Shadow Slave

Sunny opened his eyes in the cool cradle of the sleeping pod. The lid was already sliding away, and the lights in the room were gradually turning brighter. The panoramic wall in front of him opened to a view of one of the Academy parks.

The eastern horizon was already painted lilac by the rising sun, but the world was still shrouded in darkness.

'...Made it.'

With a sigh, he rose from the pod and lowered his feet to the cold floor.

These first moments after leaving the Dream Realm were still strange to him. It just… it just seemed weird to be able to escape it so easily, without having to fight through a sea of monsters and struggle against terror, desperation, and pain. How could something so meaningful be so simple?

And yet, it was. In the past two months, coming and going from the Dream Realm had almost become a routine for him. Not that he had done it as often as most Awakened did.

Standing up, Sunny grimaced, then massaged his shoulders and glanced at the sleeping pod darkly.

Now that he was an Awakened, the Academy had granted him a personal living space in one of the dormitories. These quarters were much the same as the room he had lived in during his preparations to enter the Dream Realm for the first time, but with one significant difference: there was a smaller room adjacent to the main one, housing a humble meditation space and an individual sleeping pod.

The problem was, that pod was not at all as advanced and state-of-the-art as the ones used for the Sleepers. It did its job fine as long as an Awakened remained in the Dream Realm for about eight to twelve hours, as most of them did. However, Sunny was in the habit of spending much, much more time there.

His recent adventure, for example, had lasted three whole days… he had to work hard to not fall behind, after all. As a result, his muscles felt sore and heavy.

Circulating essence through his body to chase away the remnants of sleep, Sunny walked to the bathroom and got into the shower. As streams of water caressed his skin and flowed down the scales of the black serpent coiling around his lithe body, he sighed and closed his eyes for a moment.

was not exactly equal to good sleep, but it was somewhat similar. Mental fatigue still accumulated little by little, but it was easy to remove by meditating or actually sleeping on the other side of the Gateway. Few Awakened ever did, however, since no

wide awake and full of energy. He dressed himself, sat at the table, and quickly compiled a report about his recent exploration. Then, he picked up the communicator and checked

missed calls, a few messages from Effie with photos of all the delicious food she was eating and several memetic jokes of

for a bit, then sighed and put

"Time for breakfast."

wrap itself around his body so that he appeared like a

and True Names of Cassie, Kai, and especially Effie had been plastered all over the media, but luckily, he had avoided becoming a poster boy for the government's insatiable propaganda machine. As the result, random strangers had no idea who he was, which suited Sunny just

food, sat at one of the tables, and placed

supposed to come any

breakfast in peace and quiet, glancing at the communicator from time to time. No one bothered him, and there was no

content smile found its

'Ah. Life is good…'

Finally, the communicator rang.

to the respectful voice on the other side of

Well… great! Then I will…

down and stared into the distance for a long time, a strange look

points for his Forgotten Shore report and making some money by selling soul shards to other Awakened on the Chained Isles, Sunny had done something that he

bought

home in the district of the city

waiting, everything was finally ready for him

shadow, Sunny lingered for a few moments, and