Chapter 22: How to make a Clay Aura Bomb!

"Well first off. What is your talent.", she said, her expression changing drastically. "Maria must have told you what a talent is. And I know you have unlocked yours, although I don't know how. So tell me. What is your talent."

"…". Judging by the look on her face, she wouldn't tolerate a half-baked lie. "I think my talent might be the ability to perceive time slower."

"Oh… I see.", she said, her face melting back to her normal self. "Well, it will help with spying so that's a plus."

"You still didn't tell me any of the details."

"I'll tell you the details when you are ready."

At this point, I wanted to punch her in the face. This lady hadn't answered a single one of my questions with a straight answer.

"Okay.", I said, heading out of the room.

"Where do you think you are going?", she asked.

"… To my room.", I said. The hell did this woman want from me?

"Since you agreed to my little deal, you don't get to go to your room. it's time to train."

"Train? I thought I had a two-day vacation.", I said, roughly remembering what the director told me.

"Normally yes. But since you agreed to my deal, you have to train, if you want to be ready for the big day."

"And what exactly do you mean training?"

"Training your ability to use nihilism, using the dream realm. The exercise you do in there also counts to the real world as an added bonus."

"… Yeah right.", I said. "Sell your snake oil to someone else.". It sounded too good to be true in all honesty. Monsters and superpowers were believable, but a cheat to get fit? That was a step too far.

"I dunno how it works, but it trains you in the real world too.", she said. "Do you believe in gods?", she said immediately after, while extending a hand for a handshake.

I could feel the aura emanating from her. It felt like sandpaper rubbing my skin.

I sighed. "Yeah, yeah I do.", I said, firmly shaking her hand.

The next couple of hours went by in the most painful way possible. I went into the dream realm and fought with Daphne to the death.

In reality, she just beat me up, pierced me with a funny-looking weapon, burnt me alive, and ripped my skull off as a starter pack before I got sent off to the land of the living. Then rinse and repeat.

Her execution tactics got more and more complicated. It started from beheading me, and now it was repeated stabbing me, and hanging my ankle while I bleed to death.

Training my ass. It was at moments like these when I wondered why I even agreed to this in the first place. I had no reason to accept other than my own morbid curiosity.

Although I had my sword, I could even get a single hit in. As time went on, I defaulted to side slashes, like I did with that other guy, and all it ended up making my moves easier to predict.

The only silver lining was that each time I died, I could control my nihilism better. By my 50th death, I could mold my aura, like soft clay, in spite of it acting like water.

That also meant that my sword strikes were now as strong as that of a semi-truck's. That would only matter if I could hit my strikes in the first place.

I tried using my ability, or talent as everyone else called it. I could definitely control it better than before. Now I could slow down time 5 seconds before my death instead of 4. Yay. If I concentrated my nihilism aura around my eyes, I could slow down time easier, but not nearly as much as when I was near death. And better yet, even when time was slowed down, Daphne could still react to my movements. Her reaction time was out of this world.

Daphne kept dodging my strikes, and every time I made even a minute mistake, I would get punished for it by having a polearm impaled straight into me. And that was if I was lucky. If I was unlucky, my arm would be flying off.

I needed to accelerate the speed of my sword somehow. That was the only way I could see in beating her.

Then I had an idea.

I molded my aura towards the back of the blade. I concentrated on it as much as I possibly could. Then I released it, making it a budget nihilism bomb.

And it worked! The blade accelerated so much, that my arm was torn clean off.

Huh?

Daphne just stared at me, trying to hold her laughter as I was just standing there, with both my arms missing and in an incredible amount of pain.

Alright so that did kinda work. Just with the minor caveat of being too powerful. If recall correctly, nihilism could strengthen your body, right?

So what if I poured some of my nihilism on myself and the rest on the sword?

The first time I did that I dislocated my shoulders. The second time I did that, my sword strike had virtually no power.

About 15 attempts later, I was able to accelerate the sword at my will. It felt exhilarating. It was as if I was relearning kendo.

"Ha! You actually did it…!?", I heard her say as I slashed her by the collarbone. She was still grinning, ear to ear, as she ripped my head clean off my body.

Even though I had found this new trick, it took about 30 attempts before I could successfully hit her, and that was when I was using my time-slow ability. Her reaction speed was ridiculously good.

'Checkmate!', I thought to myself. Finally. I could-

She reached out to grab my head, still grinning ear to ear.

"What the-"

*SPLAT*

I woke back up in the hospital bed.

'Oh for fuck's sake. What could I have done in that situation??', I thought to myself.

"Alrighty, now go to your room. Your training for the day is done.", she said.

"What?", I said in surprise.

"The entire purpose of this exercise was to help your combat skill. And you did it! There isn't much like hand-to-hand combat to train a person.", she said leaning back on the chair.

"So I did it?", I said.

"Nope. Not even in the slightest. But I feel like you are quite exhausted, so might as well give my dear student a break! If you want to learn how to control your little talent properly, come back by 8 in the morning tomorrow. Now then, scram, I have work to do.", she said, hurriedly taking some sheets of paper from here and there.

I felt my eye twitch. I had to go through all of that… again? It felt like I had spent a few decades in that place. That reminds me…

"What's the time?", I asked.

"Oh, the time? It's 9:45 am.", she said, quickly glancing at her watch.

I had spent about 3 hours, including the time I spent sparring with that Gabriel dude. This dream realm thing was really time-efficient! It really is the ideal training place.

"Is there any way to go into a dream realm by yourself?", I asked, getting excited. I had always wondered what I would do if I had an extra hour per day, and this seemed like the perfect opportunity.

I honestly wanted to probe this dream realm thing further. If both people were knocked out when using it, then could it be used for combat? What were the criterions? How do I change the

"You just ask yourself a question and answer it with the intention to open a dream realm.", she said, now paying little to no attention to me, instead looking at the documents on her desk, similar to the director. "Oh yeah make sure to keep your nihilism aura active, or else it won't work."

"And how to set the rules and settings?", I asked.

"You will understand when you make it yourself. Don't want to spoil the experience for you after all. I'll just say this; it feels like painting on a canvas, with every possible tool in your disposal.", she said.

"And where does it get information on how to make the rules?", I asked, half out of curiosity, and half out of hope.

"From your imagination. If you imagine a book, as long as you have seen all the pages at least once, you will be able to read it in the realm. It's really that powerful. That's the reason written exams are considered to be obsolete here. Pretty cool isn't it?", she said, turning to look at me.

"Yes… it really is quite powerful…", I said, with my mind being preoccupied by the thought of, 'HOLY SHIT I CAN NOW READ ANY BOOK I WANT ANYTIME I WANT TO…! I CAN DO LITERALLY ANYTHING THERE!'

"Oh yeah.", she said. "The dream realm chews through your nihilism, so don't go around making a large dream realm. Don't keep the dream realm up for too long either, it might severely exhaust you."

I didn't listen to the last part of whatever she said that well. I guess this is how Icarus felt when he got his wings. It felt like someone had opened a new world for me altogether.