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Chapter 91: Broken Dreams(Final)
🕑 Added 2025-07-18 13:00:15 +0000 UTCThe Nightmare descended like a silent executioner.
Its pale blue skin shifted into bruised purple, gleaming faintly beneath the dense clouds of haze laced dream mist that churned silently. Its eyes open fully now. Grey, sparkling, pupiless eyes warping the space around it as if gravity itself bent in deference to its gaze.
Baku met it head-on.
Steel kissed claw, the first collision breaking through the fog like a bell tolling through storm clouds, breaking the veil with a clearing shockwave. The Nightmare shrieked, a voice coming from a fractured throat that couldn’t mimic anything resembling language. But its cry wasn’t meant to intimidate.
It was meant to command.
And from that cry, the tide of dream beasts shifted.
Where before they came as packs of maddened horrors, now they moved as soldiers beneath a general’s whip. Their flesh bulged, warped, and twisted mid-charge. Eyes split into dozens. Limbs fractured only to reform in new, unnatural shapes. Jaws stretched wide enough to swallow armored men whole.
Mutation, refinement, evolution, all under the pressure of the Nightmares inhuman lullaby.
Its influence made them stronger, faster, hungrrier.
A commander’s presence on a battlefield of chaos.
Baku grinned as his sword lashed through three at once, severing heads and limbs that barely slowed their momentum.
“Oh, this one knows how to lead.” he mused aloud, even as his body danced through teeth and claw, blade flashing in lethal arcs.
Caldeon watched from his distant perch atop the fractured sky, sweat crawling down his spine despite himself. His Enforcers with him, watching below. Yet all of them felt it, the shift. The Nightmare was changing the tide just by existing.
And worse for Caldeon… it was beginning to crack his Tenet.
Cracks, unseen but felt, spread beneath Caldeon’s feet like ice fracturing under strain. His connection to the Endless Slumber groaned beneath the Nightmare’s presence and Baku’s relentless defiance.
“That’s impossible,” he muttered. “Nothing inside should destabilize my core. The pocket realm is mine. My rules, my laws…”
Yet already, he could feel it.
His devil core trembling.
Strain where none should exist.
Because Nightmares weren’t meant to be contained, not in a place like this.
They weren’t born of Hellnian law domains. They too were born of contradiction. Born from the essence of fantasy itself.
A paradox to reality, with an instinctual hatred of all that lived outside the Dream Fissure.
They existed for one purpose, to make the waking world bleed unreality.
And Baku?
Baku existed to tear down anything that tried.
Another exchange of blows sent shockwaves through the dense air, blades carving through monstrous bodies, claws raking sparks across enchanted armor. Baku laughed in delight, wild, like a man who’d spent too long bored beneath the weight of civility.
“Kahuhuhu! You’re better than your herded mutts!” he said, sword resting briefly across his shoulder even as more beasts closed in.
The Nightmare answered with a lunge.
Blindingly fast.
Claws like scythes striking in a blur, cutting not for flesh but for essence.
Baku stepped aside, redirecting the attack. His blade caught the strike, spun it wide, used the momentum to pivot behind the creature in a flash of motion almost too fast for eyes to follow.
“Lucid Dream Sword Style, [Eighth Form: Half-Lidded Eyes].”
Steel howled as it carved a perfect arc through the creature’s side. No blood. Just ruptured mist and flickering threads of unreality spilling like veins torn open beneath the skin.
The Nightmare recoiled, angered, its body reknitting in spasms of distortion.
It screeched again, higher, sharper.
The beasts responded instantly. Their forms contorted further, their hunger sharpened. They became blades unto themselves, rushing, guided by their commander’s will.
Baku moved between them like wind through reeds.
Each step a dance.
Each strike a note in a symphony only he could hear.
But even he felt it now, the thickening haze. The creeping pressure of unreality clawing at the edges of the pocket dimension.
This wasn’t merely a battle anymore. It was slowly becoming a war of existence itself.
The Nightmare moved again, this time faster. Its claws tore through the fog, rending distortions that snapped space like glass. It struck at Baku in angles that bent reality inward, forcing his defense into positions no normal swordsman could recover from.
“You’re getting somewhere. Almost.” His blade flashed again. “But you’re still too slow.”
Behind his words, another truth settled in his blood.
This is familiar.
This is home.
This is why he was set atop this cursed mountain, to face the impossible.
To break it.
Caldeon’s hands trembled now, knuckles white against his blade’s hilt as he felt another crack splinter through his connection. His Tenet was fraying. His core weakening.
“No… not now!”
He poured more energy into the fissure tether. More mist bled into the dreamscape. More power to anchor this nightmare world.
But even that couldn’t patch over the flaw taking root within.
The Nightmare lunged again, its claws slicing through hordes of lesser beasts as if they were air, its unnatural body cutting the battlefield like a blade of living distortion. Behind it, the dreamscape quaked and twisted, seams widening with every clash. The mist had thickened beyond recognition; dense and pale, untouched by Baku’s nature.
But from Baku’s mouth, where breath met air, the mist was beginning to change.
Rainbow hues now bled with each exhale, a soft iridescence curling like smoke through his teeth. The byproduct of a stomach built to devour dreams, working overtime.
The [Eater of Dreams] Physique.
"You’re still so fragile," Baku laughed, his tone slipping deeper into something savage. "But this… this feels closer."
Another wave of dream beasts surged. Only faster. Only bulkier. Twisting into snarling things meant to shred minds rather than bodies. The Nightmare’s influence was pushing them beyond limits, bending unreality further.
Baku welcomed them.
His blade flashed, once, twice, thrice.
Each cut clean, precise, dismissing monsters as trivial interruptions.
“[Second Form: Moonlit Memory.]”
One beast’s head spiraled away, severed so neatly reality paused to admire it before crumbling.
Another fell apart in pieces it couldn’t comprehend.
Click. Slash. Click. Carve.
That rhythm again, like the countdown of an executioner’s clock.
"Kahuhuhu! You thought this would wear me down?" Another laugh, harsher now, haughtier now. "I fought alone before your ancestors learned to dream."
The enforcers above watched from their unraveling perch. Caldeon felt cold sweat beneath his armor.
That rainbow mist…
It rose, passively, from Baku’s breath.
Proof of a body eating dreams alive with every inhalation.
Ryoha’s voice broke through. "His devil blood-"
"No." Caldeon’s voice was tighter than he wanted. "He’s not regenerating, just..."
They were watching a predator working through his meal.
The Nightmare’s gaze fixed on Baku, reality warping under its weight. With a shriek like teeth grinding through bone, it launched forward.
Baku didn’t move until the last instant.
“[Tenth Form: Drifting Lanterns].”
The sword cleaved the very space beneath the Nightmare’s path. Cracks blossomed beneath its feet like spiderweb fractures on glass.
Caught off-balance, it faltered.
Click. Slash.
An arm fell, swallowed whole by Baku’s own exhaled mist. dream laws unraveled, devoured before hitting the ground.
The Nightmare howled, retreating behind its reshaping horde, forcing mutations faster. Limbs split. Eyes doubled. Jaws fractured and reformed.
"You’re feeding me too well," Baku exhaled again, rainbow mist curling lazily. "It’s Unfortunate you encountered this mountain’s mouth alone kahuhuhu!."
Predator. Apex. Dream Eater.
Beasts lunged. Baku answered with choreography honed by centuries beside this fissure.
Click.
Steel flicked sideways, dismissing hordes like insects. Blades struck paths they hadn’t traveled. Wounds appeared on beasts who thought they’d dodged.
"You children should have stayed behind your desks."
Caldeon’s sword trembled beneath his grip. His devil core throbbed in pain.
The dreamscape…it was breaking. Baku’s existence was grinding it down now.
"This isn’t…" Jeron’s voice cracked. "This isn’t what we trained for."
"It doesn’t matter," Caldeon forced composure, despite the seed of despair beginning to sprout. "Failsafe. Now."
Above them, the Nightmare hissed through its torn throat. Its mutation couldn’t keep pace. Baku wasn’t slowing, he was only laughing louder.
"Come now, Kahuhuhu!" he said, sword raised. "Show me why I should remember this at all."
The rainbow mist from his mouth thickened briefly, curling around him, but in the denser grey, it faded fast.
He would not touch the haze bleeding through the cracks. That belonged to the fissure, not his hunger.
He hunted only what dreams left behind.
The Nightmare shrieked again. But this time, in panic. It could feel its body unraveling the more it touched Bakus mist.
With its shriek, the beasts obeyed, throwing themselves forward in suicidal tides, desperate to seperate Baku and their master.
Baku exhaled, long and slow, rainbow mist trailing like ribbons around him. His sword lowered, humming with quiet hunger.
"I slept beneath the fissure when no one else dared. Alone."
The mist curled like smoke from a predator’s grin.
The dreamscape cracked more. Creeping lines of fracture that raced beneath Baku’s feet, spreading like roots beneath glass.
Above him, the Nightmare continued to shriek, its malformed body twisting in place. Panic now lurked beneath its movements, fearing the thing Baku was becoming.
With every slow exhale, more of that rainbow mist spilled from his mouth.
With every inhale, the dream mist was consumed.
Beasts. Space. Dream laws itself, drawn inward, erased without a sound.
A predator’s hunger, refining itself to instinctual perfection.
The Reawakening Complete.
It had been dormant for too long. Too restrained beneath protection, beneath patience, beneath years of sickness watching this mountain rot in silence.
No more.
The rainbow mist now wrapped his shoulders like a mantle. Beneath his feet, even the cracks gave way, peeling upward in lazy curls of unraveling thought.
Each breath inhaled unreality and crushed it down into nothing.
“Finally,” Baku murmured. “You made me hungry again.”
Above, Caldeon struggled. His eyes, wide now with horror, tracked the growing storm of color curling from the samurai’s teeth.
He drew his failsafe with trembling fingers. A black shard, rune-etched, humming with compacted dream laws. A single use. A final gambit.
“It doesn’t matter!” Caldeon hissed. “I'm collapsing the whole thing… I’ll take him with it!”
He drove the mysterious shard into his palm. Blood. Pain. A surge of power.
The dreamscape groaned.
All at once, it began to fold inward. Walls of false sky shattered. The stitched heavens tore open, bleeding colorless light into the void. Fragments of the constructed world spiraled down into nothing.
His plan was to collapse, retreat, regroup and reassess.
Unfortunately, the surge of power caused Caldeon’s core to crack.
His devil core, a pale thing thrumming behind his heart, split down the middle with a soundless scream.
The backlash threw all three enforcers from their hidden perch, slamming them down onto what passed for ground in this dying space.
Ryoha struck first, skidding in a heap, her twin blades falling from numb fingers. Jeron landed worse, halberd snapping beneath his weight, his armor crumpling like paper.
Caldeon hit last, clutching his chest, his breath gone, his vision swimming.
His tenet had betrayed him. Or rather, he’d overreached, and it had snapped beneath Baku’s weight.
Above them, the Nightmare paused.
It watched the collapse not with terror now, but surprising calculation.
Then it moved…
Swift, predatory, cutting through its own horde with a shepherd’s brutal focus.
Straight for the fallen Caldeon.
Baku chuckled beneath his breath, teeth flashing behind rainbow mist.
“Oh, you poor fool. You thought you controlled this.”
Jeron barely lifted his hand to cast a ward…too slow. The Nightmare’s claws sheared through him, body unraveling into motes of ash and respawned essence, scattered to reform somewhere far from Hazy Mountain.
Ryoha tried to rise, blood in her throat, calling to her swords, but the Nightmare’s kick crushed her chest flat in a single movement. She too vanished, forcibly returned to elsewhere.
Only Caldeon remained.
He watched it come with eyes wide, his mind fracturing alongside his core.
“No… stay back!” he gasped, but it was far too late.
The Nightmare then did something horrifying.
It reached into his chest.
It moved like smoke, slipping through flesh as if reality no longer applied. Without spilling blood or tearing flesh, an innate ability to prey on beings that possess no protection.
And from Caldeon’s broken body, it drew free his devil core.
A fragile, gleaming thing. Cracked. Dying.
It didn’t bother watching the pure agony forming on Caldeon’s face as his life rapidly faded, stars stripped the second the core came free.
Then, the Nightmare ate it.
Its throat bulged. Rings of light. Red, white, grey, shuddered across its eyes. Limbs stretched. Flesh warped. New shapes bloomed across its body like tumors learning how to exist.
It was evolving.
Simply by devouring something real.
The Nightmare’s body continued to shift, bones reshaping with sickening sounds beneath its pallid, purpled skin. The gorged devil core still pulsed faintly in its throat, leaking stolen essence into the twisting entity.
It had not finished evolving.
And it would not finish evolving.
Not if Baku had anything to say about it.
He stepped forward, slow, heavy, the weight of his years pressing into the broken world beneath his feet. Rainbow mist poured from his mouth now in steady coils, devouring every scrap of dream law it touched. His sword hung low in his hand, its edge humming with certainty.
“You won’t finish.”
His voice was calm. Certain.
“You won’t reach reality.”
His foot slid forward, stance locking into place with a sound like threads snapping across dimensions. His blade tilted, angled perfectly as light began fracturing along its edge in impossible colors.
“Lucid Dream Sword Style, twelfth and final form.”
The mist seemed to lean forward, as if breathless, awaiting the words.
“[The End Where Dreams Begin].”
All that sounded was a soft, final click of his sword reentering the sheath.
And the dreamscape filled with colorful light, and began to collapse.
It folded like paper, curling inward with shimmering light and ribbons of rainbow mist dissolving into the void.
The Nightmare, still half-changed, reached forward once, and vanished in the tide.
Caldeon’s broken body, the remains of Jeron’s and Ryoha’s vanishing ashes, the sky of stitched illusions, all swallowed in the unraveling hush of unreality.
Light danced where darkness had ruled.
Colors bled where monochrome had held sway.
The boundary between dream and waking trembled.
And in the heart of it, one figure remained.
Sword sheathed. Mist rising. Smile widening as the world he’d been trapped within ceased to exist.
Whether Baku’s blade struck the Nightmare, the world, or something deeper… no one watching from outside could say.
Because from beyond the fissure, from atop Hazy Mountain’s trembling heights, nothing escaped that final cut but light and silence.
Comments
Aune
This one i like
Aune
Boku just slappes the Grand pappa down in his house. Darkly so hannay was not to witness it so.
Prent
It’s absolutely hilarious to me, that the Dream Faction spent so long trying to get Baku infected by the lulling virus and then so much longer waiting for him to die of it, that they forgot why that was their plan to deal with him in the first place.
