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.

average Awakened. In fact, none of the survivors of the

recruited by powerful Citadels and provided the means to anchor themselves to their Gateways. Everyone profited from this arrangement — the

to be a small recruitment war happening in the next few days. Prosperous Citadels were going to fight for the

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

remain awake long enough to make a choice and settle the details of their future anchors. Since their physique was far

a lot to do in these

had turned his attention to after retreating to his personal

of these tests

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

Sense, around a dozen meters or so. However, he knew that it would increase as

exclusion

own shadows no matter how

of kilometers away. That meant that, if both were sent into opposite directions and reached the limit of the Shadow Control range, he could potentially instantly cover about

of Shadow Step. The

move through shadows as though he was one

it make him completely undetectable by means of sight, hearing, and smell,

but also unable to perform

peaceful. Sunny had to constantly remind himself to concentrate and

of some terrible cave

Shadow

came at

him to expend essence. The more distance he covered with a jump and the more time he spent as an incorporeal shadow, the more essence

the theoretical four-kilometer jump would eat through all of his essence, leaving both of his cores

always slowly generated essence, eventually filling his cores to their maximum capacity,

fight effectively and use the more powerful enchantments of higher rank Memories, so balancing its expenditure was

both incredible opportunities and insidious problems. It was a lot to take

he was going to get there,

temporary quarters, Sunny sighed and summoned the

time to reap

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 her grounded technique into

it held itself, then spending countless hours trying to decipher the hidden meaning behind it, until his mind was ready to boil. Solving that mystery and traveling into the past to observe the birth of the nameless temple slave, and