Shadow Slave

1415 Empty Shells

Sunny would have held his breath if he wasn't a shadow at the moment. Out there, in front of him, something massive was hiding in the fog. If not for the slight movement just now, he would have mistaken it for another pile of towering bones… that movement might have saved his life.

'Curse it…'

Because of the mist, he could only see a vague, dark shape. The details were obscured, and he could tell that the creature was enormous. It also instilled him with a deep, bestial feeling of dread.

A strange, sweet smell permeated the air.

Sunny froze, hiding in the skull of a dead leviathan. He did not know what to do — moving forward was out of the question. But moving back could potentially inform the enemy of his presence as well.

That only left Shadow Step.

However, before he tried to slip away, Sunny lingered for a few moments.

Something was gnawing at him. Why did this presence feel… familiar?

He had felt a strange familiarity ever since entering the monster graveyard. It was faint, but unmistakable.

'Why?'

Had he been to this part of the island already, in one of the revolutions that he did not remember? No, that did not make any sense. Before becoming aware of the loop, Sunny had to have repeated the same actions over and over — going forward alone to rescue Jet, and dying to Undying Slaughter's ghostly blade.

So how could anything on Wind Flower feel familiar?

At that moment, a strong gale blew from the direction of the vortex, and the mist receded.

The giant creature hiding in the fog was revealed in all its eerie, grotesque beauty.

Sunny shuddered.

The massive shape he had noticed… was a revolting butterfly.

seemingly fragile legs that ended in sharp points, and two enormous, faceted eyes that were like orbs of pure darkness. Between them was a disturbingly long, oily-black beak, which

about a

Great Monster that had battled the Serpent King for an entire month for

Butterfly? What

traveled so far into the past from the beginning of the Nightmare, and yet, this grotesque horror somehow ended catching up to him

Sunny felt a hint of

with, it was also subtly different. The pattern of bone-white scales on its belly was not the same. The jagged edges of its wings were not the same. The length of its antennae was not the

Butterfly for an entire month, so he remembered its

might have belonged to the same tribe of Nightmare Creatures, but

was not to say that

'Damn it!'

just how impossible was this Third Nightmare supposed to be? And here he was, hoping that things would go easier if he chose a different path

Breaker… if they tried to fly away from the island and were caught by it in the air,

had just gotten much more

have to go around the monster graveyard, for

to hide the eerie creature. Before it did, Sunny followed a whim and peered into the soul of the Dark Butterfly, wanting to make sure that it, too,

moments passed before a coherent thought could form

'...What?'

the surface of the aerial giant's carapace, where the tendrils of the revolting darkness were supposed to

neither were there radiant suns of shining soul cores. Instead, the creature's soul was

was no soul inside that monstrous body at

The Dark Butterfly was…

'It's Hollow?'

left as empty shells

did not travel between the two worlds in

if an abomination's soul was somehow destroyed without damaging the body, there was a small chance that the body would continue to live on. Empty and void of

left the skull of a dead leviathan. Sliding closer to the giant butterfly, Sunny extended his

like the shadows of all inanimate

had frightened him so much… was

Great Monster sat among the bones with its wings laying listlessly on the ground. It seemed to be breathing, but other than that, it remained absolutely still. Its