Shadow Slave

Heat.

It was hot. Lethally hot… a mundane human would not have lasted in this suffocating heat for long. Even as a Master, Sunny was struggling to breathe. His skin was burning.

Sitting on the sand, hunched, he covered his eyes and looked up at the merciless white sun.

The sun was like a small silver coin that hung high in the cloudless azure sky.

White sand. Azure sky.

This was indeed the desert Nephis had once tried to cross. The one that lay east of the Forgotten Shore, stretching far and wide along the Hollow Mountains.

He couldn't see the dreadful black peaks, though. Either this part of the Nightmare Desert was much further north than the small fragment Nephis had traversed, or much further east, where the Hollow Mountains were no more.

In either case, Sunny was in big trouble. Nephis had told them that the further one went into the desert, the more dangerous it became. Eventually, she could not advance anymore, and chose to take her chances in the mountains instead…

Just how deadly was this desert, for Nephis to decide that venturing into a known Death Zone was a better choice?

There was one more thing, too… if it was the same desert, then he had to find shelter before the night came. Failing to do so meant death.

Death...

Sunny sighed.

He was sitting on the white sand, casting five stark shadows. A few dozen seconds had already passed since his arrival in this cursed land, and very soon, something was bound to find and attack him.

He had to move, but his mind was plagued by too many thoughts.

useless… it's all

ago, Sunny had been full of a sense of triumph. He had defeated

would have been destroyed…

Valor would have achieved a sweeping victory. None of its key figures would have perished, and plenty of Awakened would

of that had happened, of

again, he

victory

'Curse it all…'

crushed by the weight of

three Category Four Gates… it wasn't hard to imagine what was going to

all the Awakened of Song were as good as dead. The only ones who had a chance to survive were the Masters, the Saints, and a handful of people those Saints could drag with them into the

guarantee that they would have had

still have to survive

without the most powerful defenders. And much worse still, there would be

going

about it. Don't think

Sunny gritted his teeth.

on his mind… but if he continued thinking about it, he would drown in anger and despair. For now, he couldn't allow himself to lose focus — he

of the Dream Realm that was much more harrowing than the Forgotten Shore, without any way to get back to the waking world. His friends could be lost somewhere between the

were still alive… and figure out a

it was not his first time escaping hell,

was a will, there was a

bunch

a slight tremor run through the sand

he escape the Nightmare

There were four ways.

one was to cross the desert and find a path through the Hollow Mountains. Needless to say, surviving a journey through two