Shadow Slave

After the Seed of Nightmare had been destroyed, something unexpected happened. A Gateway took its place, turning the Ivory Tower into a Citadel.

At the same time, the Dream Realm anchors of the cohort members shifted, becoming tied to it. Masters did not have to travel to another world every time they slept, but they still needed a Gateway to return to reality. Changing an anchor was as easy as making use of another Gateway, but there lay the problem.

The only way to leave their new Citadel was to either brave the Crushing, somehow, or to go through the portal to the Ebony Tower and rise from the depths of the Sky Below on the flying ship.

While that made the Ivory Tower incredibly safe, it also meant that there were no Nightmare Creatures around for them to hunt. There was no point for Sunny to go to the Dream Realm at all, especially after he had explored Hope's former prison, finding nothing of particular interest inside.

...It also meant that Mordret was most likely tied to the same Gateway. However, the Prince of Nothing had never shown himself. Either he had found a way to change his anchor, or he had chosen to remain in the waking world as well.

In any case, there was no safe way for Sunny to collect shadow fragments in the Dream Realm. He was also cut from his main source of Memories, which he had hoped to put on sale through the Emporium.

At first, Sunny was very unhappy with this situation. He was both much stronger and still far behind Nephis in terms of raw power. Even though there was a vast gap of two Ranks between them now, his soul lusted to grow even more.

He could never have enough strength, never be powerful enough to protect himself and those he cared about from the vicissitudes of life. He was still too weak to challenge fate.

…But after a few days of peaceful life in the waking world, Sunny had started to slowly change his mind.

In the past three years, his power had grown tremendously, and at a breakneck pace. While that was extremely beneficial overall, there was a negative side to such speed.

His foundation had turned unstable. He had been so preoccupied with gaining more power, more strength, deeper insight, greater understanding… that he had not spent enough time actually assimilating all these gains into a coherent whole. Internalizing and absorbing all the lessons he had learned into his very bones was very important, yet he had neglected it for the lack of time and opportunity.

He needed time to truly make the vast power he had won his own.

Additionally, there was something else that concerned Sunny. His... mental state.

and sometimes through his own volition — to incredible abuse. Sunny prided himself on the fact that he never broke, no matter what ghastly horror and gruesome

had been

that Awakened, no matter how great and powerful they seemed, were also the most likely to crack. The nightmares they brought back from the Dream Realm haunted them, and many succumbed to

amount of torturous pain he had gone through could only compare to the amount of mental anguish he had experienced. The Red Colosseum, the nightmares, and all the rest… it was enough to crush a dozen people. And

But for how long?

prideful enough to think that he was better than every over human out there. Would his soul and mind

countless cracks

heal was worth it. The situation with clan Valor,

a favorable outcome in these negotiations, especially because fifty of the most promising Awakened of

was going to use the time before that happened to

months had not exactly been

that he had learned to elevate his mastery of battle to a new level. He

— the threat of losing himself to the formlessness of Shadow Dance — was easily remedied by a simple thought exercise. He just had to remember his True Name. No

of shadow essence, as well as the time he had taken to fully absorb all of his rich

intricacies of Shadow Manifestation, first learning how

Ability was an incredibly versatile one, so there was a lot he could do with it. Not only did it have the potential to be powerful on its own, it could also be weaved into every other facet of his battle performance in unexpected and insidious ways. Almost every

took a lot of time to find the most effective and efficient ways to use Shadow Manifestation. Slowly but

Lastly, there was sorcery.

lot of time widening the scope of his understanding of spellweave. This was perhaps the most unassailable and tough field of

the subject were boundless, and all he could do was blindly stumble in the darkness, learning tiny bits through trial and

things into Memories and experimenting on them instead. However, that produced its own obstacle — he needed

could not procure them in the Dream Realm, for

the merit points provided by

had compiled another paper with the help of Teacher Julis. The Exploration Report on Chained Isles, by Ascended Sunless… did not produce as big of a ripple among the general public, but caused a real