Six days later, the cohort had almost reached the safe haven of the Citadel. The speed with which they traveled reduced significantly due to the heavy wounds the Fire Keepers had sustained, so all things considered, it was a very good result.
As days went by, their healer had continued tending to his companions, so by now, most had already recovered — except for those like Shakti with especially grave injuries, of course. Those would only be healed after they had returned to the real world and then came back. Even then, their physical bodies were going to sustain serious internal damage and require a prolonged period of treatment.
As the sun disappeared in the Sky Below, the cohort reluctantly made camp. From where they were now, only a handful of islands separated them from the Sanctuary. However, some of those islands were populated by Nightmare Creatures too dangerous to attempt traversing their hunting grounds, so the Fire Keepers were going to have to make a big detour.
Since traveling in the darkness was a big risk, they had no choice but to spend another night in the wilderness and continue their journey tomorrow.
Sunny didn't mind.
When everyone fell asleep, he quietly turned into a shadow and slid unseen between the lookouts. The darkness of the night might have been a threat to them, but to him, it was an ally.
For Sunny, it was time to hunt.
He had been venturing alone into the deadly expanse of the Chained Isles for the past five nights, and this one was not an exception.
During that time, Sunny had taken more risks than he usually would, challenging Nightmare Creatures that he had studied before, and those that he knew almost nothing about. Hunting the latter ones was a deadly endeavor, but with Saint's help, he managed to emerge victorious from each battle without sustaining too many wounds.
The Undying Chain had also played a big part in his success, since even when Sunny received damage, it blocked most of it. Nothing had been able to pierce the bleak steel of his new armor yet.
…Gliding across the heavenly chain, Sunny approached a neighboring island and soared into the sky, then crashed heavily to the ground. The silver blade of the Cruel Sight gleamed, reflecting starlight as it manifested in his hand. Sunny rose to his feet and grunted, then walked forward with a dark expression.
The island he just reached was descending, but still high enough for him to feel the remnant effects of the Crushing. Still, Sunny didn't care. Tonight, nothing was going to stop him.
He was just one step away from fully saturating his cores.
Sunny walked between tall, jagged stones, approaching a large ruin that stood forlornly near the center of the island. He had been to this place and explored it before, so he knew what kind of abominations made their nest in the ancient structure.
The ruin might have been beautiful once, but now, it was warped and misshapen, its walls full of cracks and on the verge of collapsing. Sunny didn't know what purpose it had once served, and how it was destroyed, but had concluded many months ago that a terrible battle must have taken place inside the ruin once.
The clues were in the central hall of the shattered building, where the stones were damaged and looked like melted wax. Its walls had collapsed outward, which told him that whatever force had devastated the structure had come from within, as opposed to from the outside.
Regardless of any of that, he had fought the dwellers of the ruin before. There were two types of Nightmare Creatures inhabiting the island of jagged rocks. The first ones were of the Awakened Rank, and resembled stone gargoyles. They had lived near the edges of the island, and Sunny had already killed most of them, if not all, during his first months on the Chained Isles.
The gargoyles never went near the ruin itself, because there were much more powerful creatures dwelling inside the ancient building. Those were of the Fallen Rank, and looked like beautiful specters. Beneath their eerie beauty, though, hid an ocean of madness, evil, and bloodlust. The first time Sunny had encountered these wraiths, he barely escaped alive.
Luckily, the wraiths only appeared at night.
...And now that he was much stronger and had the Cruel Sight, which had the ability to harm incorporeal enemies, this night was going to be their last.
Summoning his helmet, Sunny looked at the ruin through the narrow slits of his visor, and walked into the darkness that reigned between the ancient stone walls.
***
[...Your shadow grows stronger.]
Sunny growled, jumping back from the ghostly form of a beautiful young woman he had just pierced with the incandescent blade of his spear. Or rather, she had seemed beautiful before showing her true face — a twisted, terrifying mask of inhuman hatred and corruption, ancient madness burning in the dark, bottomless pits of her eyes.
Fighting phantoms had turned out to be much harder than he had anticipated, even if the [Ghost Blade] enchantment of the Cruel Sight allowed him to strike them down. Not only because their movements were fast and unpredictable, defying the logic of combat he was familiar with, but also because their attacks seemed to be able to deal soul damage as well.
In fact, the claws of the wraiths of the ruin were able to bypass armor completely. The Undying Chain mitigated some damage due to its higher Rank, but not enough to make the battle even remotely easy. Currently, Sunny felt weakened and in the throes of terrible pain, as if he had spent too much time in the vicinity of the Broken Oath.
'Curses…'
This just went to show that one could never feel safe in the Dream Realm. After receiving a Transcendent armor, Sunny had allowed himself to become too complacent. He should have known better than to forget that, no matter how powerful a person was, all it took to die was one mistake.
Every power had a flaw, after all.
But still, he wasn't going to retreat now.
As an ear-piercing scream echoed from the stone walls, growing closer and closer, Sunny gritted his teeth and summoned the runes.
Shadow Fragments: [1994/2000].
He raised the Cruel Sight and faced the direction of the eerie shriek with a grim smile.
'One more to go…'