Shadow Slave

The hospital staff had provided each of the newly Awakened with a small room at one of the underground levels of the complex, to have a place to rest and get accustomed to their new abilities while waiting for more permanent accommodations — if they were going to remain at the Academy, of course.

It was also a place they could take their families to talk and spend time together in privacy. Currently, many emotional reunions were taking place in similar rooms around Sunny's, made especially joyous and heartbreaking because the survivors of the Dreamer Army had spent long years on the Forgotten Shore.

They had gone through hell, indeed, but their loved ones in the real world had suffered a great deal as well.

...Not that Sunny would know anything about that. No one had been waiting for him to return, after all.

In any case, the room he had been provided with was sufficiently comfortable. There was an area for training, a desk with a pitcher of water and some snacks, a sofa, and even a bed.

None of the returned were going to sleep, of course. Not for a few days, at least.

At the very end of the field of shimmering runes, Sunny could now see a new string of symbols:

Gateway: —

Usually, the name of the Gateway that an Awakened had last used would be written there. This was their anchor in the Dream Realm.

Every time an Awakened fell asleep, they would be transported to the Gateway they were anchored to, spend some time in the Dream Realm — either as much as they wanted or as little as possible, only until their soul was ready to travel between worlds once again — and then go through that Gateway to wake up back in reality.

However, the Gateway of the Forgotten Shore had been destroyed. For that reason, every single survivor of the Dreamer Army now had no anchor in the Dream Realm. That didn't mean that they would remain in the waking world forever, though.

Rather, it meant that they were going to be transported to a random one as soon as they fell asleep, just like during their first journey into the land of nightmares. The prospect of being at the mercy of the Spell once more was nothing short of terrifying.

Especially for Sunny, who had the misfortune of always finding himself in only the most extreme of circumstances.

However, the situation wasn't really that bad.

There was a way for a newly Awakened to change their anchor without relying on chance. It was to acquire the services of a Saint, who would be able to take them to the Dream Realm without involving the Spell, appearing near the Saint's own anchor.

Of course, that anchor would most likely be situated in one of the human Citadels, allowing the Awakened to anchor themselves to a Gateway in human territory.

There were just a few dozen Saints alive across all of humanity, so for an average Awakened, their help was not easy to get.

not an average Awakened. In fact, none of the survivors of the Dreamer Army

the most promising of the newly Awakened were recruited by powerful Citadels and provided the means to anchor themselves to their Gateways. Everyone profited from this arrangement — the talented Awakened received a chance to change their anchor if they wished to do so, while Citadels received new

out to be, there was going to be a small recruitment war happening in the next few days. Prosperous Citadels were going to fight for the right to add these outstanding young people to their populations, promising

would inevitably get involved, too, helping those who for some reason failed to find a Citadel

their future anchors. Since their physique was far superior to that of mundane

lot to

first thing he had turned his attention to after retreating to his personal room

result of these tests

ability to travel between shadows was akin to a weird form of teleportation. He could enter a shadow that was large

smaller than the range of his Shadow Sense, around a dozen meters or so. However, he knew

an exclusion from

able to travel between his own shadows no matter how

both were sent into opposite

that was just one side of Shadow Step. The other was, arguably, even more

though he was one

only did it make him completely undetectable by means of sight, hearing,

state, he was invulnerable to physical attacks, but also unable to perform physical attacks of his

Sunny had to constantly remind himself to

in the depths of some terrible cave system,

Shadow Step was

it came

as breathing, using Shadow Step required him to expend essence. The more distance he covered with a jump and the more time he

through all of his essence, leaving both of

filling his cores to their maximum capacity, while shadow fragments increased that maximum capacity and were used to create new cores, as well as

essence to fight effectively and use the more powerful enchantments of higher rank Memories, so balancing

had opened a whole new layer of both incredible opportunities and insidious problems. It was a lot to

going to

the floor of his temporary quarters, Sunny sighed and

was time to

had worked so much, and done so much, to get here. First, repeating the same sword strike thousands of times, day after day, until his hands bled and his muscles screamed from the pain. Learning the basic katas and movements of Neph's flowing battle style, then gaining enough insight into it to make it his own. Almost dying to receive the gift of clarity, then fighting against the Shadow Saint and slowly incorporating

spending countless hours trying to decipher the hidden meaning behind it, until his mind was ready to boil. Solving that mystery and traveling