Normal trial-takers like Serle or Gretel? Or nightmare incarnations like the Old Witch?
If the identities of normal trial-takers provided a path for ordinary people, then nightmare incarnations were a hidden route specifically for Professionals and those with a certain grasp of dream knowledge.
The Old Witch's soup before him was the "special item" that opened this hidden route. From this pot of soup, Anvis obtained more fragmentary information related to the other path.
There was no superiority or inferiority between the two paths; they merely differed in focus and process.
If a normal trial-taker wished to reach the end and obtain the inheritance, they had to face one different trial after another and find every possible way to pass them.
With every trial they successfully overcame, the trial-taker's strength would increase. This included both the infusion of power from the dream rules themselves into those who cleared the trials, as well as certain special items obtained during the trials.
Trial-takers who successfully passed three trials qualified to receive the title of veteran trial-taker and gain partial authority over the entire dream world.
Even if they had been ordinary people before, once they reached this point, their own strength would be enough to contend with Fourth Rank Professionals within the dream.
But beginning with the third trial, the terrifying entities they faced during their clear would change from aggregates of dream-operating rules with no self-awareness into incarnated Nightmare Spirits of others who had taken the nightmare path.
Like trial-takers, Nightmare Spirits were divided into different levels. However, their primary method of advancement was not killing trial-takers, but devouring other Nightmare Spirits.
By eliminating an ordinary trial-taker in the dream, a Nightmare Spirit could randomly obtain around half of their power and Authority Fragments. But by devouring another Nightmare Spirit, it