Nightmare System

The Forest

*Man of Cursed Spirit: The man who has endured the assault of 66 djinns and demons for years. The unending attacks to his mind, when couldn't break it, strengthened it. Mental spells will have no effect. Attacks to his spirit will have no effect. Perfect candidate for the Nightmare System*

"Cool, I guess," Hell mumbled to himself. He didn’t think that’s what he’d see. Hell didn’t know how to feel about his “identify”. I mean, when was he even assaulted by djinns and demons? And for years, too!

"Let's see how much damage I can deal with these weapons,” he then said and left the apartment after trying to put his weapons in a guitar case and fail miserably. He left Imp Needle at his house as it could be summoned. It would also be great to see if he could summon it through great distances. He would travel kilometres away from it, after all. He wrapped the rest of the weapons in a cloth and carried them out.

The weather was great, especially considering it was still March. It was warm with a slight bit of wind. He tried to find a place where people wouldn't hear nor see him. He travelled for almost half an hour into the forest.

There would only ever be wild animals here so it was almost guaranteed he wouldn't see anyone. He quickly unwrapped his glaive like a child opening his birthday gifts. Sure, he had used it in the nightmare, but he could enjoy it better this time.

There it was. He gripped it tight and raised it into the air. He thought it was amazing, holding such an unearthly weapon. Well, at least it was not from this earth, as far as he knew. He then started giggling to himself, looking at the weapon.

He barely could get the words out as he said: "This weapon…" he took a deep breath and finished his words. "I took from the corpse of Hans the Undying. That is just too funny."

He burst out with laughter for a few more seconds until he finally became serious and hit one of the trees with all his speed. The glaive was stuck more than half-way into the tree, and he accidentally launched himself a few metres ahead.

"f**k!" He yelled. He didn't have the strength to go through a tree, obviously. His hands hurt. "Damn it." He used all his strength to take the weapon out, but it was a wasted effort. Even though his fast swing was powerful, he also didn’t have the strength to complete the attack.

"This can't be the reason as to I invest points into strength!" he exclaimed. He took out the bow and one of the arrows, wanting to shoot at that tree. But he was unable to pull the bow properly with his strength, either. It was nigh-impossible for a normal person to pull it, so he let it go.

"I can't believe I killed giants and their all-powerful leader, only to be defeated by this shitty tree and this two-bit bow."

"Imp Needle," he said and it was suddenly materialized in his hands. "Cool."

He tried to nudge the glaive out by attacking at the stuck part. He attacked with power. This magic weapon was always a perfect fit to his arm and it always distributed the stress passed onto the weapon. It didn't hurt him even when hitting a solid object. He managed to pierce the tree, but the weapon stopped as it hit the glaive.

"Alright. f**k this," Hell said as he opened his character page, investing all his stat points into strength.

*Strength=65*

"Let's see how much of a difference this made." He said, wrapping his hand in a few layers of cloth and punched the tree from its smooth side. Although slightly, the entire tree shook.

"I guess it would be a bit comical to expect anything more than this. But I do feel my strength has increased. Let's try that thing. ‘Rapid Move’ I think it was called," he thought. He held onto the glaive and just as he was pulling, he tried to activate the spell with a mental command. The spell activated and he did manage to get it out in but a moment. He was holding the glaive the next second.

"Open Menu."

Player: Man of Cursed Spirit

Age: 21

Occupation: Cursed Hunter

Level: 23

HP      : 100/100

Mana : 81/220

Stats

----------

Strength : 65

Defence : 10

Dexterity : 166

Mana : 220

Vitality : 10

Stamina : 10

Unused Stat Points: 0

Hell kept watching his mana. It seemed 10 seconds was enough to recover 1 mana by itself. To recover it completely he would need to wait slightly more than 23 minutes. It would be impossible to wait for that long in a fight, he didn't have enough stamina.

Maybe if he raised his stamina above 100, he would get some advanced skill to help him endure more. He could keep going then, even tire his enemies out. But it was a pipe dream for now. He wouldn't want to raise his stamina when he hadn't even raised his HP and Def.

He thought it would be best if he raised his strength to 100 and then focused on HP for a while. Then again, there was no guarantee he would survive that much. Raising his stats in-nightmare, he managed to throw the system off by dumb luck. The only thing his enemies couldn't match up was speed. Not only that, but his brother would have died also.

"Now that I have enough strength, let's try the bow and arrow again," Hell nocked an arrow to the bow and released it to the first tree he attacked with his glaive. He was around 30 meters away from the tree when he nocked the arrow, he thought this distance would be enough to exert its full damage.

Hell, surprising to him, missed the tree and it hit another behind that one. There was a loud boom and the untouched tree was blown away in its middle and started falling toward Hell. Although he was surprised to see this happen, he nimbly dodged out of the way and was not harmed.

"Alright, that's… quite damaging," Hell thought to himself. One shot and the imp king would probably die, he was thinking. "Well, unless he had any spells to protect him from ranged attacks, or unless he had one that teleported him… I guess I'll never know. But this was incredibly beneficial," he said, talking to himself.

He saw some people coming his way so he wrapped the weapons in those clothes again and wanted to return home. He left Imp Needle where it was. He wanted to get his arrow back as well but couldn't find it.

"I really didn't want to lose one of the arrows," he whined to himself but finally let it go. When he turned to leave the forest, he met the group of men he saw in the distance a few minutes ago.

"Did you hear that sound?" one of the men asked.

"Me?" Hell asked.

"Yeah, we are talking to you, i***t," another man said.

"I didn't hear anything. I wouldn't know." Hell said.

"Well, that's a lie," a third man crossed his path and added: "Whatcha got there?"

"Just some camping stuff."

"Let us see," the man replied, still blocking his path. There were six of these thugs around.

Hell was excited. He would be justified in killing all these assholes. At least in his mind. That's all he needed to take a life, justification according to his own rules, tenets, principles, whatever one may call them.

"Make me," Hell said with a grin. He was giggling inside, these men definitely did not know who they were dealing with.

One of the men laughed uproariously. "We have got ourselves a twink, guys!" And tried to slap Hell, but was very surprised to have completely missed him. The young man stood there, unfazed. The man seemed confused for a moment, so he tried again. He missed him again.

"Are you trying to scare him? Just hit him," one of the men with a bulkier build approached Hell and took a swing. He also seemingly missed, not understanding why.

"Alright, mates. Where do you wanna get buried?" Hell said casually, with a slight smirk on his face.

"f*****g arrogant prick," the man who hit him first wanted to grapple him as he couldn't hit him for some reason unknown to himself. He lunged at him and Hell seemed to have flickered for a moment in his eyes. He was using all his speed to confuse them as much as he could, playing with them. He punched the man's throat and stood still again, as if nothing happened at all.

The man's throat seemed to collapse inwards and he was unable to breathe. His friends were suddenly enraged, confused and slightly scared. They didn't know what was happening other than the fact that their friend was now unable to breathe on the floor.

"Otto, get up!" One of the men that stayed in the back suddenly rushed at the side of his friend.

 "What the f**k did you do to him you freak bastard?!" the man yelled. "Did you poison him? Is that it?"

"You know, I was actually joking around. I'm not really gonna bother burying you bastards, your blood should draw enough wild animals here to take care of the corpses," Hell said. He hated thugs like these.

He remembered he hadn't killed anyone for years. He wanted to be a good person, he really did. But there was a point last year when his little bro was getting bullied by this one kid. This forest was a great place to bury both the body and the evidence. Hell remembered the kid's parents crying and depressed. He had a good family, it seemed. Shame he was such a bastard.

Hell hated the fact that he enjoyed negative emotions. It wasn't that he didn't feel anything when he killed the kid, which was also the time he learned no matter how easy people could die from small accidents, it would still take a lot of hits before you crushed someone's skull, even with a durable, heavy and blunt object.

It was that he loved all emotions. He especially found joy in feelings like sadness and fury. He was also a helpful person, he helped people whenever an opportunity presented itself, he also enjoyed the feeling of helping a friend in need. He was probably insane in the worst way possible. But who in the world is truly “sane”?

"Oh well,” Hell said, waking up from his daydream. "You are all dying here."

"Ben, shoot the bastard. Shoot him!" said the man holding Otto's now passed out, about to die body.

"Imp Needle," Hell faintly said as he turned to the man taking his gun out. He mentally tried to use the other skill he had, the “Short Distance Warping “, and appeared in front of Ben. It had worked.

"You are way too slow, mate," Hell said as he pierced the man's throat with Imp Needle. The man's eyes were full of regret. His glasses fell down, but he was unable to move his head. Probably because of the extreme pain, Hell was thinking.

He was the same the first time he got his throat cut. It was not a pleasant experience. Of course, that was just a dream. He realized the pain was worse when he experienced it in the nightmare. Dying definitely hurt. The man collapsed, his throat sliding out of the Imp Needle. Ben was bleeding out on the floor, gurgling with his own blood suffocating him.

"Come on, do kill me," Hell said. "You have knives and stuff, right? Try to stab me to death."

Three of the remaining four stood motionless, one of them started talking: "I don't even really know these guys, I'm just-" the man was saying as his words got cut short as Hell threw the needle at him. It went through his chest.

"We'll leave!" the other two said. One man was still holding onto Otto.

"I don't really care what you want to do," Hell replied. "I don't like the fact that I like killing, so I am a bit upset because of you guys. But it is interesting, right? I am moving at unhuman speeds and I can also do things like this," Hell said as he called the name of Imp Needle again.

The weapon suddenly left a gaping hole in that man's body and reappeared in the hands of Hell. The men were all terrified and the first man was still holding onto whom he referred to as "Otto". Which was but a corpse right now. He started wailing and crying. It was odd, seeing such a large, strong-looking man cry like that.

Hell looked at the man, and he felt his heart ache for a moment. "Was he… your brother?" He asked the man. There was no response, so he turned the other two and asked again. "Is Otto or whatever, his brother?"

"No," one of the men said. "They were lovers."

"Oh!" Hell replied. "This changes things, then. I'll help you guys," Hell said, looking at the couple and pierced the head of the wailing man. His death was instantaneous.

"They can be together now." He was somewhat proud of himself. He wouldn't want to leave a man broken like that when his sin was only harassing himself. He could have left him as such if he offended him more before.

One of the men started crying at this point, he was bawling his eyes out. "Please," he said. "I don't want to die. I really don't want to die. Please let me go."

This was the man that stayed slightly behind the others, who didn't look like he was willing to harass him at first, either. Hell may be ruthless, but he realised people’s wishes when worded properly. He was a horrific fairy godfather of his own.

"Alright," he said. "Kill that other man, then." The crying man stopped, wiped his tears and looked at the remaining man he left the pub with. He picked up a rock on the ground and lunged at him in a craze. The other man was taken aback and told him to stop until he no longer could.

“Damn,” Hell said. “All right, you get to live. Wait a moment.” After contemplating what to do with this man, he wanted to try something new.

"System, what do I need to curse someone with the system?" He asked.

*Player needs consent to spread the curse of the Nightmare System. The consent can be overruled if the trust between parties reached a high enough level. If they refuse and the system is exposed to the world this way before the time comes, Player will be terminated*

"Is it fine if I kill the person who refused instead?"

*Terminating the person the system is exposed to is the optimal action*

"Fantastic," Hell said as he saw the man had beaten into a pulp already by the one who asked forgiveness from Hell.

"I think so! I am killing him. Don't kill me!" The man, again, asked for mercy in a fervour.

"What's your name?" Hell asked.

"Vaun." The man replied.

"What kind of weird name is that?"

"I don't know, I swear I don't know!" the man replied in the same manner again.

"I won't kill you, I promise," Hell said. "As long as you accept a small thing for me."

"Yes!" The man said, getting up with his blood-covered hands. Vaun was scared out of his wits. He was always sensitive to people's auras. He knew there was something wrong with this man from the first time he laid his eyes upon him. He wanted to run as soon as he had a closer look.

When he started killing his newly acquired friends, he felt the man's aura didn't have much change aside from some feeling of amusement creeping into it. He felt that the man would truly kill them all without a second thought. This man felt like a demon, not a human. He was sure after seeing him move in such speeds as well. No human could to that.

Vaun was a 30-year-old man who didn't have much going on in his life. He wasn't the brightest in school and he mostly did odd jobs to survive. He soon became a jack of all trades, having worked in a plethora of jobs. With a computer under his hands and a few tool kits, he could make a living.

He was a man of black hair and a strong build. He looked like a hulking monster when he stood next to Hell. But he knew the true monster was this kid with blue eyes as cold as death itself. He didn't want to defy this monster. He wanted to get away. Run from him.

He suddenly saw a red-ish screen in front of his face. It read "Player has invited you to torturous lands as his subordinate. Do you accept?"

"Accept it," Hell said in a threatening manner as Vaun looked at him.

"I…" Vaun hesitated. "This says subordinate, I…"

"Oh, it uses the word subordinate? Fantastic." Hell said. "Accept it, or gouge one of your eyes out. I won't ask again."

Hell felt he was being slightly unreasonable here. He wouldn't kill the man since he liked to keep to his word, he didn't want to break a promise at all, no matter how insignificant it was. It was likely that he would either reject and die a quick death here, or accept and die a horrible one later.

Vaun's heart started racing, he was scared. He didn't know how things had come to this. He had only wanted to drink some beer in the woods with these random guys from the bar. They said they had a beautiful place they hung out in the woods.

"I accept it," Vaun said.

*Congratulations* Vaun suddenly heard the voice in his head.

*You will enter the system along with the Player, following him. Refusing to do so is impossible*

*Sub-Player Vaun has been created*

"Did you… hear that?" Vaun said.

"Yeah, it's cool, isn't it?" Hell said.

"Open Menu." Hell opened the character menu again and saw a small tab under his character page for Vaun.

Player: Minion of the Cursed Hunter

Age: 30

Occupation: Minion

Level: 1

Stats

----------

Strength : 15

Defence : 12

Dexterity : 9

Mana : 0

Vitality : 13

Stamina : 15

Unused Stat Points: 0

Items: None

"Damn it, why are your starting stats better than mine?" Hell silently cursed. "Oh? So there is truly another way to invite people into the system," Hell realised. After all, no one had invited him.