Droplets from the bed and the cloth covering Lidien's face reverberated throughout the Training Room.
Aria's face was flushed red, giggling as her ecstasy reached its peak.
"Oh, my Lidien... I'll make you addicted to this kind of love, so you'll always seek me over Lily..."
Aria stared down at Lidien... unmoving. His feet were stretched to their end, making them look cramped; his hands were stuck in fists while the claws dug deeper, dropping blood that harmonized with the water droplets. His crimson eyes were so unfocused that his pupils dilated like those of the dead.
"Good luck, Lidien… I hope you come back..."
***
As Lidien's consciousness was pulled by the outside influence, he was met with an ocean of stars.
'What a traumatic way just to enter this Dreamflow...'
This time, Lidien wasn't floating... but standing on clear water reflecting the stars in the sky, staring at the Crimson Shard, where numerous fragmented shattered shards orbited it like satellites.
Lidien took a step, causing ripples on the still water... as he proceeded near the Crimson Shard, he could now clearly distinguish everything, unlike the first time he visited here when he was having a nightmare in the carriage.
The shattered fragmented shards depicted the past tragic experiences of Lidien, leaking a corrosive black miasma that slowly condensed before dropping onto the still water surface, polluting it.
Meanwhile, the Crimson Shard... his own Soul Shard that was fused with the Essence of the Death God... absorbed a thin film of rays that came from the stars, though it only absorbed three distinct types of rays...
The first was a red substance that looked as if forced to evaporate from blood; the second was a grey smoke that screamed like a ghost; and the last was a corrosive emerald pus, thick and slimy.
Though the three looked unnatural in their own ways, they still combined harmoniously without any sign of resisting each other.
Then they were transformed by the Crimson Shard into a blood-like liquid dripping down from it, mixing with the lake-like water.
Lidien stared at the still water he was standing on.
'Is this the Verve?'
Lidien's knowledge was so insufficient that he couldn't even define the things he was seeing.
'I need to find a way to gain more knowledge... and it doesn't exist here in the barbaric Savage Expanse...'
Curious, Lidien tried to use his Demonic Transformation and watched himself in the reflection of the Verve...
Surprisingly, some of the black miasmic verve produced by the previous Lidien's Shattered Shards engulfed his whole ethereal body, transforming him into his Demonic Form.
Lidien smiled and thought of trying it with his Incite of Blood.
As he activated his Incite of Blood, the blood-like verve crawled up his feet, snaking its way toward his heart and head... making everything seem to slow down.
Analyzing everything around him, Lidien saw the Crimson Shard shine unnaturally. As he focused on the source, he saw a rune engraved on it alongside two others.
'Incite of Blood... Whisper of Souls, and Echoes of the Flesh.'
However, when he checked the Shattered Shards, trying to find the source of the Demonic Transformation, he could only see his reflection staring back at him in its Demonic Form, hissing.
Lidien smirked, then sat in the lotus position without deactivating the Incite of Blood and Demonic Transformation, looking around his Dreamflow to see the changes if he were to use his abilities.
As he waited for a few minutes, Lidien noticed that the Verve beneath him was getting rapidly consumed; his blood-like verve was producing more than his consumption, while his black miasmic verve production couldn't keep up with his Demonic Transformation, making the blood-like verve compensate by engulfing Lidien with it while also trying to crawl up to the Shattered Shards using the black-miasmic verve as a bridge.
'Damn it... so the more I use the Incite of Blood, the more my Demon side is getting purified by it...'
Lidien deactivated his Incite of Blood, and as he watched the Blood-like Verve settle, the purification of the Shattered Shard stopped.
However, Lidien felt a burning sensation throughout his whole body from the overuse of his Sparkline maintaining his Demonic Transformation.
Lidien sighed and deactivated his Demon Form.
'Now... how do I leave this Dreamflow? Am I still breathing outside or not?'
Without a way out, Lidien could only sit and stare at his Crimson Shard silently absorbing Essence from the cosmos.
'The past Lidien's memories say that Understanding Essence will evolve a Blessed... Is it only from watching this essence get absorbed and transformed into verve? Or how I understand its usage?'
Laughing dejectedly, Lidien tried to Meditate on how to absorb Elemental Essence, trying to see if he could make a Coreflux in his Dreamflow, but it was impossible... Not because he couldn't find peace in the Dreamflow, but because there was no Elemental Essence present; even the Spiritual and Profane Essence couldn't be absorbed in his ethereal form to build a Coreflux.
He stayed in the lotus position until he felt himself being forcefully pulled out of his Dreamflow.
***
Lidien coughed up all the water still stuck in his throat. As he tried to lean to the side, he was surprised to see Aria still unshackling his body from the bed.
"Welcome back, Lidien... so, how was your Dreamflow adventure?"
Lidien had almost forgotten he was drowned by Aria after spending what felt like a day inside his Dreamflow.
Taking a deep breath, he sat up and glanced at Aria, who was still removing the chain from his lower body.
"I'm not sure... I don't know... it was just like an ocean with a Shattered Shard containing my past memories... by the way, how much time passed by?"
Aria shook her head and put the chain and container back into her space ring before picking up the white cloth that was placed beside Lidien.
"Well, I'm not sure... It felt like only seven to fifteen seconds passed from when I drowned you..."
Aria then sat beside Lidien and wiped his still-wet face with a new cloth.
"Did you try smashing your Shattered Shards with your Verve?"