15 Nightmare and Artifact

Opening his eyes, Max felt as though his current location was somewhat familiar. Everything around him looked a little blurry, but after a few seconds, he could still make out where he was. It was his home, back in Intis.

In front of him, were the dying bodies of his parents, however, they were not trying to help him escape like in the past. No, instead, they were slowly crawling toward him with only their hands, their legs having already been cleaved off rather crudely, a trail of blood and organs was left behind with each pull. Clearly, their stomachs had also been cut or worse, completely opened up to allow the organs to flow out.

Frozen by the horrifying sight, Max could not move an inch or say anything, just watching the scene with a slight tremor in his eyes.

His mother soon reached him and placed a sword in his right hand before falling to the ground, dead. His father then grabbed the hand with the sword, and pointed it at Max's throat, only to slice off his own neck at the back of the double-edged blade, which did not move despite the decapitation.

Max found the blade to be rather familiar, and as soon as he focussed his attention from his dead parent towards the sword, it moved swiftly towards his own throat.

…

"Bwa!" Max opened his eyes with a start from the nightmare,  only to see the same sword from his dream rushing towards his neck, trying to kill him. Using his left hand, Max pushed the tip of the blade to the side, not wasting energy or time to try and block the blow. The sword hit the bed next to his neck, missing him completely.

Only now did Max realise that his own hand was actually holding the sword, as though it was being controlled by the sword.

Focusing completely on his right hand, Max failed to get it to let go of the sword, which he was already trying to pull out of the bed. Immediately noticing the danger, Max used his left hand to pry open the fingers of his right hand, and move it away from the sword, which fell off the bed and onto the wooden ground lifelessly.

'Holy sh*t! Not only does it show you nightmares, but also tries to kill you! Old Man did not say anything about this! Also, I did not even use the sword, only held it and scared away some Beyonders with it, I did not actually cut anything or anyone. Does that mean that the very act of holding it signifies that I used it? Or is it that holding it at night, even if I don't use it, would mean it tries to kill the wielder? Also, what would happen if I use it, but do not hold it while sleeping? Wait a minute! I was not holding it while sleeping. It was next to my bed, in its make-shift sheath made from cloth.'

As Max came to this realisation, he bent over and saw that his cloth sheath was in tatters, clearly torn open from the inside. That meant that the sword escaped the sheath, attached itself to Max's hand while he was sleeping, and then showed him the nightmare while trying to kill him. 

'Sealed Artifacts possess living traits…' Max only now recalled this statement from the original novel of Lord of Mysteries and sighed at his own stupidity. Should he had just gone to a normal group of individuals to search for his item? Would that have changed the situation? Was he holding the sword while travelling to the Knowledge Magisters also considered wielding the item? Max would need to thoroughly investigate this before making use of the item again.

'Maybe I should purchase a box and keep the sword in there, maybe something like a briefcase or instrument case, that I can bring around without standing out too much, but also big enough to store the sword.'

Thinking until here, Max looked over at the window and noticed that the crimson moon had almost set, and the sun would soon rise, a new day would begin, and Max could not allow his nightmare and death-defying experience to determine his way forward. In this crazy world, where life and death were only a single step away from each other, knowledge was both a power and a curse, Max would have to confidentially keep moving forward to stay alive.

Max shook the thought of his dead parents from his mind, the memories of Samuel helped a lot for this, as he had also lost his parents at an early age compared to most, and had already gone through everything before finally coming to a conclusion that helped him put their memories to rest.

'Well, once I become a Beyonder, there will be no going back. Right now, If I dispose of the sword and Invest my money somewhere which would bring me a decent profit, I could just live my life normally, and pass away due to old age or something after a few decades…' Max mused to himself as he thought about his reasons for becoming a Beyonder.

'Heh~ who am I kidding? Even if Old Man Uxas was not missing while searching for his old friend who is also missing, I would have still chosen to become a Beyonder. Samuel has already lived a considerably decent life back on the original Earth, or was it the Past Earth?' If it was the past Earth, then that would mean that the Author of Lord of Mysteries was either a time traveller or an astrologist, neither of which Max favoured, so he just assumed he had been thrown into a fictional world.

'Plus, I also feel like killing the b*tch who killed my parents. Well, my revenge arc has already been set in stone. Now all that is remaining is to become a Beyonder. Though I will have to apologise to all living beings on the Earth, since I will end up being an Outer God and not a Great Old One, I will likely end up on the other side of the war.' Max thought to himself before resolving himself once more and getting out of bed.

…

Over the next week, Max spent some time experimenting with the sword and realised that locking it in a box or cupboard which did not have any access to the sky would prevent it from gaining sentience and trying to kill him at night. 

He also figured out that using it did indeed involve actually cutting something or using one of its powers in another way, in which case he would have to give it blood. And it the creature you cut did not have enough blood and Spirituality, it would such it up from the owner of the sword.

How did he get to know this? Simple, he went ahead and cut a squirrel he had found with the blade, and it sucked up basically the entire blood from the creature, before driving a needle into Max's palm and pulling his own blood. He was able to pull the sword out of his hand, even using his left hand, until it had had enough blood.

As it turned out, however, the nightmares would only appear if he was holding the sword while sleeping or had 'used' the sword. If he was holding it while sleeping, it would also try to kill him at night like he had experienced, while if it was locked away, he would only experience the nightmare once a night.

And if he did not use it for the previous three days, and also ensured it did not get access to the night sky, he would be able to sleep properly. This was done by not using it, and only holding onto it from the 2nd day of the week onwards.

For a Sequence 4 1st Grade Artifact, these downsides were considerably weak compared to things that would forever try to put you in its control or things that would constantly change fate to your favour, but also try to constantly kill you like the crazy quill.