Chapter 198: Chapter 197 – Gray Mist

After that entire month of working nonstop in the factory, Dream took a day to rest. The number of enchantments he had done could only be counted by Sophia, and he had expended all his energy on more than one occasion.

It was a great workout though. So after Dream completed everything, he decided to allow his soul to totally recover. The purpose wasn't actually just for rest, but so he could get a look at his current power that had gone up once more.

Before he had completed the vessels, Dream estimated that it would be at least two months before the gray mist spread through the rest of his soul. Now that the mist production was tripled, that time was cut down. And so, a month passed, and the mist was almost totally done spreading!

It had taken more mist than they thought, but Dream assumed that it was just because it was trying to fill the nucleus. The nucleus was the core of a person, so it would take more energy to fill. It wasn't anything to worry about. So on the day that he knew it would complete, he rested and waited. He wanted to see what happened when the mist overtook everything.

"Hehehe, I'm excited."

Dream giggled as he settled down on a couch. He was alone in his factory right now as Luna and Iris were out doing their own thing. 

[It's happening soon. Although, I don't really think it's going to do much.]

"Maybe, maybe not. I have a bit of an itch over this though, like something's gonna happen. I've been waiting a long time for this day too."

[...You know, it's interesting that your recovery progressed alongside the spread of the gray mist. I know you've been working to build back up your soul, but it seems a bit coincidental.]

"Huh, I guess it is. Maybe the power I lost while separating Luna and Iris's powers went into the creation of the mist, so as the mist is produced, I get back the power that I lost."

[...I guess? I just figured Iris ate your power.]

"I also figured that. What I said was more of a random speculation."

[Oh... Ok.]

"Although, it's not that bad of a theory. If Iris gobbled up my soul like that, I would've thought that she'd be a bit more powerful. I would assume my soul is rather nutritious... Oh well."

[It's almost time.]

When she said that, Dream put his other thoughts behind him and focused on his soul. Nearly all of it had turned gray except for one tiny speck in the center. Even that was fading though.

With excitement, Dream watched as the mist overtook the last of his soul. When the last speck turned gray, he waited a few seconds in anticipation.

"....Is anything gonna-"

*Woosh!*

Right as he spoke, he suddenly felt large fluctuations in his soul. The gray mist trembled and sent out waves, and Dream could feel his senses picking up on something. 

Well, it wasn't really his senses as much as it was his soul. Just like how mana felt like another limb, he suddenly felt like yet another limb had grown. He could feel a connection to a new energy that filled his soul. It was the gray mist. 

The mist trembled, and as he came to be connected to it, the sense associated with the mist was thrown in disarray. He felt like the mist was unbelievably disordered, and it made his mind turbulent. 

"Ughh... My head is spinning!"

[S-so is mine! We need to control it! Get the mist under control!]

"I don't know how to do that! It's like a new arm grew out of my back, so I can't control it right away!"

Dream shouted as he attempted to get his mind in order. However, as the seconds ticked by, he found that the confusion he was experiencing really wasn't simple confusion.

It felt like his mind was in chaos. His memories would pop up randomly, his thought process would go down random roads, his abstract thought would come up with really random ideas and concepts that threw him for odd rides, and nothing that he thought about seemed to make any sense. If he had to compare his mind to anything, it was like being high, drunk, and on hallucinogens all at the same time with all of their effects taking place at once. 

To even think about the concept of getting himself under control was almost impossible. He started to lose himself in the confusion, and Sophia wasn't much better. 

After a few minutes, he had somehow fallen off the couch from his sitting position. He then tried to stand up and catch his balance, but that was done with about as much grace as an ice skating horse. After falling more than a few times, he eventually just stuck to the floor, his body in an awkward position.

This went on for nearly 30 minutes, and not even the girls had any idea what was going on. However, after another hour, the fluctuations in Dream's soul started to calm. 

This was actually Dream's doing. After focusing his attention on his mind, he was able to discover a few things. 

Although his mind seemed chaotic, after paying attention to everything that was being thought of, he found that they weren't actually totally random. There were correlations between the memories and thoughts that appeared in his mind, and when he found those correlations, he started connecting the dots. Turns out, all the super weird thoughts and logic appearing in his mind were actually ways to get out of his predicament. 

They were seemingly random thoughts, but when he looked at the big picture and put all the pieces together, everything made sense. Then, he had an epiphany. 

'Chaotic, but orderly! Everythings random, but random pieces can be put together! And then, when you combine order and chaos...'

Dream smiled as he filtered through the last of his thoughts. When he put everything together, the fluctuations of the gray mist started to calm. The mist solidified within his soul, and stopped moving all together. Though, if one were to look closely, the mist wasn't actually completely still. The particles shook and moved, but they were also rigid. They were both excited and calm at the same time.

When the mist pacified under Dream's control, his mind slowed down, and everything became organized. However, he immediately noticed the changes the mist brought about. 

"I can sense more... And not just sense, but think. My mind... it's evolved."

Dream's eyes went wide as he took in information from the world around him. He felt like he could see the air particles scattering wildly in the air. He could feel the microscopic vibrations of the metal below him. Everything his senses picked up on would be reverse engineered and simulated within his mind, as if his mind was understanding and merging with the world around it. On top of that, he didn't have any trouble processing huge amounts of data.

"Everything... makes sense. I know why the particles are moving the way they are. I know how the vibrations travel through metallic lattices. I can see the heat flow... I don't even need to see everything. I can predict how things are moving from a distance."

Dream looked off in the distance as he said that. Even though his senses only picked up what was happening in his immediate space, he felt like he knew what was happening a few meters away. He could reverse engineer the flows of the particles to see what happened not only in the past, but what was happening in another space. It was deduction on an extremely precise scale. 

"Prediction... The butterfly effect. Isn't that part of chaos theory? How random events have patterns? I feel like this is it... Hehehe... HahaHAHAHAHA"

After mumbling to himself, he suddenly started laughing maniacally. He was feeling absolutely joyful. 

"This is it! Yes! Sophia! We've got things to build!"

[Hold your horses there bud. Calm down first.]

"I... Yea... Calm down! Ahh! Alright!"

Shaking his head and smacking his face, Dream forced himself to calm and get his emotions under control.

"Okay... I'm calm. The mist. It's also calm. My mind is definitely different though. It's working differently."

[You're gonna have to take some time to get used to that, although it should flow pretty naturally.]

"Yea. When I think about anything, it's like my mind automatically calls up everything related to it. I'm constantly bouncing between thousands of scattered data fragments. It's... interesting."

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[I see that. I've also changed a bit, though not nearly as much as you.]

"How so?"

[My processing speed has increased pretty significantly, though not from pure power. My thinking patterns changed a bit, resulting in an efficiency increase.]

"Very nice."

[Our minds aren't all that's changed though. Check out your soul.]

Saying that, both of them turned their attention to Dream's soul.

The gray mist had settled after filling up the soul. Other than that, it didn't do much. At least, nothing that Dream could see right now. Although he could control the mist now, he had no idea how it functioned or what it could do. That would come with experiments, which he eagerly wanted to carry out.

And he went on to do some small ones. After latching onto the mist, he found that he actually couldn't control any. All the mist that was spread in his soul was attached directly to it, and pulling on the mist would pull on the soul. However, the extra mist that the vessels were spitting out was free to control all he wanted, presumably because it wasn't sent into the soul yet. 

So he grabbed some spare mist and brought it out of his body using his influence. At least, that's what he tried. However, an odd thing happened when he went to go extend his influence. 

His influence was actually gray, just like the mist. Usually it was invisible, but he could clearly sense it. 

"The mist changed my influence? How the hell?"

[That's really interesting. Hey, try extending it out more. As far as possible.]

"Okay."

Nodding, Dream sent out all the influence he had. After he totally recovered and regained the power Iris took, his influence had gone back to around 7 kilometers. But after letting it out this time, it only reached around 700 meters.

"What?! Are you serious?! Why is it so short?!"

[Hehe, it's like you didn't just go through over a year of recovery.]

"But my soul isn't weaker! If anything, it's stronger! What the hell happened?"

With an incredulous face, Dream felt around his soul to see if anything was different. But after retracting and spreading his influence several more times, he found that nothing had changed. His soul was still just as powerful, but his influence shrunk to a tenth of its distance. 

"...I'm starting to wonder if the gray mist is a blessing or a curse."

[It's not that bad. How often do you need to target things with your influence 7 kilometers away anyway?]

"...I guess you have a point, but still. I don't appreciate being... shrunk down, or whatever just happened."

Sighing, Dream plopped back down on the couch. 

Despite what he said though, he wasn't really feeling as if this was a reduction in power. He definitely advanced in strength, and he was sure that his strength was merely condensed, resulting in the shorter influence. 

Plus, it wasn't like he couldn't control things outside of that range. To control mana outside one's range of influence, they merely had to create a channel that could give directions, like a remote program. Dream and Sophia were always proficient at this, so controlling mana hundreds of kilometers away was never a problem. This fact remained true even now. 

Plus, after messing around with his influence, Dream found that it was able to pick up on things much better than before. Although he still needed solid mana to see extremely small clusters of atoms, his new influence was able to extract information better, giving him a better view of things despite using the same mana. It's almost as if he got a clearer lens to look through.

Finally, he was able to sense something different about his mana. Although it still retained its clearness, it handled differently. In his mana pool, the gray mist that had been accumulating alongside his mana diffused into his mana and seemingly disappeared. It definitely changed its properties though, and he could see this the best with the vessels.

The vessels used his clear mana to mediate between Iris and Luna's opposite energies. But that process was actually disrupted somewhat due to the change in his mana. Now, the two energies were able to combine pretty flawlessly across his mana. Upon crashing into each other, they wouldn't really annihilate as much as they would just fuse into gray mist. It drastically increased the production of the mist and became a sizeable source of power. But since his mana had still changed, the swirling spheres were thrown into a bit of disarray, requiring him to get it back under control. 

Taking some time, Dream built another vessel and enchanted it. He then transferred all the strings over from the other vessels, connecting them all to the new one. When that happened, the black and white energies violently poured in, but under the control and mediation of Dream's new energy, they were tamed and fused in a vortex, spitting out many times more gray mist. 

"Ahh... That's nice."

Dream let out a satisfied breath. Now he was really enjoying the new changes. 

[While it's good that the gray mist is powerful, it seems that its become your new power source. The mist changes whatever mana you take in, so your entire mana pool has been converted to the mist. I'm pretty sure you could control that though, so I guess its not that big of a deal.]

"Well, let's clear one thing up first. The gray mist is mana, right? Or at least a type of mana?"

[From what I can see, yes.]

"Alright, so that means we've discovered another kind of energy. We got mana, destruction mana, and now gray mist. Or gray mana. But if we were just creating mana, how did it change my soul so much?"

[Not sure. There's definitely something more to it than just mana. But then again, we've only scratched the surface when it comes to these kinds of things.]

"True. So, another concern. Since I wield this mist now, is my only source of the mist the conflict between the girls' souls?"

[That's... I'm not sure. Gray mist specifically, maybe. Unless we can find another source or way to create it, that will indeed be our only source. You're still able to suck in mana and use it though. In fact, I'm pretty sure you're able to use destruction mana now. I can see that flux is much easier to handle as well. Your new gray influence lets you control all these pretty fluidly.]

"Hmm... So I've become a jack of all trades. I like it. I really do have lots of experiments to run."

[We should be able to make some interesting devices. Since you can control opposite energies, we can see the different effects they have.]

"Mm. Hehe, I really reaped a harvest. It was worth the long wait. My mind got stronger, my influence can control all the energies, and my new gray mana is useful. However, even with all that, we aren't done."

[You're right. Is it time?]

"I think it is. I've recovered beyond my previous strength, and I'm packed full of this new energy. Although I haven't mastered it, the demons won't wait around for me to get comfortable. So, I think it's about time we moved on with the class advancement."

[Yes! Finally! I'm excited.]

Sophia jumped with excitement as he made the decision. Even if his next class was a disappointment, there was a massive backlog of power just waiting for him to absorb. His level would definitely surpass the girls' level, and it would be done in a single jump. She couldn't imagine what kind of power he would be wielding, and that wasn't even factoring in the new power he just received. 

The expectation was high, as was the anticipation. Both of them were excited, and with everything out of the way, they could finally get on with it.

It was time to step out of the class 3 level, and advance to become a class 4!