Sorry, this chapter took so long, it's much harder to think of a first nightmare and attributes than you think. I wanted the first nightmare to be fighting Artorias or Manus, but since his powers are tied to the abyss watchers gotta have him fight them. Don't think you aren't going to see Artorias, tho.
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Soren dreamt of a poison swamp.
The swamp was a dark green, with the majority of it dense with tall trees. The swamp seemed shallow as there were small pieces of land sticking out of the swamp in various locations, seeming to be good places to avoid being knee deep in toxic sludge. Hidden between the trees were towering, bestial creatures brandishing uprooted trees as weapons, as well as a number of similar but lesser creatures scattered throughout the swamp.
In the swamp, there appeared to be ruins, with three of them placed to the north, south, and west of the swamp. Above these ruins, a fire burned. To the east of the ruins, there was a large stone door with three unlit fire cauldrons.
In the center of the swamp was an old tower of enormous height that connected to a bridge at the top. On the bridge rested a large, hulking figure wielding a massive stone greathammer.
Suddenly, the moon in the sky accelerated to the east, disappearing over the horizon with the sun rising from the west, doing the same. Soren realised that he was watching time reverse.
Though reversing not much changed, showing this swamp must have been like this for an unknown amount of time.
Time slowed, stopped, and then resumed its usual pace.
[Aspirant! Welcome to the Nightmare Spell. Prepare for your first trial...]
When Soren had control of himself again he was sitting in front of a small fire with a spiral sword in the middle. Seeing the sword in the middle of the fire gave Soren a nostalgic feeling as he looked through his past life memories.
It was a bonfire from the Dark Souls series.
In Sorens' last life, Dark Souls was a video game series that was infamous for being extremely hard. Based on the vision the spell showed Soren moments ago he immediately knew where he was.
Farron Keep, the main poison area that every Dark Souls game features.
Diving deeper through these memories, Soren realised how undeniably screwed he was. Not because of his memories of Farron Keep, but rather because of his memories of a certain webnovel that was close to his heart.
Shadow Slave.
A world where anyone, anywhere, could die to anything in the most painful and terrifying ways possible. Even the strongest people in the world weren't immune to the dangers of the dream realm and corruption. No amount of plot armor could help him, as even the MC of the original novel was plagued by some of the worst things that could happen to a human and survived it all through spite and plot armor given wings [Fated].
Thinking this, Soren started thinking it was over, but then thought of his current nightmare. He may not know everything about Farron's Keep, but as a Dark Souls player who played DS3 multiple times, he knows a lot, more than enough to complete this nightmare.
Looking around, Soren saw that he was in a small room that was made entirely of stone. In a corner of the room, there was a ladder leading upwards, with a doorway that led to the poison swamp in front of him.
Soren only knew up to the point of the novel where Sunny became a supreme. Even though he didn't know anything past this point of the novel, from what he did know, he knew that the would need a good aspect to survive the dream realm and a great aspect to thrive.
Before all that, he checked his runes, as that would decide how he plans to handle the challenges coming.
Name: Soren.
True Name: —
Rank: Aspirant.
Soul Core: Dormant.
Memories: —
Echoes: —
Attributes:[Dark soul vessel], [Innate Parry], [Martial Prodigy], [Fates' Bane]
Aspect: [Chosen Undead]
Aspect Description: [Ordinary Unkindled are fated to be burnt to ash attempting to link the First Flame, Chosen Undead is a title bestowed by the gods to the unkindled destined to link the First Flame.]
After reading his runes, Soren had to say he was more than satisfied. Everything but his attributes and aspect was as expected. The first attribute had an air of mystery, and, was hard to tell what it did at first glance. The second and third were more straightforward and clearly meant for combat, while the fourth gave Soren an ominous feeling. Despite having a rough idea of them from his past life memories, he decided to check the attribute descriptions to clear up any misunderstandings.
[Dark soul vessel] Attribute Description: "The Dark Soul represents humanity's inherent potential, resilience, and capacity for both good and evil. As a Vessel of the Dark soul, your innate potential is limitless, and perseverance never wanes."
[Innate Parry] Attribute Description: "The art of parrying is to use your opponent's recklessness to create an opportunity for a devastating blow. As long as you time it properly, any attack can be parried and lead to a Reposte. The higher the rank and class of the opponent, the more parries need to be done, as well as the time frame for the parries becomes shorter to perform a reposte."
(Rank is exponential, so Dormant is 1, awakened is 2, ascended is 4... while class is amount of soul cores times the value of Rank, so an ascended devil is (4*4)=16 parried for a reposte. the time frame becomes shorter by rank only. the time frame for the same rank is 1 second, while one rank above is 0.5 seconds, and two ranks above is 0.25 seconds, and so on. This doesn't account for the pressure placed on Soren from fighting a significantly stronger opponent not to mention any type of mental attack during an attempted parry.)
[Martial Prodigy] Attribute Description: "You can tap into your full potential to easily learn the basics of any weapon as well as quickly learn combat styles."
[Fates' Bane] Attribute Description: "Fate has no control over you, so it will destroy you."
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