When the sun was close to setting, Instructor Rock gathered the sleepers in the foyer of the Sleeper Center and led them outside.
Just like them, other batches of sleepers were also gathered by their instructors in the snowy parks surrounding the white building. It was the academy's medical center.
Reinhard had parted from Cassia and gone on his own. From near the end of the group, he observed the building.
It looked more like a shrine than a hospital. Its interior contained both highly advanced technology and some of the best healers among the Awakened. For the duration of their first journey into the Dream Realm, the bodies of Sleepers would be kept safe in specially designed pods and sustained by the magical powers of those healers if anything unfortunate were to happen on the other side of the spell.
Of course, whether or not they would wake up in the end wholly depended on the sleepers themselves.
Instructor Rock didn't directly take them to the wing containing sleeper pods. Instead, he led them to a comparatively deserted floor and then opened the doors to a spacious gallery that was brightly illuminated by the beautiful crimson rays of the setting sun.
There, they saw rows and rows of wheelchairs. In each wheelchair, there was a person with a blank, strangely peaceful expression on their face. All these people were completely silent, motionless, and still. They did not show any reaction to the appearance of guests.
They all seemed to be… empty.
Instructor Rock looked at the empty people with solemn eyes.
"There is a reason I brought you all here. Look well and remember. Some of you may know who these people are… For those of you who don't, they are called Hollow."
He gritted his teeth.
"Each one of them was once either a Sleeper or an Awakened. Some of them were weak, and some of them were strong. Some were even incredibly powerful. All of them have perished in the Dream Realm."
Seeing his reaction, Reinhard wondered if someone related to Instructor Rock had also turned into a hollow, or maybe he was a softer guy than he seemed.
"If you're lucky, once your spirit is destroyed, your body dies with it. But if not, you'll become just like them. Hollow."
'Fuck, I would rather have someone kill me at that point.'
Instructor Rock glanced in the direction where Reinhard stood and then added:
"So don't die out there."
'That's favoritism right there.' He would have called it unfair, but since he was on the side of 'extra fairness,' it was all good.
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Half an hour later, Reinhard found himself in his personal room preparing to enter the pod.
'Alright, I do this in the count of 5.'
'5.' '4.' '3.' '2.' '1.'
With that, he stepped forward and climbed into the pod.
In the vast echoing darkness, he heard:
[Welcome to the Dream Realm, Reinhard!]
Reinhard had expected his journey into the dream realm to resemble his first nightmare.
But the moment the spell's voice passed, his senses vanished.
Upon opening his eyes, he saw darkness and nothing else. Something cold pressed on him from all sides; only then did he realize he was underwater.
He kicked and thrashed, his arms slicing through nothing; the pressure on his head increased and his ears rung as water slid past them.
His calm mind attribute came into play, forcing the emerging panic down. What followed was the spell's voice.
[New attribute acquired.]
[Attribute Name: Aquatic Mastery.]
Air burned in his lungs. In the moment of panic, Reinhard remembered a topic he had read in the library and quickly covered his mouth and nose with both his hands.
Then he exhaled a tiny amount of air; he didn't even have enough for himself, so that was all he could manage.
That action helped him in figuring out the direction of the water surface, and with the help of his newly acquired attribute, he quickly swam there.
The moment his head protruded out of the water, he took such rapid breaths that it hurt his lungs.
After he few seconds his vision settled and he looked around.
What met him was an endless, jet-black expanse of undulating waves. Above them was an empty black sky. There was no moon, no stars, just a dark vastness of repressive nothingness.
'An ocean?! How bad of a luck do i have to have for this to happen!'
He didn't have time to curse his situation, though. Reinhard wasn't aware of what kind of nightmare creatures there would be underwater, nor was this a favorable environment to fight in. So he quickly looked around.
A few meters away he saw a weirdly shaped coral-like landmass.
He swam towards it with all his strength. While his form was perfect due to [Aquatic Mastery], the strength behind those movements was barely above average by sleeper standards. That's because he didn't have access to [Titan's Corpus]. This was where the one bad thing about his aspect ability shined: he couldn't have more than one attribute at a time. Even if it was an issue for now, it was a major one.
Luckily, however, no nightmare creature had attacked him in his sprint, and he was able to swim to the large coral landmass.
Upon reaching it and crawling a few meters away from the edge of the platform, he lay down and gazed at the sky.
There was nothing there, but he wasn't lying for stargazing either. His chest moved up and down rapidly as he regained his stamina.
'Fuck, without titan's corpus my body is still very weak.'
Finally having land below him, even if rough, Reinhard was reluctant to stand up and look around for threats.
So he lay there and willed an attribute into existence.
[New attribute acquired.]
[Attribute Name: Sensory Amplification.]
Attributes: [Radiant Presence] [Calm mind] [Battle Master] [Favored of Spell] [Sensory Amplification]
As the name suggested, the attribute enhanced his senses. It wouldn't do much, but he was too tired to think at the current moment.
And after all of that was over, Reinhard finally had a moment to address another issue he had noticed a while back but had been ignoring until now.
He was completely naked.
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Thanks for reading the chapter....
My exams are finally over! LET'S GOOO!
I am probably barely going to pass, but at least now I get time to write.
Not much happened in this chapter, so there is not really much to talk about right now, I guess...
Anyways, I am going to ask you all shamelessly, do you guys have any ideas for his aspect legacy? I have a few, but I am just going to take all the scraps and cook something up.
Bye.