"I have to ask..." Moonlight said after a moment of quiet treck.
Of course she did. The time Sunny's mouth felt sour, his throat burning and tongue heavy. Now he had to run into one of the most talkative people he knew. In a forest where the slightest sound attracts danger, no less.
But even in his silence he still did somehow managed to attract the snake so it wasn't as flawless a tactic as he made it out to be.
"About what?"
"How did you... that snake, how did you kill it on your own?"
In response, Sunny held up the sword, an obsidian blade just slightly visible under the smoke it emitted, with a red stringed blood soaked handle.
Before she could ask the obvious follow-up question, Sunny answered it;
"Got it from a giant spider that was attacked by the Detested Deceiving Beast."
After another moment, Sunny spoke again, knowing well she must have been confused by what he had said.
"It's a giant bat thing that talks... The spider could also talk."
Now saying it all aloud, Sunny realised just how ridiculous it all sounded. Just how unbelievable it all was. Had he not lived through it all he would definitely think himself a madman.
"Okay... Makes sense," Moonlight replied, returning to face the path they were following.
Sunny looked down at the burn on his forearm caused by the remaining snake venom on Trinity's corpse. He felt a sting of resentment for the very beast he had just massacred.
There was a possibility that it was only an animal seeking prey so it may feed. There was a possibility that to it's perspective it was either she died or it died. It had reacted obeying its nature.
Sunny did not care about all this. Still, he wished that he could kill it again for murdering a member of his family.
"No one here is real," Moonlight spoke, as though she had read Sunny's mind.
"We're in a world weaver's world," she continued, "I've read about them before. They create world's and use your memories to create the specifics– people, places, all that. If you have a weak mind you forget the original world."
Sunny remembered how difficult it had been for him the first days to figure out which world was real. He remembered how he had felt as though the original world was a dream.
He heaved a sigh of releaf.
Had it not been for the spectator room he would have already forgotten the true world.
Before another word could be uttered, Sunny noticed multiple grey threads rushing towards their direction. Immediately, he gripped his sword firmly.
With the directions of the threads, the creatures would be on both sides. As such, hiding amongst the trees was out of the question.
As anticipated, shadows flooded the smoke, making Sunny and Moonlight instinctively duck for a bush.
They were either fleeing from something or hurrying to get somewhere.
"Scavengers," Moonlight whispered.
The whisper immediately made Sunny notice her blood stained self, with her hair pulled back in dry blood and her face messily wiped.
He had been lost in thought the whole time that he hadn't noticed she must have ran into creatures too.
With the amount of noise she often made there wasn't any possibility she didn't run into them.
"With a carcass that big, they'll be busy for a while," she added as they returned to their track. "How did you kill something that big again?"
Again, Sunny held up the smoking sword.
Moonlight stepped on his path, looming over him.
Sunny lowered his sword, trying to step past her. She remained blocking his path.
"I don't know, okay? It just happened. I lost my temper and..." He said, keeping his voice low.
"And a forty foot long snake with the girth of a tree ended up dead?"
Sunny looked at her for a moment before taking a deep breath. He didn't know just what exactly
she wanted him to say.
"I had a... smoking spider sword?" He lifted it, as if it was supposed to be a valid answer.
Moonlight stepped back, revealing the numerous wounds she had, and a makeshift bandage from cloth wrapping around her stomach.
"I can't access my system here, so what you did there isn't really explainable."
Sunny immediately thought to himself that there must have been something wrong. He could access his spectator room. It was difficult, but it was still achievable. Still, he didn't have any other access to his system apart from the spectator room.
Was the spectator room not part of his system? He wondered.
"The spider must have given me some power with the sword," he said dismissively as he finally stepped past her, following the black thread. "That carcass won't last forever, Moonlight. We have to find Luna."
"What even makes you think she's that way?" Moonlight hissed, following him.
After a moment of silence, Sunny answered, "A hunch."
Silence befell the journey until they had to rest.
Sunny's feet ached from all the stones and fallen trees he had to overcome on the path. His wrist was sore from carrying the sword, and his back ached for some reason. It felt as though he was carrying something heavy on it.
They found a stone and rested on it, Moonlight holding her would as she slowly lowered herself onto the stone.
His stomach growled, breaking the silence.
" Here," Moonlight held out a piece of raw meat, "Heart, it's fine," she added, explaining what it was after seeing the look on Sunny's face.
He felt weak, he knew if they were attacked he wouldn't be of any help in the state he was in. With how injured Moonlight was, he couldn't simply let the duty of protecting both of them befall her.
Holding his breath, he brought the heart up to his mouth, taking a bite of it and forcing himself to chew and eventually swallow.
"I'd prefer if it was overcooked," he finally said after a silence of trying to ignore the foul taste of copper and raw meat in his mouth.
Moonlight laughed before taking a liver from a makeshift pouch that was just a cloth wrapping up various meats and berries.
" Well you'll have to forgive me, princess, the royal chef will be informed," she snorted before placing a couple berries on the liver and biting into it, her face grimacing in disgust before putting the liver away.
After forcing another bite, Sunny handed back the liver, trying to spit out the aftertaste to no success.
"Have you seen any of the others?" Moonlight asked after a while when they returned on the trek.
"Yeah, a while back. They were trying to fight off a horde of creatures, making noise to attract more."
Sunny noticed how she was looking at him, as if she was waiting for him to explain how he got out of the battle and what had happened to the others.
"I figured they would buy me some time to get as far as possible from the creatures," Sunny shrugged dismissively, as if it was perfectly normal to leave multiple people to die and feel nothing then singlehandedly slay a giant creature for killing one person.
"Oh... Oh well."
Sunny thought she would be, in some way whatsoever, upset. He didn't know just how long she had been with those people, considering the fact that she had been in that world for five years. Or just how close their real versions were to her.
Still, he was relieved that he didn't have to get nagged about how he should have put himself in danger for some strangers in order to be crowned hero, a ruler of a forsaken kingdom.
A screeching scream suddenly tore through the air, the smoke shifting uncomfortably from the sound– a sound Sunny recognized almost immediately.