Overlord Dharma led Lulu and Jason to handle the Dream Reaper. They had a small team, but it was enough from Klaus’s perspective and knowledge.
Overlord Dharma is one of the strongest spirit masters in the world, so this battle was a perfect fit for him.
Of course, Lulu, who is also a spirit master, was meant to support him, with Jason acting as the ultimate backup.
He is a swordsman just like Miriam. They both use the light element.
So he was meant to stay far from the battle while Dharma and Lulu handled it.
Their opponent is a beast that relies on illusions, such as dreams, to hunt. It doesn’t physically attack, so to defeat it, they were required to overcome the illusions and get closer.
They are two powerful spirit masters, so Klaus assigned them to handle it.
On the surface, that was easier said than done.
It turns out Klaus’s intel was flawed this time, and because of that, they are now trapped in an endless battle against dream spawns.
They are trapped in a Dreamscape. Klaus didn’t know that his suspicions were right, considering he had suspected this.
When he sculpted and examined the beast, he had a nagging suspicion that a beast that doesn’t have the ability to fight physically must have something that makes it confident and dangerous.
Shit, it even became a guardian for a Tier 11 monster. That alone was enough to tell him what he needed to know.
However, he didn’t realize it had this terrifying ability, so he sent only two spirit masters. Not that he had more lying around.
He would have been on the team if Old Lu were present. But it was already too late.
It turns out the beast doesn’t only rely on illusions; its main attack is manifesting the dreams of its opponents. This means the battle was between the three humans and their dreams.
This, of course, isn’t the normal dream someone would think of.
The beast has a way of creating something dangerous out of the sweet dreams of anyone.
One could say it’s one terrifying beast nobody should go against.
Overlord Dharma was now fighting a copy of himself.
They have the same shape, look, abilities, and even freaking eye color. Basically, his dream is the fear that he will lose control over his spirit eyes and go berserk.
So this dream has been manifested, and now he is fighting a psycho version of himself.
Lulu, however, was fighting a hooded figure who was also a spirit master. Unlike her, who uses swords, this person uses daggers.
Their battle is devastating, as a single miss of one spirit weapon can end the other. That is how devastatingly dangerous a spirit master’s battle looks.
They have to use their minds to precisely control the spirit weapons while using their souls to attack each other, hoping that they mess up their control and minds to get what they want.
So Lulu was being extra careful while trying to understand where this dream came from. She never even narrowly dreamt of this person she was fighting, so how come it was now fighting her?
Jason was not exempt from the nightmare either.
While he was meant to support the beast, the Dream Reaper had no intentions of letting anyone stay out of the fight. His dream was different from the others.
He found himself facing an enormous wall of light, blinding, suffocating, and pressing against him with unimaginable weight.
Jason’s fear wasn’t of darkness or monsters; it was the fear of failure, the fear that his light would one day betray him and blind him instead of guiding him.
This fear came from what happened when he awakened. Jason’s story is a bit sad. He is from a family where his father has about ten wives.
His mother is the 6th. Naturally, his father doesn’t pay much attention to them, considering he is a renowned warrior who is loved by thousands of outsiders.
So it was Jason and her mother throughout the better part of his life. Naturally, he doesn’t give a hoot about his father.
However, his heart shattered when he awakened as a warrior. That day, he awakened as a swordsman, but instead of ice or fire, he awakened the light element.
That was fine. He was happy, for he had awakened an element and a class. But what happened next shattered his heart in painful ways.
The day he awakened, he also awakened an innate ability that allowed him to harness the power of the lightning and shoot it as a laser beam with his eyes.
It was a cool ability that anyone would be pleased about.
However, he doesn’t really know how it works, so in trying to figure it out, he mistakenly unleashed a beam that tore through the heart of the only support he had his leg on.
He mistakenly killed his mother, and as such, he developed a fear of light energy, which is his own element.
He was broken beyond repair, and for a whole year, he remained in his sorrow, until he was kicked out by his family.
For years, he dreamt many times of awakening the ice element and forever being with his mother.
The damn light element ruined his life and took his mother from him. He may have suppressed this memory…
But the Dream Reaper has other plans for him.
It knew the best way to conquer Jason was to render him emotional and weak in the mind. Basically, the dream reaper takes more than just the dreams. It takes their fears, too.
As a result, his dream manifested as a battle against his own element.
He struggled to move, every swing of his sword feeling sluggish, as if the light itself was binding him in chains.
He was drowning, and the more he swung his sword, the quicker his mind gave out.
Meanwhile, Overlord Dharma clashed furiously with his berserk doppelgänger. Every strike of their spirit weapons shook the dreamscape, sending shockwaves that distorted the illusions around them.
It was a brutal battle of strength, focus, and will. Dharma knew that his nightmare self would overwhelm him if he hesitated even for a moment.
So he was doing his best while making sure he wasn’t overwhelmed. His mind was still alert, for he knew the two kids with him would rely on him if they had a shred of chance to win this battle.
On the other hand, Lulu danced across the battlefield, clashing blades with the hooded spirit master.
Every spark of their weapons meeting sent ripples through the air, disrupting nearby illusions.
Her mind was a battlefield of its own, constantly calculating trajectories, spirit weapon speeds, and potential openings while resisting the creeping fear that her opponent was faster, more ruthless, and more precise.
She also sensed a familiarity she just couldn’t make head or tail of, the more they clashed. It felt like this wasn’t truly a dream but reality, and the more they fought, the more she continued to sense that.
The dreamscape itself was unstable.
Colors bled into each other, sounds twisted into whispers of doubt, and the ground shifted unpredictably.
The longer they fought, the harder it became to separate illusion from reality.
Worse, the Dream Reaper was feeding on their struggles, growing stronger with every ounce of fear and doubt they emitted.
It was a mess of struggle, heartbreak, and suspicion…