"It won't be long now," Cassius said as large beads of sweat trickled down his face. "I can feel my Inner Slayer Dinsion taking the form intended for it."
OOOM!
The air around him turned chaotic and upturned, but with the forceful repression of the devilishly handso man, it was isolated within the room. His rapidly fluctuating and growing aura was also contained, with not a single sliver of his breakthrough slipping out of the domain he erected.
— After roughly half an hour more of adding the finishing touches, Cassius's Inner Slayer Dinsion had finally been created —
It was also at this point in ti that the endless dark mist surrounding the Mistalore Defense Nation's territory grew darker and thicker. This indicated a switch from sothing akin to 'day to night.'
Any Nightmare Slayer who stayed here long enough to understand the inner workings of the Nightmarescape knew all too well what this switch in ti signified:
An increase in the Nightmares' aggressiveness.
The pupils of Nightmares all over the Forgotten Shores would turn a very dark shade of red, and they'd wantonly start chasing down anything with a heartbeat. They were even known to slaughter each other during this ti, going through many evolutions because of it.
By the end of the 48-hour period—which made up a full Nightmarescape Night cycle—many Nightmare Slayers from all over would have lost their lives in battle.
The rciless onslaughts of countless Nightmares in a berserk-like state for hours on end were enough to reap the lives of tens of thousands of Slayers.
Tonight, like all the many nights before, was surely going to be a bloody one…
However, cooped up within a small Fort room—seemingly oblivious to all the chaos happening around the world—was one Mr. Cassius Steele. His breakthrough had been a complete success, and along with it ca a picture-perfect Inner Slayer Dinsion.
Shaped without any imperfections and containing a wide space that could be considered a flawlessly empty page, it was the best one could hope for when creating an Inner Slayer Dinsion.
It was also around this ti that System Notifications began ringing out:
*Ding!*
[You have successfully broken through from the 'Half-step 2nd Class Slayer' Rank → '1st Stage 2nd Class Slayer' Rank!]
[Your 'Inner Slayer Dinsion' has ford with the condition of 'Pristine.']
[Your Battle Power has trendously improved!]
"It'll definitely be a while before I experience another breakthrough in my Slayer Rank, but at least I completed another breakthrough with no bottleneck," Cassius said, a little surprised about his high innate Slayer Talent. "This talent of mine makes imagine what it would've been like if I were born in this dark, dark world instead of my blue space marble. Would I have been so kind of natural-born genius? Or would I have perished early due to the envy of others…?"
He figured this hypothetical scenario could've wound up going either way. But regardless of 'what ifs,' the him of the present was the only him that truly mattered.
"With my breakthrough out of the way, I seem to have so free ti on my hands. And it should stay that way until I'm requested to the Battlefield once more," Cassius said, scouring his mind for his other techniques. "As the grind never ends, I guess I'll improve my Demon King Rank and maybe increase the progression of my Demon Dragon Bloodline by a little."
With 11 [Nightscare Shards] in his possession—after crushing them—he could potentially stay in the Nightmarescape for 11 weeks, or a bit under three months. And with Humanity's Nexus Event looming on the horizon, he knew he had to seize every possible advantage. To gain the upper hand in the silent war that lay ahead, he had to be prepared to leverage every resource at his disposal, no matter the cost.
Even if he had to torture himself for three months straight, he'd do it without a second thought.
'For more power,' Cassius thought as he faded into the act of circulating his Demon King cultivation. 'All for more power.'
With that sort of ceaseless, never-satisfied mindset, ti flew by. Minutes turned into hours, and hours beca days.
— Two weeks later —
A day after Cassius made a breakthrough into the Mid Archdemon Rank, he received a knock at his door. From that knock, he listened to the voice of a Slayer informing him of his new reassignnt to the far stronger Platoon 49. He also learned of his new Platoon's imdiate deploynt to a dangerous area situated scarily close to the current known boundaries of the Endless Dark Fog.
The Shallow Crater.
A place that, as its na suggested, was akin to a shallowly placed crater. However, it was a crater that stretched in every direction for thousands of miles, taking up a very large part of the Mistalore Defense Nation's explored territory. It was also littered with countless thin, eerie, and constantly wandering Rank 3 Nightmares called 'Nightwalkers.'
These Nightmares were what made the Shallow Crater such a perilous place.
There was a reason that, in such a massive expanse of land, they were the only species of Nightmare around…
Many Nightmare Slayers had fallen to the long, stretched claws of the humanoid-like Nightwalkers. A lot of them had died without ever knowing how exactly they died.
As for why Cassius and the rest of Platoon 49 were ordered to head over to this dangerous place, no one in the Platoon really knew. They were only told that the information was classified and that they would be rescuing soone last seen in the Shallow Crater's southern section. Beyond that, they were only inford of the last approximate location of the person whom they'd be saving.
Since Cassius first learned of his Platoon reassignnt, he had been suspicious about sothing he couldn't accurately pinpoint. But when the vague information ca through, he could all but confirm that sothing malicious was happening behind the scenes.
'Is it sohow related to ?' Cassius thought, his gaze venomous. 'It's certainly possible… But why? And who set this up?'
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