Chapter 50: Sacred God
Hugo stared at the skeleton, utterly dumbfounded, his words echoed in the silent chamber of the ship, replaying in his head over and over again...
This talking Skelton before him... He had the Omnitrix.... The real one.
The sheer impossibility of this situation was simply astounding. Out of the infinite vastness of the dead Dream Realm, out of all the ruins and corpses of history, he had stumbled upon the one being who had personally wielded the genuine article.
It felt less like chance meeting and more like a devious scheme laid by fate itself...
"You…" Hugo finally managed to speak, his voice shaking slightly. "How? When? And… why?"
Eurys stared at him with empty sockets, looking at him blankly.
"You are really quite annoying, you know that?" The skeleton let out a long sigh. "But, oh well, It's not a story worth telling in full so I'll give you a short summery: I found it on the outskirts of my home realm then I used it to commit multiple… nefarious deeds And then, when the time was right, I unbound myself from it."
Hugo absorbed eurys words carefully but they clarified nothing. He'd always assumed that Vilgax had been its primary wielder in the ancient past... But Eurys was claiming to be the first wielder of the relic and his casual dismissal of it showed that he didn't care about the subject at all...
If he discarded it, where did Vilgax get it? And did he even get it?
Was the relic passed down? Stolen? Or destroyed? If not then where was it today?
"What sort of 'nefarious deeds' are we talking about?" Hugo pressed, leaning forward over the crystalline table.
The ancient skeleton chuckled.
"You know, Nothing major. Just the sort of thing one does with unlimited transformative power Like, for instance, turning into a god and slitting the throat of a particularly nasty divine fellow."
"So you did actually slit a god's throat" Hugo stated, the surrealism of this conversation was getting more ridiculous by the minute.
He was discussing ancient history with two Skeltons atop a spaceship, being chased by a great terror while also crossing an endless nightmare desert filled with countless abominations...
Although the situation was ridiculous, Hugo could not help but believe eurys words... specifically the one about slicing a god's throat.
After all, Slitting a throat and killing were two different things, and the Skelton before him seemed to be using his words in a devious manner to mislead him... Which reminded him of a certain treacherous shadow.
"What kind of god was it?" Hugo asked, trying to pin down the full truth
"Hmm, A Divine Titan."
"I gathered, But which one?"
"Not one of the sev— six gods. " Eurys said, catching himself on the number for some reason.
Before Hugo could probe the odd stumble, Azarax chimed in, his voice booming with malicious glee.
"It was War God's favorite Divine Avatar! Can you believe the gall? This bastard here had a nasty, protracted history with that one but more then that, A slave killing the chosen vessel of War God! Isn't that uttuerly preposterous? Uttuerly Blasphemous! And uttuerly absurd! Oh how I loved every single moment of it!"
Eurys turned his skull slowly toward his fellow skeleton, his playful aura was gone once again, replaced by a cold intensity.
"He did not need to know that."
Azarax snarled at the god slayer, his bony jaws clacking violently that it almost fell off.
"Oh, fuck off! What are you going to do, kill me? Oh, right! You can't!"
Eurys didn't reply, merely turning back to Hugo with a defeated look.
This revelation was pretty significant... Eurys had used the Omnitrix to temporarily become a god and attempt to assassinate the avatar of a major deity...
The sheer scale of that action must have had terrible consequences... Well, it was quite obvious considering he was hanged on a tree for all of Eternity.
For some reason, Hugo had an idea about what imprint eurys might have used to assault the divine Titan...
'He must have used the Celestialsapien imprint...' He knew of the locked, uncorrupted DNA of a cosmic being of immense power deep within his soul sea, The omnitrix had refused to give him any answers or information about it but he could tell it was incredibly powerful...
It was the only thing he could conceive of that might grant the power to challenge a Divine Titan's avatar, even if briefly...
If he could ever access it himself… The thought was both intoxicating and terrifying.
Such power, at his hands, could make him do whatever he wanted... He could potentially bring back his mother from the dead... and go a step beyond that. He could cleanse every single Nightmare creatures out there, wether it was of the great, cursed or even unholy rank ... With such power, he could reclaim America, Europe and protect the waking world from being devoured by the dream realm... But it was locked away, behind barriers he didn't even understand...
This deeply frustrated Hugo... He had the power to get out of here, save everyone and everything but he could not access it...
Shaking off the thoughs, Hugo focused on the skeleton before him once again... This was a unique opportunity, even if he couldn't unlock a divine imprint, it was still a chance for him to understand the full potential of the Omnitrix.. and it's weakness, of course.
But there was something he simply could not wrap his head around no matter how he thought about it...
"May I ask" Hugo began, choosing his words carefully. "why did you discard it? If it could make you a god, even temporarily, why give it up?"
Eurys attempted a shrug which looked incredibly uncanny.
"It was the only way to become a god properly."
Hugo raised an eyebrow. "A god? As in, the Divine rank?"
"No, As in the Sacred rank."
Now Hugo was genuinely confused, His understanding of the hierarchy was clear: dormant, awakened, ascended, transcended, supreme, sacred and divine...
Sacred was the rank before divine...
Then, Why would Eurys surrender an artifact that could grant him the power of a Divine being—even if temporarily—just to become a Sacred being permanently? Couldn't he have simply achieved the Sacred rank and kept it?
"But why?" Hugo pressed further. "Retaining the Omnitrix should have allowed you to eventually master it even as a sacred being, Why discard the key to unlock every door just to walk through one?"
Eurys chuckled dryly, as if remembering a long hidden memory.
"You really don't know anything about true apotheosis, do you?" He leaned forward slightly, his attention focused on Hugo and the omnitrix. "Tell me, child, What separates a mortal from a god? Not a powerful being but a true god."
Hugo fell silent for a moment, how was he, a mere awakened, was supposed to know the key to the sacred rank?
There was also the fact that Hugo lived in the era of the nightmare spell, where the only god that wasn't corrupted is the omnipotent nightmare spell...
After a long moment, he spoke hesitantly
"The ability to create things from nothing?"
The skeleton shook his head "Even mortals with the right Aspects can create things from nothing, so No, it's not that."
"Then I have no idea" Hugo admitted.
The sacred skeleton nodded, as if he'd expected that.
"What separates a god—Sacred or Divine—from a mortal is that a god is their power. They do not wield it, instead they manifest it from the very core of their being. A true god does not need a sword to strike down an enemy, instead their will itself is the blade. They do not need a shield as their existence itself is enough to stop all attacks And they certainly," he said, his empty gaze lingering on the omnitrix " don't need a fancy watch to display power borrowed from noble creatures."
He let the words hang in the air for a moment before continuing:
"The essence of godhood is sovereignty over the self, To wield your own power, refined from your essence without any outer infulece. The Omnitrix… is basically the ultimate crutch for anyone walking the path of ascension, it is A glorious, universe-spanning crutch but a crutch nonetheless. If I had kept it, I would have always been always relying on it, I would have been studying its catalog, mastering its forms one by one but never forging my own and most importantly, I would have been a curator of power but never a source of it. " he paused for a moment, his skeletal expression strangely wistful " To become a god, I had to cast it aside. I had to stand alone, with only what I was."
The fact that Eurys had just confirmed he was once a Sacred being—a god in his own right— barely registered in Hugo's mind, which was reeling with the implications for his own path...
Would the Omnitrix hinder his ascension in the future? The thought seemed absurd for now, He was struggling to become an Ascended, let alone a god...
Contemplating godhood was the fantasy of a madman as no human of the waking world had managed to reach past transcendance...
And yet, Eurys was a living—well, existing—example of someone who had walked that path... And so His argument and insight was logical and wise...
But Hugo also knew he would never give up the Omnitrix.
For him, It wasn't just a tool; it was his Aspect, his Flaw and his very identity. It had saved his life more times than he could count and It was the reason he was alive untill now.
To discard it would be to discard himself.
"So, in theory," Hugo said slowly, working through eurys logic "if I continue walking the path of ascension with the Omnitrix bonded to me… will I be unable to become a god?"
Eurys seemed to consider this deeply, his skull tilted a little...
The silence stretched for a long time, with no one talking and Azarax watching with a keen interest, as if waiting for his favorite part of the story...
"No," Eurys finally said. "That is not necessarily the case for you."
Hugo blinked. "Why?"
"The Omnitrix I possessed was a Divine relic, An object of immense power that bonded to my soul, yes, but that was all it has veer been, an object. It was not my Aspect and It certainly was not my Soul Sea, It was simply key I carried." He gestured with a bony hand toward Hugo's wrist. "The Omnitrix you possess is a different matter altogether, I do not know if it is because your own unique Aspect has fused with its essence or because Weaver's Spell has done something… strange… while replicating it, But that device on your wrist is not a true Divine relic anymore."
"What?" Hugo looked down at the familiar dial. "But its description says it is, Its rank is Divine."
"It may have been a Divine relic once but It is not anymore, As of this moment, it is one with you. It is your soul, your aspect and your flaw. It is not you and the Omnitrix, it t is you , who is the Omnitrix. In a very real sense, you are a living fragment of that relic. Therefore, even if you wished to remove it, you could not, You would be tearing out your own soul core."
Hugo fell into deep contemplation, he had considered the omnitrix a part of him but he did not think it was this literal....
And now he could not help but wonder why that was the case.... why was his omnitrix different from the one eurys had used?
The only explanation he had was deeply rooted to the events of His First Nightmare…
the laboratory… and the injections of strange energy that had saturated his soul, body, spirt and shadow.
That energy had been Omni-energy, the fundamental force of the Omnitrix and When he had finally found the central chamber and touched the divine device, it had bonded with him because it recognized the familiar energy coursing through his very being...
The energy within him had acted as a conduit to fuse him with the divine relic.
Aspect: [Unique Being].
Aspect Description: [Your blood, flesh, bones, mind, soul, spirit, and shadows are altered in strange ways.]
Hugo remembered his original, dormant Aspect runes, now he Finally understood what The experiment had done for him... it had prepared his entire being to become one with the omnitrix.
The Omnitrix simply completed the process.
Of course, the intentions of the Galvans was simply to complete the omnitrix considering that, before him, no one was able to bond with it due to it's dangerous nature.
Knowing all of this, Hugo couldn't help but wonder...
Did he become part of it, or did it become part of him? Even if The distinction was meaningless now, it was still... An important thought process for his sanity..
It was then that another thought struck him...
The series of events was simply too perfect to be a mere coincidence... An aspirant with a uniquely malleable soul and body, subjected to an experiment that infused him with exotic energy, who then stumbles into the central chamber containing the very source of that energy? The mere fact that he had just the aspect needed and ended up getting the nightmare containing the omnitrix was also... Improbable to say the least..
It felt less like chance and more like… a carefully made scheme... As if someone had arranged the components with a specific outcome in mind...
As if fate itself had done it on purpose.
Eventually He pushed the paranoia down and looked at Eurys, it would do him no good to trouble his mind with something that grand for now...
"Then what happened to the Omnitrix after you discarded it?"
"I have no idea, I assumed it returned to its creator."
"Azmuth?"
"Don't know, I wasn't that close to the grumpy frog."
Hugo sighed in frustration, Eurys was a vault of information but he only opened it to dispense very cryptic fragments...
"Why aren't you willing to tell me directly? Surely, as a fellow wielder of the omnitrix you'd feel some… kinship? Maybe A desire to guide ?"
Azarax, who had been quiet for a while now, suddenly burst out laughing.
"Oh, that's rich! As if this heartless bastard knows anything about companionship especially after all he and the other eight have done!"
Eurys didn't even glare this time, instead He simply turned his hollow gaze to Hugo and when he spoke, his voice was flat and simple.
"It is simple, really, My past is not a story worth remembering. It is better left forgotten, along with this dead world and its dead gods so Let me be clear: I will not answer any more questions relating to the Omnitrix's history, my personal history, the specific nature of the gods or my home. Consider those topics sealed forever."
He paused once more before adding an ominous line.
"But I will say this: you must ascend. As fast as you possibly can."
Hugo frowned, The shift in conversation was simply too jarring...
'why was he talking about my ascension all of a sudden?'
"Why?"
"Boy, are you so spiritually blind that you cannot sense the hundred thousand seeds of Corruption festering within your own soul sea?"
'Ah...' Hugo's grimaced terribly. 'That... Of course'
Each locked DNA imprint in the Omnitrix's vast archive was sealed behind a sickly barrier of Corruption, with only Nineteen were clean so far...
But then again, Over a million more were not. This was an invasive infection woven into the very fabric of his Aspect for some unknown reasons... He had long suspected that this accumulated Corruption would one day become a critical problem, after all it wasa ticking bomb in his soul.
At least now he had a clearer path... Which was to ascend to higher ranks to strengthen his soul and resist it, or somehow conquer a million pseudo trials to cleanse each imprint...with the latter being an impossible task, of course...
Seeing the dark understanding dawn on Hugo's face, Eurys let out a dry chuckle.
"Ah, You seem to have finally realized that the 'omnipotent divine relic' comes with a price, hadn't you? A pity.... To be saddled with such a… parasitic potential."
Azarax nodded vigorously, bones rattling. "Indeed! The poor wretch is a walking Paragon of corruption! And at the same time he's bonded with a relic that was meant to preserve all life created by the gods! How utterly vile! How despicably ironic! How… sad!"
Hugo didn't respond, instead He just leaned back in his seat, looking from the boastful, warlike supreme to the cryptic sacred god Infront of him...
A profound sense of worry washed over him as hugo realized how terrible his current situation was.
He was transporting two ancient, immensely dangerous beings that seemed to have lost their sanity centuries ago... One seemed driven by pride and a love of chaos while the other by a deep sense of cynicism and a ton of secrets he refused to share...
He had gained terrifying insights into the nature of his power and the world(s) itself but he still had no solution to any of his problems... Only more warnings and deadlines...
'This is going to be a very, very long journey.'
———
[On the other side of the Dream Realm – The Chained Isles]
In a grove of twisted, iron-like trees that wept viscous, black sap, a myriad of figures moved with lethal grace against a horde of nightmare creatures.
A dark figure, covered from head to toe in a strange shifting dark mass flowed through the battlefield, His movements precise with terrible tendrils sprouting from his back.
The black tachi in his hand, left no trail of light as it brushed against the thick, fungal hide of a large grey wolf, battling it with a savage battle style.
Not far away, a figure of blinding contrast was currently fighting another large wolf like abomination, she was Radiant and incandescent resembling a true star made entirely of white flames.
Nephis awakened battle art revealed itself as she moved around the grey wolf, dancing around it as she dodged it's feral strikes
Surprisingly enough, she did not use her sword, for she was practicing her awakened ability.
White flames, pure and hungry, manifested themselves from the depths of her radiant soul cores.
Yet, unlike her time on the forgotten shore, the soul flames did not burn without reason, instead they materialized themselves into a myriad of different constructs, some lances, others as swords and some as just spikes, all made of beautiful white flame.
She hurled flaming constructs at the fallen abomination piercing it's flesh and casuing the terrible fire to consume the abomination.
Not far away, a tenebrous warrior made purely of shifting shadows was fighting against two more wolves of the same species as the wolf. Strangely, the marble saint was coated in strange dark carapace giving her more flexibility.
Sunny, who was battling the strongest of the wolf pack was getting annoyed with the bastard. It was a fallen devil, which by all means shouldn't be something a newly awakened should be fighting against but he did not care.
He let the shadows swallow him as he dissolved entirely.
Sunny used his awakened ability [Shadow step] to teleport directly towards the abomination shadow. He solidified, then shockingly, he turned into a dark mass of tendrils that was supposed to be impossible, considering his body and jumped towards the wolf, the dark mass of tendrils piercing it's skin then materializing two long dark cythes, he cut off the wolf head directly.
There was a wet, shearing sound, and then a heavy thud.
The creature writhing ceased.
[You have slain a Fallen Devil: Grey Wolf.]
[Your shadow grows stronger.]
Sunny landed lightly on the decaying forest floor beside the collapsing corpse, reverting into his normal state.
He dismissed the upper half of his Transcendent Shadow, the symbiote retreating from his arms and torso back into his core, leaving him in the dark armor of [Mantle of the underworld].
He looked at the scene before him, seeing the dozens of dead wolves. Saint and nephis already finished thir opponents leaving the ground painted red.
He then looked at Nephis, who stood a short distance away, the fierce light in her eyes dimming to their usual icy embers. The sustained use of her Awakened ability, [Flame manipulation] left its mark— on her due to her flaw.
Wordlessly, Sunny summoned the [Endless Spring] and tossed it to her. She caught it, offering sunny a beautiful smile and drank greedily from it, colors slowly returning to her face. No thanks were exchanged and None were needed.
For a moment, they stood in silence, the only sounds being the hiss of the wind and the distant, eerie calls of other horrors from the labyrinth of islands stretching far to the horizon.
The Chained Isles were a harrowing, beautiful islands of floating landmasses, some dwelling with danger and terrifying abominations. Although it was far less dangerous then the forgotten shore especially now that they were awakened.
Three months had passed since their Awakening, Three months in which the world had gone mad over the legend of the Forgotten Shore and it's survivors.
The tale of Changing Star's leadership and the heroic sacrifice of the Paragon of Purity was on every news feed, in every academy lecture and on all social media platforms.
There was No awakened who hasn't heard of the bravery of the Shapeshifting monster with a heart of gold, there was even a movie being made to increase the propaganda...
But Sunny knew it was all a carefully crafted lie, a narrative spun by the great clans and the government to capitalize on the returned heroes and avoid impossible questions...
Hugo hadn't sacrificed himself, He'd been trapped because he didn't have a choice And Sunny had been an unwitting accomplice... He was the reason his friend was there, alone and possibly dead... All because of a stupid worthless plan...
The guilt was a cold stone in his gut, constantly eroded by sharp edges of frustration and helpless anger. He spent most of his hours in the dream realm hunting and pushing himself and Nephis to their limits because the alternative was stillness... and in stillness, the memory of Hugo's grim smile before he threw him into the gateway would resurface, followed by terrible pain.
He hunted with Nephis the most because she was the only one who could match his pace and she also shared his singular, consuming drive for strength.
Effie and Kai were powerful allies and his friends, yes but they had lives, connections and other matters besides the dream realm and their lives as awakened, unlike him, who aside from occasionally watching rain from afar, had no actual life in the waking world.
While This might have seemed like a dark way to live, it had given him a way to increase his power by an incredible amount in just three months. By now, it hasn't even been a full year since his first nightmare and yet he had gained so much power...
And he was still going to gain much more, after all, Cassie's visions had revealed the location and nature of their Second Nightmare meaning they could ascend without the help of the government or the great clans.
The path was clear but it required strength they did not yet possess. They needed to gather power, gather more memories and prepare just a bit more.
Although Sunny was still a human... And so he had pressed Cassie relentlessly for any glimpse of Hugo, any shred of information she could get about how he was doing... But The blind seer would always apologize, her face always contorting in sorrow and sadness.
Whenever she had dreams and visions relating to to Hugo, she saw only a "gigantic emptiness," a void that swallowed her sight.
It was as if Hugo had been erased from the tapestry of fate itself, which was something Cassie had noted even in the forgotten shore ever since his death and resurrection which made sunny head spin with multiple questions.
What exactly happened during Hugo's death?
Did his resurrection do something to him?
Was the creature that helped them on the shore the same Hugo they traveled the labyrinth with?
And mord importantly was he even alive?
All of these questions made sunny nearly go insane, he had no answers and no clues to check on his friend which widened his confusion and discomfort even further...
On the other hand, Nephis and her Fire Keepers— the nearly three hundred awakened from the Shore who had chosen to follow her, many out of devotion to Hugo's memory— were under immense pressure.
The great clans, especially Valor, circled them like vultures. Valor had already made several attempts to recruit Nephis and the fire keepers , seeing her independence and her followers strength as a threat. A threat they could not get rid of, and so they attempted the newt best thing, to pressure her into forcfully joining valor.
Her only option right now was to ascend, to challenge the Second Nightmare and become a master, only then would she gain enough standing to not be crushed by the clans...
But nephis and Cassie were not content with this, instead they formed a dangerous plan. They planned to enter the second nightmare with at least two hundreds of the fire keepers and come out of it all as ascended champions of humanity, essentially creating a second Miracle as a continuation of the forgotten shore.
Of course, Nephis was not cruel enough to risk the lives of people that followed her, she asked them and they agreed on their own free will.
Furthermore, she had Cassie, a seer with a sacred aspect that could predict wether this plan would work or not, and luckily, Cassie had managed to see a vision where the entirety of these entering the nightmare had survived without a single casualty.
Which was not to say they have become lazy, it was a second nightmare after all which had killed numerous awakened before them but that only served as more motivation for them as they slowly gathered thier powers.
It was a mad plan, born of desperation and sheer will. It was the only way to carve out a space of autonomy and force the clans to negotiate with her as a power, not absorb her as a resource.
Sunny's goals aligned perfectly with hers: get stronger, at any cost and So, they hunted together, tackling prey that would make other Awakened cohorts flee, grinding their souls against the whetstone of constant combat.
With a soft groan, Sunny summoned his runes, the familiar golden symbols materializing Infront of him, It was almost like a ritual by now...
Name: Sunless
True Name:Lost from Light
Rank:Awakened
Shadow Cores:[4/7]
Shadow Fragments:[22/4000]
Attributes:[Fated], [Sparks of Divinity], [Child of Shadows], [Bloodweave], [stone Shell]
Aspect:[Shadow Slave]
Aspect Rank:Divine
Aspect Abilities:[Shadow Control], [Shadow Step]
Aspect Legacy:[Shadow Dance]
First Relic:Claimed.
Second Relic:Claimed.
Third Relic:Unearned.
Fourth Relic:Unearned.
Fifth Relic:Unearned.
Sixth Relic:Unearned.
Seventh Relic:Unearned.
The [stone Shell] attribute was his most recent ability, gained from saturating the counter on [Mantle of the underworld] which had miraculously transformed into an attribute fusing with his souls and granting him many incredible abilities.
His mastery of [Shadow Dance] had advanced significantly with Nephis's help; their sparring was less practice and more mutually assured destruction forcing breakthroughs and making both of them advance in their own seperate combat styles.
Serpent had evolved into an Awakened Devil, gaining [Formless] ability which was useful if he needed more manpower.
Most crucially, he had gained—and then, on Cassie's urgent advice, preserved— Shadow God's lineage, the [Drop of Ichor].
Cassie's vision had shown her that his Weaver lineage, dormant and immense, would eventually consume and nullify any other divine lineage he absorbed and So, he stored the Ichor in his soul sea, hoping that he could absorp it if he learns how to control the [Bloodweave] attribute in the distant future.
After all, The loss of the Shadow God's lineage would be an incredible waste, not only to himself but to the entire world.
Though he couldn't gain shadow god lineage for now, he still had his blessing which granted him His own collection of Shadows.
Shadows: [Carapace shadow], [Marble saint], [soul serpent], [shadow symbiote]
[Carapace shadow] had grown into an awakened devil that was used to augment [marble saint] which is an ascended demon.
Serpent was an awakened devil with incredible versatility and lastly, there was [shadow symbiote], the transcendant echo Hugo had given him...
Shadow: [Shadow Symbiote]
Shadow Rank:Transcendent
Shadow Class:Devil
Shadow Description:[And it never stopped searching for its lost twin…]
Shadow Attributes:[Superhuman], [Healing Factor], [Enhanced Senses], [Vessel]
Shadow Abilities:[Bond], [Shapeshifter], [Parasitize], [Devourer]
[Superhuman] attribute description: [This shadow grants it's master increased physical powers].
[Healing factor] attribute description: [This shadow can heal from all attacks]
[Enhanced Senses] attribute description: [This shadow's senses are unnatural]
[Vessel] attribute description: [This shadow is an ever-changing vessel]
[Bond] ability description: [This shadow can bond with it's Master]
[Shapeshifter] ability description: [This shadow can change it's form]
[Parasitize] ability description: [This shadow can forcfully bond with other creatures]
[Devourer] ability description: [This shadow can devour the remains of creatures to gain various abilities]
Devoured abilities: [0/7]
Its similarity to the Carapace Shadow was unnerving, as they were both creatures capable of bonding and augmenting others, but of course, the shadow symbiote was far more powerful and versatile capable of bonding with him to share it's powers.
Of course, it did not grant him transcendant powers, but it did give him it's abilities and durability making sunny capable of fighting creatures way above his rank and class. He slowly begun to realize how lucky gunlaug was to end up with such an echo..
Normally, an Echo couldn't become a Shadow unless its shadow was in Sunny's soul sea But the symbiote, through[Vessel] attribute and its prolonged bonding with Sunny, had gradually transformed, its nature overwritten by his own Aspect until it became a true Shadow creature no different from serpent and saint.
It was now his primary weapon and armor, layering over the [Marble Shell] to grant him monstrous physical power and resilience.
He now had two Awakened Devils, an Ascended Demon and a Transcendent Devil. It was a concentration of power that dwarfed any other awakened in history, including changing star herself.
He could already fight and kill Masters which was... Terrifying when he thinks about it, he hadn't even been an awakened for that long and yet his powers were this big..
Sunny was growing stronger at an unnatural, terrifying rate which made it harder and harder to hide himself from the prying eyes... But alas there was nothing he could do about it for now.
Exhaling a breath he didn't realize he'd been holding, Sunny looked at Nephis's face and felt his heart beat a little faster. He composed himself and asked:
"Should we head to the Shipwreck Island next?"
Changing Star raised an eyebrow as she looked at her companion.
"Isn't it better to continue hunting until we form our Titan cores? We need more essence."
Sunny shook his head dejectedly.
"For you, maybe, You're already a Tyrant, You can absorb soul shards efficiently and gain fragments from killing anything but For me…" He gestured vaguely at his own chest. "Forming a fifth core, let alone a Titan core, would take at least a year of hunting like this, even with my powers. Besides, Cassie was clear, I shouldn't form my Tyrant core before we enter the Nightmare so I'm following her advice."
Nephis finally nodded, a crisp, decisive motion. "True But you realize what that means, right? We'll have to deal with that Fiend in the Night Temple with our current strength... Cassie was certain that he would escape even if we don't bring the mirror fragment to him... He's a wielder of a divine aspect and most likely is a terror or a titan..."
Sunny's expression turned grim as he remembered Cassie's warring...
Her vision had informed them of the unstable prince of valor, mordret who wielded a divine aspect, possessed war god lineage and the son of a sovereign... Who was also raised by the most deranged sovereign... The dreamspawn.
Mordret was a catastrophe waiting to happen, a prisoner who would inevitably escape and become a mortal enemy in their plan, especially now that they've destroyed his mirror beast on rhe reckoning Island.
Even though they had taken the mirror fragment dropped from the creature to a very secure place, Cassie still told them that mordret was fated to escape. Something that agitated sunny a great deal...
Nonetheless, Their objective in the Night Temple—to retrieve the final knife—had to be achieved no matter what, after all it was necessary to complete the nightmare. And if the prince of nothing somehow escapes and tried to harm them, sunny would make him wish for imprisonment.
"He can't invade our souls," Sunny said, his voice low. "We're both divine aspect bearers meaning that His main trick is neutralized against us, so We just have to be smarter, faster and make sure he never gets anywhere near that shard."
Of course, sunny didn't believe his own reassurance. Someone with a divine aspect, imprisoned for years, festering in hatred… would be cunning, patient and ruthless beyond measure... Sunny knew that very well, because in his darkest moments, he saw those same traits in himself.
Their plan was audacious and dangerous , consisting of many parts.
They had to Clear the corrupted demon from the shipwreck on the shipwreck island, and then have the fire keepers and Cassie repair it through the special roots she found.
After that, they would have to Retrieve six of the enchanted knives scattered across the Chained isles.
Then they would have to reach the night temple, Retrieve the final knife and lastly, with all the knives collected, descend into the abyssal sky below and find the entrance to the Ivory Tower—where the Second Nightmare seed is located—with an army of two hundred Awakened champions at their backs.
Of course their was still many smaller task they would need to preform in between, such as saturating the soul cores of all the fire keepers who were challenging the nightmare with them and gaining some memories and echoes but they should be able to manage.
Even though sunny was in a foul mood most of the time due to a lot of stuff... He was glad that he wasn't alone, that he had nephis, Cassie, Kai and Effie with him... In his mind, he could only hope that Hugo, too, had someone with him even if that thought seemed nearly impossible...
With one final exhale, he and nephis left the island before the crushing descend upon them.