'How long is she going to take?'
Sunny thought he was waiting at the entrance of the side garden, which the witch had built and taken care of for the past few months. He was a little annoyed at Selena's lateness since she had urgently asked him to meet outside the garden for a serious talk, and Sunny was on edge ever since due to the ominous feeling he had. With fate, Sunny expected the best of the worst, with a mixture of both happening in all situations.
He heard footsteps approaching him, closer and closer, as an elegant figure appeared at the end of the corridor. Selena wore a white dress, a small brown hat, and sandals to complete the beach aesthetic often seen in web novels. He himself only wore [Puppeteer Shroud] and only changed if he was going into a fight, for which he would wear [Mantle of the Underworld].
"Sorry to keep you waiting, Sunny. I hope you aren't too angry I had to tell off Eliji for coming back badly bruised. After all, healing you both takes a lot out of me, so pray to the gods that today's mission succeeds with minimal injuries."
Selena spoke softly as she approached him. Sunny tersely forgave her as they both walked side by side into the flower garden. He recalled everything leading up to today, practicing with Eliji on homing in his new body until it no longer felt foreign, but as if he was born into it. Of course, when it came to Eliji, he didn't know how to hold back his punches, which resulted in many bruises that healed rapidly thanks to the enhanced [Blood Weave] and his healing vase memory. He, along with Eliji, went on many missions killing and harvesting soul shards, which he didn't know what they used them for but never questioned since he knew better. Prying would put him in danger, and until he found Nephis, he didn't want to lose his allies or make them suspicious of him and his motives.
However, it wasn't like they were still strangers, as he could proudly call them friends if he wasn't so hesitant about calling them so. The lingering remnant of his two best friends' betrayals still affected his ability to fully trust future relationships, so Sunny decided it was best to not fight it. He wasn't one for character development for one thing, so he decided to face it later on. He also kept tabs on the town and Mia and her rebel group, but recently people had started to go missing within the town of many backgrounds and classes, which made it difficult to figure out what was happening. Many blamed it on the witch, but she herself denied kidnapping the villagers, although it was always an option in his mind since there wasn't anything disproving his suspicion towards her.
As they walked, Sunny silently appreciated the beauty of the garden with its variety of flowers in shades of black and white. He would be lying to himself if he said he wasn't worried; in fact, he was even a little hesitant about going himself, but the plan was for him to capture the healer because of [Fated]. Still, he had a bit of hope that everything would go relatively to plan, and the healer was indeed Nephis trapped inside a creature's body like him, and with her they would help Selena with whatever devious plan she had been setting up and complete the second nightmare.
It felt a little surreal to Sunny, however, that the nightmare was finally coming to its conclusion, as after preventing the assassination and preventing Mia from taking over and harassing them, Selena would take action and their "deal" would be completed.
'If only she knew I was the one cheating her out of our deal.' Sunny thought as Selena finally opened her mouth.
"I think it's finally time to tell you a little bit of what I'm planning on doing, just some trivial things to look forward to." Sunny had expected something of the sort since he would need to know her plan to avoid any consequences or being affected by it, so he wasn't shocked in the slightest and nodded in response.
"In short, everyone will die, including me." Sunny stopped mid-step and stood as frozen as a statue.
'What the hell?' Was the only thing that Sunny could think of as his eyes shook and dilated slightly as he looked over to see Selena plucking a flower from a plant. How in the gods is that trivial!
"My flaw is obvious if you pay attention; everything I create is flawed no matter what, so is everything around me. The way someone acts, the way someone might move, speak. The way flowers might grow, or the sun might shine on me, it doesn't matter, as everything is flawed; even my existence is a flaw if looked at in a higher form. That night when my parents died, I was supposed to go down with them; by all logic, I should've died with them, but my flaw saved me, yet it cost me my parents. The flames redirected themselves to my parents, and they died because of me. My flaw is a horrid curse because all my life, all I ever wanted was perfection.A perfect family, a perfect life, a perfect dream, and yet it is unachievable for me. Even something normal would suffice." As she spoke, the flower in her hand that was healthy, living, and beautiful withered away in her hand as it became sickly, horrid, and dead.
"My aspect allows me to take away life from the environment, from plants mostly, but I can also imbue life into things that aren't dead. I can use the harnessed life to "create" life, and I can control that life as well. However, it's not like I'm creating life, more like transforming it from one form to another; its form changes but its matter doesn't, which is why I'm not creating it necessarily."
"Why are you telling me this?" Sunny asked, his voice a little hoarse. He was shocked at how open Selena was being at the moment and was wondering if what she was doing had an insidious goal in order to reshape his mindset or thinking. If she was trying to make her trust him to manipulate him to achieve her goal. He also hypothesized that Selena's aspect was at least of the Sacred rank if not Divine.
"When the time comes," she said, her head lowered, clasped her palm around the withered flower, and walked towards him. When she was in front of him, she opened her palm, revealing a shining flower that Sunny could feel an enormous amount of power coming from as she placed it into his hands that she grabbed. Before him, she raised her head, and Sunny could see her eyes were firm, controlled, and determined. They reminded him of Nephis's eyes whenever she talked about her plans of defeating the sovereigns or when she challenged Gunlaug to a duel, and even when she gave a speech to her soldiers before leading them into battle.
"My life is no longer in my hands, and my desires are no longer obtainable. I refuse to do what I was manipulated to do, so I can only ask you for one last favor." Holding Sunny's gaze, she sharply looked at him.
"When the time comes... destroy everything, including me," Selena said mournfully yet determinedly, as Sunny could only swallow at the seriousness of what she wanted him to do. Her tone and words shallowly reminded Sunny of another individual, who was also tasked with a mission and whose life was sacrificed to accomplish it.
'She's like Auro,' Auro had told him something similar: that his life wasn't his or something of the sort, and that he refused to die until he completed it. However, Selena was the opposite; she wanted to escape her fate, her mission; she wanted to die.
"If I can, then I will," Sunny responded in an almost mumbling voice, recalling when Cassie had asked him to promise her that he would protect Nephis. She reminded him of Cassie, and by correlation, his sister, whom he loved dearly and wanted to protect. So, unlike when he straightforwardly said no, Sunny promised that if the opportunity arose, then he would fulfill her request since he wouldn't risk his life or Nephis's for an illusion.
'Yet I see them as my sister; I suppose she really did rub off on me from how soft I am now from before.' Sunny mocked himself inwardly as a strained smile reached his lips.
***
Outside the temple, dusk had arrived, illuminating the landscape in an orange cape of light as Sunny watched the endless trees shake along with the wind. The dreamworld's version of fall had arrived, so the leaves were wilting as winter was soon to come; the area outside the runes was covered with layers and layers of varying colors of leaves as Sunny took his time watching the leaves fall. Once winter arrived, things would become difficult for the witch, as she had prepared for the following months; what he realized now was cultivating trees as a storage of life for her aspect.
Since winter killed off many lives, her source of "life force" fell to only a few sources, mainly the trees she spent the summer caring for and taking life away from small critters. If everything went to plan, then he and Nephis would be out before winter came and be back on earth.
At the thought of returning to the waking world, Sunny felt himself become a little disoriented as he quickly snapped himself out of it. Before he could question what had happened, a figure landed on the branch he was watching the land from as Eliji stood up and nodded towards him. Sunny nodded back; however, he only did it out of habit; if he hadn't, then he wouldn't have nodded back. Selena's warning still rang in his head before the secret conversation had ended in the garden.
"Do not trust Eliji; he is neither my friend nor companion, but my reminder of my deal." He unconsciously shuddered slightly at remembering the warning, although he couldn't pinpoint exactly why he did. When he pressed on about the deal or plan, she didn't budge and only said that when it happened, he'll know, and that all she wanted was for him to end it. Sunny was a little tired of her hiddenness of information, but Sunny felt there was more to the situation and play and didn't try to pry.
At the corner of his eye, he spotted the hooded hunter that had given him trouble when he accidentally entered the looping barrier. He quietly acknowledged the huntress who was standing guard of the camp in them absents who he had met back when he was trapped in a repetitive loop, while it watched her prey helplessly walk around and become weaker.Walking out of the runes was Selena, who wore a simple white dress covered in vines. Sunny took note that if his control overshadows came better after awakening, then perhaps he would be able to make a shadow armor of the Transcendent tier since he already had armor of the ascended rank, and of the seventh tier to boot, with it being a memory as the cherry on top. He could then gift the armor to either Nephis or Rain if she ever became infected with the spell to help her on her journey across the Dream realm.
"Well then, Sunny, I hope you can group up with your associates before infiltrating the complex. Eliji and Eliji will stop the assassination and stall Mia as much as we can, although you should hurry." Selena said in a slightly caring but serious voice as she indirectly told Sunny not to goof off and to hurry; the anxiety was barely hearable in her voice as the ground beneath her opened up. A plant mouth that he had seen many times consumed her as the ground closed up with the help of grass roots, as Eliji chose the less flashy exit by simply opting to jump from tree to tree.
Sunny would've guessed that Eliji was Bitey from the past if it wasn't for them being the same rank yet looking differently, meaning that unless he went through a huge change without ranking up, which was unlikely, they weren't the same person. He had also guessed it was Alex when they first met, but he was searching for his family and wasn't exactly taking the scenic route through his adventure from his stories.
Shaking off his thoughts, he waited until they disappeared before going a different direction, heading towards the town as Selena and Eliji went to the location of the ball. Once he was certain that there were no peeping eyes, he summoned Saint and Bitey.
After explaining their roles, the three of them went together until they were on the outskirts of the town, near the entrance for carriages that were importing and exporting materials and trading goods. The entrance itself was guarded too much, with only a few scouts out and about at certain periods of time - mostly to check for any nightmare creatures preparing to invade and feast upon the citizens - and a few guards at the entrance. Since it was the day of the ball where prominent figures from all over the neighboring towns attended, the security was quite lacking due to the shift of guards focusing on guarding said figures.
So, Sunny simply sneaked in with his [Lord of Shadows] attribute, which allowed him to remain invisible to most, if not all, awakened warriors, with some Ascended creatures and humans also suffering to spot him. After passing the practically non-existent guards, he moved quickly to the house where regular meetings took place as he simply jumped down the hole instead of climbing down to save time.
'Damn it, I didn't bend my knees.' Sunny groaned inwardly as he shook his legs.He took his time looking around the room to see if anything was amiss with what his shadows had scouted ahead of time, just to be careful. After making sure there weren't any traps, he made his way to the cliché wooden bookcase before pulling out a specific book about the anatomy of nightmare creatures that Selena had a copy of at base. Without warning, the bookcase moved on its own as tiny gears were shifting and moving. Once the book was slightly pulled out, the bookcase moved to the side with the moving mechanism.
Behind the bookcase were about four guards: two were playing a set of cards, one was fast asleep on a chair leaning on the wall, and one was standing guard behind the door hidden behind the entrance. The sleeping guard wearily woke up and jumped to his feet like a cannonball, worried that he would be caught slacking off while the men playing cards put them down before looking at the door as well.
The guard standing slowly formed a smile on his face, which wasn't without reason. He hadn't expected Mia and their companions to be so quick on killing all the officials, but it was a nice change of things since all the bad luck they've gotten recently. Their missions had been stalled due to the disappearances of townspeople, which incurred a curfew that made sneaking around and murdering quite difficult. However, if it wasn't for their illusionist making copies of said murdered people, the infinitely made difficult mission would be impossibly hard.
"You guys move pretty quick-" Darek started before pausing mid-sentence, then, before his mind caught up, instinct took over as his body unsheathed his iron sword and dashed towards the tall, burly dark figure standing in front of the open door.
Everyone else also reacted on instinct, unsheathing their swords and rushing towards the intruder; however, no one seemed to notice one of their shadows suddenly becoming alive. Said shadow jumped out and slashed down on the shadow's owner as their body fell to the ground in two thumps. Sunny was already expecting the quick retaliation as he used his claws to deflect the incoming sword from the guard in front of him before slashing through his chest as blood spewed out.
The second card gambler moved towards Saint while the lazy guard moved towards Sunny; however, he simply dodged before sending a powerful kick, puncturing through his chest-plated and iron-mailed body as he was sent flying towards the wall, as the wooden wall splintered and shattered, creating a crater. Saint clashed with the lazy guard; however, he stood no chance against her gigantic, domineering battle style and was quickly impaled and killed. Sunny merely nodded to her as Saint moved silently to guard the entrance.
In case finding the healer creature took too long, Sunny trusted Saint with stalling Mia and her helpers if he couldn't find it before they returned. Of course, Saint would retreat if she was in danger of being overwhelmed or seriously injured since sacrificing Saint was never an option for him. He hadn't summoned Bitey, as he wanted to keep him as a trump card and couldn't use shadow sense to sense shadows beyond the entrance, which meant every room was a mystery for what was inside.
That being the case, within the second of opening the door, Sunny had to both understand the situation they were in and plan how he was going to counteract it. However, despite his low rank, Sunny was easily able to do so since his reaction time and instincts had gone through hoops of improvements ever since he trained with Eliji, with him now being able to contend with even the most veteran and trained awakened.
He planned on moving forward before seeing the awakened that he thought to be dead by sending him flying to the wall was still alive and crawling towards a part of the wall. Sunny moved after registering that he was still alive as he threw his blade towards the head of the awakened. Before it reached him, however, he punched through the wall as a loud bell sound rang within the wall, and following it were more bell sounds as Sunny realized what had happened after his sword finished off the man as he fell to the ground lifelessly.
Sunny - ever since the realization that the spell wasn't known to people in the nightmare - had to be careful of using the spell's ability, like summoning memories. That was because it was obvious that Sunny's main ability was connected to his shadows being sentient, so him pulling all types of weapons and tools out of the air wouldn't make sense unless it was an attribute he had, which also wouldn't fit with his abilities. He also did it to keep it a secret that, in the heat of the battle, could be exploited to gain the upper hand by summoning weapons out of thin air while the enemy moved closer to kill them.
That being the case, he was used to seeing Selena or Eliji packing or carrying around their weapons instead of dismissing it like a carrier. However, what he hadn't gotten used to was primitive boobytraps or alarm systems. Selena's enchantment field wasn't considered primitive since, according to Nephis, Clan Valor used rune circles as well, so calling them ancient methods would be insulting to the Clan and society, not that he cared much about getting on their bad side. For all he cared, he would never enter a clan unless they enslaved him, which would mean they would get him over Nephis's corpse, which they would find difficult.
Sunny stayed where he was as the door at the end of the room burst open, with Awakened unleashing their aspects towards him. Some sent out elements like fireballs and ice shards, while others used insidious attacks like installing an innate fear into Sunny by simply being in the presence of the person or the walls seemingly closing rapidly to crush Sunny. The first to reach Sunny was a swordman who had incredible speed similar to Caster as they traded blow after blow, trying to stall time for their space manipulator to squash the intruder; however, they were caught in a blow from his tail as he was sent reeling back into their team, causing a few to fall.
One of which was the awakened, who could manipulate space; the walls that were about to turn Sunny into a bloodbath receded as Sunny quickly dashed in. A woman seemingly in her twenties moved forward and created an ethereal wall separating Sunny from the team that wrapped around them like a blanket. However, he had already sent his Haughty shadow ahead as they became corporeal and proceeded to stab the woman's heart, which made her face turn pale as she shuddered against the cold stiletto thrusted inside her chest. The mages fired at his shadow, but he had already turned back into an incorporeal shadow and hid in the shadows.The wall quickly shattered with the women's death as one of the men grabbed their fallen swordsmen and quickly brought them through the door as the mages and remaining swordsmen all got into battle stances.
Sunny merely stared at them intensely before rushing towards them.
***
The fight ended pretty quickly after the party's main win conditions were knocked out of the battle, as it was made apparent with the corpses Sunny left behind as he continued to walk deeper into the base of the traitors. More and more Awakened kept flooding out like rats being driven out from their hole to face the intruder, so the pile of bodies kept on going. Sunny thought that things would go a lot faster since he was limited on time and being aggressive, but the Awakened had a trump card, which was their healing creature that, as long as they didn't die immediately, their companions could send them back to recover and be sent out again. This slowed down progress as his storage of essence started to dwindle, as making essence couldn't keep up with the demand for it.
Other than an obvious strengthening of the body, Awakened could use essence to strengthen their body further, which Sunny could only use in short bursts. Although Sunny trained with Selena to adapt to the change, knowing and experiencing it was two different things.
Even with this hindrance, he made steady progress as he pressed forward inwardly into the base. Sunny visited many rooms such as armories, storage rooms, a dining room, and even a room filled with stashes of green paper and metals. The whole base was like a maze that Sunny could only guess where he needed to go with his intuition, with the multiple doors that began to appear.
Because of the seemingly endless soldiers rushing for his head, he had to summon Bitey earlier than he wanted to cover his back, as if he was in a sea of deadly Awakened. Bitey was their fill of blood as he climbed the walls and pounced on them when they crossed the door in surprise. Sunny, on the other hand, made sure to blow out the torches and smash the lanterns to keep the room dark with the help of his shadow control, giving him the edge to combat all disadvantages he was at.
Eventually, Sunny entered a dimly lit room that housed many cages; however, all of them were empty aside from one that had pieces of white fur attached to the crevices of the steel-wood cage. Sunny surveyed the room before continuing forward uninterrupted as he opened the door on the right. This time, it wasn't intuition guiding him to choose the other two doors in the room but that there was a dried-up trail of blood leading to it, most likely from the injured that he sent to the infirmary.
However, before he opened it, the room transformed in his eyes into a black space with no light.
'Damnation.' Sunny thought as he realized he probably fell for a trap set by the awakened.An arrow coming from his right shot out towards him as he narrowly dodged by his wits alone. Sunny slammed his fists onto the ground, which caused rubble to be sent out, temporarily removing the illusion that covered his vision. He saw as clear as day a young tan man with a pointy hat holding a bow behind a couple of crates; his hands were covered with mists that seemed endlessly clear yet clouded at the same time, both magical but real. It messed with his mind that Sunny didn't notice the man loading another arrow until it was too late, as it was shot forward and stabbed into Sunny's head.
Luckily, it didn't reach too deep due to his tough exterior, but it still hurt and blinded him for a moment as a wave of pain washed over him. Sunny used his shadows to get a hold of himself to use their unobstructed vision to send himself towards the man.
As if waiting for it, he quickly conjured up another illusion for Sunny; this time he made himself a cage and quickly made it so the surrounding cages were moving, making him quickly lose sight of the cage that was the man. This led to Sunny's tendons from his feet being cut, which caused him to lose mobility in one leg as he keeled. Hoping that the man would grow arrogant and attack him blindly, Sunny prepared for a surprise attack, and yet it never came. Confused, Sunny saw the final illusion disappear from his eyes as he realized that half the empty cages from earlier were, in fact, not empty.
Their half-blurry eyes, quickly unblurred as if stuck in their own illusion, broke free as they looked around, and all of them locked in on Sunny, who was still kneeling. From his Creepy shadow, he could see the pointy-hatted man send a smirk and a wink at the kneeling Shadowspawn as he quickly entered the infirmary door and casted and final illusion to make the door blend with the wall.
From there, all the creatures, the weakest being a Fallen Monster, launched themselves at Sunless as he heard faintly a young man laugh in the background.
***
First of all, I want to apologize to all my readers out there (those who got this far at least) for not posting for two months. A lot of things happened - and don't worry, I'm fine now - in my life that I had to attend to; however, I never forgot to come back to this, even if it took two months.
Second, assuming nothing bad happens I'll go back to weekly updates, so I'll finish around August if things go well.
Lastly, if you're wondering why this chapter seems... lacking, it's because I'm rusty; however, I'll bounce back next chapter, hopefully.