Nightmare Realm Summoner

Chapter 56: Nexus Point

By the time Alex had finished reading the golden words floating before him, an invisible blanket of tingling energy had already wrapped itself around his entire body. A loud buzzing noise filled the air around him. Something within him lurched, his stomach clenched. He tasted iron against his tongue.

"Oh, shit," Alex said, his words echoing in his own head. "I'll be back! I'm about to get—"

The tingling sensation turned to a prickling heat, sharp enough to sizzle against his skin. His ears popped. The world jerked, twisted, swirled together like someone had shoved the entire thing into a blender. Colors mixed into a solid brown, and that shifted to black.

The ground fell out from beneath him.

Alex's stomach shot up into his throat as he plummeted, devoid of every single sense.

His feet slammed into something hard with an abrupt jolt. Color blurred and swam back into place as his hearing returned with a second pop. Alex staggered, nearly tripping over himself as the world drew itself back into being all around him.

A circular cave stretched out around him. A ceiling, well over forty feet at its peak, rose into the air above, polished perfectly smooth gray. The ground was paved with shimmering white tile, dismissing any remaining notion that the location could have been natural.

The tiles had been laid in a design that twisted inward to a large dais at the center of the room. Upon it was a door, circular in shape. Rotating segments had twisted shut like the petals of a closing flower to nigh-seamlessly seal its entrance shut.

Before Alex could so much as start to wonder exactly where it was he'd been pulled to, he came to the abrupt realization that he was not alone in the room. He wasn't sure when or how it had happened, but there were several other people standing in the room together with him.

He couldn't make out any detail of their forms. It was as if they were oddly sharp silhouettes in a dimly lit room, granting him only the general greyish-black outline of their shape and nothing more.

A melodious hum filled the air. Alex yanked his gaze up to the center of the room. Dull golden sparks danced as they traced a rectangle through the air, leaving a glowing path in their wake.

Matching energy washed across the rectangle's face, forming into a glimmering doorway. From within it stepped a figure wearing plain white robes. They didn't seem to have any features at all beyond their clothing.

The figure had no face. No skin — no anything. Its clothes conformed to an invisible form, hanging from a body that did not exist. Pale light washed off the strange apparition, washing over the room and breaking through the edges of the strange silhouette-people surrounding Alex. He still couldn't make out any details, but everyone's features grew sharper and more defined.

"Congratulations on your placement in the 2nd Initialization Event for Subsector 735," the figure intoned. Its voice was smooth and polished, completely devoid of any emotion. "I am the Overseer for this Trial. Welcome to the Subsector 735 Nexus Point. The lifeforms in this room are the Rank 1 Leaderboard runners who achieved the highest scores on their Local Leaderboards for the 2nd phase of Initialization."

"Are you the System? What's the point of all this?"

Alex's gaze snapped to the side as the loud, energetic voice of a man somewhere around his mid-twenties rang across the room from one of the silhouettes. The figure in question stood over a head taller than Alex. Even without detail, Alex could make out muscle rippling over the man's form. He held the shadows of what seemed to be a small axe in each of his hands.

The robed figure didn't so much as acknowledge the interruption.

"Rewards will be distributed according to your relative scores," the Overseer stated. It waved a hand through the air and gold streamers trailed behind it, twisting like snakes in its wake. "The final competitor in the trial was worth 100 Kills. You may take a short period of time to familiarize yourselves with the rankings."

Hold on. Did it just say competitor?

The lines of gold connected and formed into words.

Final Leaderboard — Initialization Event

Absolution (Initiate 8): 824 Kills

GoGently (Initiate 4): 693 Kills

Stargazer (Initiate 6): 502 Kills

Ash (Novice 7): 471 Kills

Sunset (Initiate 4): 464 Kills

Stem Major (Initiate 7): 399 Kills

TacticalSandal (Initiate 2): 346 Kills

TryFinger (Initiate 1): 319 Kills

HackNSlash (Initiate 1): 289 Kills

River King (Initiate 1): 250 Kills

The first thing Alex noticed was that someone had somehow managed to get eight hundred kills. There definitely hadn't been anywhere near that many monsters to fight, but he only managed to linger on that thought for a second before his mind flitted to process the words he was reading.

Every single person on the leaderboard — himself excluded — was already at Initiate rank.

Alex wasn't the only one to notice it.

"That's odd. What's a Novice doing in here?" A female voice asked.

Alex glanced in the direction of the person that had spoken, taking care not to turn his head. If everyone could only see silhouettes, then they couldn't track his eyes — and he wasn't so sure he wanted to give himself away by looking too excited about being mentioned.

The speaker was short and carried a staff taller than her with both hands. There was a large, circular hat with a flattened top and rectangular brims perched on top of her head. Alex turned his gaze over the rest of the room, taking in the other silhouettes and committing them to memory.

A huge, armored form that must have been at least eight feet tall, bearing a broadsword as wide as they were.

A thin form draped in robes not all too dissimilar to those of the Overseer, leaning on a wizened staff with what appeared to be a pointed wizard hat upon their head.

A woman in plain clothes, clutching a paint brush nearly as large as she was, unable to sit still as her head turned back and forth to scan the room.

A man that seemed to be completely naked beside a loincloth, holding a tiny dagger in one hand.

A brawny man — the one who had spoken first — with two hand axes.

A slightly rotund man wearing what Alex suspected to be a suit and leaning on a cane.

A man of average build with a huge scythe slung over his back.

A tall, thin figure that Alex couldn't determine the gender of, with their long hair tied back into a ponytail and a thick book tucked under an arm.

It seemed the others had a similar idea, because it was several moments before the silence was broken again, this time by the heavily armored form.

"I'd rather know why he's in the middle of the ranks at his level. He doesn't even have Qi yet!" the armored figure exclaimed, their gruff voice identifying them as male. "Who's Ash? Speak up, mate."

Qi?

"Hey!" The axe-wielding man yelled, pointing one of his axes up at the Overseer and ignoring the conversation entirely. "Can you hear me?"

"Be quiet. Please. All of you," the man in the wizard hat said. "The Overseer obviously isn't going to say anything until we stop talking. I want to see what I get and then get back to work. I have important business to get to. Work might be a foreign concept to the rest of you, but I'm swamped with it."

"You just spoke more than all of us," the girl with the paintbrush said.

"I figured out who Stem Major is," the naked man said through a nasally snicker. "Do you really think the System would get stunlocked on a bunch of idiots yapping? I doubt it's even registered us talking."

"I'm not Stem Major. And shut up. Don't lecture me," the robed man who was definitely Stem Major said. "I—"

The leaderboard vanished from the air and the Overseer brought its hands together in a gentle clap.

"Your excess rewards will be distributed shortly. Upon return to your former locations, any deferred rewards will be released. It is suggested that you steel your Mind Palace in preparation for Energy Overload."

What the hell is Energy Overload?

"Just give it to us already," Stem Major muttered under his breath.

The air before Alex crackled and a tiny golden portal traced itself into existence. His hands shot out a moment before a tiny white crystal fragment tumbled out from the portal and landed in his palms. Glistening words traced through the air above it, identifying the small item.

Unstable Nexus Core Shard (Epic) — Consumable

Upon Destruction: Permanently gain 5 Units of Soul Energy.

If the user of this item is killed, it will re-form at the location of their death.

The first three Unstable Nexus Core Shards returned to this location will evolve.

Alex's eyes went wide. 5 Units of Soul Energy was practically enough to upgrade every single one of his skills. That was a ridiculously good item. His gaze shot up to everyone else in the room. Each of them looked to have gotten something similar, but the description strongly implied that there were different rarities — and Alex was willing to bet they'd been distributed in order of rank. He'd placed around the upper middle of the leaderboard… so the ones at the top probably gave even more Units.

I don't know what the rarity even means in this case, but I'd be willing to bet it determines the quality of the ability upgrades I get. Holy shit. What an item… and what a way to put us at each other's throats. If we kill each other, we get another upgrade — and if we combine 3 shards, we can bring it back here and get an even bigger reward.

But doesn't this mean…

"The System is making us hunt each other," the portly man leaning on his cane observed. "It's keeping us from banding together and launching ourselves even farther ahead of everyone else by causing infighting. That also ensures only the strongest can benefit from these shards, while the weakest may end up falling to someone that doesn't even have one and distributing the power to the more deserving. Intelligent."

"Stop sucking your own dick," the mostly-naked man said, shattering his own shard. "You really like the sound of your own voice, don't you?"

The other man continued speaking without missing a beat. "For anyone who wishes to sell their shards, I will purchase them at a very good price. My name on the leaderboard is the River King. Find me."

Yeah, not happening. No way am I giving this up.

"Hand over your shards!" the heavily armored man proclaimed, also ignoring the River King completely. "Give 'em here and save yourself the—"

"Stuff yourself," the girl with the paintbrush said. Her silhouetted hand rose, a glistening shard pinched between her fingers, and she crushed them shut. The shard shattered, transforming into glittering motes that flew into her body. "I don't want to deal with any of you, but I'll be happy to take the shards off your bodies if you come looking for me."

A shimmer in the air before Alex caught his attention. He glanced down as the tiny portal that the previous item had fallen through undulated with a final flicker of energy. It vanished, but not before dropping a little glass disk into his palms. He barely managed to catch it before it slipped between his fingers.

Looking Glass (Legendary) — Consumable

Upon Destruction: Choose a single entity in the Nexus Point and reveal their leaderboard identity and appearance.

Alex's eyes widened. His gaze shot up to try and see if anyone else had gotten the same item, but their portals had all vanished. There was no way to tell if they'd gotten the item as well. The safe bet was to assume that they had.

He scanned the silhouettes around him, both trying to figure out who to use his own shard on while also trying to see if their body language revealed anything. Unfortunately, with their faces completely missing, it was hard to draw any conclusions.

Well, shit. I want to know who all of them are, but I've only got one shot.

Who do I reveal?

There were several people that hadn't spoken yet. A lot of them already had pretty evident silhouettes, but that didn't mean they couldn't just change their clothes. Alex frowned as he studied everyone for a moment.

The girl with the giant hat and the staff seems really confident, and she's not as dumb as the axe-guy. If she ends up putting that staff and pointy hat away, she'll just look like any other random woman. The others are generally a bit easier to recognize, so she seems like a good one to go with.

Alex shattered the piece of glass.

The shadow covering the girl evaporated like water in the desert heat, peeling away from her form and disappearing. She looked to be around 24, with bright red hair that rolled down to her shoulders and pale, freckled skin. She wore dull purple robes trimmed with flowing silver designs. The side of her lip was marred by a small scar. A large portion of her face was concealed by her hat, but Alex could still make out more than enough of it to commit to memory. Letters carved into the air above her head.

GoGently

Sweet.

She's the Rank 2 on the leaderboard. I got a pretty good guess. She's definitely stronger than me right now, so I'll have to keep an eye out for her until I can close the gap a bit farther. I definitely don't want to get into a fight with her yet.

"Rewards have been distributed," the Overseer proclaimed. "Return to your former positions is imminent."

Several of the other silhouettes shattered their fragments instantly. Alex followed suit. He wasn't about to sit around on the shard and wait for someone to steal it from him.

The crystal shattered between his fingers as he crushed it. Tingles raced across his skin. Something tightened in his chest. His heart skipped a beat and a painful pressure built within his ribcage.

Alex nearly staggered as energy exploded within him. It roared from his chest like water bursting through a dam and flooded his entire body, flowing through veins and muscles alike with effortless ease. Pain ripped through him with such sudden intensity that he didn't even have a chance to scream before it had vanished.

In its place, golden words carved into the air.

Unstable Nexus Core Shard has insufficient strength to influence Singularity Core.

Singularity Core has refined the Unstable Nexus Core Shard.

You have amassed 5 units of soul energy.

Alex blinked as he studied the words floating in the air before him. Singularity Core had shown up before — back when he'd first gotten his class in the Mirrorlands. He had no idea what it was or what it was doing, but he'd gotten 5 whole Units of soul energy. That was an entire 5 level boost. A grin split across his face. This was exactly the kind of reward he'd been hoping—

Singularity Core has enriched [Requiem to the King]'s potential upgrades.

It did what now?