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.

it's all

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

Fang's death, the balance on the battlefield had been bound to shift. Mordret's reflections would have been destroyed… the

sweeping victory. None of its key figures would have perished, and plenty of

of course. Everything had

Once again, he

tiring, to always have victory slip through his fingers at

'Curse it all…'

by

was the Nightmare Spell. These three Category Four Gates… it wasn't

elites, too. All the Awakened of Valor and all the Awakened of Song were as good as dead. The only ones who had a chance to

not a guarantee that they would have had enough time to

had would still have

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

going

it. Don't think about

Sunny gritted his teeth.

he continued thinking about it, he would drown in anger and

lost in a region 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 white dunes,

alive… and figure out a way to escape

it was not his first time escaping

there was a will, there was a

bunch of

slight tremor run through the sand beneath

how could he escape the Nightmare

There were four ways.

Hollow Mountains. Needless to say, surviving a journey through two