Summoner: The Book of Dimension

95 A Surprising Revelation

“Wiboe probably told you who I am. My name’s Peter Cohen,” Peter introduced himself. He found it strange, though, that they were meeting in the dream world, especially in the dream kingdom.

They all nodded. “Yeah, nice to meet you, Peter. I’m Edward Hoffman, by the way,” Peter finally knew who the guy he was talking with. He looked at his friends behind him.

“Geez, don’t be too formal, Ed,” a guy wearing a hoodie said, his blonde hair parted in the middle. “You can just call me Jonas,” he smiled and gave Peter a nod. Peter only nodded back and chuckled at his remark.

“My bad,” Edward laughed a little.

A curly-headed man smiled faintly and lifted his hand from his pocket. “Ken,” he said.

Edward patted his back and chuckled. “He doesn’t talk much, but when he does, it’s always logical,” he said.

Peter nodded. “Cool,” he said and grinned at Ken who grinned back at him. “Sometimes, I talk too much that I don’t really make sense,” he joked, which made them laugh.

“I’m J-o-e, Joe, at your service,” the shortest of the group, Joe, gave him a small salute as he enthusiastically introduced himself. “I’m actually the reason why this group is formed. They were all my friends but they knew each other through me. Although Edward acts as our ‘leader’,” he paused to quote the last word. He continued, “I’m the leader of this group but yeah, the roles aren’t important,” he shrugged.

Peter nodded in amazement. That was quite long for an introduction. He looked at the last man, who looked quite intimidating although he had seen him laugh along with everyone.

“My name’s Steve,” he shrugged, smiling a little. Compared to his appearance, his voice was softer. Which kinda made Peter think he wasn’t as intimidating as he looked.

Peter nodded and looked at everyone. “Nice to meet you, everyone. It’s great to befriend with few dreamlords. It’s kinda lonely to be only talking with a goblin,” he grimaced.

They all sat at one table and decided to take the chance for them to hang out.

“We live in Greenville, and just like Joe said, we all met because of him. We were originally dreamlords, Joe befriended each of us, and one day he decided to make us all meet. That’s probably how we’re here, together,” Edward said.

Peter nodded with a surprising reaction. “It’s just next to the village I live in, but it’s in a neighboring city. That’s probably why you guys looked new to me,“ he said. “Did you guys become a dreamlord or are you guys inheritors?”

“Ken and Joe are inheritors but they trained for a short period in becoming a dreamlord. Edward, Jonas, and I started as a trainee for about five years?” Steve asked, quite uncertain. “I can’t remember.”

Peter nodded. That made him think that becoming a dreamlord by a dream goblin was not that common. He liked that he was different, though. He liked the idea of standing out from some people at least once in a while.

“How about you, Peter? We haven’t seen you around. Did you train earlier or later?” Joe asked.

“You knew Wiboe, right? He made me into a dreamlord,” Peter said.

They gasped but in impression. “As in, he appeared in your dreams and tested you and you passed the riddle and you became a dreamlord?” Jonas asked.

Peter nodded. “Yeah, you can say that. Is it impressive?” he asked.

“Yeah!” Edward exclaimed and everybody agreed along. “Wiboe is known to give such tricky riddles. And sometimes it is based on how he feels about you on whether he will favor you or not. Sometimes, based on his mood, too. He has his way of choosing someone to make a dreamlord and he’s picky,” he explained. “He’s also a dragon inside a goblin’s body, don’t him on the bad side.”

“And also, there’s a lot of people that became his slave in dream kingdom. The people and creatures you see here, they’re either dreamlords or slaves. Some dream goblins rarely have slaves. It’s Wiboe who had most of them. He’s the highest-ranked dream goblin here.”

Peter was surprised. That was not how he knew about Wiboe. He didn’t know Wiboe had such character. “Really? Wow, I didn’t know that. I was asking him a few things but he would answer and do some things for me anyway. Is it bad if I ask him much stuff?” he said.

Joe raised an eyebrow. “That’s new,” he said.

“Yeah. He never really let people ask him stuff. If he does a thing once for you, you can’t ask him the next time. But if he continues to do things you ask from him, that means you’re one of his favorites,” Edward said.

“But in a sense that he probably sees a potential in you that he rarely sees in others,” Steve said and everyone agreed with a nod.

“I became a dreamlord because I accidentally summoned him,” Peter revealed, which he earned loud gasps from them.

“That’s why. That’s one of the reasons why you became a dreamlord and one of the reasons why he favored you like the few others,” Ken said calmly. Everyone looked at him and nodded.

“Woah, we’re having a friend that is a summoner and a dreamlord? That’s cool,” Edward said.

Peter wanted to tell them about how he discovered the book but he thought he was telling them a lot of things he should. Everyone looked at him in amazement.

“But yeah, something happened and I don’t have the book anymore,” he said. “I can’t tell the details but that’s what happened.”

The group groaned a little. “That’s a bummer, dude,” Steve said.

“I know. That’s why I’m deciding to focus on being a dreamlord and learning as many magic books as I can. I want to expand my knowledge about magic now that the book is not on my hands,” he said. It came out naturally as if actually talking to his friends.

Jonas shrugged. “I mean, we can let you borrow some of our books,” he said.

“Thanks,” Peter smiled. “Oh, I’ve applied to upgrade into intermediate and high-level dreamlords. It’s been a year since I did. Wiboe said it will take longer. Do you guys know anything about it? Have you guys upgraded, too?”

The five guys looked at each other. “At some point, we considered. But we’re focusing on our current powers. But maybe we will reconsider later. We don’t know,” Joe shrugged and everyone just nodded.

“Ah, I see. But have you met intermediary and high-level dreamlords?” Peter asked in curiosity. “Or have you heard someone who successfully upgraded?”

Edward grimaced as he thought of his question. “There’s a few, but there’s not much. I heard there’s not much of them in the dream world.”

It was Peter’s turn to grimace. “That’s weird. Because according to the upgrading speed of the kingdom of dreams, there should be many of them. The dream kingdom existed for a long while, right? Even in a decade, there should be much. I heard many dreamlords apply for it,” Peter said. He wondered why he just thought about it now. 

Joe nodded. “You have a point. Now that you said that, it kind of sounds weird.”

Peter looked at them and agreed with a nod.

“Ah, I remember. We should be going. We just meant to stay here for a while. We need to go back to our real lives,” Edward said as he remembered. The five of them started standing up, readying to go. “If you want to ask, the librarian actually knows a lot of things,” Edward winked at him and patted his shoulder. “We’ll go now.”

Peter watched as they left the library.

He stood up and walked to the front desk, where the familiar dream goblin librarian was. She gave him a raise of an eyebrow. “It’s you again,” she said in Orrinatta. “What do you need?”

She didn’t have to be that low-tempered, he thought. “Uhm, I want to ask something about intermediary and high-level dreamlords. Why is there not many of them?” he asked.

The librarian was quite surprised. She looked from left to right. “Be careful in talking about them here,” she whispered and asked him to come closer for her to whisper quietly. “I’ve been here longer than Wiboe, if you know about him, so I know what goes around here. But it’s your choice to believe what I’m going to say.”

Peter nodded and wished she would just tell it right away. “Tell me,” he whispered as he lends his ears close to the librarian goblin.

“You’re wondering about the intermediary and high-level dreamlords, right? About why there aren’t many of them? It’s because there aren’t many dreamlords who applied for the upgrade. If there aren’t many dreamlords to apply, there aren’t many intermediaries and high-level dreamlords,” she said.

“Your point is?” Peter asked as his eyebrows creased in confusion. “I thought there are a lot of dreamlords who apply for it?”

“There are many who apply but not many of them succeed to be upgraded.”

“And why is that?” Peter asked.

“Every ten years or every decade, a large group of dreamlords disappears, mostly who applied for an upgrade. If there aren’t many applicants left, there aren’t many dreamlords for the higher-ups to upgrade,” she revealed.

Peter looked at her in shock.