Shadow Slave

The Nightmare was over.

The illusory world that Spell had conjured had collapsed, expelling the surviving challengers.

They were supposed to find themselves in the empty void between dream and reality, where countless stars shimmered in the darkness, forming a vast and inconceivable pattern. There, the Spell was supposed to appraise their performance and let them go through the process of rising to a new Rank in peace.

However, that was not what happened to Sunny.

He had no time to comprehend the consequences of having his very existence pierced by the talons of the Cursed Terror when the Nightmare Collapsed, sending him into a world of darkness. There was no appraisal, and no pattern of stars shimmering in the void.

Instead, still reeling from the inconceivable and frightening turn of events, he was thrown out of the void, entering another, much smaller, but similarly dark space. In fact, he was violently catapulted into that space, crashing into a jagged piece of scorched concrete, shattering it, and colliding with a deformed alloy wall behind it.

The force of the impact was terrible enough to make the alloy crack, and for Sunny to lose consciousness.

And that…

Was how he became possibly the first human in history to Transcend while passed out..

The six shadows gathered around his reforged body, perplexed and dumbfounded.

After a while, one of them sighed, and then shook its head in utter dejection.

***

The first thing Sunny felt was pain.

Not the terrible kind of pain he was sadly used to experiencing from time to time, but a more mundane pain. He was laying on a rough surface, something sharp biting into his back through the fabric of Ananke's Mantle.

The air was full of dust. The world was silent.

He was cold.

Groaning, he opened his eyes and sat up, feeling strangely refreshed and revitalized. Looking down, he saw jagged pieces of concrete littering the floor. No wonder he had been uncomfortable.

stretched his hand, wishing to sweep a few of them

dust from his irritated swipe. More than that, the

to think of

the hell

eyes from the dust and looked around, trying to assess his

It was rather strange.

a few meters in diameter, the ceiling just tall enough for him to stand up. There did not

few moments of contemplation, Sunny realized that the dusty pocket of space he had come to his senses in was

ceiling were a chaotic mess of cracked concrete and torn alloy, as if some building had collapsed on

'Wait… alloy?'

Alloy and concrete, pieces of

heart was

in the

The Nightmare had ended while the horrid bird was tearing his soul with its talons, and

Nightmare Desert, but instead back to the point in the waking world

be Valor's stronghold in one of

scene of devastation around him for a while,

siege capital

in a random pocket of empty space inside a ruin instead

by the feeling of cold air brushing against his

hell. Why am I

Shroud of Graceless Dusk was

the Shroud

However, nothing happened.

'What…'

yet there was no response. It was as if it

I not have enough essence to summon even

planning to assess how much essence he had

And froze.

'What, what the hell?!'

vastly different his soul, his body, and the world

suffused with power… such terrifying power that even Sunny himself felt a chill. It was already scary enough now, while he did