As a monster, my primary enemies are none other than humans. If I couldn’t make my mind to have killing intention towards them eventually, I will die by their hands. Although I know this; when something that was engraved to my very soul, how can it be easy to change?

Unless something drastic happens, I don’t think I would have a change in my perspective. It is a good thing that I don’t have any illusions of acceptance by the human community just because I know ‘compassion’ as a monster.

Racial bias… it’s not that easy to curb. History can prove it.

Anyway, due to Logier’s arrival, I regained confidence. Whatever little hesitation I had about using the skills also vanished. Killing maybe something I couldn’t do period, using skill to beat them to half death!? That I can very much do.

While their minds clouded by the Logier’s very presence itself, I targeted the man with the tattoo on his face and activated ‘Nightmare Manifest’

Suddenly the surrounding became deathly quiet as I find myself in a damp marsh. Aside from seeing the marsh, I felt nothing. No smell, no wetness even when I was knee-deep in the swamp water, nothing I could feel aside from the vision. Before me, stood a deformed creature resembling a human female. Her form was too horrible to describe with mere words. Her eyes… they were stitched shut but I could see the black blood oozing from them. She had uneven hands, one longer than the other. On her back was a huge hump, like a supermassive tumor secreting yellow pus.

Her legs were normal looking but the feet were bent backward. It was a terrifying sight. I didn’t know this person had such a blood-chilling nightmare. Suddenly my body enveloped by a black light as I morphed into the creature I saw. As soon as my morphing was complete, information about this creature appeared on my head from a mysterious source.

Elipthale, a human woman who was the wife of a fish farmer. She was living happily with her husband and their only daughter in a small village manned by a retired knight. Since the village was isolated far from the city, the people there lived happily and void of any official oppression. But due to that, it was also most susceptible to occasional monster attacks and raider invasions. That retired knight did well in protecting the small village from all problems but he was getting old.

This person, Edmond one day raided their village and killed the aging knight after a series of deception filled battles. Then he killed many people and taken captive of the women in there. While he did so, this woman, Elipthale and her daughter both were blemished by his filthy claws. Therefore, the woman maddened in rage and saddened by her loss vowed in the blood to take revenge. After her death, she transformed into this grotesque monster and haunted him.

With the help of some artifacts, Edmond managed to seal the woman into this marsh, which used to be the very village she once lived in. such was the sad story of the woman whose form I took. As soon as I finished transforming, the woman vanished and replaced by Edmond. He was looking everywhere in franticness.

As soon as his eyes landed on my form, he took a step back with his eyes wide as dinner plates.

“Impossible!!” he screamed and scrambled away. He didn’t look back and ran as far from me as possible. Unfortunately for him, this realm is my domain and here I am everything. I am omniscient and omnipotent. No matter how far he runs, he could never outrun me. This is the power of Nightmare Manifest. As I said before, if used correctly these abilities can be used both as offensive and defensive or escape purposes.

Right now, I am in the Nightmare realm, an illusionary place created from my power and the target’s fear. If I want, I can leave this place and return to the real world while in the transformed state. In my transformed state, I will be immune to all attacks but I also can’t mount an attack on others. If successfully cast Nightmare Manifest another time on a different target, I could affect that particular target both physically and mentally. Of course, skills aren’t exempted from this. Even if I couldn’t physically attack others, I could still use skills.

In any case, until I master this skill, I do not intend to use it to attack. At most, I will target a single person and then run away while they are busy. Besides, there are still many things I don’t understand about my skills or this world and even this body of mine. I have to discover everything gradually until I know everything about it.

I was still inside the nightmare realm, following behind this man’s back. There was a reason why I wasn’t actively engaging him in a battle of wills; after all, in this realm, I've got the power to crush this adventurer with an unknown strength. I wanted to know the duration of this skill.

Unlike the case with Cast Illusions, the system didn’t say how long the target would be under the effect. Therefore, I had to discover it on my own. I was only following behind the man without even trying anything. With the memories of this deformed thing, I could very well make this man pee his pants. However, I don’t have a fetish to scare people uselessly.

I was also afraid. If killing the man in this realm would kill the man in the real world… that would be very bad. I am not yet ready to handle that kind of shock.

My future for revenge looks bleak… and even my death couldn’t cure me of my naivety.

1 minute…

1 minute 20 seconds…

I calculated the time while following behind the man. Suddenly I remembered the passive of Nightmare Manifest. Every minute a target stays in this realm, their real body would take 40% of their max HP as magic damage. If he can’t let himself out in three minutes, he might die.

Therefore, when my calculation reached 2 minutes mark, I disabled the skill. How I did it? It’s very simple. All I have to do is think of closing a door while calling the skill’s name again. It will happen automatically. The same was true for when activating the skill as well, all I have to do was think of opening a door in my heart and chant the name of the skill.

After I canceled the skill, I observed no change with myself. As for the man whom I targeted, he fell to his ass and started to mumble incoherently about something. Also since I have attacked him first, my system already gave me a rundown of his name and HP.

Edmond Maxleo

Human Lv 3

HP: 84/100

Hmm!! Why does his HP reduce by only 16 points? did he have a defensive tool to guard against magical attacks? Although I wanted to know why such low damage value reflected, something else caught my eye.

Humans seem to have only 100 HP and there is a level system that exists between them. I learned something very important. Monsters don’t have levels, they are categorized as an infant, juvenile, young adult, adult, and old. Each stage of their life reflects the strength they possess. For example, an infant monster would possess very low HP and MP, and their physical attributes are low as well. Similarly, once they step into the juvenile stage, all their attributes would have a thorough upgrade.

In any case, Logier didn’t attack them seriously. He just swung his poorly made ax aimlessly, which somehow injured one. The other two just scared stiff and decided to retreat rather than attack head-on. And with their captain acting like a retard, they lost all will to continue fighting.

Cathie looked both of us with a smile and shook her head. She gestured with her hand and voiced a ‘thank you’ to both Logier and me. After that, she dove into restoring her strength. Perhaps this little incident made her realize how weak her current self was, she zealously, with a determined face continued to ‘suck’ the goblins dry.

Ugh… no matter how I try to rephrase it, her actions, in the end, could be termed with that single word only.

In any case, my first live usage of “Nightmare Manifest” was a huge success. And if not broken in a short period, it could even kill the tankiest of the monsters or humans. While the skill itself isn’t that much, its passive ability is overpowered. 40% of the target’s full HP as magic damage! That’s gotta be huge damage anyone could receive.

Wait! I did a mistake!! The passive of Nightmare Manifest doesn’t deal 40% of total target’s HP rather 40% of caster's, that is my HP as magical damage. Oh well, it can’t be helped. I was too tense since it was my first time using a skill on a human.

Anyway, a question echoed in my heart, are all the special monsters this strong?

Then just how strong are the special humans of this world?

And what about those bunch who were summoned to this world with me?

As these questions flooded my mind, my heart started to beat rapidly. I don’t want to meet anyone of that bunch, well probably only that Alma girl but no one else. One of them had already shown his true colors, what if others are also the same?

As for the matter of if I can ever go back to my world or not, I always stay away from that topic. Even in my dreams. This will only make me depressed.

“These damn humans, they only know how to run when faced with a powerful being. These are so different than the one we faced…” the disappointment in Logier’s voice was real. It was as disappointing as when you download a ‘Free Minecraft’ game from android store only to find it a rip-off of a ‘Minecraft’ ripping off the original.

The feeling was real here.

“Just wait for strong ones to come. These guys are weak” I shook my head. From what I picked up from their conversation, they are small groups only excel at looting something, and that something should be the unfortunate adventurers being killed by the monsters here.

I wanted to know more about the outside world, but due to my inability to speak, I couldn’t ask the only person who is the perfect candidate for that. Looks like I have to wait until I truly gain the ability or know how to write the language. Let me tell you, although these guys speak a language very similar to ‘English’ the writing is very different. The alphabet here reminded me of the Russian alphabet… weird and hard to write for an English guy like me.