267 Nightmares from the Abyss

Having lived a long life, he had accomplished many things but most importantly obtained many things. And amongst these things, the techniques that he had unwittingly stolen were now his most prized treasures.

Back then he didn't purposefully look for those things, after all, most Nightmares all powered up the same way and didn't need cultivation techniques or ever battle techniques because of the incompatibility in constitution. They instead powered up by devouring Souls or by bringing destruction to a Planet, World or Realm and assimilating it into the Abyss.

The assimilated land would then form a mysterious connection with them which would allow them to do many things with it, and 1 of those things was to directly draw power from it.

Now of course, it was simply impossible for each and every Nightmare to obtain an entire World worth of Abyssal territory by themselves, there were too many of them and most of them didn't have that kind of power in the first place. It was too unrealistic.

What would actually happen was 1 of 2 things.

First of all, it was not impossible to assimilate just a Continent. In fact, even a Forest or a measly pond can be assimilated as territory for them and the Abyss. Whenever multiple Nightmares were invading, they would split the territory between themselves depending on their strengths.

However, make no mistake. There was no loyalty or brotherhood between most Nightmare races. They were more than likely to just steal from their 'brethren' and even kill in the process without batting an eye. Most of them only shared because there was no other option. They couldn't invade alone lest they get targeted by the entire World or Realm's forces, so they needed other Nightmares that would divert the attention. And of course, such invited Nightmares would never do such a thing for free. As soon as they joined the invasion they would start assimilating territory from a different location of the World and there was nothing the first Nightmare could do about it.

The other thing that could happen was that a powerful Nightmare could split his own territory and gift it to others. Naturally, such a thing was rare, but there were still many colony-type Nightmares like the Insecta Abyssi and the Emerald Carutata that did it.

As for devouring Souls, it was just that. Many other races could do the same thing and it wasn't unique to Nightmares. However, nobody would look down on the benefit of obtaining memories in the process. After all, 1 Soul might possess the coordinates of multiple Planets or even Worlds, and such information was priceless to Nightmares.

It was just a side-bonus that they could obtain techniques and the like that way, but it was usually useless. However for Kazolix, that information that he had regarded as garbage before was now incomparably precious.

In his previous life, he had only reached the 6th Realm, only a few steps away from the Immortal Realms. However, Nightmare life was extremely brutal and overly dangerous. He didn't think that at the time but now he had been provided a new perspective to life. Although Nightmares were powerful and even better - hard to kill, they were too dependent on their instincts and the Will of the Abyss, and it made them act with no regard for safety in the pursuit of more territories. If you saw the way they acted most of the time, you would believe that they had no intelligence. It was that bad.

Kazolix had died in a Law World invasion, killed by a god of Light that he had never seen coming. Like all others that had gone before him he had thought it was all over, so it came as a very big surprise when he began to see again. Such a thing was undoubtedly a miracle even if the amount of eyes could use has SERIOUSLY dropped. Just a pitiful 2! So initially he thought that he was just greatly damaged, somehow alive but in very bad condition. It also didn't help that he felt extremely feeble and weak so he had been sure that it was just a terrible injury. It wasn't a farfetched thought considering what had got him there.

But it didn't take him long to realise what had happened. It was impossible for him to not know.

He had reincarnated and was reborn as Beast.

Initially he didn't like it at all. To him, the Beasts were an inferior race and were greatly lacking when compared to Nightmares. He had suffered a big loss. The only things that he had to be grateful about was the fact that he was still alive, still had room to grow and was still a Sea Creature.

In his previous life he was a part of the Darkisfex Lagoon race, a race that had humanoid torso and 6 arms, a serpentine lower half and funnily enough an octopus head. They had countless red eyes all over their bodies and each one of them could cause damage to Souls or at least disorientate the senses.

Naturally, as Sea creatures, the territory they spent time assimilating into the Abyss were large sections of Seas so he hadn't been bothered by becoming an Octopus at all, he just found the Beast race as a whole a terrible joke. Some of them were strong, there will always be outliers, but they were a minority. And he hadn't been amongst them.

Or so he had thought.

As one could expect, his opinions inevitably changed. The Eridius World was just too strange. The Beasts here were much more intelligent, their talent was greater and they could even achieve the disgustingly bizarre phenomenon that was the Enlightened Form. How such a thing was even remotely possible was not within his understanding.

The Universe was vast and it wasn't as if he had never seen a Beast become an Enlightened or vice versa, but such things were first of all VERY rare, but also in 9 out of 10 cases it was some kind of curse that carried serious detriments. On top of that, he had only ever heard of 4 cases where the transformation could be controlled at will. And only 1 of them had no detriments at all.

But here in Eridius, apparently all a Beast needed to do was reach the 4th Realm and they would get the benefits of both a Beast AND an Enlightened.

Ludicrous. It shouldn't exist. And that was coming from an Abyssal Nightmare.

Thankfully he was one of them now.