Is This a Dream or a Nightmare?

*BAM!

"Huh uff"*cough cough

Aavesh awoke coughing with cold sweat drenched all over his body, his mind was still processing being shredded into atoms and he felt as if something was wrong as he was able to still sense the gate of Afterlife before the pain and guilt overloaded his soul to unconsciousness, he could only remember that oath he made before his soul drifted to sleep.

After that, he was able to sense something powerful but that was it, he couldn't remember anything after that even if he searched his memories again and again.

"Wait What The F-"

Aavesh finally broke out of his stupor and returned to his current reality,- He was astounded to see himself in a familiar yet unfamiliar room. It was Night Time, he could see the sky from his Holo-Window, He felt thirsty and reached out to the Water flask on the other side of his bed, but was stunned when he saw his hand was not as large as he thought it would be.

He then noticed something even more wrong - His body was that of a child!

His mind became chaotic once more, His mind started to have an active imagination that he had transmigrated and stolen an innocent 7-year-old's body or that the boy was already dead and Some Force Dragged him to this poor kid, In Short, he felt that he had killed an innocent child and stole his body and his guilt would be even heavier.

His mind wandered around like this until he saw a little framed photo on the wall, illuminated slightly by moonlight, It was a beautiful Photo of a family of 5 at a Space Harbor, A Young Couple in their early thirties with 3 children- 2 boys, and 1 girl.

The Man had a slightly dark complexion with a wheatish-Brown Texture, a sharp military haircut on his lush black hair, and a well-built physique while wearing a red-mecha jumpsuit, his face wasn't too handsome, but there was a humble and kind smile on his face with a unique calm temperament only enhanced by his bright black eyes,

While his wife had a more fair complexion, long dark brown hair, and almond brown eyes, she wore a sapphire space suit meant for artists and Designers-her figure looked graceful-only accentuated by her bright cheerful smile while holding her children.

The Little Girl seemed to be of only 4 years old, was standing in the middle and smiling with cute rabbit teeth and frizzled black hair with her almond brown eyes- while holding both hands of the Couple.

The Younger 5year old boy with a little dark complexion but with the same almond brown eyes and soft black stood on the right holding the father's hand, with a little bossy smile but it made him look cute instead, and then finally the slightly older 7-year-old boy-

he was a bit fair like his mom and even had her eyes and same dark brown hair but he did share his father's face a bit more as his siblings took a bit more on the face after their mother, he held his mom's hand and was smiling with no worries on his little face.

Aavesh looked at the picture with tears in his eyes as memories of that carefree childhood rushed towards him, all those happy moments until he discovered his genetic talent and mental aptitude. It was like everything rushing at him all at once, as he let out more tears and was sobbing softly while clutching this family photo.

Yes, it was his family, He had not transmigrated anywhere, he had either come to heaven or hell because the root of his guilt lied with what he did and it implicated his family. He remembered it all now.

He fell to the floor as the pain started to come again with nightmares clouding his mind. He could still see the moment of the execution, the horror, the pain, the rage, and desperateness to try to save them but could not...

"NOOOOOO!!!"

He screamed out loud as he saw the memories play again- over and over, almost endless.

His scream had created a commotion that startled his parents sleeping in the next room.

*Boom!

The Door Broke into pieces.

*Whoosh!*

Two figures quickly entered through the door in his room with scanning eyes and weapons armed -

The female figure with a glowing red pistol found him on the floor and quickly caught him into her embrace, while the male figure with a glowing neon green machete, quickly checked the entire room while keeping his wife and son behind him.

Not letting his guard down even a single bit, observing the room for any sudden movements and letting out an energy pulse from his body to see if anyone was using special techniques to hide. After making sure that nobody was there, he slowly relaxed a bit but did not let go of his blade. He then quickly moved to check on the child who was sobbing in his wife's embrace.

"Baby tell me what happened? why did you scream"

The woman gently caressed the child in her arms, consoling and coaxing him. Aavesh stopped sobbing for a bit and then looked at his Parents who were consoling him with gentle gazes.

He could sense that they were using their energy and presence to give him a protective aura and to comfort him as if telling him that as long as they were there then everything would be fine. Seeing this His already red eyes turned even redder and he burrowed himself deeper into their embrace and sobbed even harder.

The couple was stunned but quickly returned his embrace and started to coax him even more. After a while, the little boy stopped crying and fell into a deep sleep within their embrace. The couple held him close and put him back to bed. Luckily the other 2 kids were soundly sleeping in their respective rooms and were not affected by their eldest's cry, otherwise even they would join in and cry with him-

Kids were sometimes like that, even more so for siblings. Although the couple was looking at their sleeping son with a concerned and caring gaze, they turned to look at each other with a cold glint in their eyes.

They communicated with their neural implant to avoid waking up their son whom they had coaxed back to sleep with great difficulty.

Mom:~"Looks like some Bastard has a deathwish, playing tricks on our poor baby, scaring him to tears like this"~

Dad:~"I want to know which fucker dared to come and disturb our family in the middle of the night"~

Mom:~"Hmmm It can't be from our family compound... The rules are extremely strict for going out at night without a pass and even those with passes know not to abuse otherwise the whole elder council will eat them Alive"~

Dad:~"You're thinking if it's someone from the outside? Hmmm, The Defense systems are last gen though, it's more likely some creep would sneak in to cause trouble "~

The woman pondered over it and as she replied again, the expressions on her face turned into wrath,

Mom:~"It could be possible, wait don't even start with me... ANTRIKSH XANDER! I KEPT TELLING YOU TO CONVINCE THE COUNCIL TO UPGRADE THE DEFENSE SYSTEM AT LEAST TO A NEWER GENERATION!"~

The man got chills from his wife's outburst and even though she didn't open her mouth, her facial expressions told it all, He knew he was in for a bloodbath if he did not reply properly, his wife was usually so gentle and caring during normal times, but when she was angry, she was far more terrifying than a thousand demon lords from the abyss!

Antriksh(Dad):~"yes yes yes dear I will do it first thing tomorrow-"

Mom:~"Heh Don't even dream about tomorrow! If YOU DONT SCRAM FOR ME NOW TO GET THIS DONE, YOU CAN STOP DREAMING TO EVEN ENTER OUR BEDROOM! I,-KRITI KUMARAN! AM- A- WOMAN-OF-MY-WORDS!!!

Kriti looked especially menacing, even though she hadn't said a word physically, her expression had twisted further with her gritting her teeth, and her eyes filled with wrath terrified the man even more- her vow about the bedroom scared him senseless. This was a question of his happy life, No he would never underestimate his wife's ability to follow through with her words, There were too many instances.

A subtle energy field came outside of the man's body.

Antriksh:~"Don't take too much stress, dear, You can consider this matter done I will go immediately!"~

Kriti:~"SCRAM- NOW SCRAM FOR ME!"~

She bellowed at him with the neural implant. As if a life or Death mission had been given, Antriksh scrammed out of the room without making a sound. Whatever- those old farts at the council were just too busy making more training routines and raising talented kids to enlist in the Defense Corps Academy.

This was done to ensure their Atrios family coalition kept maintaining their presence in the Republic to get those special resources for advancement and nurturing. They had neglected the infrastructure a bit too much lately for sake of coming up with new Neural training manuals and Mecha training equipment.

Looks like he had to give them a reminder to keep up with times or get left behind. Anyways he did not have many scruples getting this done, His father and father-in-law were among the top 5 chief executives, They were more than capable of getting this proposal passed- he thought calmly.

They would do it, if they didn't, Kriti would bring this issue to her mother and mother-in-law, Then they would be toast. Those 3 women would rally all females to protest and this would become a big nightmare for the council as it already had a fair amount of female members as well.

They would certainly not take the issue of a stranger trespassing at night to harass women and children lightly, It would become a major issue, many people's lifetime happiness would be threatened, and the men would be drowned by a crowd of screaming demonesses and crying ghosts.

No matter what happened, even if there was no stranger and his kid only had a bad dream, he would still go and raise this issue. It was better to safe than sorry and Of course - Angry women were always terrifying!

He shuddered at this thought and increased his speed to the elder compound. Even the late-night patrol guards were surprised to see him scramming for his life in the middle of the night like a madman despite no one chasing him. It seems that big something was about to happen, They had only seen Antriksh that worried when his wife blasted the shit out of him when he got injured in the war.

It seems something similar happened again and Antriksh Xander was about wreak havoc in the Elder compound... then they thought about that smiling she-devil of a wife he had, they shuddered in terror.

That woman was too scary, her energy force may not be high but she was the best expert on the entire planet when it came to ancient runes, No one knows what kind of freakish runes she would generate- Once an Idiot dared to scold her kids in front of her because they looked dirty-

Come On! her kids were just playing in the sand on a Playground! they did not even harm anyone or cause trouble, All of a sudden a student from the Karlin Family who had come to attend an exchange event between the 2 groups came and started berating the kids for looking like dirty flies and told them that they were ruining his vision.

He even started berating about their upbringing and how they were shaming the ground with their very existence, The Kids found it too much to bear and started to cry when Kriti had just come back from a minor duty to check up on her children. She just heard the words "Shame the ground with their existence"-

That was enough for her to slap the man down, She condensed weird 1500 green glowing runes at once and turned that man into a jelly-like thing in the shape of a worm with no limbs but only eyes and ears and tearful eyes but no mouth to scream, she then proceeded to roast him like a barbeque, that poor guy could only keep crying as he was being roasted alive.

This commotion was immediately reported to the higher-ups of both factions. The People from Karlin Family arrived to seek justice for their now transformed disciple and demanded she be punished for her actions, But she rallied all females of the Atrios group and showed them the video of that idiot disciple scolding her children for no reason except for just looking a bit dirty while playing in the mud.

The women were all gradually incensed at this and stormed the Commons Plaza where the 2 groups were Negotiating about this incident. The Atrios Group executives were a bit angry at how the Karlin family simply said that the poor student only spoke some words out of order and that he should be punished only by the Karlin family, not anyone else, this was just watering down the crime and whitewashing the criminal!

Hehe! those little schemes may have worked if the overall Group member opinion was nonchalant about the matter, But it would be another thing if all females stormed together and demanded compensation for hurting the kids- Yes if an idiot came to berate your kids for no reason, was it not harming the poor children? was it not insulting to the Group that their upbringing was not up to the mark?

Plus if someone could randomly waltz in and criticize despite having no real power, responsibility or status was it NOT SAYING THAT THE GROUP WAS WEAK AND SHOULD BE LOOKED DOWN UP ON!?

These arguments even made the men of the Atrios Group riled up and it was safe to say that the entire Karlin Family felt that it was being stared at by a hundred thousand Asuras from Hell... No way, they could not negotiate with unreasonable people who were just a pin drop away from exploding on them. They did the only thing they could do.

They Scrammed!!!

Yes, They scrammed the hell out of the place with their weirdly transformed student, crying tears of injustice in the arms of a senior as he saw an angry mob chasing them.

It became known that the Karlin family head profusely apologized for the farce caused and gave up 3 slots for the Advanced Warrior Academy and sent a lot of Beginner Awakening genetic serums and Energy active materials to appease the Atrios Group, Why did he do so?

Because the Atrios group had way too many connections with the Military and Planetary Police Force. One word and they could stop all businesses and vital products from being traded to their family.

This would be a disastrous blow to their Family and they could not let it happen. He could only Bow his Head down in shame. That Day Everyone in Planet Sarkon was reminded that it was a very bad idea to mess with the Atrios Group.

The Guards remembered this event deeply and looked back at the running Antriksh who was about rouse all the Gods and Devils sleeping in the compound.

Of course, they would not stop him, his status was very high in the Atrios Guardian Group. They simply let him pass through the entrance, aware that he probably was going to create a new storm in the night.

Meanwhile back in the room, Kriti gently caressed her sleeping son, looking at him with a tender gaze. She then whispered softly into his ears,

"Don't worry my child, no matter what happens we will always be there for you-"

Her child stirred a bit and spoke in his sleep

"Mom, is this a dream or a nightmare?"

She was surprised as her child seemed to be speaking in his sleep. she said,

"What do you want it to be?"

"Reality "

She gently smiled and said,

"Okay, it will always be... Ave(Nickname), Now be good and go back to sleep"

As if obeying her gentle request, he immediately drifted back to sleep unaware of the massive commotion he had caused.