(i recommend on not reading this chapter because there are not much lore or massive changes and is quite boring in my opinion :/ )
Sunny was expecting to first look at the place where his arrival to the Dream Realm was going to take place from above, just like it had happened at the beginning of the First Nightmare. Back then, time had magically moved in reverse, giving him an opportunity to see hints of what he was going to face.
Instead, immediately after hearing the greetings of the Spell, Sunny found himself blind and drowning. As he instinctively tried to open his mouth to scream, salty water rushed inside, making him choke and twitch. Immediately [The Shadow] Attribute started to adapt his body from the salt and calm himself down while underwater.
More than that, he couldn't see anything. No, it's not that he couldn't see — it's just there was no source of light around. Usually, darkness wasn't a problem for Sunny, but, for some reason, his sight wasn't working anymore. Maybe the seawater he was submerged in was blocking it.
(Clarification i don't know if this is supposed to be true darkness but i think it is so he can't see through it but he can still see within darkness just not true darkness and cannot get his power up inside true darkness!)
If it wasn't for the special space perception that the affinity to shadows gave him, he would have been completely disoriented. With its help, though, he barely managed to understand which side was down, and which side was up.
Luckily, Teacher Julius's lessons had included swimming. Swearing to thank both the old man and Master Jet once he came back, Sunny forced himself to stay calm and began to swim upward.
In a few long and tense seconds, his head broke through the surface of the water. Sunny was finally able to draw in a deep, hoarse breath.
'Breathe, breathe. You're still alive!'
Thankfully [The Shadow] Attribute was adapting his body to calm himself down letting him think properly.
After sucking in enough air to soothe his slightly burning lungs thankfully [The Shadow] has already adapted him to having his lungs from being destroyed and compose himself to a certain degree, Sunny carefully spun in the water, trying to take in his surroundings.
What met him was an endless, jet-black expanse of undulating waves. Above them was an empty black sky. There was no moon, no stars, just a dark vastness of repressive nothingness. Sunny blinked a few times, cold dread taking hold of his heart.
"Okay where the fuck am i perhaps the storm sea maybe but improbable considering theres no storm happening."
As he was gripped by a momentary panic, a remote sound suddenly drew his attention. Sunny turned around and saw a triangular dorsal fin moving in his direction. Luckily, it was still hundreds and hundreds of meters away.
'Wait… if it's so far away… then how come I can see it so clearly?'
Despite being submerged in water, Sunny still felt like there was suddenly cold sweat all other his body. By his estimation, that dorsal fin was at least five meters tall. It was rapidly approaching, growing visibly larger with each second.
'Damn you, [Fated]!'
With eyes full of horror, Sunny spun again, desperately trying to find something — anything! — to save him. And there, a short distance away, he finally noticed a black mass protruding slightly above the water.
Not wasting even a second on thinking, he started to swing his arms and legs, swimming in the direction of the black mass with a considerable speed. However, no matter how fast he swam, the giant shadow of the unknown creature was closing the distance between them much faster.
And then silently commanded his own shadow to wrap itself around his body. Instantly, his speed increased twofold. And [The Shadow] was making sunny swim faster and more efficiently soon enough he was finally gaining distance from the shark or whatever hell it was.
Sunny reached the black mass, stretched out his hands, and pulled himself out of the water. He rolled away from the edge, scratching his skin on the uneven rocks, and jumped in fright when the whole surface underneath him shuddered, as though something massive had collided with it. Thankfully he had around a ten seconds to spare so he got to the middle before the entire thing shuddered.
As Sunny backed out, terrifying jaws appeared from the water, with rows and rows of giant teeth, each one as long as he was tall. Thankfully a colossal tentacle suddenly broke through the water and rose into the air like some strange, black tower. Before too long, it fell down, entangling the owner of the giant maw and pulling it back under the water.
'Oh it was running away it wasn't actually going to eat me alive and considering the amount of darkness here i am pretty sure ill regenerate forever and ever until theres light.
A few seconds later, the dark sea was calm again, as though nothing has happened. The indifferent waves continued to move silently under the lightless sky.
***
A few minutes later, Sunny was pretty sure that nothing was going to devour him, at least not immediately. With that certainty, he was finally in a state of mind to stop trembling and explore his surroundings a little.
The black mass he climbed onto turned out to be a single stone platform of around twelve meters in diameter. Its surface was mostly flat, covered with grooves, and somewhat dry. Due to the regular shape of its edges, it seemed more like something man-made than a natural formation. But then again, here in the Dream Realm, it was hard to be sure that something "man-made" was actually made by humans, as opposed to…
Better not to think about it.
The platform wasn't connected to anything, existing as a tiny island in the sea of darkness. There wasn't anything else above the water for as far as Sunny was able to see. After discovering that fact, he also realized something else.
It was that he was wet, cold, and completely naked.
'Huh.'
In his defense, the clothing situation was the last thing one would think about when trying to save themselves from abyssal monsters. Also, it's not like someone was here to witness his stark paleness and private bits.
"Oh... Better summon puppeteer's shroud."
Sunny summoned the Puppeteer's Shroud and watched as dark-grey garments covered his body. It even came with a pair of high, soft-soled leather boots. Clad in grey fabric and lusterless leather, he suddenly felt much safer.
Sunny didn't exactly need the armor he just needed the protection it gave because [The Shadow] already adapted his body to the cold so his always in the perfect body temperature.
After that, sunny sat down and tried to remember the unique characteristic of every explored region of the Dream Realm he could think of.
Unfortunately, none of them matched this starless, dark void.
'Of course not,' he thought with a bit of resentment. 'Even if some unlucky humans had ever come here, I doubt that they were able to return to the real world alive.'
Not with those things hiding underwater.
Not yet desperate enough to leave the platform and try to swim away in search of land, Sunny decided to wait and see. Maybe something was going to change as time went by.
With a soft sigh, he habitually looked for his shadow. However, due to the total darkness that surrounded him, it couldn't really be seen. He just barely felt its presence.
"This must be a paradise for you, right? All this gloom and not a star in sight!"
The shadow, of course, did not answer.
"Anyway... good job earlier."
The shadow again didn't answer.
"Whatever im literally praising you and don't even care how... Gloomy."
With a nod, Sunny lay down, using his hands as a pillow. Not thinking about much, he stared into the black sky and waited. The sound of the undulating waves was, actually, quite relaxing.
After a while, he closed his eyes and listened. Minutes merged together, growing into hours.
… Suddenly, Sunny caught a slight change in the sound of the sea. It was as though something was shifting. He opened his eyes and noticed that one corner of the sky was slowly turning grey. Soon, a glimpse of a pale sun could be seen rising above the horizon.
A new day had come to the starless void.
And with it, the dark sea suddenly surged.
The black, opaque water suddenly surged and seethed, as though a living creature desperately trying to avoid the pale light of the coming dawn. Sunny slowly rose and, after some thought, carefully approached the edge of the stone platform.
Looking down, he blinked and then kneeled to make sure that what he saw wasn't an illusion.
The sea seemed to be receding.
Slowly at first, and then faster and faster, the water level was dropping. The circular stone formation he had been taking shelter on used to barely protrude out of the waves, but now there were meters and meters of wet rock between him and the restless surface of the sea.
As the sun climbed up, the monstrous ebb tide continued. Soon, Sunny found himself standing on the edge of a tall cliff, with a hundred-meter drop separating him from the churning waters. Beneath him, the rock formation broadened and changed shape. However, from his vantage point, it was hard to determine what that shape was, exactly.
At that time, the dark surface of the water began to be punctured here and there by sharp crimson blades. As it dropped even further, it was as though a crimson forest was slowly rising from the black depths. The "trees" were made of something resembling coral, growing chaotically into each other and stretching toward the sky.
They were colossal in size, with irregular protrusions entwining and merging together, looking monumental and eerie in the black and red reality of the sunlit void. The labyrinth formed by this strange reef stretched as far as Sunny could see, broken here and there by protruding cliffs, sudden chasms, and distant natural features.
"Yep this is totally an un — explored area of the dream realm... Fuck you [Fated]!"
His small circular island had turned into the peak of a strange, towering, irregularly shaped cliff. Looking down, he felt his head spinning.
***
Despite the sudden disappearance of the dark sea and its hidden monsters, Sunny was in no rush to climb down from his circular stone platform. Firstly, he felt that if the sea was able to disappear, it was surely able to come back, perhaps at any moment.
Secondly, he did not know what dangers the coral labyrinth was hiding. Perhaps there was something even scarier than the owner of the giant tentacle down there.
But that did not mean that he wasn't going to explore.
Coming back to his spot in the middle of the platform, Sunny sat down and commanded his shadow to separate itself from his body. Then, taking control of it, he approached the edge of the platform and nimbly slid down.
Habitually moving from one shadow to another, he began the descent. At this moment, Sunny was glad that shadows had no weight and were not affected by gravity.
While the shadow was busy climbing down, Sunny yawned.
"Say, don't you think that you need a name?"
Although his shadow was already too far away to hear him, they still could communicate through their shared connection. Of course, the fact that it could did not mean that it would. The shadow was sort of taciturn, mostly because it didn't have vocal cords and was unable to speak.
Plus, its temper wasn't that great.
"How about… Shameless? No? What about... Shady? Also no? Hm, what about something simpler, like… What? Well, do you have suggestions then? Alright, alright! We'll shelve this conversation for later."
By the time he was done with this short monologue, the shadow had already reached the bottom of the cliff. The range of [Shadow Control] was not limitless, but it was just barely enough to explore their nearest surroundings.
Sunny also realized another thing he was only relying on his second aspect and never even tried to use his main aspect.
"Well i might get rusty sooo... Do i jump down and break all my bones again orr... Nevermind."
Entering the labyrinth, Sunny found it to be extremely disorienting and convoluted. The paths between coral pillars were sometimes broad, sometimes narrow. They twisted and turned without any logic, often leading to dead ends or even back to where he started. More than that, some paths entered inside the "coral" mounds, turning into dark tunnels.
The labyrinth was vast and multi-layered, making Sunny's head hurt after multiple fruitless attempts to memorize the layout of the nearest pathways. In the end, he sent the shadow up, forcing it to climb on top of the crimson forest and start jumping from one sharp coral blade to another — knowing full well that he himself would not be able to do the same.
Soon, he circled the strange cliff and froze, scared by the sight of what was happening in its shadow.
There, the corpse of the giant shark-like creature that had briefly pursued him the previous night was laying on the ground, the pillars of coral around it shattered and broken.
'Why don't you look at the the mother fucker from yesterday is dead and uhh... Cut in — half.'
More precisely, half of it was there, with grotesque innards spilling out of the terrible wound and stretching far away into the distance. The other half was gone, as though it had never existed.
Around the corpse, hundreds of smaller monsters were scurrying, tearing away and devouring its flesh bit by bit. Each of them was about two and a half meters tall, looking like a weird mix of a demonic crab, a centaur, and a nightmare.
They had four pairs of long, segmented legs that ended in scythe-like protrusions. At the front, a human-like torso was protruding from the carapace, also clad in thick chitinous armor. The head, if it was even the appropriate word, was situated directly on top of the torso, with no neck in between. It had two narrow eye slits and a viscous-looking mouth with several slimy mandibles. Instead of hands, the monsters had two enormous pincers.
Currently, they were all using those pincers to tear off chunks of meat off the desiccated corpse and stuff them into their mouths. From time to time, a fight for an especially juicy piece of meat would break out, ending up in a few monsters being torn apart and quickly devoured by the victors.
Sunny swallowed.
'I wonder what that would taste like... Shark meat probably taste horrible to be honest... Yuck gross.'
His luck, like always, was awful.
'At least I don't have to wonder why the labyrinth feels so empty. All the inhabitants are having a party!'
Sunny felt weirdly angry for some reason.
'And they did it without me how dare them i will eradicate their lives then their parents and then their grand parents even their grandma's fuck them grandma's.'
Feeling a little bit comprehensive about turning his shadow's back to the monsters, Sunny commanded it to look back and study the cliff he was taking shelter atop of. Something about it was making him feel uneasy.
The shadow turned around and looked up, taking in the sight of the strangely shaped cliff. It took Sunny a few minutes to shift his perspective and recognize it for what it was.
'That's… a finger. That's a hand. That is… a sword?'
He blinked.
'It's a statue.'
Indeed, the cliff was man-made. It was an ancient, colossal statue at least two hundred meters tall. The scale of it was so massive that it boggled the mind. From what Sunny could see, it depicted a knight clad in an elaborate plate armor, with seven shining stars carved into his breastplate. In his hands, he was holding a gargantuan sword, pointing it to the ground.
However, the most striking thing about it was that the giant stone knight was missing his head. In fact, the roughly circular platform Sunny was standing on turned out to be the top of his neck. And by the looks of it, the head wasn't missing by design — it was as though something, or someone, had violently tore it off at some point in the distant past.
Sunny walked around the platform, looking down from all sides, but didn't notice the head lying anywhere near.
'What on Earth is this place?'
Without any hints to find the answer, he led his shadow back to the giant's neck and settled at the western edge of it, studying the feasting monsters.
'it would have been better if i got transported into the bahamas or maybe hawaii actually scratch they are probably infested with the strongest nightmare creatures to ever exist.'
He didn't move until the sun was about to set.
Just as Sunny expected, as soon as the sun touched the horizon, a deafening rumble could be heard coming from somewhere below. The monsters instantly stopped their feast and scurried away, some hiding inside the coral pillars, some simply burying themselves in the soft soil.
A few minutes later, the first streams of black water appeared in the labyrinth. Their volume quickly grew, and soon an apocalyptic flood devoured everything around. The sea was returning with the approach of the night.
Sunny stared at this unimaginable process, thoughts churning in his head.
In an hour, the circular platform was the only thing above the dark waters once again.
With an empty stomach and a head full of thoughts, Sunny returned to the center of the platform and sat down. After a while, he beckoned to his shadow and said:
"Wake me up if anything happens."
Then, he closed his eyes and tried to fall asleep. His consciousness quickly slid into the sweet embrace of darkness, giving Sunny some well-needed rest.
In the middle of the night, however, a sudden impulse stirred him awake. Sunny jumped to his feet, his groggy mind full of tense apprehension. He was afraid that the owner of the giant tentacle had come back to finish the job.
Or maybe some other horror from the depths had sensed him and decided to snack on human meat.
However, the sea was quiet and calm. He didn't hear any abnormalities around the knight's statue.
"What is it?" Sunny whispered, addressing the shadow.
The shadow silently pointed him in a particular direction.
Turning his head, Sunny squinted. He quickly understood why it was a good idea to wake up. Otherwise, he wouldn't have been able to see…
Out there in the distance, a few kilometers away, a small orange light was shimmering in the darkness. Its reflections were rising and falling with the movement of waves.
It was too far away to make out any details, so Sunny just stared at it for a while. Pretty soon, the light disappeared.
"Yeah those guys are getting attacked how much you wanna bet on it."
Shaking his head, Sunny lay back down and attempted to return to his slumber. However, this time sleep was escaping him. Pangs of hunger were still not unbearable, but slowly becoming more and more intense. The thirst, however, was worse.
In the end, His most priced possesion [The Shadow] adapted his body to endure the hunger better letting sunny sleep... Wait hold on how does one sleep if they are already asleep?
Well anyways, sunny slept like a baby whilst already sleeping like a baby... That really needs a better terminology.
***
As soon as the morning came, the pincer monsters crawled back from their hiding spots and rushed to the giant carcass to continue their feast.
Sunny watched them for some time and then walked to the opposite side of the platform to take a look in the direction where he had seen the mysterious light the previous night.
At a considerable distance from the headless statue, five or six kilometers away, the ground rose naturally and formed something akin to a hill. On top of that hill, an especially massive coral pillar rose to the sky.
From the looks of it, its upper branches were just high enough to stay above water in the night.
"That's where the light came from right gloomy... Oh right you can't exactly talk my bad."
"I could have technically swam there last night if i really wanted."
His shadow just looked at him like he was a mentally insane patient... He could technically be classified as a mentally insane patient if he were to get a check — up but sunny wasn't going to do that what if he wouldn't be able to kill people anymore that'll just be depressing.
Sunny knew he was smart when he was in professor julius classes it would only take one try for him to understand something all he really lacked was the proper education to showcase his brilliancy... Why am i glazing myself huh weird anyways, sunny made two questions they were extremely important.
First of all — would he be able to find the way through the labyrinth and cover that distance during the day? And more importantly, should he even attempt to do it? After all, there was no indication that the source of the mysterious light was something beneficial, as opposed to dreadful and deadly.
He was sure if there was an dreadful and deadly nightmare creature there he could probably kill it considering his vastly superior strength and combat knowledge he obviously only knew the basics of the matter but he was pretty sure it was good enough to kill an nightmare creature one rank above his own not to mention are there any shadows? Probably not.
Not having enough information to make a choice, Sunny settled back to study the monsters. He did, however, send the shadow to investigate as far into the labyrinth as the range of Shadow Control allowed, hoping to chart at least the beginning of the path that could potentially lead him to that hill.
Logically speaking, he was as safe atop the headless statue as he probably could be in this strange place. The only problem was, he was going to die soon because of thirst or hunger.
Both problems were solvable if he were to venture down. He could desalinate the seawater in a number of ways taught to him by Teacher Julius, with materials that were present pretty much everywhere in the Dream Realm. He could also prepare traps and hunt a pincer monster to eat. With their massive size, just one of them would be enough to feed him for weeks.
He could easily see such a routine: hunting by day, returning to the statue at the approach of the night. It was probably his safest choice.
However, this way of doing things lacked one vital element: the potential for improvement. It was well suited for keeping Sunny alive, but had no way of giving him hope.
Well, technically sunny could just fight his way through considering [Undying Madness] and [Fear Madness] was probably good enough to destroy and annihilate everything in his path but it would still hurt like hell and that type of pain would stick around longer than any scars could meaning if he goes way too insane he would be closer to a nightmare creature than human and he would rather be human that nightmare creature because how could he protect Rain if he couldn't even save himself from madness.
So it was decided sunny would only use his main aspect when necessary and only use his secondary aspect for now to keep his sanity and humanity in check.
So he is constantly thinking about Rain and how he will get her back one way or another and that he will spoil and give her anything and everything she could ever wish for any maybe one day he could reveal that he's her long — lost brother... Day dreaming to the extreme yes but was it effective in restoring sunnys humanity and sanity. Extremely.
That sounds like an crazy ex trying to get his girlfriend back but hey who cares that's just how sunny likes expressing his deep and love for his sister even though he doesn't know how to express it properly he will probably learn it some way or another down the road.
Well anyways back to the main topic of discussion. That pretty much meant that the only choice left for him was to try and reach the source of the orange light. And if Sunny was really trying to attempt it, he had to do it before the pincer monsters were done consuming the giant carcass.
That way, at least, the surrounding segment of the labyrinth was going to be free of them.
Firm in his choice, Sunny decided to leave the headless statue the next morning. He would spend the rest of today exploring paths through the labyrinth and preparing himself mentally.
With that, he closed his eyes and concentrated his perception on the moving shadow.
***
In the night, a sudden storm descended upon the dark sea. Sunny was stirred awake by the shadow in time to prepare himself for the crushing winds and the pelting rain.
Usually, rain always put him in a bad mood. But this time he was too thirsty to think about anything except for freshwater. Staying low so as to not be blown over the edge of the platform, Sunny cupped his hands and waited until they became filled with rainwater. Then he raised them to his mouth and greedily drank.
Thankfully [The Shadow] adapted his body to the germs of the water which could probably kill sunny but who cares... Well he cares about his own safe being but that wasn't important right now what was important was food which he clearly didn't have.
Strikes of lightning illuminated everything above the churning sea. If anyone were to see Sunny now, they would have noticed a wide grin on his face.
The storm continued to rampage for several hours. Sunny crouched in the middle of the platform, enduring its rage. More than once, a tall wave would crash into the headless knight's neck, threatening to wash him away. But Sunny held tight to the deep grooves in the stone surface of the platform, sticking to it like glue.
By morning, when the storm finally dissipated, all of his muscles were sore.
Which was immediately fixed by [The Shadow] this thing is extremely dandy.
But there was no time to waste.
As soon as the monsters came back to the carcass, with a few stragglers quickly following behind, he slid over the edge of the platform and began to nimbly climb down.
Sunny had to thank Wilderness Survival classes once again, since he had been taught the basics of rock climbing as well. Teacher Julius was adamant about giving his student a crash course in all possible forms of traversal. Additionally, Sunny had already scouted the optimal way down and memorized the best holds and indentions to grab onto with the help of his shadow.
Soon, his feet finally touched the ground.
Despite the fact that leaving the safety of the headless statue was going to put him in considerable danger, Sunny instantly felt his mood improving. Remaining passive for the last couple of days did not suit his character well. Now, even if his plan were to end in failure, at least he was going to go down doing something that he had decided to do.
Trying and failing was better than not trying at all.
The black mud was deep enough to slow him down, but not to the extent he had been afraid of. With some practice, Sunny was soon able to walk at an acceptable speed. What's more, as long as he stuck to the shadows, his steps were light and silent, producing no squelching noises from the mud.
He headed for one of the paths that were supposed to lead him to the distant hill and entered the cool shade of the crimson labyrinth.
Immediately, a strange feeling enveloped his mind. It was as though the world beyond the labyrinth did not exist anymore, and all that was left were its twisting, dark paths.
'This thing almost seems endless.' sunny thought and remembered something. 'Wasnt there like an anime where there was an arc about uhhh. That one demon slayer infinity castle arc or something like that.'
Shaking his head, Sunny sent the shadow to scout ahead, hoping to be notified of any latent danger in advance, and began to move forward. His life now depended on whether or not he would reach the distant hill before the sun began to set.
He didn't even want to think about what would happen if he were still inside the labyrinth once the dark sea came back in an unstoppable flood.
The shadow moved ahead of him, not meeting any hurdles. Sometimes it would climb high to scout the direction of different paths, allowing Sunny to choose the optimal route most of the time. However, he still had to backtrack a considerable distance once or twice, ending up either in a dead-end or on a path leading in the wrong direction.
Despite that, everything seemed to be going smoothly.
Sunny even had time to carefully study the interior of the labyrinth, noticing more details of its composition, as well as a frightening amount of unrecognizable bones hiding in the mud beneath his feet.
Because of how well things were going, he lowered his guard a little. His arrogance was also to blame — with his extensive preparations and skillful control of the Shadow Scout, Sunny subconsciously patted himself on the shoulder and assumed that everything was going to be fine.
That's why, when the mud directly in front of him started to move, thankfully he was fast enough to dodge the massive pincer that could have probably cut his body in half but considering sunnys superiority it would probably only hurt but it would still make him bleed.
"Oh you gotta be fucking with me."
Sunny didn't know if it was his fault or was it [Fated]'s fault but all he knows is that his going to beat the living shit out of this stupid mother fucker.