The next day, he took Nephis with him to hunt in the Dark City. With her accompanying him, he chose to take a safer path. His storm sense worked overtime, ensuring they wouldn't stumble upon something they couldn't handle.
Walking side by side, Lucien said:
"Can you tell me what your aspect does?"
When she hesitated, he chose to extend an olive branch.
"Mine gives me an affinity to storms and can massively boost my speed. I also have an attribute that gives me a strong affiliation to divinity." He paused for a moment and then decided to add.
"As for my memories, apart from the sword, spear, and stone armour, I also have a warbow and an arrow memory. The sword can consume my blood to summon lightning, and I haven't figured out the effects of the others. "
Nephis nodded, and after a short pause, said:
"My attributes give me an affinity to light and fire, as well as a strong affiliation to divinity. I have three Memories: a rope, an armour, and a sword. The rope is very sturdy and can change its length. The sword is very sharp and can protect its wielder against soul attacks, to a certain extent. My Ability can be used to heal and burn."
'A healing aspect, huh? No wonder they survived in the labyrinth for so long.'
"That's going to be incredibly useful."
Inwardly, he was relieved. He was planning on using the storm blade to fight this time and avoid using his aspect too much. He would be much safer if Nephis could heal.
They continued walking in comfortable silence. After a while, Lucien suddenly stopped. He could feel the corrupted tingling nearby. He moved silently and hid behind a half-collapsed wall. Nephis followed behind without a word.
Peeking out from the corner, he saw it. The abominable monkey-like creature. It was a bipedal fiendling with a singular eye, seemingly too large for its diminutive skull. Bone spikes protruded from its body, dripping with black liquid. Its mouth was in a constant grin that extended out of its face. It was busy devouring the corpse of an iron spider.
"Awakened." He whispered as Nephis peeked over the wall, her cold, calculating eyes washing over the creature.
"It's going to be fast and agile, but those bone spikes will limit its movements." She said, gripping her sword with both hands. "I will attack it from the front, and you attack from behind. Focus on its joints." She paused before continuing. "I will try to let you get the final hit."
Lucien nodded, summoning the storm blade and stone armour. But before he could walk out, Nephis stopped him and shook her head.
"We engage in an open area."
Frowning, he peeked out again. The monster had entered a broken-down house, it was scratching at the rubble as if expecting something to come out.
"I'll lure him out to that clearing." He pointed ahead to a decently large open area. It used to be a crossroads once, but now nothing remains of the road.
Nephis paused for a moment and nodded. The purple lightning wreathed Lucien's body, and he jumped out. The faint sound of thunder instantly got the monster's attention. It perked up and turned around.
The moment its eyes found Lucien, something ignited within them. It let out a harrowing screech and leapt towards him.
The lightning covering Lucien turned deeper as he sprinted away from it fast enough to just barely keep out of its reach. Ahead, he could see Nephis perched atop the roof of a house; their eyes met for a moment, and he nodded.
Just as he reached the clearing, he disappeared in a flash of purple, and Nephis dropped down on the monster. Her silver blade flashed and cut through the flesh of the monster, leaving a deep gash in its back.
It roared out in pain and tried to clutch its wound, only to stab itself with one of its bone spikes. It glared at Nephis, hatred dripping from its eyes. Nephis met its glare unfazed, brandishing her sword.
For Lucien, all of that was happening in slow motion. He watched as the monster exposed its back and chose that moment to strike. To the rest of the world, it seemed like he appeared instantaneously, but to him, it was just a normal sprint. Taking a deep breath in, he raised his sword, like he had done a thousand times before. The lightning covering him flowed to the blade, and time resumed its natural flow.
'Raise. Push. Pull. Twist.'
The words flashed by his mind like a mantra, and the blade descended in a practiced swing. The tip of the gray blade cut deep into its elbow and sliced through its tendon.
The beast moved as soon as it felt the steel cut into it, turning around faster than it's abhorrent features should have allowed it to. Its teeth gnashed against each other as it raised its remaining hand and slashed downwards. The claws cut deep into the stone, but made no purchase as Lucien backstepped out of its way..
But the monster would not let him go that easily. It lunged at him with its remaining arm and slashed at him again.
This time, Lucien was prepared; the storm covering his blade split, and half of it went to reinforce his armor. He moved his sword to deflect the blow, and the force pushed his body back. But he was unharmed. Keeping one eye on the creature, he readied his blade, firmly planting his feet on the ground.
Even with one of its hands hanging uselessly by its side, the nightmare creature maintained a barrage of attacks, most of which were deflected by the storm blade. Still, some slipped by and cut into his armour.
That was the monster's biggest mistake. In its rage, it had forgotten about Nephis. That turned out to be fatal.
Nephis moved with all the grace of a practiced killer, her silver sword soaring through the air as the monkey wound its arm back for another attack. Steel met corrupted flesh and tore clean through. The severed arm flopped down, and blood gushed out of the open wound. For a moment, the monkey was defenseless.
Purple lightning converged on the gray blade, and the monster's eye widened. Then it saw no more as the storm blade pierced through its head.
The monster shuddered and then slumped down, its head sliding off the gray blade.
[You have slain an awakened beast, Cyclopean Babboon.]
[Your storm roars wilder.]
He sighed and knelt down. "Come on, let's move this to the tower."
Together, the two of them carried the body of the beast to a nearby stone tower and then continued their hunt.
By afternoon, they had hunted down half a dozen awakened abominations. With each fight, their understanding of each other grew stronger, and so did their coordination.
Back in the tower, they spent a few hours extracting the soul cores from the nightmare creatures and some of their meat. Before long, they left to return to the human settlement.
Back home, Lucien continued his daily routine of a thousand downward slashes. That night, he tried something new. They had split the soul shards among themselves. Nephis, unlike him, could absorb the soul essence inside them.
After seeing that, something struck Lucien for the first time. His flaw made it so that his creations adopted his abilities, but he was never good with soul essence. What if that was the reason the fan kept failing? With that in mind, he handed Nephis two of his soul shards and said:
"Can you absorb most of the essence, leaving just enough for the shell to hold its shape?
Nephis paused for a moment and then nodded. Accepting the shards, she began the process of saturating her core.
He watched as the light inside the shards began dimming, and right before they went out, Nephis stopped. Looking down at them, she nodded before handing them back to Lucien.
Lucien grasped the shards gingerly, as if he were afraid they would crumble in his hands. Then he closed his eyes, letting the storm flow out. The purple sheen covered his body, but did not enter the shard. He frowned and tried again. Forced by his will, the lightning flowed into the shards, slowly filling them up.
Nephis stared at the shards blankly. Just what was Lucien attempting to do with that? She watched as the iridescent glow of the shards was replaced with a cloudy grey. Purple lightning streaked the walls of the crystal and remained there, frozen. It was as if a storm had been captured inside them.
Eventually, after almost draining both of his cores, it was finally done. He opened his eyes and stared at the shards, mesmerized by their new look. It was beautiful. As he stared at them, a thought struck him.
'Would my cores look like this if I died and someone extracted them?'
His grin faded away at that thought. At the same time, a sudden dizziness assaulted him. His face paled considerably, and he almost dropped the storm shard.
'My flaw,' he grimaced. He had made something new for the first time, and so the price was higher than usual. He shook his head and wobbled up to the fan, silently inserting the two storm shards. The machine flared to life, blowing cold wind pleasantly at his face.
A smile slowly crept up his face as the fan continued working even after the lights had gone out. The two storm shards were still glowing brightly. After all this time, he had finally found the solution. Now he just needed to find a way to reliably make storm shards.
For the next few days, they fell into that comfortable routine. Every morning, they would hunt in the Dark City; come evening, Lucien would practice the sword. At night, he'd have Nephis drain soul shards and refill them with storm essence. As a result, his countenance had almost permanently turned pale. At one point, Nephis asked if he was alright, perhaps out of concern or curiosity. He simply waved her away; it wasn't wise to reveal his flaw to someone he had only recently met.
Soon, the day came when Sunless and Cassia would return from the Bright Castle, and Nephis would leave. Lucien chose not to go hunting that day; he wanted to hear what they had learned in the castle.
He was going through his daily quota of downward slashes when the two sleepers approached him. He smiled and greeted them.
"Morning, Sunless, Cassia. You're back from the castle then?"
Cassia nodded, "Yes." She paused before adding, "And please,call me Cassie."
"Where is Nephis?" Sunless said, looking around to find the girl.
"She's inside." Lucien pointed to the door, "Go on in, I'll join you guys later."
Sunless frowned and nodded. He still did not trust the guy, even though Cassie seemed to.
Lucien sighed as they left. Maybe he shouldn't have tried to intimidate them at their first meeting. Shaking his head, he continued his training. Where was he again?
'Ah, yes, 937.'
'Raise. Push. Pull. Twist.'
'938'
.
.
.
'1000!'
Lucien leaned on his sword, lightly panting. He chose to stay like that for a few minutes, to give them some time to catch up with Nephis, of course. It was definitely not to take a breather.
After a while, when his arms had finally stopped aching, he walked back into his house, but the voices inside made him stop. They were talking about him.
"Do you trust him?" Sunless had asked.
There was silence for a bit, and then Nephis spoke.
"No."
Cassie hesitated for a moment, prompting Sunless to ask:
"What is it? Did you have another vision?"
"No," Cassie said, "It's just…I took a look at Lucien's attributes and…"
"What did you find?" Nephis asked.
"He does not have the dreamspawn attribute like you, Neph."
Lucien blinked. Cassie could look at his attributes? More importantly, what the spell was the dreamspawn attribute?
"So he lied about being born here?" Nephis asked.
"Of course he lied, I knew that bastard was up to something!"
He could almost hear Sunless scoff.
There was a moment of silence before Cassie spoke again, "I don't think he lied to us."
"What do you mean?" Sunless asked. If he didn't have the dreamspawn attribute, that meant he lied about being born in the Dream Realm. And if he lied about that, who knew what else he lied about.
"But why would he lie about that?" Cassie said, "It doesn't make sense."
Exactly! Why would he lie about that? He gained nothing from it.
Cassie continued.
"What…what if he isn't lying? Maybe he really was born here, but somehow he didn't get the attribute?"
Sunless went quiet after that. It wasn't entirely out of the realm of possibility. In that silence, Nephis suddenly spoke.
"Why don't you ask him yourself? He has been standing outside all this time."
Two pairs of eyes instantly turned to the gate.
Lucien froze, 'Ah, I was found.'
"Alright, you got me." He walked in, just to find Sunless glaring at him.
"You were eavesdropping on us." He accused.
"You were talking about me, of course, I eavesdropped." He retorted, before turning to Cassie. "You know, it's kinda rude to peek at someone's attributes.
She turned her head away, her ears turning red, "S-sorry."
He sighed, "I don't know what this dreamspawn attribute is, or why I don't have it. But I really was born here."
Sunless scowled, "Can you prove that?"
"No," He shook his head, "It's entirely up to you to believe me. It doesn't matter if you don't. Not like it changes anything anyway."
'I could have them meet mother but…' Lucien stared at the three sleepers. 'I don't trust them enough yet.'
After a while, Nephis said.
"We will just have to trust you."
For now. That part went unsaid.
Lucien nodded in thanks and sat down beside them. "So, what did you learn inside the castle.
Sunless stared at him and glanced at Nephis, who nodded. Sighing, he began to recount what he had observed.