Shadow Slave - After the Third Nightmare - A different Story

Sunny watched all the awakenings with ambiguous feelings. Those who awakened experienced a jump in raw power so potent to the point when all gym equipment could be considered useless to them. It had to be mentioned it cost him some money. He already feels that his golden heart is about to bleed. Regardless, that money is still going to actually not mean anything due to how many soul shards he accumulated. In the picture of thousands of soul shards, just a few spent for gym equipment is nothing. But what's actually worse, and that thing cannot be really depreciated, it's that most of the military weapons in the world is going to be not much of a use anymore, and soldiers are well-versed in exactly that.

Those men, and women require more specific training in using swords, bows, spears, shields, etc. Luster made sure that they can do something with them, but something in terms of Dream Realm is far from enough.

The issue definitely had to be addressed. So at first Sunny decided to bestow all freshly Awakened with [Mark of Shadows]. The current Soul Serpent apparently possessed an ability to make lesser versions of itself, and leave them in the soul of the other. By testing it with Aiko he determined that the resulting minion can be controlled by the target. What's more incredible is that the minion has some qualities of the original Soul Serpent. The minion is a snake, which isn't that far from being a serpent. It takes two forms: the form of a tattoo that improves control over the essence, and the form of a weapon of the master's choice. What's more the minion establishes a connection between the host, and the original. Soul Serpent can access the soul of the target through the minion, and make a personal appearance there. Things go even further. The target receives an affinity to shadows, can see in the dark, and move more sneakily, turning it into a slightly boosted version of the Child of Shadows. The cherry on top of the cake is that the mark allows him to empower the marked with his shadow helpers.

Having such a treasure in his hands there weren't many more sensible things he could do with it. He planted a Mark of Shadows onto every single Awakened under him, be it soldiers, or Aiko's employees. That way the benefits could scale a bit.

"So is this what we're getting instead of Aspect?"

It was that guy who complained earlier about not even trying to find a way to awaken on his own. Sunny took his criticism with humility, but the curiosity of the guy was almost offending. He wanted to know many things, and yet Sunny couldn't offer much knowledge. How was he to explain to the experiment he's the experiment?

"You don't have to wield it, if you don't want to. Just claim your aspect, and you won't have to pretend anything."

"And how are we supposed to do that?"

"Don't ask me such complicated questions. It's going to be your aspect, not mine. I don't know how get you the aspect you want."

"You're talking if it's up to us what kind of aspect it's going to be."

"Because indeed it's this way. You might think it's just the Nightmare Spell who bestows aspects. In some way it is, but the Spell while unjust has its own very perverse has also its perverse fairness. My first Nightmare determined that I had to obtain an aspect related to shadows due to attributes it got me, but the quality of my aspect was determined by what I accomplished during the trial. It's similar for you."

"How is it similar?"

"You have some talents, skills, desires, predispositions, and perhaps even attributes. It's up to you, what kind of aspect you'll obtain, though I can't explain how it works nor I know what you can obtain. By the myth of creation the Gods, and humans were created from some divine flame. That flame still dwells in the humanity, and contains the potential to form an aspect, and the flaw. Aspect is just a realization of that potential. There's no trick to it, only the material, and the choice."

The guy sighed, and then smiled,

"Sounds fair. If you were able to grant aspects we would be overly blessed, wouldn't we? It's already too much that some generous man is going to spend thousands of soul shards, and I would like to point out that with my money I can only buy a few. We owe you."

"You'll have time to think how to stop owing me. Now that you have Soul Cores you ought to saturate them a bit, which means… It actually takes a thousand of awakened soul shards to saturate a core."

"What about dormant ones?"

"It doesn't work. It won't give you anything."

"Damn…"

Sunny could relate to the frustration even if he had it many times worse. He had killed hundreds, and thousands of abominations, but because most of them were of a lower Rank it didn't bring him any gains, except for the essence replenishment.

"Don't complain about it. If you come across dormants, in most cases you can easily overpower them, and though you don't have any use for them, someone else can awaken. They can also be used as a material for minor Memories. One's garbage might be the other's treasure. And of course, the industry will still buy them from you. If you manage to live long enough, you're rich. Now go inside."

Soldier's eyes goggled when from their strange benefactor's shadow a strange chest emerged. It wasn't a Memory. They've seen Memories already, and as far as they could tell Memories don't appear like this, out of the shadows. What's more strange it's that they remember that chest as they've already seen their Master turning it into a tower, and a storage room.

But far as they recall it wasn't alive.

Someone else asked.

"Master Sunless, what happened to your storage Memory?"

"I modified it into something fancy. Now come inside. explanation wouldn't change anything."

Soldiers compiled, but felt some significant repulsion. That chest… seemed to have a lot of personality. And last thing you expect from your tools it's for them to have personality. On the other hand they could already tell nothing would happen to them. It apparently would go against Sunless' interest. When they finally all entered the doors closed behind them, and the chest retreated into the shadow. They panicked for a bit, but there were no tremors or anything happening. They were just in a rough spacious room lightened by shadow. They can't even feel the movement of the Memory, because… well, the interior of the coffer was just a separate dimension. But there was something more going on here. They couldn't tell what it was, but they had dreadful feelings.

The space around them was changing. It was the same, however something was different about this place as it fell strangely silent. Not to mention it was several times bigger inside than before.

There were a few minutes of anticipation, and wonder about what is happening, but soon the doors of the 'chest' were wide open. Their eyes were greeted with the sight so out of place.

Their Master was standing outside wearing the same set of unnecessarily elegant clothes as before. But instead of being in the room of stone, and purple crystals they appeared in the fortress made of unknown stone. The most important detail was that they could see the sky.

"Welcome to the Dream Realm, a world that consumes ours."

"Where are we? How did we appear here?"

"Questions… You see, my chest allows me to contain things, including living beings in my Soul Sea after dismissing. Quite like a Memory."

"So were we in your Soul Sea?"

"... Now that you're talking about it, yes."

"So… what were we at that moment? Don't Memories turn into soul essence while being dismissed?"

"Did you feel that you turned into soul essence?"

"Not quite."

"So you have your answer. As for your first question… It belongs to Soul Reaper. We're in Disruin."

As much as Sunny recalls the citadel used to belong to Saint Cor, recently it was given to Soul Reaper. It was a small base. Ironically when Saint Cor captured it, it was already in a ruined state. Many Awakened had to work just to make it defensible. Currently it was relatively safe. The citadel isn't facing any immediate danger, and the fortress was renovated.

It doesn't mean there's no danger. Due to nature of the Dream Realm mundanes can't live here, the Dream Realm would immediately plant a seed of nightmare in them, and currently only Sovereigns know how to stop blooming. From time to time some horde finds their way here, which requires the attention of Masters to solve it. Poisons, unique powers, some so unique it's beyond many Awakened to deal with it. The oldest problems were managed to be either diverted away by Cor, or brutally killed by Jet who took the opportunity to strengthen her Fractured Core further.

Their group arrived next to Gateway.

"Let's do a reminder. Normally we use Gateway just by touching it. We don't know if it's the Gateway itself, we, or the Spell, but the trick with anchoring for the Awakened infected by the Spell is just to touch the Gateway. When an Awakened falls asleep his 'self' drifts away somewhere to the Dream Realm, while his body remains in the waking world. By using a Gateway we set it is as the location where our 'self' drifts after falling asleep. As result we appear in the citadel we're anchored in, not in some random place in the Dream Realm like those Dreamers during the winter solstice. After 'drifting' to the Dream Realm we appear in spiritual body. That body resembles our physical body, but is also a bit different."

"We're here in our physical bodies, right?"

"Yes, I can tell, your bodies don't lay anywhere in the waking world, and therefore you're here in the physical body. Is there something you think about?"

"Master Sunless, if we're going to use that Gateway, where are we going to appear after using it? Can it be we're going to end in a random corner of Earth?"

There was some point to it. Ending up in a random place on Earth in the age of Nightmare Spell can be comparably terrible to being sent to the Dream Realm. If they were to be sent somewhere to North America, it would be a straight up death sentence for them. Not that was true. The case of traveling destinations for not-anchored Awakened was pretty well explored, especially after Sunny returned with the army of Dreamers. After all, Saint Tyris took him to her citadel, and despite that after using the Gateway – he couldn't anchor in a different way – he appeared back in the NQSC. It's the same for everyone else who returned from the Forgotten Shore.

"If it works, you should arrive back in the park."

Everyone, one after another touched the Gateway. Unsurprisingly the Gateway worked, and the soldiers appeared back in the park. Because of that Sunny had to go back with them, and pick them up again. The thing about how 'drifting' to the Dream Realm works had to wait till they fall asleep in the waking world. After short discussion regarding uncertainty of if their going to be pulled in the Dream Realm in their sleep, he used Marvelous Mimic again to make them appear in Disruin at the same time.

Without further deliberations Sunny lead them into fields surrounding the fortress. Along the way he explained different dangers, and rules of approaching abominations, their basic psychology, way of seeing the world. Before long they ran into a pack of abominations resembling insects.

Description of they look… They were just ugly, sharp, and deadly, had pincers, somehow eight legs instead of of six. Most of them were Awakened. No one was even surprised, but still the soldiers looked at them with some shiver, and wonder if they should run for their lives.

"Turn your tattoos into weapons already! I won't let them surround you, but you still have to fight!"

Their master summoned a bone sword, this time it appeared out of sparks, not from his tattoo, and started slashing at insects. All happened with such inhuman timing they barely could see the process. The insects not only lost their legs, but the mysterious power of the word turned them into half frozen statues. In a few seconds ten charging creatures lost their lives.

But even then most insects came through him, and started charging at them. Through gross figures they could spot blind malice dwelling in the eyes. They desired to never see it again. The thought that something hates you this much was hard to bear. It was a striking idea.

Then they shook it off. They were scared, though most of all they were just shocked. When they dealt with the shock, everything was simple. The tattoos slipped from their skins into their hands, and turned into different weapons, mostly swords, and spears. Someone even figured out that a spiked shield can also be a weapon, and add this some defense to the group, and they quite needed it because without armor nothing could protect them from harm in case the skin was reached by the claws, and pincers.

Despite the initial chaos soon the soldiers assumed a simple formation, one that involved using shields to stop the charge, and spears to deal a wound, and covering the line to not allow the large insects to pass through them. It wasn't perfect, but with everyone having pretty much the same, quite versatile ability known to each other it was pretty easy to build some rudimentary teamwork.

Master Sunless didn't move around much. Mostly there were more large insects trying to bite him, but neither was able to do him any harm. Every time something tried to jump at him, he would move away a bit causing them to miss. His terrifying efficiency in dealing with these abominations signified he could already do everything by himself. He just didn't want to.

Meanwhile the little army was still struggling. Many abominations fell to their blades, but they were still outnumbered. The assault fell more even more oppressive. What's worse the soldiers didn't have much experience with their new power, which caused many of them to waste their essence. There were also many situations when someone lost his balance in an attempt to swing their sword, because while the weapons they wielded were much heavier, their weight didn't change much. That left them open, and exposed to attack, which their comrades had to cover. Also it's not like the insects were incapable of making any unpredictable movements or jumping over them.

In the midst of being busy protecting their dear lives some felt a chill. Something much more powerful appeared in the distance, extruding dreadful aura, much more present than the malice of the insects. Actually the distance was meaningless. The monster could reach them in a few moments. It was several times bigger, and much more potent. No one dared to take their attention from the enemy they were engaged, but they could already tell that if it reached them, they would stand no chance, and therefore only death awaits.

At this point their boss decided to ignore insects, and charged at the creature. He made one well-aimed swing, and it froze everything else he cut. Just like that it was finished. The enemy was strong, but their master had to be even stronger.

And then something changed in the swarm. There was a moment of doubt as if something was taken from the abomination. Well, it was still malicious, and hateful, and dangerous, and wanted to kill them, but now that want seemed to be all instinctual and deprived of sense. The soldiers didn't stop there. They took the opportunity to kill the insects and slay the majority of remaining ones.

Soon the pressure diminished, and they finally had time to see the aftermath. They won! It's the first time they could proudly tell they're not only didn't run from Nightmare Creatures, but also they killed them with their own power. The fight wasn't easy, actually far from that, but at least it didn't feel like trying to cut a tree with paper, which was a nice feeling, to fight a fight that is possible to win, and manageable.

"Did you enjoy yourself enough?

Sunny commented on their drained expression, and panting from the sheer exhaustion.

"No, sir."

Master Sunless frowned.

"Good, because it's only the beginning. Your performance… was acceptable. I led you to fight those bastards head on, which is actually my fault. But you didn't panic, and had enough resolve to fight against the enemy that had some advantage, with the power you've just obtained. Not every Awakened is capable of that, especially as weak Awakened as you."

"You know what to do. Start extracting soul shards. I want you to take them all out, and bring them into my chest. Also the ones bleeding, come to my chest immediately. I have a nice trick to show you."