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.

his hand, wishing to

because the concrete pieces simply turned to dust from his irritated swipe. More than that, the floor cracked under his palm, and

think

hell was

eyes from the dust and

It was rather strange.

cave. It was a few meters in diameter, the ceiling just tall enough for him to stand up. There did not seem to be an entrance to the cave,

of space he had come to his senses in was not a natural cave. It looked

as if some building had collapsed on itself, forming a few

'Wait… alloy?'

and concrete, pieces of

heart was

back in the

ended while the horrid bird was tearing his

point in the waking world where his

supposed to be Valor's stronghold in one of the siege

devastation around him for a

the siege capital been

empty space inside

air brushing against his chest. Looking down, at himself, Sunny

Why am

of Graceless Dusk was gone. Here and there, his pale skin

Sunny summoned the

However, nothing happened.

'What…'

his Memory again, and yet there was no response. It

I not have enough essence to summon even a

attention to his soul, planning to assess how much essence he had

And froze.

'What, what the hell?!'

vastly different his soul, his body, and the world

Sunny himself felt a chill. It was already scary enough now, while he did not have his six shadows wrapped