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.

the Nightmare Spell at sixteen, his psyche had been subjected — sometimes by the circumstances and sometimes through his own volition — to incredible abuse. Sunny prided himself on the fact that he

had

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

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 yet, he

But for how long?

better than every over human out

were countless cracks on

worth it. The situation with clan Valor, while unpleasant, was not critical. It just demanded time and caution. Slowly but surely, the sides were going to

reach a favorable outcome in these negotiations,

use the time before

exactly been exciting for

combat skills and Shadow Dance, properly assimilating everything that he had learned to elevate his mastery of battle to a new level. He also had to relearn a lot of things

during this time was that the inherent problem he had been struggling with — the threat of losing himself to the formlessness of Shadow Dance — was easily remedied by a simple thought exercise. He just had

his newly profound control of shadow essence, as well as

not the only thing he trained, though. He also dove deep into the intricacies of Shadow Manifestation, first learning how to properly wield it, and then leveraging his cunning and creativity to push its uses to their

it could also be weaved into every other facet of his battle performance in unexpected and insidious ways. Almost every day, Sunny discovered something new he could do. The possibilities were simply

limitlessness, however, was its own problem. Just because Sunny could do a lot did not mean that it was wise to do it. So, it took a lot of time to find the most effective and efficient ways to use Shadow Manifestation. Slowly but surely, his arsenal of true and tested tricks and methods grew. He practiced each one until they became as instinctive as his combat techniques, so that he could use them without wasting even a split

Lastly, there was sorcery.

Sunny spent a lot of time widening the scope of his understanding of spellweave. This was perhaps the most unassailable and tough field of expertise he was trying to study,

blindly stumble in the darkness, learning tiny bits through trial and error. It did not help that he could only experiment with

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

them in the Dream

his resource problem, Sunny turned to the only source available to him… the merit points provided by the government,

get points and fund his research, he 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,