(Written while listening to: "To the Beginning" by Kalafina on YouTube)
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Tome of Faith Description: [When faith fuels the embers of one's spirit, it is like a soothing balm upon soul and sinew. It binds wounds, it strengthens limbs, it spreads like the light of a blazing sun from one deserving body to the next. Keep your faith, stoke it, and it shall bolster your believers for all time!]
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'... Now I wanna start a cult.' Laito thought after he managed to decipher the synopsis of Tome of Faith.
I'm gonna name it: "The Great Pigeon Club" and we will be begging Steve to grant us his blessings…. The funny thing? He might just grant them.' He was a bit bitter because after some testing Laito realized that Steve was an unfair existence.
Ever since Laito unlocked his Aspect he has been wondering: 'how the heck am I supposed to saturate and increase the numbers of my cores?'. After all it directly related to his strength and he also suspected that if he had more cores then he could be in more places at the same time… just like Sunny could with his own Shadows.
But unlike normal Soul or even Shadow Cores that had their Soul/Shadow fragments saturation counter in thousands… Laito's Core showed: 1/3 fragments.
He suspected that the one fragment he had was the Forsaken Lands itself that he supposedly ended up "devouring", at least as according to the Nightmare Spell…
But Steve?
His Aspect was of "only" Supreme rank. Even though quite high it shouldn't be able to increase its number of Cores, being locked to only one.
Even Cassie who had Sacred Aspect was restricted to a single Core.
And here was Steve spouting new cores as if they were some self-propagating bacteria.
Without taking in a single Soul Fragment on top of that.
Laito spent a few sleepless nights trying to come up with an answer…
And the only conclusion he got to was that Steve: Was. A. Creature.
Not a human.
Creatures… whether Nightmare, or Noble, had their own progression(or degradation) on a path of Ascension.
As already established, they did not have Aspects… but Steve had. That was most likely because of Laito himself.
But then Steve was still a creature so he could still increase his class the same way that other creatures could.
And for them… the supposed first step to advance from a Beast into a Monster…
Was to get slightly smarter.
Or maybe it was that getting a second core caused them to get slightly smarter, but in Steve's example that wasn't it.
So Laito deduced that to become a Monster, Steve had to develop some rudimentary intelligence… which he inherited from Laito, so it was only a question of time before the evolution happened.
And the next step… the requirements were also complete with Steve possessing a proper self-awareness(also inherited) and also developing his own "powers"... which he got from his Aspect.
And lo and behold when Laito focused really hard, he could already feel Steve's Cores preparing to multiply even further.
Laito hoped that he could exploit that for infinite Cores, but unfortunately Steve's Soul Cores were tightly connected with no apparent way to separate them. When Laito tried to withdraw one to turn it back into his own Existence Core, all of them fused and only then Laito could get his own single Core back, leaving Steve with none.
'No infinite Core glitch… shame.' Laito regretted it a bit, but apart from that, he was quite content.
His Avatar had both advantages of human Aspect and creature's class progression. Without Divine Aspect! That's really something.
It didn't solve his question on how he could get more of his own Cores. Laito hoped that he could get his answer once within the Nightmare Realm.
Speaking of which.
"
If they appeared, they would show up only on the very day of Winter Solstice. 21st December.
If they didn't appear… Laito had no idea yet what he would do next… ironically Nightmare Realm was an imperative shortcut to getting stronger… but it was not the only way. But better not to get ahead of ourselves.
Disappointingly, during his few months stay in Meta-World practically nothing of note happened.
Not really because there was nothing happening, but because Laito actively avoided getting involved with pretty much anything.
Except getting to school(only when he had to), some preparations with his dad and occasional calls with Mineta, who some time ago discovered his own strong drive to get into U.A.(for reasons known), Laito kept to himself.
It didn't amount to much, but every bit counted.
It would be MUCH better if Laito had any container Memory that he could fill with supplies… but no luck there… he still didn't forgive Master Fang for that.
All that remained was to wait just a few more days.
6 days remaining. Nothing happened.
5 days. Still nothing much.
4 days. Laito has been getting nervous, but at that point he has fully updated his survival knowledge he got from the Incandescent with modern techniques.
3 days remaining. Laito and his dad finished filing all the necessary paperwork, along with proofs of Laito's attempts to finish his middle-school education despite his "quirk" complicating things. Now, even if it took Laito a long time to get out from Nightmare Realm, with that preemptive filings, as long as he would be there on the very day of entry exams into the U.A. it would all be allright… at least that's what they promised on their unusual recruitment procedures.
2 days left. Laito and Tomio received the first prototype of the Meta-World version of "Sleeper Pod".
It looked very cybery and aesthetically it looked very advanced. Who knows. With just one investor there was only so much that they could do. If one day the demand for that technology would increase, it might even make its way into the I-Expo!
But not that day. The prototype would most likely be needed very soon.
1 day left until Winter Solstice. Laito decided to ditch the work and go "party".
Which in his case meant spending time on the internet. Sharing memes. Doing a little bit of ragebaiting and trolling. Maybe playing some games.
That sort of things
Then came the very awaited day.
21st December. A Winter Solstice.
When Laito simultaneously opened his own and Steve's eyes he felt…
He indeed felt the symptoms. The drowsiness, listnessless… just how he remembered feeling all these years ago, before he succumbed to his First Nightmare.
Laito was right.
The Nightmare Realm called for him.
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[16 months left until MHA plot beginning]
[Chapter End] The story is not over yet
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