Shadow Slave

Soon after Nephis had finally come back to her senses, they prepared to leave the shelter of the giant stone hand. The morning had just begun, so there was plenty of time to cross the remaining distance and climb out of the deep and vast crater. If all was going to go well, they would meet the next sunset on top of the tall wall of the mysterious city.

Of course, numerous things could go wrong between now and then. But, for some reason, Sunny felt optimistic.

This was a rare moment for his cynical, paranoid heart.

Just like before, Sunny and Neph took turns climbing down a few dozen meters and lowering Cassie to one another with the help of the golden rope. However, they had grown considerably stronger since the last time they had to do it.

Sunny remembered how tiresome it was to descend from the giant knight's statue in that way and chuckled. Now, he felt as though he could do it three times in a row, and considerably faster, too. Even though he had spent the last few days in an endless nightmare and brought his body to the point where it was about to shut down, now, there was nothing but resilient strength filling his muscles.

These two months that they had spent in the perilous hell of the crimson labyrinth, constantly fighting for their lives and slaying monsters that no Sleeper should ever face one after another, had made all three of them much more powerful.

Sunny doubted that a lot of Awakened had ever gone through this ruthless of an initiation and lived to tell the tale. Once he returned to the real world, he would most likely be considered one of the elite representatives of the current generation.

'Huh, that might actually be a problem.'

Well, he could always blame everything on Nephis. She was already close to being a mythical existence — the last daughter of the legendary Immortal Flame clan, one of the few Awakened in history who had managed to receive a True Name in the First Nightmare, the top student in her batch of Sleepers in the Academy, and so on.

People would easily believe that a prodigy like her had been able — and willing — to carry two pathetic weaklings on her back all the way to the Gateway.

Sunny just had to choose his words carefully when describing the events leading up to their triumphant return. Luckily, in that regard, he was a master.

Entertaining himself with such thoughts, he didn't even notice the flow of time. Soon, they were already approaching the ground.

Just before jumping into the soft black mud, Nephis looked at Sunny and said:

"Stay vigilant."

She didn't have to remind him. Sunny knew that the last stretch was often the most dangerous — mostly because it was natural for people to allow themselves to relax in these moments, falsely believing that the worst was already behind them. Numerous Awakened perished tragically with their goal already in sight.

He wasn't planning on becoming one of them.

as Neph helped her step out of the rope loop, and jumped down. He landed on the ground in a nimble roll, immediately jumped to his feet and outstretched one hand, ready to summon the Midnight Shard at a

was trying to

looks, and then slowly

the distant grey

Changing Star to stop and turned around, curious to take a look at the statue

robe towered over the black mud. She was lovely and graceful, with a slim waist and delicate arms outstretched to the skies, as

a long time ago. Now, one of the arms was broken off, with only its shoulder remaining in place. Luckily, the other one was still there, and had served as a safe

were seven shining stars carved into the stone surface of

though, was the fact that just like the giant knight, the graceful woman seemed to be missing her head. Once again, Sunny wondered if these stone titans were created without faces to begin with, or if something had beheaded them much later in a fit of

severed heads guarding seven seals,' he thought, remembering

it was destined to remain unsolved — Sunny doubted that he would ever come back to this cursed place after returning

many regions in the Dream Realm, and almost every one of them

hell with all this

to the statue that had saved their lives,

was about to step on a wide stone buried in the mud, the stone suddenly shifted and rolled to the

of the colossal crater,

that something was crawling from under the soil, Sunny jumped back and summoned his sword. To his side, Nephis was doing

moving in the mud. No giant beast rose from it to feast on their flesh, no horrifying abomination had extended its limbs to pull them underground

what made that terrible

happening, a sharp pain suddenly pierced his right leg. Looking down, he saw…

damn stone was chomping

to be a bizarre Nightmare Creature, revealed a mouth full of long, sharp teeth on its surface. It awkwardly rolled a couple of times to reach Sunny and then tried

clean off, but, luckily, the leather boot of the Puppeteer's Shroud turned out to

was painful, but

was as indifferent as always, but after all the time they had spent together, he was able to recognize the similar kind of amusement written clearly on

"Uh…"

raised the trapped leg into the air and shook it a couple of times, trying to send

it doubled its attempts to gnaw on Sunny's shin, its stone

The only hope of killing me it has is if I die from