Footsteps and crunching leaves could be heard as Sunny and Nephis walked towards the temple's entrance, and most likely towards danger. Sunny sent Gloomy and Happy inside, to which Gloomy was hesitant, but after some encouragement from both of them, he went along with the waiting shadow, so he was scouting out the inside as they got close. The temple must have been a sight to behold once, but now it was nothing like its former glory. Its stone pillars and towers at its edges had been overrun by decay and vines while the walls of the temple had holes and were crawling with common insects of all kinds that were native to the Dream Realm they had discovered while they traveled.
It seemed like it had been a long time since anyone had set foot near it which made Sunny on guard since something must be up for even nightmare creatures to avoid this place. Even so Sunny sensed a hint of divinity lingering around the temple, maybe it had been one of the few temples Auro and the war empire hadn't destroyed during their crusade across all the land, although the temple didn't feel like it belonged to Shadow God. Instead, Sunny guessed it was a temple to Heart God, God of souls, emotion, memory, hunger, and growth. It could have also been a temple to War God since it was also the God of life - and considering they were in a forest brimming with life - it would also make sense considering it's also why the temple hadn't been destroyed or perhaps they were only going for Shadow God's temples and ignoring everything else.
Inside, Sunny spotted two stone statues depicting a priest and a type of beast with a human head, with horse legs as arms and boar legs as its legs. It was pretty disgusting in his opinion although he'd eaten worse back in the Dark City and even now. Other than the statues at sat in the middle of the temple there was a staircase going up on the left side and another going down on the right. There were no decorations or any signs of any that had been as the floor was made of wood similar to that of the trees whenever Sunny cut down a portion of a tree for fire or honey.
Once they stood at the entrance Sunny gave an all clear signal as they waltzed into the doorless entrance of the temple and felt a cool breeze hit them both which was unexpected but welcomed.
"You go up, I go down," Sunny said as he made his way to the right.
Nephis only nodded as they went their separate ways into the different floors of the temple.
***
Nephis walked up the stairs with [Dream Blade] in hand as she took a left and entered the floor before taking a look around for danger. On the walls were countless faded murals like the ones from the Hollow Mountains depicting many things she didn't understand. She started from the closest one to her before slowly moving along the murals as she tried to understand what they were saying or depicting. The first showed a young girl running away and being chased, behind her stood a burning house where people all around held torches and burned the building. Outside the building, the people captured two adults, a woman and a man.
Then the same girl ran into the woods where a creature was shown hiding in the shadows before showing itself to the poor girl, but instead of killing her the creature merely helped her up. After that one Nephis saw the same girl but older, still with the creature as they built a temple and farmed land in front of it. The next depictions showed a woman praying, planting rows of trees with the area nearby dead and devoid of any life, and the last one showed a big shining tree that dwarfed all the other trees.
'This must be the story of the creature and priestess from below.' Nephis realized as she stopped before the last mural of the tree.
This one intrigued her for some inexplicable reason before realizing it was the tree that they saw at the center of the jungle. It had been the priestess and creature who had created the tree which then brought back life according to the murals. It had also shown the townspeople as barbarians who killed a young priestess' family for no reason... which didn't sit right with Nephis as who kills a poor family without reason?
'Perhaps there's more than what is being said.' A frown appeared on her face as she moved away headed up the stairs once more to the last floor.
This time there was a door at the, so she had to stop and open it... and dodge a falling rake that almost hit her as it fell down the stairs below. Looking back at the door she saw that the floor was filled with gardening tools of all kinds and materials of different kinds and she could only imagine what nightmare creature it belonged to. Boxes littered the room in numbers and cobwebs hung on the roof and a few even got on her hair when she moved around. In a corner there were hundreds of eggs laid on a patch of dirt, crouching she got closer and inspected the eggs. Nephis only got half a second to react before a spider that had been hiding behind a box jumped at her.
She lodged her sword into its fangs, but the impact launched her to the ground as the spider pushed against her sword trying to get to her face to most likely bite it off. Nephis groaned as she pushed it back a little before dislodging her sword and pushing herself off the ground as it spat on the ground a green inky goo where she had been. She was glad that she had moved away as the ground where the goo landed dissolved in seconds.
Taking a look at the spider, she noticed a few markings on its abdomen and a string of runes that were too faded to see what they once said. Its body was a mix of green on its back and black on its head with red eyes.
She enhanced her sword with a portion of her flames as she bit back the pain and pounced towards the devious spider. It zipped away before she could hit it but she simply changed her stance and turned her blade horizontally biting and cutting off 2 of its 8 legs. It screeched and retaliated by biting and breaking the tip of her sword. Cursing, she kicked at its head which sent it flying although her foot throbbed from kicking its hard-shelled head.
Before she could press on another spider crawled out of a box and started sprinting towards her as if defending the other spider. She dodged to the side before slashing down, but it sprayed out web fluid and caught her sword with overwhelming force as it flew out of her hand and attached itself to the roof. Instead of trying to recover her sword she simply started to dismiss it and flew a fist at the spider's eye while dodging its long thin legs.
After trading a few blows the other spider came back and attacked behind her at her legs which forced her to jump away. Nephis deduced they must've been at least demons as the second spider was waiting where she would land and bit her foot. She felt her bones crack but if it wasn't for [Starlight Legion] she would completely lose her foot as she shifted her weight and augmented herself fully before throwing a punch at its head.
She had only meant to get it off her foot but instead her fist went straight through its head killing it almost instantly as its head scraped on the wooden floor in panic before stopping abruptly. When had she gotten so fast?
[You have killed an Awakened Demon, Prowler Spider]
Not lingering around she pulled back her arm and picked up a nearby box before throwing it at the remaining spider. She was hoping to buy some time but it simply ran straight through the box and launched itself at her. She raised the now summoned sword and shoved it into its mouth before lighting it on fire with her flames as it screamed in agony and tried to spit out the sword, but she held it inside as it burned. Eventually, its struggle ended as it collapsed to the ground burnt to a crisp husk.
[You have killed an Awakened Demon, Prowler Spider]
Breathing heavily, she summoned a bow that she obtained during the Dark City and shot a flaming arrow at the nest as it burnt the eggs.
[You have killed an awakened beast...]
[You have killed an awakened beast...]
[You have killed...]
The spell - mocking as ever - spoke for a few minutes about her kills until it paused for a moment before continuing.
[... Your flames are overflowing with power.]
[Your flames are shining brighter.]
Suddenly, Nephis felt her soul heating up every time she was about to form a new soul core. After readying herself indescribable pain flooded her as she bit down hard on her teeth. She endured the pain of forming her Devil core for the third time in a row. After a bit, the heat started to cool and the pain lowered as she held herself up with her sword, leaning on it like how her grandmother had done whenever she walked around the mansion before passing away. Taking walks with Nephis as she told her stories of the world before the spell, before the fall of her clan. How her mother was like and her father before he died as well due to Anvil, Ki Song, and Asterion.
She found it ironic that her grandmother outlived both her father and mother who were some of the strongest of their time.
After catching her breath and fixing herself up she looked around some more to see if she missed anything before heading back down and heading to the ground floor to wait for Sunny.
***
Sunny walked down the stairs after departing from the main entrance before finding himself face to face with a wooden door at the bottom of the stairs. Staring and inspecting it for a moment he simply channeled some essence before kicking down the door from its hinges as it fell to the ground sadly.
'I've always wanted to do that,' he smiled softly as he inspected the room with Serpent in his beast form - who had long been wanting to stretch... whatever a snake stretches - with [Midnight Shard] in one hand and [Moonlight Shard] in another. He had [Shadow Lantern] attached to his belt on [Mantle of the Underworld] which he put on since [Puppeteer Shroud] wouldn't offer the same amount of protection as the mantle would.
He had only put on the shroud because it helped with the heat of the death zone, but just like the lesson with the Carapace Scavengers he would learn it again if he believed it held any chance against the regular Fallen and Awakened they would fight regularly. Looking around he noticed that the room was quite small yet clean, as if untouched by time even though everything else had already rotted away.
On one side of the room were two beds, one small one relative to the huge one next to it, 3 times larger from the looks of it. Next to each of the beds was a nightstand, although there wasn't anything on them, nor was there anything inside the drawers when he checked. On the other side were pots filled with trees of different sizes and dirt, some of them were dead while others were alive and doing well. Looking around the pots, he searched for any markings or anything informational, but it just looked like regular trees inside regular pots.
'Who puts trees inside pots? Away from daylight nonetheless.' Sunny shook his head as he moved on to the workbenches nearby.
The workbenches were filled with papers detailing... trees? Indeed, Sunny picked up and studied all the papers on each of the workbenches where it seemed that the priestess and monster that lived here before had been experimenting with trees.
'Wait there was something about trees and experiments engraved in the singing tree from two months ago.' Was the singing tree also an experiment from the priestess?
Looking at the papers again he noticed that all of them were theories on how to breed the perfect tree, although it was weird that a priestess would care so much about the environment unless everything wasn't as green a long time ago. He also guessed that they must've been devoted to Heart God considering it had to do with growth, but War God was also a decent choice.
Putting the papers back down Sunny moved to the door on the third side of the room which opened up to a spiral staircase. Recalling Serpent to the door and having Saint behind him they moved down the stairs and reached another door where instead of a wooden door it was shut by a steel door. There was a keyhole, but he hadn't noticed a key back when he was exploring the room, luckily Serpent nudged him in the leg and opened his mouth to reveal a key.
"I can always count on you Serpent! Good Serpent!"
Patting the onyx snake on the head he carefully inserted the key into the lock before twisting and opening the door wide open. Imminently he noticed that there were runes that didn't make sense on the baseboard throughout the walls of the room, although they seemed to be destroyed as some parts of the lining were gone or incomplete. He realized it was similar to the rune circle he saw in the small cell under the ruined cathedral where he obtained Weaver's mask from, except much bigger, and didn't seem to be made for the same reason as the other one which was made to contain.
Sunny felt adamant about entering the room but after his own Shadows entered the room, he didn't want to be embarrassed by his own damn Shadows, so he followed them in. Heading to a random part of the runes he realized that they weren't any rune language he recognized, in fact, it didn't seem like any rune language that existed. He also noticed upon entering earlier that there was a pot much bigger than the ones upstairs almost filling up half the room in the center, although it was empty and whatever tree was in it had long since disappeared.
'What the hell?'
Looking behind him, he saw Serpent trying to bite the runes while Saint merely watched seemingly entertained by the ordeal. Sighing, he realized that whatever the runes were they wouldn't be able to decipher or tell what they were, so it was useless to spend any more time on them, plus it seemed to be harmless considering he wasn't feeling anything from the runes. Walking towards another door at the other end of the room... he tripped.
'Curses!'
Catching himself with a shadow hand he pulled himself up before looking down at what tripped him. It was a root popping out of the ground which was connected to the pot in the middle before running along the floor randomly. Taking a closer look around he noticed that many - mostly small but also a few big ones that were about his width - were all connected to the big pot to the walls. The roots seemed to have connected to a large tree that had once been rooted in the pot which was now gone somehow.
Sunny was stumped on how a tree could just disappear and after some time he decided to leave the topic for later for when he regrouped with Nephis. Reaching the door, and thanking the gods that it wasn't locked, he opened it as they once again went down a spiral staircase before reaching the bottom and opening the door to a small room.
Once again, the point of interest was at the center of the room where a black obelisk around Nephis' height stood with runes covering the entire thing. Surprisingly, he saw that just like the walking stone giant that the builder from the forgotten shore built, it contained 4 dark soul shards of the awakened rank inside it. Considering that the obelisk was connected to the temple it most likely activated a component of the temple.
From the dark soul shards, he realized that they were void of energy but when he touched the obelisk he felt a sensation as if it was trying to pull something out of him that he didn't have leading him to believe that it would reactivate the soul shards if he inserted his essence into it. Looking around he saw no other doors aside from the one he entered from meaning he had probably reached the bottom floor of the temple.
'Nephis are you there?'
'Yes, what happened and where are you I've been waiting for a couple of minutes now.' Was it just him or did her voice sound slightly haggard? Had walking up the stairs exhausted her that much?
'Well, I found something interesting down here so come down and meet me so I can show you it.'
'Alright, I'll be down in a second.'
***
"So, do you think we should risk it?"
"I have no clue Sunny, perhaps we should just leave it be."
"Maybe... but congratulations on reaching your devil core for the third time i saw it while checking your runes waiting for you to come down."
"It was just luck that the spiders' eggs were awakened, or else I would still need some more time."
Sunny nodded at the remark, but in all honesty, he was glad Nephis was back to the same class as he was considering they needed all the strength they could get. They had both given themselves a rundown on what they discovered and now they were deciding on whether to mess with the obelisk by pouring some essence into it to see what would happen.
"I think we should leave it be then."
"Agreed, let's go now that we've explored everything." Sunny simply nodded as they got off the ground and walked back up the atrocious stairs before feeling the sunlight hit their skin as they once again got outside.
***
Two days, they were only a two-day walk away from escaping the jungle and reaching the seed where they'll finally face the second nightmare and hopefully get back to the waking world.
Both Sunny and Nephis were walking leisurely - a rarity considering the danger the jungle posed but they too posed a danger to the jungle - as his shadows were stalking and scouting around them. Suddenly it seemed as if the jungle was holding its breath as it got deadly quiet, the birds that they avoided that flew above them were suddenly nowhere to be seen. The rustling of grass from the wind suddenly stopped as if frozen in time, and the trees stood still as if... it was listening. Sunny was reprimanding himself for getting comfortable as they both tensed up from what was happening, weapons and shadows out as they got into formation for the threat seemingly looming in the jungle.
Then a screeching sound emanated in the direction they were heading for which caused both Sunny and Nephis to fall to their knees and almost scratch their ears out from the pain. Sunny gritted his teeth as they shattered before sending a shadow up onto the trees to see what was happening. Once Happy got up there he spotted in the distance the enormous tree, but there was a figure on the treetop now unlike before.
His face went into horror as he recognized who the figure was. It had two big dark and buff hooves as hands, its head was covered in scars on its humanoid face that had long since been obscured by the cuts, and two boar-like legs that could probably kick him hundreds of feet back easily. Sunny then realized that it was staring at both of them directly as it screeched, as if it had finally noticed their presence. After a few minutes of them being practically crippled and lying on the ground, the screeching stopped.
Nephis gasped as she coughed out blood while blood came out of both of their ears and noses. Sunny himself felt like his ears were about to explode and were still ringing as if a bomb had exploded near him. He was shaking heavily as he slowly got up and held Nephis's shoulder as she coughed out blood. Sunny would've also been coughing out blood but [Blood Weave] saved him from the torment, sadly though it didn't save his nose or ears.
Summoning [Endless Spring] Sunny cleaned both of them up before noticing something in the distance. Commanding Gloomy to check it out while Happy continued to spy on the creature on the treetop his face lost a pint of blood as his face turned even paler than usual. Picking up Nephis' princess bride style he started dashing and running towards the seed as Nephis was caught off-guard.
"What's wrong Sunny?"
"We have to reach the seed NOW" he gasped as he continued running as quickly as he could with Nephis in his hands. Realizing it wasn't fast enough he summoned [Prowling Thorn] and started swinging from the trees with it as they rushed towards the center.
Sunny went as fast as he could as he watched from his shadow's eyes a series of events happening simultaneously.
***
Somewhere far away a monkey-like figure threw its last log with its left hand at the remaining snake killing it before eating it fully without hesitation. Hearing the screeching it threw a glance at the dead snakes around it before looking at the stump of its cut right hand. Growling it roared before jumping high up among the trees before moving at incredible speed towards the center of the forest.
***
A trail of bodies started from a huge hole and continued down a straight path as the path of bodies led towards the center of the jungle. The bodies were being eaten or absorbed seemingly by the ground as the only remains were blood and bones and even the soul shards were consumed.
***
A fog that promised to consume anything that entered its domain, traveling at random, suddenly moved in a certain direction. As it moved any creature that couldn't move out of the way of the mist in time was never seen again, nor any remains remained.
***
A temple that had stayed dormant for hundreds of years suddenly started to move. At the bottom floor of the temple, an obelisk that was unpowered was suddenly wrapped by vines from above as essence coursed throughout it and the four soul shards embedded inside it shone brightly once more. The temple shook as it suddenly rose slightly as four vine legs popped out of each corner - made up of smaller vines entangled with one another - and started moving in sync towards the sound of the screeching.
The hunt for two desperate Dreamers had started, and Sunny wasn't sure if they would make it out this time.