After the Seed of Nightmare had been destroyed, something unexpected happened. A Gateway took its place, turning the Ivory Tower into a Citadel.
At the same time, the Dream Realm anchors of the cohort members shifted, becoming tied to it. Masters did not have to travel to another world every time they slept, but they still needed a Gateway to return to reality. Changing an anchor was as easy as making use of another Gateway, but there lay the problem.
The only way to leave their new Citadel was to either brave the Crushing, somehow, or to go through the portal to the Ebony Tower and rise from the depths of the Sky Below on the flying ship.
While that made the Ivory Tower incredibly safe, it also meant that there were no Nightmare Creatures around for them to hunt. There was no point for Sunny to go to the Dream Realm at all, especially after he had explored Hope's former prison, finding nothing of particular interest inside.
...It also meant that Mordret was most likely tied to the same Gateway. However, the Prince of Nothing had never shown himself. Either he had found a way to change his anchor, or he had chosen to remain in the waking world as well.
In any case, there was no safe way for Sunny to collect shadow fragments in the Dream Realm. He was also cut from his main source of Memories, which he had hoped to put on sale through the Emporium.
At first, Sunny was very unhappy with this situation. He was both much stronger and still far behind Nephis in terms of raw power. Even though there was a vast gap of two Ranks between them now, his soul lusted to grow even more.
He could never have enough strength, never be powerful enough to protect himself and those he cared about from the vicissitudes of life. He was still too weak to challenge fate.
…But after a few days of peaceful life in the waking world, Sunny had started to slowly change his mind.
In the past three years, his power had grown tremendously, and at a breakneck pace. While that was extremely beneficial overall, there was a negative side to such speed.
His foundation had turned unstable. He had been so preoccupied with gaining more power, more strength, deeper insight, greater understanding… that he had not spent enough time actually assimilating all these gains into a coherent whole. Internalizing and absorbing all the lessons he had learned into his very bones was very important, yet he had neglected it for the lack of time and opportunity.
He needed time to truly make the vast power he had won his own.
Additionally, there was something else that concerned Sunny. His... mental state.
Ever since he had been infected by the Nightmare Spell at sixteen, his psyche had been subjected — sometimes by the circumstances and sometimes through his own volition — to incredible abuse. Sunny prided himself on the fact that he never broke, no matter what ghastly horror and gruesome agony he had to endure.
And there had been plenty.
However, he also never forgot the conversation he had with Master Jet on the way to Shadow Blade Kurt's execution. He knew that Awakened, no matter how great and powerful they seemed, were also the most likely to crack. The nightmares they brought back from the Dream Realm haunted them, and many succumbed to the relentless strain.
Sunny had been gutted, beheaded, and burned. He had watched friends die or be left behind. The amount of torturous pain he had gone through could only compare to the amount of mental anguish he had experienced. The Red Colosseum, the nightmares, and all the rest… it was enough to crush a dozen people. And yet, he still stood tall.
But for how long?
While Sunny considered himself to be a resilient person, maybe even incredibly so, he was not prideful enough to think that he was better than every other human out there. Would his soul and mind continue to remain strong if he continued to carelessly abuse them, or would small cracks appear on their surfaces?
Maybe there were countless cracks on them, already.
…In the end, he had decided that taking a break to consolidate his foundation and give his mind time to heal was worth it. The situation with clan Valor, while unpleasant, was not critical. It just demanded time and caution. Slowly but surely, the sides were going to come to an understanding and find a compromise through negotiations.
As Masters of considerable renown, Sunny and Cassie had enough influence and weight to reach a favorable outcome in these negotiations, especially because fifty of the most promising Awakened of their generation were following Song of the Fallen.
He was going to use the time before that happened to his benefit.
So, although the past six months had not exactly been exciting for Sunny, they had been very fruitful.
He had spent a lot of time practicing his combat skills and Shadow Dance, properly assimilating everything that he had learned to elevate his mastery of battle to a new level. He also had to relearn a lot of things to adjust to his new power as a Master, and adjust all his techniques to this new incredible reality.
One of the more valuable discoveries he made during this time was that the inherent problem he had been struggling with — the threat of losing himself to the formlessness of Shadow Dance — was easily remedied by a simple thought exercise. He just had to remember his True Name. No matter how far gone he was, it always brought him back.
Apart from that, every single aspect of Sunny's combat ability was vastly improved by his newly profound control of shadow essence, as well as the time he had taken to fully absorb all of his rich battle experience.
Battle techniques were not the only thing he trained, though. He also dove deep into the intricacies of Shadow Manifestation, first learning how to properly wield it, and then leveraging his cunning and creativity to push its uses to their limits.
His new Ability was an incredibly versatile one, so there was a lot he could do with it. Not only did it have the potential to be powerful on its own, it could also be weaved into every other facet of his battle performance in unexpected and insidious ways. Almost every day, Sunny discovered something new he could do. The possibilities were simply limitless.
That limitlessness, however, was its own problem. Just because Sunny could do a lot did not mean that it was wise to do it. So, it took a lot of time to find the most effective and efficient ways to use Shadow Manifestation. Slowly but surely, his arsenal of true and tested tricks and methods grew.
He practiced each one until they became as instinctive as his combat techniques, so that he could use them without wasting even a split second on thinking about and concentrating on the desired result.
Lastly, there was sorcery.
After the initial breakthrough he had made in the Nightmare, Sunny spent a lot of time widening the scope of his understanding of spellweave. This was perhaps the most unassailable and tough field of expertise he was trying to study, since there was nothing and no one to teach him how to do it.
The scope and complexity of the subject were boundless, and all he could do was blindly stumble in the darkness, learning tiny bits through trial and error. It did not help that he could only experiment with Memories, which were a rare and finite resource to him.
Sunny worked around that limitation, somewhat, by turning mundane things into Memories and experimenting on them instead. However, that produced its own obstacle — he needed soul shards to do so, and soul shards were very expensive in the real world.
And he could not procure them in the Dream Realm, for now!
To solve his resource problem, Sunny turned to the only source available to him… the merit points provided by the government, which could then be exchanged for various valuable things.
To get points and fund his research, he had compiled another paper with the help of Teacher Julius. The Exploration Report on Chained Isles, by Ascended Sunless… did not produce as big of a ripple among the general public, but caused a real explosion in the Awakened academia.
The data about all the ancient Nightmare Creatures, the culture, and the bizarre nature of the Kingdom of Hope was a true boon to the collective knowledge base of humanity. Sunny, of course, kept the most sensitive pieces of information to himself, but just what remained brought him vastly more contribution points than the report on the Forgotten Shore.
Information from Nightmares was ten times more valuable, after all, since very few people ever challenged them, and even fewer returned alive.
These contribution points, as well as other benefits and privileges he had become entitled to as a Master, allowed him to not only pour his mind and soul into studying sorcery, but also kept the Brilliant Emporium functioning without a constant influx of his hunting trophies.
Sadly, even that was not enough.
…And hence, Sunny found himself teaching young Awakened at the Academy. While that was not the best and most efficient way for a Master to earn, it was still rather profitable for someone in his situation.
Sitting in the empty auditorium, Sunny sighed and looked at his communicator. A pale smile appeared on his face.
"She must be already here…"
Today was a special day for more than one reason.
A few days prior, Master Jet had suddenly contacted him. This was not too strange, since they interacted often in these past six months… but this time, something about Soul Reaper's voice sounded a bit off. Not exactly bad, just… different.
She had told him that she had some good news, and some bad news, and requested a face-to-face meeting to discuss an important issue.
That meeting was about to take place at the Instructor's Cafeteria.
Shaking his head, Sunny stood up, dismissed his chair, and walked to the door.
"I wonder what Master Jet has to say… gods, was there really a need for all this mystery? She made it sound as if the world is ending…"