It was a transford human figure, twisted enough to call it a chira.
'Horrifying.'
The vision showed it clearly. It communicated to Rowan exactly what it was saying.
The blending of wolf and human looked nothing like it should. Calling it a werewolf was a stretch. It was a grotesquely warped mass, like sothing made of sli.
'The traits of an incomplete werewolf...'
It gave enormous physical ability, but it was a vicious trait, one that triggered without warning, day or night, whenever the host got excited. Rowan didn't stop there, going through the vision several tis over, confirming what had seed suspicious.
'Sothing's off.'
The vision of a wolf and human being forcibly mixed together was sothing that could only be described as artificial. There was no reason to show a wolf attacking and rging with a human. All that needed to be shown were the advantages and disadvantages of a complete werewolf.
The black dream had that quality too. It helped piece together what ca before and after.
Thanks to that, Rowan could figure out things that weren't knowable otherwise.
'It was forced.'
aning it had been made, not born. It could have been a wizard's failed experint, or maybe a subject in so dark shaman's testing.
The traits of an incomplete werewolf were not sothing anyone should have. Excitent triggers transformation regardless of day or night. And each transformation ca out differently: no fur one ti, the muzzle not fully extending another, the teeth not coming in sharp and fanged the next.
The fact that the transformation couldn't be controlled at will was already disqualifying on its own.
One thing was clear: even Pandevus had been afraid of accepting those werewolf traits. Going through the visions, Rowan felt it. The suffocation, the fear, the pressure closing in on the chest.
'What a rotten feeling.'
Seeing what was, in so way, a victim wasn't a good feeling no matter how it was looked at. As long as you feel things, as long as you can share in soone else's feelings to so degree, that kind of empathy is unavoidable.
Incomplete Werewolf Traits
Transforms without warning when excited, day or night. Each transformation looks different. Prone to losing reason.
'An ability that should never be chosen.'
Garbage in every way. Rowan ca back out of the black door with a sour expression. The horrific emotions Pandevus had forced himself to live with had seeped in.
'Damn.'
Cursing didn't help. And Rowan could feel that the black dream was slowly getting more developed. Down the line, it might even be possible to have a conversation with soone Rowan had killed.
'What a miserable thought.'
Rowan shook it off, slapped both cheeks, and moved toward the next black door.
Slash. Slash. Slash.
A vision of Pandevus appeared, using a short, sharp blade to carefully fillet the skin off a dragged-in corpse. Dark smoke moved in and covered the view, then showed sothing new.
Crack!
A scene of a human bone being smashed to pieces with a single hamr blow. The crushed bone was laid out on human skin. Clay was mixed in alongside it.
Scrape. Scrape. Scraaape.
A black mountain goat's horn was ground down. Fine powder piled up softly in a bowl. It was sprinkled evenly over the bone and clay, then another layer of human skin was placed on top and beaten repeatedly with a wooden mallet.
Even as clay seeped out through the skin, the beating continued. The skin gradually stretched wider and thinner. A fairly large sheet of human skin erged. Pandevus dyed it with a brown pignt.
'The parchnt!'
Watching the whole process, Rowan finally understood. This was how the ominous parchnt (or the nausea parchnt) was made.
'Vile.'
That wasn't the end of it. Pandevus drew symbols with his own blood. The blood had no dium to carry it, but it burned dry and gave off smoke on its own. Rowan swallowed hard. Once a symbol was complete, a large eyeball rolled out wildly from where the symbol had been drawn and swept the surroundings.
The eye t Pandevus's gaze, blinked once, and disappeared. Only the symbol remained.
Rowan felt the spine go rigid. Just like that, Pandevus inked three symbols and cut the parchnt to size.
The thod for crafting the nausea parchnt was the ability behind the second black door.
'Not exactly appealing.'
Rowan had no real desire to try it. A giant eyeball had co rolling out and stared everything down.
The next three black doors in a row were all about drawing different symbols. In those, Rowan was able to see the full extent of Pandevus's strength.
Symbols with nas: Power of a Noble Steed, Mind of an Elf, and Technique of a Warrior. Those enviable legs (the lower body strength everyone had marveled at) ca from the Power of a Noble Steed symbol carved onto the nausea parchnt.
'So that was what he was fighting against.'
The growling, the violent head-shaking: those were attempts to hold back the loss of reason. The Mind of an Elf had been helping with that. Not superior intellect, but the ability to keep calm. That was what the Mind of an Elf symbol gave.
'The swordsmanship wasn't anything impressive though.'
The Technique of a Warrior symbol raised questions. The fighting hadn't been particularly good. The idea of soone with not a single secret technique investing in swordsmanship felt almost funny.
The unfortunate part was that only one could be chosen. Without firmly morizing the symbols before leaving, none of them could be used. And the faster that call was made, the better. You couldn't stay in the black dream forever.
'Wait. I already have two of the parchnts. I can just copy from those.'
There was no need to morize anything in the first place. Two of the three nausea parchnts Pandevus had carried were in Rowan's hands. What symbols were on them, though, was unknown. It hadn't seed important at the ti.
Geotric symbols were hard to morize anyway. One was as good as another in that sense.
Fwoosh!
A wind ca through, cool enough to feel refreshing. Inside the black smoke, a glowing blue light moved. It left afterimages that built the shape of a human figure.
The blue light kept forming and reforming that human shape. And within it, Rowan could see a kind of flow, completely unlike blood. Sothing that could move differently at any mont, be drawn out at will, and directed in countless ways.
'Mana.'
More precisely, it was the thod for controlling that mana. This was the black door that could grant Pandevus's mana control.
'Now that's tempting.'
Everyone has mana. But almost no one knows how to use it. Rowan had done a fair amount of ditating, having once wanted to beco a wizard. But not knowing how to handle mana at all had been the reason to give it up.
Becoming a wizard required more than money. Money alone couldn't get you there. It was a path determined strictly by bloodline and family na. There was a wizard's shop at Torch Fortress, but an actual wizard living there was out of the question.
From the perspective of the southern kingdom's capital, this place was the edge of the edge of the frontier. Even in the modern world, balanced developnt was talked about but never actually achieved. In a world where such talk didn't even co up, the significance of the capital was sothing else entirely.
The capital ant an overwhelming gap, all on its own.
'Mana control.'
An ability that had to be acquired. If Rowan ever killed a wizard down the line, this would be the foundation needed to take their magic. Still, Rowan didn't choose it right away.
The next door offered Pandevus's mana itself, added on top of Rowan's own. Whether Pandevus had a lot or a little mana, that was impossible to tell.
Rowan had no way to feel or check for mana.
Just before stepping into the last remaining black door, Rowan flinched. Sothing else was visible in the black smoke. Eyes.
Very similar to the eyes seen in the symbols. Perfectly round, clean white sclera, and deep dark irises. They were clustered together inside the black smoke, just sitting there.
Visible even through the thicker patches of smoke, faintly. Those eyes felt like they were smiling.
[What are you hesitating for?]
Gulliver Alastor jeered at Rowan's hesitation. The two had opened up to each other considerably, talking as equals, building sothing between them, but Gulliver still didn't think highly of Rowan. The relationship was improving, just slowly.
"Those eyes. Have you ever seen them?"
[What does it matter. This dream itself is sothing ordinary people would hesitate to use in the first place. Isn't that right?]
Hard to argue against. It was because Rowan had been forcibly stripped of softness by modern culture that the black dream got used without hesitation. Looked at from that angle, refusing to step through a black door just because of so eyes was a contradiction.
'Easy to say.'
Why does hypocrisy happen? Because it's simply what humans do. Avoiding it takes effort, and you have to make sure you're never put in a situation like that to begin with. But nobody actually manages that while living in the real world.
You do the sa thing yourself, and still don't hesitate to look down on and criticize others for their contradictions.
Because talk is always cheap.
"..."
Rowan stood there, stuck in thought, and couldn't move easily. But in the end, stepped through the black door.
'Is now really the ti to weigh everything. What I need right now is power with no drawbacks.'
Holding back because sothing felt a little off wasn't a luxury the situation allowed. Rowan's circumstances were not as comfortable as they seed.
The black smoke rolled over Rowan. A vision shook everything.
'Oh god.'
An enormous presence bore down on every inch of the body. In an instant, all sensation vanished except for that crushing pressure.
[How interesting. To encounter here the connection to a great prince of a fallen kingdom, one who chased the god of good and died for it.]
It spoke words that made no sense. The language was demonic, so even though it ca as a ntal wave, not a single word landed clearly. Without any sensation, Rowan's mouth moved numbly, slurring like a sleepwalker. Drool ran out like a little kid's, though Rowan couldn't feel even that.
The pressure vanished as instantly as it had co. Nothing tangible had been grabbed, but Rowan could still check the information that had entered the mind.
Hands and feet were tingling and drenched in sweat. The head felt distant and hazy. Passing out right then would have been completely reasonable. Rowan had already been thrown back out of the black door and was lying flat on the ground.
'The demon Akatabert.'
Forming a connection with Akatabert: that was the ability the black door offered. The path of becoming a demon's subordinate. There was nothing about losing one's soul or anything like that. Simply knowing of the demon Akatabert and holding that connection was enough to grant considerable power.
Mana.
Physical ability.
Skills.
Knowledge.
Experience.
Everything else needed beyond those. All of it could be obtained. Wanting to know sothing ant naturally coming to know it. It was overwhelming power. And for that reason, even though it asked for no paynt of any kind, Rowan couldn't help but hesitate.
Because Rowan knew well enough that nobody in this world gives sothing for free. Even the person who hands over a gift first is doing it because they expect sothing in return.
Anyone who wasn't like that just ended up with their skin peeled off and their guts carved out.
'Is there really no downside?'
Rowan began to chase down what it truly ant to hold a connection with a demon.
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