Rise of the Nightmare Crestmaster

No. There might be something more to this, but he shouldn't pry too much into it. He had a feeling that Irene wouldn't react very nicely to it.

But now that he began thinking about it from a different perspective he was beginning to see that there were several weird and strange behaviors displayed by Irene.

The weird muttering, the suspicious and paranoid looks, the sleep deprivation and finally the loud arguments with her 'grandfather'.

Furthermore, Irene stayed in his apartment for several hours, even if she was on bad terms with her grandfather he should still be worried that his granddaughter spent such a long time in a strange man's apartment.

This whole matter with Irene was not over, but he couldn't just go and ask her about it now. It was better to find a good opportunity first and try to understand what exactly was happening here.

More importantly, he had massive issues to deal with.

He looked at his status bar.

Skills: Light Step Lv.1+

Light Step Lv.1: double your speed in short bursts, has to be in straight lines.

This is it. Aldrich knew this Skill, it could be said that he was very familiar with it. The armored husk used it to devastating effect against him in their battles.

He did manage to get his hands on his first skill. It was now that he fully understood the difference between abilities and skills.

Abilities were passive and could be used by consuming physical stamina, the consumption was very tiny. Very negligible.

Skills on the other hand had to be activated and they consumed Ether energy. All Crestmasters relied on it to use their skills, a fact which he recalled from the incident with the Necrotic-Claw Hawk.

He had hoped to get the Stamina drain skill, but after experiencing the armored husk's memories he knew why he got the movement skill.

There was no other option this was the only skill that belonged to armored husk himself, the stamina drain skill was not his own.

It came from the slave brand that was bestowed upon the armored husk when the council member executive came to reside in the city.

All the members of the Unseen Hand were boosted upon his arrival. And they were 'blessed' with being able to use some of his powers in times of need.

Especially since the conflicts and anomalies started increasing exponentially in the last memories of the armored husk. The once illustrious Professionals lost their minds after their powers deserted them.

Even though the Unseen Hand was actively working to overthrow the order of the three worlds it too had never experienced such an upheaval.

It was true that they initially celebrated these things but as time went on they started to lose track of things. They too were affected, some of their members lost control and the executive from the council became ever more violent and erratic day by day.

The worst of all was the isolation, cutting off teleportation which was the main method of transportation in the three worlds lead to an unmitigated calamity. People turned on each other.

Travel outside physically? Only one in ten thousand made it back. The outside world was plagued by mana storms and monsters never seen before stalked the lands in search for any flesh.

The goals that the Unseen Hand worked hard on for more than ten thousand years was in front of them without them even doing anything and it only took twenty years.

Better yet this was much worse than their plans, this was true mayhem!

Unfortunately, the central piece of their plot, the artificial divine core, was not ready yet.

However Aldrich did not think that he already unraveled the mystery of the Nightmare realm despite his newfound knowledge.

He did indeed learn of many things, however, he only got the memories of the armored husk, a low level guard. And not even all of them at that, there were many missing 'holes' in the memories he got.

There were many things that didn't make sense when he thought about them. For example, the armored husk never had any skills of his own in his entire life, even until the moment when everything went dark.

The armored husk was supposedly practicing a method from a foreign world to gain the power of a professional. And the Light step skill was one of the three techniques in the combat art.

But he had ultimately failed to gain anything from it. In the end when the armored husk stood guard over the staircase of the third floor he was an ordinary man.

He could use the stamina drain skill but only once, that was what he was told. And yet when Aldrich fought him he used both skills so efficiently. And he used the skill multiple times with liberty.

The combat art had two more skills, the second one was called the Weight of a boulder. Apparently, it allowed the user to triple his weight and transfer that weight wherever he wished.

He could transfer it to his sword at the moment before his strike lands. The weight included his own armor and equipment, the user of the skill won't be affected by the increased weight.

The third skill was called Qi gathering, the explanation about this skill was vague. And Aldrich didn't get anything from the memories of the husk regarding it.

Second, why were all the husks sealed in their houses? When? Who did that?

Third, the moon of the three worlds was supposed to have been destroyed long ago but it was clearly fine in the current Nightmare realm.

Well, not exactly. In the memories of the husk the moon of the three world was always pure white. But the moon now was sickly yellow and it was much closer to the world than before it's alleged destruction.

The source of light for the three worlds was not the sun, which they knew of from other worlds within the Divine domain and outside.

Apparently after the Lord of the clairvoyant moon rose to lordship he took the actual moon to the divine land and left only a visage, perhaps a better word would be a spirit of it to light the three worlds.

Of course he did bring it back before he lead the great army to the divine land.

All in all, Aldrich didn't know if he should believe any of this, this whole thing was insane. It didn't make any sense. A being could grow so powerful that he could rule three whole worlds?

Even more damning is the fact that the Lord of the clairvoyant moon was considered among the weakest Lords in the Divine Land. There were thirty three Lords in the Divine Domain but only nine Ancient Lords and they were all below the Great One.

Then what was the Empire? what was he? what was this whole world? He was insignificant, his whole world was insignificant, it was a pointless speck of dust in the uncaring Astral realm.

…At least he had gained useful information and some interesting things were revealed to him. For example he found the way to the divine land that the old madman talked about.

The way was through the basement. The basement was actually a secret hideout of the Unseen Hand, it was a prison of four levels, each level had a warden.

That was where those kidnapped by the organization were kept. Underneath the fourth level of the prison was the personal laboratory of the executive of the Unseen Hand.

The people were actually experimental subjects used in the research of the Unseen Hand in their quest to create artificial divine cores.

But the good news is he didn't have to go through all that trouble, he just had to go through the first level of the prison as it had a secret path that would lead him straight to the residence of the Overseer of this city.

The Overseer had the key to a teleportation gate to the Divine Land itself and from there, how hard could it be to find the divine city and get that crown or whatever the old man said?

But he had to get another key before that, the key to the prison was with the superior of the armored husk who holed himself in the third floor to work on some experiments of his own after the communications cut off with the organization.

That iron gate had to be opened with the key. If anyone tried to use force to open it, it would self-destruct killing the ones behind the attempt and burying the entrance to the prison.

Aldrich wasn't afraid of death but he wasn't about to let the only path he knew get buried so he had to get the key from the superior.

The superior wore the key around his neck all the time and he had to have taken it with him back then. The key also opened the cupboards he saw in the basement which had some very interesting gadgets.

Although he had many questions he wasn't here to be a historian or an archeologist, he had a mission. To find and bring back Isger's soul.