Midnight Prince: Empire of Sin

What did it really mean to be a fighter?

Adam, in the not so distant past, had never loved fighting. Fighting was just a struggle for him, a means to an end. His skills, as good as they were, were useless in the world at the end of the day.

He did not wish to train for a year only to be pummeled on the ring in front of hundreds or even thousands of people.

But, he had no choice, or rather, he had made his choice already and there was no backing up from the path which he had taken. His so-called dignity was useless in front of the simple reality of an even uglier but even simpler desire. The desire for money and luxury…

He just did not want to be poor and insignificant in this world. He hated having to save for money while his friend could splurge without having to think for even a second.

Having to give excuses every time they had an activity because he was unable to go there due to money constraints was even more painful for the young him.

So he fought and fought, fought till he could no more, and it was there that he discovered something he would have never imagined in his entire life.

He liked fighting or rather— he loved the feeling of superiority that would fill up his heart as he crushed and destroyed his opponent, leaving them with absolutely no way of retaliating against him.

It was truly — Exhilarating.

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'Hah…What am I even thinking right now?'

Adam woke up only to find himself in a strange situation. It seemed like he had fallen unconscious after fighting a new horde of those web spinning bastards. Though, his situation was not particularly enjoyable right now.

'How the hell did I even faint in the first place?'

He wondered briefly, finding it quite amusing to have fainted in a world of dreams and illusions.

Could he even dream in this plane? If he was able to then it would really be all sorts of weird.

He wondered briefly about that possibility before stopping his thoughts pertaining to these useless things. Currently, thinking was a luxury for him and he had to move more on instinct than anything else to save and prolong his life for even a second longer.

The absence of 'The World' was once again hitting him like a sledgehammer and proving to be a limiting factor for him overall. Going from having such a wide coverage to simply having to rely on his two eyes was truly a discomforting feeling like no other. But he was getting used to this little by little. He simply had to work harder and fight better than ever for his survival. It wasn't really hard for him but it was tedious nonetheless.

'What is the situation?'

He breathed in the Dreamforce floating around him with a deep and heavy breath while observing his surroundings with maximum attention.

All around him, the corpses of dead giant bees and other such insolent and dastardly insects could be seen thrown all around as though a tornado of blades had swept through the area.

The state of their bodies denoted a particular savageness and clear desire to bring not a swift death but as much pain as possible for the insolent and fatally supercharged insects.

Adam remembered how the fight had gone on for him. Once again, he had been surrounded by a plethora of insects and bugs but this time he fought the damned bugs with reckless abandon, not caring about the wounds he would receive in the process of fighting and killing as many of these arthropods as possible.

It had been hard for him, so hard even… that for a moment, he started blacking out and simply fought in the dark without much thought and more on the honed instincts of his sense of self. His body, like a well-oiled machine, moved with the simple desire to end this fight and survive this ordeal.

Right now, his body was entirely covered in blue blood of all types of instincts and he felt hot and bothered. It was as if his very blood was boiling inside his body and something in him was slowly reaching saturation, simply wishing to be released at any given moment.

'I think I am reaching the limit of what the Pawn piece can hold onto and will finally be able to evolve into the next state.'

He needed to promote, to increase the power of his vessel, and only then would he transform into an entity that would be able to fight better, faster, and more efficiently with the current usage of Dreamforce.

He started walking again, like a zombie of sorts, with only a single thought in his mind— fighting and killing as many of the bastards as possible, even at the cost of his own life.

He would make them regret hunting him and trying to mess with he who has embodied 'Death' itself.

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What Adam didn't know at that moment was that they were already regretting fighting him and very much so.

"My queen, the unit sent had once again been completely annihilated by 'that entity'."

"How is this possible!? Are you sure it's just three pawns who have been fighting all along? Are they not hiding more members among them and feigning weakness? Just what is going on here?"

Currently, inside the beehive, one of the soldier bees was giving a report to the queen of the hive— the Queen Bee. She was three or four times larger than the soldier bees but was unable to move much due to her size.n0.0

The soldier, reporting the situation to her, scrunched his wooly shoulders and shuddered on the spot as he recalled the memories of 'that entity', "Those monsters should only be pawns. In fact, we even noticed that two out of the three are something akin to summoned soldiers. So this makes even less sense. Sadly, it seems like their power level is far higher than their apparent level."

The queen cursed inwardly at the mention of those words.

As the ruler of this forest, she had been living with no problem whatsoever for eons. She did not need to fight for bigger territories and had good relations with the fluffy bears and the talking flowers. Though the Great Queens were fighting each other for the right to rule Wonderland, this had absolutely nothing to do with her. All she had to do was stay in her hole and bother no one and she would be able to survive.

Giants like them didn't care about shrimps like her. Still, she was a queen, the queen of a whole race… even if only in name. She had a prestige to maintain for herself or else she would be usurped.

This was why, when she learned that the teddy bears and the flowers had been brought to near extinction, she had been mad and decided to avenge her subordinates.

Her first mistake had been to underestimate that monstrous 'entity'.

'I should have sent the full army from the start.'

She shivered even as she thought of that mindless beast. Since she had only sent progressively more soldiers, her army had been slowly dwindling and now they were nothing but a shadow of what they once were.

If this continued, she would be the one to face near extinction next and even if it wasn't that monster killing them, the people inside the settlement would surely take pleasure in killing her to get her power and usurp the throne.

'I can continue to wear him down but he has already shown that nothing short of an attack by the full army would be able to take him down for good.'

She already decided that continuing pm like this would only make her opponent stronger by feeding him more and more Dreamforce.

In the first place, this whole place could already be said to be doomed. She was sure that the Ant Queen and Spider Queen would not let her go no matter what was the outcome.

'But… If I manage to kill him now… I could perhaps reach the next level.'

It was very tempting for her. The thought of achieving a new realm of existence. But as she was now, it was impossible— unless…

"My dear children. It's time for you to come back to Mother."

The queen smiled inwardly. She was pretty surprised at how easily she decided to give up on her children but she could always make more later on. It wasn't as if they wouldn't kill her if a new queen was born. So she had no reason to feel regret.

It didn't matter if this place was destroyed. She simply had to create a new one and for that— she needed to become stronger. Much, much stronger.

'Mother is sorry. But you will serve me as the base for a new life.'

What followed was a simple and pure display of cannibalism like no other.

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(AN: We just need a few more and we will be good. Dreamscape has far more potential than just the forest haha. Gotta show more explorations and so on. This is the world of dreams after all.)