Shadow Slave

Sunny had gone through many chilling trials in his tumultuous life, but the Nightmare Desert was, perhaps, the most harrowing ordeal of them all. Lost in a true Death Zone, pursued by a Great Nightmare Creature, and running out of time... he saw little hope of making it out of this tribulation alive.

Nevertheless, there were two paths he could take.

The first one was to follow Morgan to the Tomb of Ariel, and the second one was to follow Mordret into the Third Nightmare.

Both paths were equally lethal and veiled in uncertainty, making it hard for him to choose.

In the end, Sunny made the most prudent decision - he postponed making a choice by a few days.

After all, there was a time limit set by Morgan in her daring attempt to reach the black pyramid. Four days... if they did not arrive at the daemon's tomb in four days, Summer Knight was going to take her back to the waking world, leaving the rest of them behind.

So, Sunny was going to put his hopes in the Princess of War, and if she failed to accomplish her goal, he would answer Mordret's invitation and follow the only remaining path into a Seed of Nightmare.

The Prince of Nothing was not very happy with the delay, but he had no other choice except to agree with Sunny and wait patiently. He really needed the strength of Changing Star's cohort if he was to challenge a Third Nightmare... especially one that he knew nothing about, and would be entering without any preparations.

Masters were the best of the best among the warriors of humanity - unlike Awakened, who had no choice but to face the trials of the Spell and survive them, each Master had chosen to venture into their Second Nightmares voluntarily. Only the strongest and most resourceful survived and Ascended.

And out of those strongest, hundreds and hundreds had attempted the Third Nightmare in the last few decades. Yet... only a few dozen humans returned, thus becoming Saints.

That alone spoke about how deadly the Third Nightmare was.

if he was a titan with seven fully saturated cores and another decade of experience behind his shoulders, he would

would be able to lead them to the black pyramid. Having to make a deal with the Prince of Nothing was the

forced

the last people in two worlds he wanted to associate

yet, here he

each hour and every day that passed, it was starting to look more and more as if

sapped them of all energy, will, and desire to live. The suffocating nature of the pristine sea of dunes had only affected them physically at first, but as time went on, its cruelty started to gnaw on their minds,

that none of them could really sleep, gripped by the fear of the cataclysmic battle that raged across the ancient desert at night. The further into the dunes they went,

sand in the inner regions of the desert, but at the same time, less and less of them looked durable enough to withstand

Sir Gilead alone was enough to deal with them. Later, the valiant Saint would struggle to fend off

when even Summer Knight became wary of their opponents. The group was forced to tread with utmost caution, lest they encounter something that neither the Saint nor the Masters would be

slowed them

slowing down allowed the Gate Guardian - Skinwalker - to find their trail

and as time went on, the constant need to escape that pursuit was only growing more urgent. There were two reasons why the great abomination was getting harder and harder

first one was that Sunny and the rest could not allow themselves to move forward as swiftly as they had before. The second was that... the

it was quickly learning about the waking world, the Awakened, about the powers they possessed, and about the way they thought. At first, it had only been able to study the memories of several dozen vessels that it had hunted down and taken in the desert,

most likely escaped into the waking world, as well. How many vessels of the great abomination were there

...Millions?

that every time they had to escape from the Skinwalker's

Everyone was... tired.

into despair. The gauntlet of the Nightmare Desert was just too cruel, too harrowing, and too