Gray skies loomed over the red expanse, the sun's light filtering weakly through the clouds. It shimmered across the coral, casting eerie glints on the dark mud below.
Pa!
Anathan landed with a soft thud as he finally reached the ground. His dirty feet sank slightly into the soft, wet terrain, just as he'd expect from the ocean floor.
It had taken him nearly an hour to descend the statue, moving carefully and methodically, all the while observing and analyzing the structure. From what he could estimate, the statue stood around 200 meters tall.
Up close, the details had been hard to make out, and even now, standing on mud, he could only imagine it.
'An armor, a sword pointed downward, is it a knight?'
He couldn't shake the feeling that the proportions and symmetry were too perfect to be a coincidence.
It was a breathtaking construction. A thousand questions immediately sprang to mind—who had built it? What had happened to them? Why build it in the middle of nowhere?
'No... not nowhere. At some point in the past, this had been somewhere.'
Ruined civilizations weren't uncommon in the Dream Realm. At least, that's what the stories and Academy texts claimed. Each known region in the realm followed its own internal logic, almost like a separate world entirely. Worlds that had fused into a single, sprawling nightmare realm, one where humans and abominations alike could survive, though more often, they slaughtered each other.
Anathan kept walking, thoughts racing.
Even if this was his first real visit to the Dream Realm, he had already begun forming theories.
One of them: the ocean might return at night.
Mysteries like this fascinated him. They gave his mind something to work on, something to distract from the gnawing emptiness in his stomach.
"Agh!"
He hissed through his teeth and yanked his foot back. He'd stepped on something hard. Kicking through the mud, he uncovered a bone, half-buried and slick with rot.
Before he could react further, a sound reached his ears. Sharp clicking noises... and something heavy being dragged through the muck.
Something was approaching from around the bend.
His eyes locked on the source as a figure emerged from the coral, larger than him, looming, maybe twenty meters away.
He hadn't strayed far from the statue, just far enough to check for signs of movement. From atop the structure, the coral was far too dense, too overgrown to spot anything hiding beneath it.
Without hesitation, Anathan summoned his weapon.
In his right hand appeared an unassuming object: a smooth, dark shaft with a handle shaped from two conjoined spheres. It looked plain. Deceptively so.
The target before him was fully exposed. Though still menacing, it was somehow...
'Injured?'
A creature, roughly two and a half meters tall, lumbered into view. A grotesque fusion of demonic crab, centaur, and nightmare, it was clearly fresh from battle.
It had four pairs of long, segmented legs, though one dragged behind it, snapped at the joint and leaking red blood. The others ended in scythe-like claws, some chipped and dulled from impact.
From its armored carapace, a humanoid torso jutted forward, clad in thick, cracked chitin. Part of its left shoulder had been torn open, exposing raw, glistening muscle beneath. Its head sat directly atop the torso with no neck, a fused mass of shell and bone. Two narrow eye slits glowed dimly above a mouth lined with twitching, half-shredded mandibles.
Where hands should have been, it bore two massive pincers. One was sharp and deadly. The other had snapped in half and now hung uselessly by torn sinew.
It was Anathan's second time facing a real nightmare creature. The first had been in his initial nightmare trial. Back then, he'd had only a few options. But now, he had an entire book of spells at his disposal.
'Oh? It didn't notice me?'
The creature's posture remained low and sluggish. Its head swiveled slowly, but not toward him. The slits that passed for eyes glowed faintly, unfocused.
Maybe the injuries had dulled its senses.
Anathan remembered the first time he'd dropped into the Dream Realm—and the intense welcome party his light had triggered.
This time, he whispered.
"Lumos."
In what looked like a narrow corridor just wide enough for the demonic crab to walk, the creature reacted immediately to the blinding light flaring from Anathan's wand.
As if it had found food or treasure, it lunged.
Despite its injuries, it was still fast.
'Focus..'.
Anathan glanced at the wand, still glowing in his hand.
'Let's go, Eldy.'
The sound of coral and mud being flung aside grew louder, closer. The crab surged at him with murderous force.
"Protego!"
The light vanished instantly as a curved barrier of force burst into life. A heavy weight slammed into it a moment later, brutal and fast. The shield cracked but held. Anathan heard a wall beside him explode, fortunatelynot his own bones. The force had redirected, sending a violent spray of black mud and crushed coral into the air.
He raised his forearm, shielding his eyes as cold grit lashed his chest, neck, and ribs.
He felt it hit—but not where it mattered. He could still see.
The crab stumbled slightly, legs adjusting from the deflection.
'Chance!'
His wand moved.
"Incarcerous!"
Silver cords exploded from the wand's tip, slicing through the grime and wrapping tightly around one of the creature's front legs, the one still functional. The bindings constricted immediately, biting deep into the chipped chitin.
The beast hissed, yanked backward, and tore through the threads. But its rhythm had broken.
Exactly as intended.
Its entire figure now loomed close to Anathan, and his mind absorbed every detail, filing its anatomy away like a blueprint.
"Stupefy!"
A red bolt struck its fused face. One eye slit flared, then dimmed. The beast reeled, scraping backward from the stun, but not for long.
So he had to capitalize.
Anathan's gaze fell to the mud.
A curved bone, long and jagged, lay half-buried in the muck.
"Accio."
The bone ripped free and zipped toward him.
But the creature had already shaken off the stun and lunged again.
Anathan felt the wind shift across his mud-covered skin. He saw a hulking shadow rush toward him, but at the last possible second, he sidestepped.
The summoned bone slammed directly into the crab's torn shoulder. The already-exposed wound took the blow with a sickening crunch. The bone embedded itself deep, jutting from the muscle like a driven stake.
The creature howled.
Red ichor sprayed from the gash, fresh and arterial.
Anathan's wand moved again, this time with no incantation.
Just a flare of soul essence, shaped by will, emotion, and instinct.
It struck the embedded bone.
The stake punched deeper.
The crab shrieked, legs buckling slightly.
Another blast.
More ichor sprayed. Wet. Sharp-smelling.
"Ha!" Anathan exhaled, breathless, releasing what he hadn't realized he'd been holding.
Another pulse of energy.
Now the bone was almost completely buried in the shoulder.
The crab stumbled. Its broken left pincer twitched, then dropped, finally tearing free from the socket. The mangled claw hit the mud behind it with a dull splash.
One of its rear legs gave out as well. The limb that had been dragging twisted and folded beneath the weight of its own failing body.
But the demonic crab didn't fall.
It unleashed a loud, primal scream.
A sound like grinding bone and drowning lungs.
Then it made an erratic charge.
Its form shook with each movement. Fluids leaked from ruptured joints. Its cracked shoulder spasmed violently. It moved with the frantic terror of something that knew it was dying, but refused to die alone.
The right pincer was its only remaining weapon, sweeping in a low, vicious arc.
Anathan didn't flinch, even as the pressure surged.
He knew he could do this.
"Protego!"
A shield shimmered into place, not to block, but to redirect.
The pincer slammed into the angled barrier. Anathan let the force shove him sideways. His feet skidded through the mud, his body pivoting as he landed in a low crouch.
The monster stumbled forward, its momentum carrying it past him, its back now exposed.
Anathan's eyes locked on.
He saw the rupture, the precise point of weakness, but the window lasted only a moment.
The creature twisted again, facing him.
Anathan, naked, body streaked with mud and cut by fragments of coral, bones, and gods-knew-what, spoke with clarity.
"Accio."
The broken pincer that the creature had dropped moments ago ripped free from the muck behind it.
It launched forward, fast like a spear.
But the beast was still in the way.
The pincer slammed into its back. The jagged edge punched clean through the carapace, splitting the shoulder wound wide open. The point burst out the other side, spraying red ichor across the coral walls.
The crab spasmed.
Collapsed.
And stopped moving.
[You have slain an Awakened Beast, Carapace Scavenger.]
[You have received a Memory...]