Shadow Slave

Dorn, Kim, and Luster brought other news from the Dream Realm, too. All of it was fragmented and chaotic, since the First Army itself did not seem to have a strong hold on what was happening throughout the Antarctic Center.

With all modern forms of communication down, whatever information trickled in and was disseminated through the Dream Realm was doomed to be incomplete, and often became obsolete on arrival. The lack of reliable intelligence was the worst fear of all armies.

The strange blizzard raging across the Antarctic Center was the cause of the collapse of the interaction network. It was attributed to one of the Titans that had emerged around a month ago, designated as the Winter Beast. The Titan's current location was unknown, but its impact could be felt throughout the region.

The field army tasked with evacuating the Antarctic Center was in a rough spot. The southern reach of the landmass - where Sunny and his cohort were currently stuck - was lost and all but abandoned. People were scrambling to preserve the remaining six siege capitals, not knowing when and where the Titans would strike next.

Even worse, the Titans were merely the harbingers of a new phase of the Chain of Nightmares. The frequency and potency of the opening Gates seemed to have increased drastically, and countless Nightmare Creatures were pouring into the waking world every day.

...In other words, humans in the Antarctic Center were in trouble, and Sunny was in the biggest trouble of all.

'Wonderful.'

His soldiers had not only received information, but also reported the cohort's current status and location. The information was going to take some time reaching Master Jet, and then more time would pass to get her response back to Sunny. For now, he had nothing to do.

Sunny contemplated for a few minutes whether he should start moving north immediately, or remain in place for a few days to give his soldiers time to recuperate and learn more about what was happening in the region. In the end, he decided to postpone the decision for when the second shift of sleepers returned from the Dream Realm.

was not an ideal situation, but neither was blindly venturing into the mountains. Either way, there was a big chance that a disaster would find them, but at least the former choice gave his soldiers a chance

were also the two civilians to

the compact kitchen of the large vehicle, summoned the Covetous Coffer, and concentrated on preparing a hearty breakfast for the crew of

were the Great Clans doing? How hard would it be to reach the distant siege capital, which stood

fields. At least they would not be cold

wondered how Rain was doing. Was she worried about his long silence, perhaps? Was

Ivory Tower and ask one of the cohort members to check up on her. Effie was quite close with Rain, and so was Nephis.

him several seconds late to react to danger, but the latter would make him miss it completely. With how

cooking food brought everyone inside the Rhino to the lounge area. Even Professor Obel and Beth woke

signs of a sudden deterioration of his health. Nevertheless, Beth used a

pot of coffee and several bars of dark

then smiled and uttered in his usual friendly

impressive machine you have

was already bringing a spoonful of curry to his

Of all the vehicles I've driven, our Rhino is the most fearsome! This one time, we had to plow through a

The old man smiled.

still being used and kept up to date. I knew the engineer who initially created this APC concept, you see. Of course, back then, it was far less advanced.