CHAPTER 879: NIGHTMARE OBSERVATION LOG 1

"Please..."

"Please?"

"Please can we have a break?" Elias begged as he couldn’t even walk right now.

He had completely exhausted his stamina. Alice did not hold back at all. She could tell how much stamina he still had left, mixing killing intent into her attacks to force his fight or flight response.

Her attacks were just fast enough so that he had to anticipate them, but not too fast to the point where he couldn’t react instinctively.

And whenever he felt comfortable with the speed, she would always increase it further.

A demon of training.

"Hmm... I suppose you earned a short break. It’s not like we have a lot of time to spare anyways. We should start making our way back to the surface." Alice folded her arms with a sigh.

Looking at the state of the cave around them, a frown appeared on her face.

This place can’t handle any more. If they were to go for another round, it’ll probably collapse mid training.

Thankfully, since Elias had experience with using Diagnosis so his grasp of the key concepts behind Zone were good.

The only issue was trying to put that into practice.

’He has all the signs but...’ Alice sighed inwardly.

Perhaps it was because he’s a doctor, but his patience, calm, reaction and observation were all good.

His body was just struggling to keep up.

In this aspect, he’s like the opposite of Jin.

Jin had the body but not the foundation.

He had the foundation but not the body.

Creating a portal for Elias to leave for now, Alice demolished the cave. Leaving it like this would be more dangerous than just destroying it.

Stepping through, Alice watched Elias repair his own body. His stamina was still gone but the wounds disappeared.

"Just be careful not to fight too often in the Nightmare realm. You don’t get the benefit of Sigils in there." Alice shook her head.

They’ve done everything they could.

Elias nodded his head.

With nothing else they can do, the only thing left was go back to the city and wait for the Nightmare to descend.

###

"What the f*ck is all of this?" Alice’s smile twitched.

Having returned to the city, they quickly booked a room and prepared for the Nightmare.

During this time, Suyin had returned and was now pulling out machine after machine from her vault.

Clearly something she had been preparing while she was away.

Countless monitoring systems were now present in the room, practically filling it to the brim with canisters of blood being prepared as fuel.

Eldritch energy crystals were inserted into several compartments, causing a flow of violet energy to pulse through the pipes.

It was also clear that this was now just one experiment but rather multiple.

Some of these had uses that wasn’t clear from the initial observations.

"These are all my babies of course. These three are used to monitor you and Elias, these two are to observe the changes in your body, these are for recording everything that gets changed during this time.

"The tall one records ambient energy, the short one records fluctuations. The wide one records the environmental changes and the tiny one records the different sources energy at play. Abyssal, Holy, Void, Eldritch.

"This bad boy is to let me see if Eldritch energy reacts to anything in Extalia since I’m still working on my original experiments. This one is a recharging station and this one is an armoury for myself just in case anything goes wrong." Suyin explained, showing them her contraptions one by one.

"Why do you need an armoury?" Alice furrowed her brows.

"Why not? First of all, you’re forgetting that behind all of my babies and darlings, I’m just a normal fleshy person. One breeze from anyone slightly stronger than normal and I’ll fold like a stack of cards.

"Second of all, I’m not at my workshop. I can’t just call forth my turrets, big f*cking swords and bombardments from the sky. Third of all, what do you think happens when everyone is dragged into the Nightmare realm?" Suyin asked while holding up three fingers.

"While all of you have your souls dragged away, I’m observing the situation as a spectator. I don’t have my soul here since this is just a glorified communication device. If they were to realise that, don’t you think it’s only normal that they’ll send something to take care of the anomaly so that news of this place doesn’t get out?" She reminded.

"Plus, your situation is abnormal to begin with. Had you not remembered this strange phenomenon the outside world will still be clueless on what the f*ck is happening here."

Alice was silent.

It’s clear that Suyin had put more thought into this than her.

Since that was the case, she might as well just let Suyin do her thing rather than interfere.

Meanwhile, both Elias and Cayla had a slight headache as memories came flooding back the moment they entered the city.

They recalled everything they went through all over again.

And with the sudden surge, it was a similar pain that Alice had felt when Griselda overloaded her soul momentarily.

Completely disorientating.

"Anyways just sit tight while I sort everything out. Need to hook it properly along with the jammer so I’m not found out." Suyin rubbed her hands together with excitement.

"Jammer?"

"Yep. Unless you want the signal of around... a Lord level beast pumping out energy like they’re about to kill someone in broad daylight, a jammer is needed for this much machinery." Suyin nodded.

"How does it work exactly?" Alice asked curiously.

If it was indeed as powerful as Suyin mentioned then learning this technique would be rather helpful for stealth.

"Are you aware of a person’s blind spot? Ignoring that Zone of yours. When someone relies just on their eyes, there’s a specific part of their vision that is blind. Total sensory silence. The brain fills it in using the surrounding visual information and pattern prediction.

"You can think of it as your own brain tricking you. This jammer works in a similar way. It obscures, camouflage and hides itself by matching the surrounding ambient energy. Of course, just because it camouflages itself doesn’t mean the output is erased.

"Instead, the output is filtered out separately through several layers. They split the output that people can sense and weave them into the surroundings. So even if the machine is charging a powerful attack, unless you’re looking directly at it, you shouldn’t sense much.

"Of course there are more optimisations that can be done but desire one and you lose out on the other. This is the best balance I’ve found out thus far." Suyin shrugged with a sigh.

"So... if I was to use this filter, would a Void Flux be transformed into a simple weak attack?" Alice asked curiously.

Suyin paused and sat up.

Thinking about it for a moment, she shook her head.

"It’s not as simple as that. Hmm... I doubt you want to listen to my ramblings all day long so it’ll be easier to just show you. Here’s a spare sheet, if you hold it in front of something and observe it directly rather than the ’area’ around it, you should be able to see the effects." Suyin reached into her vault and pulled out a strange piece of metal.

Its surface seemed to constantly shift depending on how she angled it against the light. Ridges of different materials overlapping over and over to form a single unified object.

Snapping her fingers, Alice created a spark of energy and followed Suyin’s instructions.

Holding the metal in front of her, she observed the spark and raised an eyebrow in surprise.

Rather than a mote of fire... it felt like she was projecting a piece of...

Wood?

Dismissing the fire, she created a mode of blood and infused it with Void powers.

Once again, her perception of the energy changed. The metal sheet filtered the energy and she was now sensing...

Rocks and metals in her hand.

If she was to just rely on her senses, it simply feels like natural minerals with more Abyssal energy than most. Definitely strange but not unheard of before.

Places deep in the Abyss would have similar minerals.

[Most people would just think someone brought up materials from the deeper layers and ignore it.] Cayla mumbled, still clutching her head from the headache.

’Mnm. Though using it mid combat wouldn’t be easy since they can see the attack that’s being charged up. Unless their vision is obscured and I have enough of this material to hide the entire thing.’ Alice nodded.

She wanted to mimic the properties of the metal but doing so wasn’t easy. Especially since Suyin had retained most of the original qualities of the material instead of using energy manipulation.

"See? Told you it’s probably easier for you to check it out yourself." Suyin accepted the metal sheet back as she tossed it into her vault without care.

She had more where that came from.

"How did you even come across something like that?"

"You know how it is. Just playing around with things until something interesting happens.

"Curiosity is the most important aspect of a Researcher just like how the mindset is important to a Hunter’s growth. If a researcher isn’t curious, their progress will stagnate. Being able to cultivate, protect and even encourage this curiosity brings out the biggest ideas.

"Though too much curiosity can bite one in the ass as you can expect with your... experiences." Suyin winked.

Even though she was directing that at Alice, Alice felt a flicker of bitterness in her smile. Slightly forced and her eyes showing a hint of pain.

Rather than saying that to Alice, it felt more like she was saying that to herself.

Before Alice could even dwell on this feeling, Suyin gave her machine a pat on the sides then jumped off the chair.

"Alright. Everything should be prepared now. Shall we see what kind of mystery this Nightmare realm holds?" Suyin grinned.

The sun was about to touch the horizon light and the moment of Nightmare was about to arrive once more.