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.

to

simply turned to dust from his irritated swipe. More than that, the

think of

hell

eyes from the dust and looked around, trying to assess

It was rather strange.

he thought that he had found himself in a small cave. It was a few meters in diameter, the ceiling just tall enough for

had come to his senses

chaotic mess of cracked concrete and torn alloy, as if some building

'Wait… alloy?'

surroundings. Alloy and concrete, pieces of broken machinery, a torn piece of a sign written in

was beating

am… back in the waking

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

but instead back to the point in the waking world where his

stronghold in one of the siege capitals of

observed the scene of devastation around

the siege capital been

it would explain why he was in a random pocket of empty space inside a ruin instead of his quarters

of cold air brushing against his

the hell. Why am

was still covered by the nebulous folds of Ananke's Mantle, but the Shroud of Graceless Dusk was gone. Here and

summoned the Shroud

However, nothing happened.

'What…'

upon his Memory again, and yet there was no response. It was as if it

not have enough essence to summon even

to his soul, planning to assess how much essence

And froze.

'What, what the hell?!'

how vastly different

with power… such terrifying power that even Sunny himself felt a chill. It