Soren stared in shock at the Captain’s question.
He had no idea how to respond to that because who would, in their right mind, want a scavenger as part of an Abyssal expedition team?
Thankfully, before he had to respond, he heard thumping upstairs that caught the attention of the others and gave him some more time to think over the offer.
“That must be the others,” Rivor said, looking upstairs.
“The man and children that managed to survive with you.”
Soren sat up, remembering that he didn’t see the Jase die from the impact nor did he see any Abyssal Creatures find the two children.
“How are they?” he asked, praying that they’d be okay.
“Hmm,” Meric responded, already walking over to go upstairs.
“The man will live and the children are unscathed.”
Soren breathed out a sigh of relief he didn’t know he was holding.
Although it was a tragedy, with what happened in the restaurant, at least he wasn’t the sole survivor.
That would’ve haunted him even more than it was haunting him now.
“Would you like to see them?” Meric asked, gesturing upstairs.
Soren shook his head.
Although he was glad to know that they were safe, he didn’t know how he could face them—especially Jase.
Soren got his wife killed and he wasn’t ready for any confrontations yet.
Not to mention the other woman met a terrible fate trying to save him.
Meric, seemingly understanding him, nodded and went upstairs with the others in suit.
Soren took the opportunity to go to another room in the inn and finally gather his thoughts that had been bothering him since waking up.
He took a shuddering breath and felt his body, feeling for proof that he was alive and that this place wasn’t some purgatory.
He still remembered the feeling of being a ghost.
The feeling of not being in control of his own body.
The feeling of death.
However, he didn’t know if the dream he had was real or just a cruel trick his mind pulled on him, but what he did know was that something in his mind told him to take it seriously.
Soren shelved the existential crisis aside and unsheathed the Dream Sword.
He had to survive the Abyss before he could allow himself to spiral and to do that, he needed information.
He mulled over what to manipulate the Looking Glass attribute to look for until he decided.
The battle at the Nexus.
The reflection shifted to capture a stoic woman in the midst of a fierce battle against Abyssal Creatures of varying ranks.
Surrounding her were numerous soldiers that were fighting just as fiercely as her.
‘The Empress of Vulcanis.’
Soren looked at the dream sword in awe at what he was witnessing.
There were around a hundred normal soldiers guarding the citizens while dozens of Ascended royal guards were in the frontlines with the Empress, slaughtering the Abyssal Creatures.
They were slowly advancing to the crater of the Grand Stage where a small, pulsing purple rift waited at the center of all the devastation.
There, a creature stood, guarding the rift.
When Soren tried to focus on the creature, he found that he couldn’t really focus on its features other than it looking demented.
‘Strange,’ Soren thought before giving up trying to see what the creature was.
However, according to the brief information he read in the handbook about the Abyss, an Order Break’s Nexus spawns an equivalent rank of the Abyssal Creature.
Since the Order Break was of the Divine rank, it was safe to assume that the Abyssal Creature’s manifestation was Dark One—the direct parallel to Divine.
In contrast, Abyssal Creatures manifested from Formless, Echoed, Dark One, Shadowed, to Nightmare.
Soren knew that to rule Vulcanis, the Prince or Princess must be at least Transcendent and given the Empress’s relatively young age, she was probably only Transcendent.
That would mean that the Empress would need to defeat the Dark One as a Transcendent.
Soren tried to focus deeper on the details of the Empress and the Dark One, but the reflection remained ambiguous regarding them.
However, he found that the reflection of the regular soldiers or even most of the royal guard was clear.
‘Hm,’ Soren thought, rubbing his chin.
‘It seems that the Dream Sword can only see the information of the lower ranks.’
Realizing its limits, Soren quickly willed the reflection to change.
‘Show me Shindo.’
The dream sword rippled, its reflection changing, before it stopped.
The reflection shifted back to the battlefield for the Order Break Nexus.
Soren frowned, a knot of panic appearing in his chest.
He tried again, clearing his mind and focusing on Shindo but once more, the Dream Sword distorted before snapping back to the Nexus.
It didn’t make any sense for Soren.
He knew Shindo since he was a child.
He was his best friend for as long as his memory went back.
The Dream Sword seemed to only lock onto Awakened or below but he knew that Shindo was only a normal scavenger like him—well he thought he did.
Heavy footsteps echoed from the hallway outside the room he was in, breaking his spiraling mind.
Soren tilted the blade away but Captain Valen was already there, leaning against the doorway watching him.
“That’s an unusual blade,” she said, walking into the room.
“What does it exactly do?”
Soren gripped the hilt before he decided that honesty was the optimal choice.
“The sword allows me to look across vast distances and the information of Abyssal Creatures—like a looking glass,” he said, offering the sword to the Captain.
“I—uh, got it from an Abyssal Creature I killed.”
“Hmm,” she hummed softly, taking the sword and examining it.
“Meridia…”
Soren looked at Captain Valen, detecting a faint trace of history in her tone when she mentioned the Empress by name.
He wisely refrained from prying though, as it wasn’t his place.
She returned the sword back to Soren, a questioning look in her sharp eyes.
“What’s the issue, then?”
Soren hesitated for a moment before deciding to speak up.
She was a Transcendent with vast knowledge of the Abyss and its magical artifacts.
Seeking her insight probably couldn’t hurt.
“Well,” he started cautiously.
“My friend, Shindo, was also dragged into the Abyss with me but I couldn’t find him.
I was wondering if you could help me find him.”
Captain Valen let out a quiet noise of acknowledgement, remaining silent for a long moment.
Soren waited anxiously but braced himself for rejection because who in their right mind would risk their life in the Abyss for a complete stranger?
“Do you know if he’s alive?”
Come to think of it, he had no idea if he was alive.
The Dream Sword hadn’t shown a corpse, but it hadn’t shown Shindo either.
That didn’t confirm whether or not he was dead or alive.
“I—I don’t know.”
Captain Valen grimaced at the answer but seemed like she had already anticipated it.
Given the nature of the Abyss, one could hardly be expected to survive its harrowing trials without ample preparations—not even a Transcendent was guaranteed their survival.
‘No, I need to be certain,’ Soren thought, having an epiphany.
‘I need to map out the rules of this blade—no matter how crude.’
He gripped the Dream Sword and thrusted it into the ground before manipulating the Dreamy attribute to change the longsword to a giant greatsword.
A pulse came from the white orb on his necklace before the sword swelled in size, turning into a giant mirror that reflected the entire room.
Captain Valen took a cautious step back, an intrigued spark in her gaze.
Soren licked his lips before he touched the mirror-like blade, willing the Dream Sword to show what he wished to see.
Although the sword warped without problems, he felt a stronger surge of entropy come from the necklace to the Dream Sword but ignored it.
In the first attempt, he willed the Dream Sword to show Irene—the woman who was consumed whole by the white-faced Abyssal Creature.
The reflection fractured like broken glass, reverting back to its mirror-like blade.
In the second attempt, he willed the Dream Sword to show the other woman who was stabbed to death by the white-faced Abyssal, not consumed at all.
The reflection showed her lifeless bloody lying in the ruins of wooden planks.
The third attempt, he willed the Dream Sword to show the part of the city at the complete opposite end of where he was.
The image manifested, but it was blanketed in a dense fog.
And in the final attempt, he willed the Dream Sword to show Captain Valen—the person right in front of him.
He even tried once more on the Empress and the same result occurred.
The reflection shuddered before it snapped straight back to the reflection of the dense fog from the previous reflection.
Soren stepped back, his breathing ragged as the pieces clicked together.
Soren cupped both hands over his mouth, trying to find any reason as to why Shindo was supposedly the same rank as Transcendents before his eyes widened, coming to a realization.
Captain Valen shifted her feet, the subtle hum of her Transcendent presence revealing that she felt the Dream Sword probe at her location.
Her sharp eyes had tracked the rapid tests Soren had conducted, missing none of the calculated logic behind them.
“You ran through a process of elimination,” she said calmly, not minding the Dream Sword’s attempt at finding her location.
“What did you find?”
Soren lowered his hands, letting go of the sword and letting them fall to his side.
The reality of what he had just deduced felt absurd—almost impossible.
“If the target was devoured, the blade fractures.
If the target wasn’t devoured but killed, the blade finds the corpse.
When the distance is too great, it turns to fog,” Soren said, his voice trembling slightly before he forced it to steady.
“And when I search for someone of a high rank—like you, Captain, or the Empress—the blade distorts and snaps back to the previous reflection.”
Valen nodded slowly.
“A reasonable limitation for such an artifact.”
“That’s just it,” Soren said, looking up to meet her cold gaze directly.
“When I try to search for Shindo…
the blade reacts the exact same way it does when I look at you.”
“Shindo, who I thought was a normal scavenger,” he said, his eyes wide in disbelief, “is a Transcendent.”
A heavy silence settled over the room.