Elizabeth stood on the shore of the beach, her silk jet black hair dancing in the breeze. She had an expression filled with calmness and serenity, and looked so beautiful her presence seemed mythical, almost siren like, her expression blank as she stared into the distance. Despite how mesmerizing the sight was, her surroundings were anything but.
All around her lay the corpses of nightmare creatures. They were wolf like in nature, their bodies scattered across the beach and bleeding out. She stood right at the center of it all, the water at her feet stained red. She lowered her gaze and sighed.
'And here I used to think these little things were hard to kill.'
She glanced around her once more. The corpses were not real. Part of the Dreamscape's training program allowed it to generate illusionary monsters resembling nightmare creatures. Just moments ago, she had been fighting these illusions to test her Aspect, trying to see what it excelled at and what it failed to do.
She was satisfied with the results.
But she had also discovered a few major issues. Elizabeth glanced at her arm and willed it to change. Her slightly pale skin turned transparent, then flowed into liquid, maintaining the rough shape of an arm made entirely of water. She focused on it for a moment, then sighed.
She released her concentration. The instant she did, the water lost cohesion and fell back into the sea. She looked at the place where her arm had been and shook her head. That was the problem she was currently facing. Her entire body could turn into water, but maintaining the form of her arm required constant focus. If her concentration wavered, even for a moment, she would lose it as it would turn into water.
Luckily, that did not mean the loss was permanent.
She looked at the water. She could still feel her arm, along with the illusionary cold of the sea. She willed it to return. A blob of water rose from the surface, slowly drifting toward where her arm had once been, before reattaching itself. With a bit more focus, the water solidified back into flesh.
If not for her [Split Spirit] attribute, which granted her two minds and increased mental capacity, which had also increased recently, she would have found it extremely difficult to use her Aspect in battle. Most of her focus would have been consumed simply maintaining her form, and she would most likely not have even used her Aspect at that point.
But that was not all she discovered about her Aspect.
Elizabeth willed her arm to turn into water again, then slowly strained herself to reshape it. The liquid shifted for a moment, stretching and taking the form of a wobbly imitation of a sword. She detached it from her arm and watched it float in the air.
She could mold parts of herself into whatever she wanted. Even separated, the water was still part of her, and she could control its movement with her mind. As long as she did not lose focus, she could control it for however long she wanted.
"Training dummy, human shaped."
She said, and the moment she did, sparks of light materialized in front of her, forming a faceless human shaped mannequin.
Elizabeth willed the water sword forward. It shot ahead at impressive speed, but the moment it collided with the mannequin, it splashed apart, dispersing harmlessly without leaving a mark. She sighed.
'Even if I can shape it into a sword, it's not powerful enough to do any damage.'
At the moment, it could only be used to splash an enemy, making its attack power lacking.
'But it's not completely useless.'
She smiled and willed the water to rise again. The scattered droplets slowly rose, gathering into a sphere. In an instant, she sent it forward, encasing the dummy's head, and a few moments later, the training dummy slowly turned into sparks of particles.
"Training dummy type, human. Cause of death, drowning."
Her smile widened when she read that. Since she could control water, she had already imagined countless applications for it.
For example, drowning her enemies, forcefully injecting water through their noses and mouths, making them choke. She was thinking of even more advanced versions as well, such as making them drink the water and changing it to cause heavy internal damage. Her second mind had been constantly doing the same, thinking of ways to make her power even more lethal.
'…Okay, I might not be mentally okay. Is it normal to think like this? No?'
She recalled the water, reforming her arm. She glanced at it with a smile, then looked back at the corpses of the wolf like beasts before her. Her smile widened even further. That was not all she had discovered about her Aspect though.
The first thing she had done to warm up was fight a group of nightmare creatures in the form of wolves, at least forty of them. They were not strong enough to completely overwhelm her, since they were training versions, but they still managed to injure her slightly. That was when she noticed something. Water from the sea flowed into her body, sealing her wounds. The healing was not slow either. It happened fast, incredibly fast, nearly comparable to a healing Aspect.
But even that was not the most impressive part.
Elizabeth submerged her arm into the blood stained water and willed herself to absorb it. Strength surged through her. She felt herself nearly double in power, a liberating sensation washing over her as her body radiated strength. Her power had increased by at least twofold compared to normal. Yet that was still not the most impressive aspect of her ability.
When she absorbed water, it remained within her body, sustaining the enhancement and constantly healing her until it ran out. And if she released it, she could still control it for a limited amount of time.
She slowly extended her arm. A burst of water erupted outward, and she felt her strength gradually return to normal. She willed the released water to remain afloat, forming a flowing river around her.
"Training dummy, human shaped. Bring four of them."
Seconds later, four mannequins appeared. Elizabeth divided the river into four blobs and sent them forward, each encasing a dummy's head. Moments later, they dematerialized.
"Training dummy type, human x4. Cause of death, drowning."
Her connection to the water faded as it fell back into the sea.
Her Aspect had potential, an insane amount of combat potential. Their capability was endless.
'If I can just figure out how to increase the range, and how to make it more deadly…'
Currently, the water she absorbed could only be controlled within ten meters. Her transformed body parts could extend slightly further, up to fifteen meters. Beyond that, she could still feel them, but she lost control. She was certain there was a way to increase the range. Whether it was limited because she was still a Sleeper and would expand after Awakening, or she could train it, she did not yet know.
Elizabeth looked up at the sky, lost in thought for a moment, then lowered her gaze to her hands.
'…Should I try again?'
There was one thing she still hesitated to test, turning her entire body into water. The last time she attempted it, she felt a primal fear, and something in her telling her it was a bad idea, so she of course listened to it. Now she understood why. If her entire body became water, where would her brain reside? How would she think, or will herself back into form, if even her head dissolved?
She could not bring herself to do it. It was simply too risky. A simple mistake and she was gone. With a sigh, she dismissed the thought.
'Should I stop for today?'
She looked at the sun that was slowly setting, causing the sky to turn an orange color. She slowly shook her head. She doubted she would be able to sleep at the moment anyway.
'Oh well. Let's keep training. I still have to get used to this sense of vision.'
Seeing in 360 degrees was disorienting, though she felt herself adapting at an insane speed rate. Especially when she was in combat, she found it faster to adapt when she was fighting.
"Training dummy, human type, swordsman, level of difficulty, hard."
Moments later, a faceless swordsman appeared holding a long sword. The moment it fully materialized, it attacked immediately. Elizabeth summoned Last Hope, gripping the dagger in her hand as she took her stance.
'How… slow.'
The dummy possessed the strength and speed of a peak mundane human. Fast by normal standards, even some Sleepers would struggle to keep up with it, yet to her it was moving at a snail's pace. She had already prepared her counterattack countless times in her mind before it was within reach.
Something had fundamentally changed since her fight with Rethen.
Before, she had solely relied on instinct and adaptation whenever she fought. Now, her mind cleared of all thoughts except the opponent before her. Every minor movement they made, every subtle shift in stance, appeared clearly in her mind. Her world seemed to reduce itself to cold numbers she could interpret and react to.
'It's as if… I'm seeing through the world, and looking at what it truly is.'
She still found it hard to explain and put it to words, and before she could continue to ponder further, the dummy's sword slashed toward her neck. She was about to proceed with the counterattack she had in mind before she stopped.
'…Would it work?'
An idea slowly took root, and the more she entertained it, the more convinced she became.
'It won't hurt to try…'
She let the attack land, even spreading her arms and leaving herself wide open. The moment the blade touched her neck, she willed it to turn into water. The sword passed through harmlessly, and Elizabeth followed it with her eyes, a smile slowly forming on her lips as it did.
Due to the way the dummy slashed his sword, it overextended, momentarily unbalanced since it had expected meeting some resistance when it slashed at her. A heartbeat later, her hands blurred as she slashed her dagger across its neck.
"Training dummy, human type, swordsman. Cause of death, decapitation."
Elizabeth watched as the particles drifted away.
'…I can do this too.'
She chuckled lightly.
She doubted she would rely on it often though. While she could turn her body into water, could she do the same for her armor? Even if she could, there were too many unknown Aspects and Memories in the world. If she grew overconfident and deliberately allowed an attack to land, only to face something that ignored intangibility, she would die. She would rather not train that habit at all.
'That's how Rethen, a deity, fell after all.'
He had underestimated her dagger, choosing to ignore it, and that mistake had cost him his life. She frowned slightly.
'Now that I think about it… how did Last Hope even injure Rethen?'
Had he truly been weakened enough for the dagger to pierce his skin? She still didn't fully understand what had happened. At some point, Last Hope had transformed into a Memory. Something must have happened to fulfill the condition, but what made a Memory different from a normal artifact?
'Knowledge of sorcery really is a must have…'
She had seen firsthand what sorcery could accomplish. It had weakened a being close to godhood enough for her to kill it. Though it had been sorcery at a divine level created by the goddess, something that would take years, perhaps even eons, to even try to master to the same level, she decided it was worth pursuing.
'After all, knowledge is power…'
If it was something that was going to give her power and strength, she would master it.
Elizabeth had always thirsted for power, even as a child. It must have been because her parents only seemed to care about her brother, who stood as a symbol of strength to her. She wanted to be just as amazing, just as strong.
She once believed that if she gained enough power, her mother and father would finally look at her. But when her brother died, she realized how naive that belief had been.
She no longer sought power to be loved. She sought power to survive. Enough power to shine for no one but herself.
To do that, she had to surpass her brother in every way.
'…Right, this was the reason. I forgot why I started imagining him back then.'
When she first imagined her brother, it was not because she wanted familiar company in her time of loneliness.
'I… wanted to kill him.'
She wanted to kill the symbol of power she could never be, the one who seemed so unshackled and invincible. If she could defeat the image of her brother, then she would be strong.
She had to be.
"Oh my, how rude. Thinking about me that way. Aren't you being heartless, sis?"
She looked ahead. Her brother stood there, smiling.
"Didn't we talk about this before? Forget about ever defeating me, sis. You're about, uhhh, twenty years too early to even think about it. Although… with your potential, maybe ten."
She glanced at him, a small smile forming. "So it went from a hundred years too early to ten?"
He shrugged. "That's the time limit you set for yourself. I'm just part of your imagination after all. I am only telling you how much time you think you can use to surpass me." Cain chuckled.
"But remember what I always told you about true strength?"
Elizabeth nodded. "True strength is the ability to defeat your enemies without lifting your weapon, that your might alone should suffice." She said as she glanced at her dagger. He laughed and nodded.
"Exactly. That's why you can't defeat me yet, Liz. You're afraid of my might. You've only seen me train in the basement and heard stories of my accomplishments, yet that was enough for you to build an image of me as something untouchable."
Cain then pointed at his chest. "You only seek to kill my might."
Elizabeth stared at him silently. He was not wrong. That was the truth.
"That's right. I want to have enough power that your accomplishments seem like a joke compared to what I will achieve." She tightened her grip on Last Hope. "And I will do it."
"But you killed a sacred being," Cain said. "That's more than I ever accomplished."
She shook her head. "Rethen was weakened. I would have died if not for countless circumstances aligning together to protect me. I don't consider that an accomplishment."
Cain smiled. "…If you say so, sis."
Elizabeth's mind entered battle mode, and the world around her froze before she attacked. Her brother simply stared into the distance, gazing at the slightly orange simulated sky.
"Wow… how pretty."
Moments later, Elizabeth suffered a crushing defeat.
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SN: Sorry for the long chapter, and sorry for not posting yesterday. Two more chapters are coming out today soon!