Rise of the Nightmare Crestmaster

Aldrich marveled at his body, he had grown taller and his body rippled with lean but tough muscles.

He walked around the broken hall and frowned at the scattered flesh of the corpses that were still in the cage pillars. In the rampage of that battle the cages fell and broke.

However, Aldrich had to look for the key. His original objective in coming here, it ended in him snatching it mid combat but after he transformed, the beast obviously didn't give a fuck about it.

Ans so it was buried somewhere here, in the wreckage. As he was going around looking for the key Aldrich was busy with other thoughts.

His crest was of a completely new class which was great news, and also terrible news.

For Aldrich who needed to stand out to achieve his goals, it was great as this kind of news had the potential to spread like wildfire. Even the Emperor could be alarmed by the appearance of a new crest.

But, then what? Like Ayemon said even if he somehow got an audience what would he say? With what proof?

He shook his head, it was not a viable option. Besides, there is standing out and then there's being abnormal. Whose to say which was he?

In fact there are two more crests that were not of the five known classes. They were the Undead crest of necromancy and the Crawling shadows crest of the Yeatra race.

They were both universal enemies of the entire world. In fact, the three powers of the continent would sometimes pause conflicts and join hands to hunt these two groups.

Although it is said that the new Dominion through the hands of the Ascendancy have begun working with necromancers in secret. That was still just a rumor, the Dominion has publicly refuted any such claims.

Aldrich was only one man, how could be willing to put himself in such an uncertain future? But a new crest...

He could only think that it had something to do with the nightmare realm. Otherwise how could he, a normal guy, have something like that?

However, Aldrich may have already found a solution to this problem. One of the basic abilities of the weaponsmaster crest was the ability to store weapons in the crest.

Aldrich reached out with his mind to his enhanced great sword and his Ether enveloped it completely. In the next moment it disappeared and the symbol of his crest changed too.

From the swirling darkness and red nebula it changed into the shape of a sword with a red tip and a black body. This way it looked like a variant of the sword symbol of the Weaponsmaster crest.

The weaponsmaster crest was blue and his was red and black but that was fine, this could be attributed to it being an unusual symbol of a well known crest. This was better than being a completely new crest.

He would be able to stand out and at the same time not become a public enemy. Besides Crestmasters can control when to show their crests so most of the time he would just keep it hidden.

Suddenly his attention was attracted by the remains of the centipede, they were burning out of existence in the same way that happened after he defeated the armored husk.

It left behind a black heart. The black heart had pure white bones jutting out of it from the back and coiling around it in a protective fashion. Eerily enough the heart was beating rhythmically as it levitated in the air.

He had seen one just like it before, it was the Proof of Devotion. Unfortunately it didn't leave behind a Deadman's Remnant.

Aldrich continued looking for the key, and after retracting his steps to the place when he first turned into the beast he finally found it.

Although he knew it was the key, it didn't look like one. It was a rectangular folded golden metal. On one side it had various marks.

Aldrich took it with him along with the Proof of Devotion, used the seal of Tindalor and teleported to the common room. He then sealed the heart in a glass jar and locked it firmly.

At this time he didn't have the patience to look into it, he had to return to the real world and save his teammates.

But there was just one more thing he had to look into before that. His new stats.

His stats made a massive jump in terms of pure stats alone he was four times maybe five times stronger than he was before and he was already very strong then.

But there were some more shocking changes. Such as his ability and skill, Eye of Insight and Light step both rose by a level without consuming any essence!

This was huge. He simply had no idea how or why that happened. It was still great news for him nonetheless.

As a Crestmaster he obtained three new skills and using his Eyes of Insight on them he was able to see their true effects.

1) Aurora: Augment Lv.1: this skill could use an energy called Aurora to enhance almost anything. It could be used to enhance an attack, defense and even his senses.

The beast used it to protect itself from the high pressure water explosion. It was not a simple skill at all, that kind of versatility was not ordinary.

Unfortunately the Aurora was hard to control for now. Unless he used a skill it remained like a lump of iron, heavy and unmoving.

2) Invisible sword Lv.1: this skill was called invisible weapon before Aldrich absorbed the great sword, and changed after that.

Aldrich tested this skill and it actually conjectured a perfect replica of his sword, only it was invisible.

After further testing he found out that the invisible sword could be controlled by his mind to levitate. Controlling it was not that easy but if he honed his skill at it he might be able to make it a great secret attack.