Rise of the Nightmare Crestmaster

Aldrich cleaned of the green blood from the sword and followed the noise to a staircase leading up to the second floor.

The hallway here was even darker and the rooms here were all wide open except for one. The first room to his right was sealed with and iron bar.

Aldrich listened for a moment and determined that this room had at least two husks. Aldrich took a deep breath, removed the iron bar and sprinted in.

As he ran in, he observed his opponents, two second type husks. One of whom was armed with a great sword and the other with what looked like short bow.

The husk with the great sword slashed at him, straight from high up intending to split him in half. But such a huge attack left an opening, Aldrich who was already mid-run dropped and rolled, dodging the attack smoothly.

Aldrich used this momentum to charge not at the husk wielding the great sword but at the archer. He dodged the arrow, aimed and shot poorly due to the distance.

Aldrich didn't attack instead he hid behind the archer and pushed it towards the swordsman, which saved his life. The sword that was intended for Aldrich tore the archer in half horizontally, splattering green blood all over Aldrich.

Aldrich was shocked, this was not intentional. He didn't expect the swordsman to have recovered and launched another attack at him that fast. He wanted them to bump into each other and fall or something to that effect.

But this shock didn't last long when he raised his shield to block the oncoming sword. He managed to deflect it but the force of the blow made him stumble back a few steps.

Aldrich looked at his shield. The steel reinforced wooden shield was dented heavily and his entire arm up to his shoulder was numb. Aldrich went on the offensive and attacked with three consecutive cuts and the swordsman parried them all.

Aldrich then threw away his shield and held the sword with both hands. He learned a few things from the last exchange. His opponent was quite skilled but their strengths were actually equal.

Aldrich threw an overhand upper cut, the husk blocked him with his own sword. Their clash sent sparks in the air, the metallic clang of metal rang throughout the room.

This time it was his turn to parry, the next cut came from the other side, Aldrich parried again and again. Back and forth, until, he realized he was still alive. Aldrich was being pushed back, breathing hard and his arms losing strength.

Aldrich didn't like where this was going. He needed to think, to act instead of react. With the next cut, Aldrich threw his hands up, and parried high, with his point towards the husk's face.

In his pleasure at his success, he nearly missed the moment to thrust, but thrust he did. The tip of the sword pierced through its eye and with a final push out of the other side.

Aldrich breathed in hard. Panting, he wiped of the blood and sweat off of his face. He collected four essence orbs and one coin pouch.

With a start he realized that this was the first real sword fight that he had. In the past he always used less than dignified methods to win.

'It's not like I didn't want to do that this time too, but I couldn't. Against a competent opponent dirty tricks can't be expected to work all the time.'

Aldrich gathered himself and made his way to the third floor. From the moaning sound he was sure that he only had one husk to take care of.

The third floor was by far the darkest. Aldrich followed the moaning noise to a room when the moaning suddenly stopped. Aldrich looked around but the visibility was horrendous.

He walked into the room. He was stabbed in the back. With a grunt he turned around and pushed off the husk. Aldrich did not allow himself time to feel the pain, he tackled it to the opposing wall with beast-like ferocity .

The crash shook the walls slightly causing dirt and grim to fall of the walls. Aldrich proceeded to punch the husk in the face repeatedly until the husk stopped moving.

He could have easily finished it off with his sword but chose not to. Aldrich pulled out the knife that was still in his lower back, pulling it out proved quite painful. It was a kitchen knife, a very rusty kitchen knife.

This was the second time that he was surprised by a husk this day. He had no idea if this wound was fatal or not. It didn't feel like it was fatal.

Aldrich found the sealed windows and broke the wooden boards in every room improving visibility quite a bit.

The moonlight in the nightmare realm was as intense as ever. Aldrich looked at the sky and lost himself in its beauty, the hundreds of colorful stars bathed the town in a hundred different colors.

Now that the fog had diminished, the starlight was even clearer, if not for the creepy yellowish color of the moon it could have been a romantic sight.

Aldrich came back to himself and started searching the entire house and he found another coin pouch. In the biggest bedroom he found a hollow under the plaster behind the bed.

Aldrich carefully removed it, he inserted his hand in and pulled a small ornate chest. The chest was made from an unknown material, it had intricate white patterns over its dark blue surface. It had two metallic handles on it's sides.

Aldrich felt like he got lucky again. Just the red precious stone inlaid at the center of the chest was enough for him to get happy over. However unfortunately the chest wouldn't open, no matter how hard he tried to pry it open.

Aldrich sighed. Of course it wouldn't be that easy. He looked at his attributes and decided to upgrade his intelligence to three now. He had three essence orbs left from last time and he got eight this time.

This was an experiment to see how his body reacted to the change in attributes rather than just passing out on the couch. Aldrich gave the command in his mind and the panel blurred for a moment.

Then came the pain. Aldrich closed his eyes and fell to his knees, tears involuntarily escaped his eyes. He felt and electric energy roaming, touching, twisting and changing his body in ways that he couldn't understand.

Abruptly the pain was gone, replaced by calm clarity. He looked around, it didn't take that long or maybe it did. He didn't know. Aldrich could see and feel things around him significantly better than he did before the change.

Aldrich went back down to the room in which he fought the swordsman. He stood exactly where the swordsman stood and held his own sword in the same stance that his opponent used.

He closed his eyes and recalled the moves that were used against him. During a battle everything flew by quickly that he couldn't remember things that clearly before now.

Aldrich looked at the dead husk and something unexpected happened when he focused on him a few letters floated above it's head; Drager.

'A Drager? So that's what husks are called? Husks just sounds so much better.'

At this thought something changed again, the letters that formed the drager words blurred and changed into; Husk.

'Wow, what? that's neat.'

But wait, why did he only start seeing that now? If his ability the eyes of insight was the source of the panel and attributes then why wasn't he able to do that before?