Markets and Multiverses (A Serial Transmigration LitRPG)

Chapter 539: Dream

The water elemental’s entire body began to glow a faint golden color. A moment later, it turned around and began heading towards us. The creature had no eyes, and I had no idea how it perceived the world around it. Even so, I could feel that it was watching me. On a purely conceptual level, the creature had seen me when I looked at it, and it was not happy.A whip made of water sprang out of its body and swished towards us, before it crashed into the water several hundred meters away. It was nowhere near close to hitting us - but the waves from its attack still caused our surroundings to fall into chaos, like a miniature storm had passed through the area. Towering waves that were several meters tall surged towards both of our boats. Anise immediately shot a few spells into the ocean, which stilled the waves before they could reach us - but it was obvious that the water elemental regarded us as threats now.

I squinted at the monstrous blob of water. Did it have any way to actually reach us? If it didn’t, then whether it noticed us or not didn’t actually matter much. All it would be able to do was rage in place and annoy us. On the other hand, if it did have a way to hurt us, things were about to get dangerous.

A moment later, I saw the sides of the water elemental’s body bubble again, before several giant globules of water shot out of its back and into the sky. Each orb of water was at least twice the size of our boat, and traced a neat parabolic arc through the air. Finally, several globs of water crashed into the ocean several dozen meters away from us, missing us entirely. The water elemental had missed.

However, each sphere of water hissed and released a huge cloud of steam when it met with the cold water of the ocean. Even though the globs of water were several dozen meters away, I could feel a faint heat radiating off of them.

These things were hot. For me to feel the heat from this far away, they must be hot enough to flat out melt some things when they came in contact with them. I shuddered as I thought about what would have happened if those blasts of water hit us instead of the ocean.

“Did that thing just try to hit us with a giant glob of boiling water?” asked Felix. He seemed nearly as surprised as I felt.

“More than just boiling. I think those globs of water were mixed with heat on a more conceptual level. It’s the best explanation for why they were so hot,” I said. “I think that they might have been hotter than lava. If those things hit us, we’re dead.”

The water elemental didn’t give us much more time to think. It turned towards us, and then started swimming after us at a previously unthinkable speed. Its body started to shrink and compress itself, and the previous 200 meter tall body quickly shrank until it was merely a 20 or 30 meter tall ‘wave’. In a way, that made it even more terrifying, because it showcased just how malleable the monster’s body really was.

Then, it began to speed up. The two boats began to speed away, which had the fortunate upside of leading the water elemental a bit further away from our island instead of closer.

The downside was that the monster was clearly intent on finishing us off.

I checked the speed of our boat, then glanced at the water elemental. It was gaining on us. When we had first seen the water elemental, I had assumed that it was a threat we had time to analyze. That we could escape on an individual level, at least. Now, it was speeding up in order to chase us down and kill us. Even more annoying, it had a ranged attack.

A few moments later, the creature indeed fired another wave of boiling water bubbles at us. They all missed, just like last time - but I had zero confidence that it would keep missing. The first time in hit, we were dead - and given how massive the water bubbles were, I wasn’t sure if I could teleport an entire one away, even though {Void Mastery} had increased the size of my portals quite substantially.

My mind raced for a way forward. A way to survive.

The giant blob of water was so resilient that there was no way we could kill it. Even if it had some kind of weakness… with a [Vitality] around Grade 70, it just didn’t matter. Even if it just stood there while we unleashed everything we had at it, we might all die of old age before we inflicted meaningful damage on it.

We couldn’t harm it directly…

Another whip-like tendril of water crashed into the water, and nearly touched the back of our boat this time. The waves from the impact were quelled by Anise before they could captize our boat, but it was a reminder that I didn’t have much time to think. My mind felt like it was spinning in circles as I tried to urge the boat to move faster. It wasn’t enough. The water elemental was still gaining on us. 

I got a new idea.

I used {Eldritch Soul} to create a clone as far away as I could. My water clone spent about half of its essence on an extinguish, before it started swimming for its life. A moment later, I also had my clone swap to conceptual sight and look at the water elemental again, just to make sure it chased after my clone and not my main body.

The water clone didn’t have a boat of its own, so its speed was naturally terrible. It fell behind us in mere moments, before the water elemental sent a wave of water whips cracking towards my clone. Right before the water elemental’s attacks hit, my clone burned the rest of its essence reserve on another extinguish. I observed the water elemental’s life force.

It didn’t seem noticeably injured, but I could certainly tell that it seemed annoyed - kind of like a human that had been stung by a wasp. Its life was not in any real danger, but it certainly seemed like it had at least noticed the attack. However, no real damage had happened. My clone had bought us a few seconds, but that was nowhere near enough time to truly escape.

Still, during the time the water elemental was tearing my clone to pieces, it hadn’t launched another water of boiling water at us, or hit our boats with any attacks. I had at least distracted it for a few moments.

yelled Anise, before another wave of essence cascaded through the water. It blanketed the entire area in a dense, heavy fog. A moment later, Felix started lobbing random bells into the area. They looked kind of like more developed versions of the sound-making objects he had originally used to distract fog banks, all those years ago. They flew around, making loud obnoxious sounds and randomly emanating waves of essence. Sallia and I sat there and watched, since neither of us had a good way to contribute at the moment.

The water elemental did, indeed, seem distracted. It spent several minutes tearing Felix’s bells to pieces as we pulled further away - but even though we were pulling ahead, we could never quite shake off the creature. Whenever we pulled more than five kilometers ahead, the creature would dart forward in a way that seemed almost accidental - and yet, it would always maintain a certain distance near us.

After the fourth time this happened, I started to wonder whether we had failed to distract it at all. Perhaps it was just toying with us, the way a cat might toy with a mouse before eating it?

I desperately pushed the boat forward, while Anise and Felix tried to distract the monster. After the fifth time it ‘coincidentally’ caught up to us, Felix got frustrated and started using my portals to bomb the creature. That didn’t seem to do much either.

“How in the world do we deal with this thing?” hissed Veritum. “It doesn’t feel like we’re making any progress at all.”

“I’m going to try using an item. Felix, uhh… Felix made it for me a long time ago,” I said.

I said.

said Felix. Anise and Sallia acknowledged my words a few moments later.

I pulled up the item description for {Dream of Hunger}, to make sure I remembered how to use it. The last time I had done so was over four hundred years ago, after all.

Item: Dream of Hunger (nonphysical item)

Effects: Once per lifetime, you may enter a dream of ‘hunger.’ This will allow you to drag a single creature from anywhere in the world into your dream in a greatly weakened form. (note - this is a dream-related magic item, so creatures which have resistances against this type of effect may be able to resist it. Creatures above Heroic Grade also have considerably stronger bonds between their soul and their body, meaning it is almost impossible to separate their soul and drag it into a dream.)

(To activate this item, you must have some sort of medium related to the target. It is best to use things like blood, hair, or saliva - but other things, such as scales, straw from a nest, or other things can also be used. The more related the medium is to the target, the better the effect of this item).

Maintenance cost - 40.7 Achievement per reconstruction.

To use {Dream of Hunger}, I needed a medium from the creature’s body, such as hair, blood, or saliva. It was a water elemental, so I needed water. Fortunately, it had tossed several globs of boiling water at us earlier. It had also crushed several of Felix’s annoying bells, and left behind quite a bit of water from its body in the process. After it crushed another bell, I teleported it over to me, collected some of the water attached to the object, and then activated {Dream of Hunger}.

I felt like the world grew dimmer and weaker, but not by much. I vaguely remembered that the first time I had used this item, it had seemed to cause the entire world to dissolve into a dream world - but this time, it didn’t feel like I had gone anywhere at all. Even so, I felt inexplicably sleepy - and the water elemental in the distance had slowed down quite a bit as well.

The creature bubbled and churned in the distance, and I felt something buck and churn within my own mind as well, as the item tried to activate. However, it was also clear the item wasn’t working as intended.

I eyed one of the lines in the item description.

I said.

said Felix.

The water elemental hadn’t been pulled into a dream, but at the very least, it had stopped coincidentally reappearing anytime we were about to flee. It was still moving, and it was still crushing Felix’s bells - but its movements were a lot slower now. It had still made the creature less alert. That was good enough for our purposes. After several minutes of sailing, we finally escaped the range of the water elemental. It had been far from an ideal result, but we had escaped with our lives.