Sunny stopped in front of the battered stone creature.
Today, as the last day of hunting, they had decided to finish off the stone statues, since tomorrow the assault on the Dark City would begin and everyone would be busy defending it.
He raised his sword and shattered the monster's helmet. A fine ruby dust burst into the air as the spell announced its death.
[You have slain an Awakened Monster, Stone Statue]
[Your shadow grows stronger]
[You have received an echo]
[Your shadow overflows with power]
He smiled. He had Santo again.
At the same time, his body tensed, unconsciously preparing for the tearing pain of forming his core.
Seconds passed, and he felt warmth in his chest. He shuddered at the sensation, knowing the pain was already on its way.
The warmth spread through his body, enveloping him completely. Little by little, the heat subsided and vanished, replaced by the familiar cold of his dormant soul.
'Huh?'
He looked at himself, already noticing the new strength in his body. He felt like he could shatter a scavenger's chitin with his bare hand now.
'That's quite a pleasant effect of Shadow Weave.'
To his embarrassment, he had been completely unaware of this secondary effect.
He greeted his new shadow, which, unlike in his past life, was different—seeming happy and peaceful, even a little lazy.
It greeted both him and Glommy, then lost interest in everything and simply began observing its surroundings.
'I'll have to think of a name for you, kid.'
He looked around. Lilia had accompanied them for a few days, but when she believed they were doing fine on their own, he had sent her off.
The team hadn't changed much. Caster, Jack, and Mike were mostly the same, only with slight improvements in their swordsmanship and little else.
Harper seemed to be gaining more and more confidence, which wasn't bad—he just hoped it wouldn't go to his head.
Meanwhile, Patrick.
He turned toward the boy, who was standing in a corner of the plaza with several corpses around him.
'He's a monster.'
The memory of what had happened a few days ago was still vivid in his mind.
- - -
His eyes widened as he stared at the scene before him. An Awakened monster lay on the ground, its head severed by a perfect cut and its body riddled with holes.
Standing before it was Patrick, drenched in blood, his gaze fixed on the corpse.
The reason he was so shocked was that the day before, Patrick had barely been able to face the echo of a scavenger—and with help. And now, just one day later, he had defeated an Awakened monster alone.
The boy's brutal growth was chilling, and that was without even having filled a quarter of his core yet.
A smile crept onto his face.
'It was a good idea to bring him.'
Of course, from his point of view, killing an Awakened monster was a minor problem. But he stood at the top of the food pyramid on the Forgotten Shore, alongside Nephis and the Crimson Terror.
Even lieutenants and people of his level would need some effort to kill one, and only the best hunter groups could boast of taking down similar creatures.
Under all these circumstances, Patrick was frankly and objectively the greatest prodigy he had ever seen—perhaps on his level.
'Or even more.'
- - -
Now he was heading toward a peculiar area of the Dark City—not the Shining Castle, not the walls.
He was accompanying Seishan, who had said she had something to show him.
It was a simple, well-kept stone plaza near the northern base of the city. The surroundings were chaotic, with signs of constant battles visible everywhere.
But what caught his attention the most was a tree. It didn't provoke any strange sensation—it was an ordinary tree, just like one from the waking world, which was odd.
Beyond the tree and before the ruins stood a beautiful stone house, with two large windows and a rather elegant wooden door. The roof was made of stone and had a small balcony where a rocking chair swayed in the wind.
"Is this what you wanted to show me?"
He spoke, clearly confused by Seishan's intentions.
"No. It's inside the house."
They continued forward, and now he noticed several figures lurking around the area.
'Hunters.'
He had noticed a strange number of hunters in this zone. They seemed to be protecting something very valuable here.
They reached the door. The woman stepped forward and knocked softly.
"Lilia, it's me."
He could feel a couple of shadows inside. One stood up slowly, as if being careful not to break something.
She approached the door and opened it without hesitation.
The girl with the piercing gaze he had met a few days ago was gone. Now she wore a simple dress, as if it were part of her usual remembered way of dressing.
Her blonde hair now fell freely, and a placid expression rested on her beautiful face.
But none of that drew his attention.
Instead, his gaze went to the girl's arms. There was a bundle wrapped in silk blankets, its face nestled against the woman's chest.
Sunny froze, and his hand trembled.
'A b-baby?'
After making sure twice that what he was seeing was real, he exploded internally.
'What the hell is a baby doing in this hell?!'
- - -
A while later, he was sitting on a comfortable leather sofa. Beside him was Seishan, chatting about trivial things with Lilia.
The other person inside the house was none other than Mike.
For a moment, he thought Mike might be the father, but he quickly discarded the idea. Even after his arrival, he hadn't abandoned his post guarding the wall of the living room.
It was rather comical to see the guy standing like a statue, pretending not to be bored.
As for the house, it was incredibly well decorated. There was comfortable, beautiful furniture—tables, chairs, even the sofa he was sitting on—and plenty of tasteful, not-too-exotic handicrafts.
There was even a painting of Lilia and her baby in the living room. He found it curious not to see the father and eventually concluded that he had probably died.
'How unfortunate.'
But above all, he was angry—angry at the child's father.
'Who in their right mind would bring a baby into this hell?'
No one, probably.
He returned to reality and listened carefully to the girls' conversation. They weren't saying anything interesting—just things about work or mutual friends. After a while, Seishan turned to Mike and asked:
"Where is Jackson?"
"He said he'd be here in an hour. It shouldn't be long now," he replied curtly.
A crooked smile formed on Sunny's face.
'It can't be… there's no way, right?'
He didn't want to believe that the idiot he had taken as a disciple was the fool who brought the child.
Something imperceptible slid across his vision. Lilia wrinkled her nose slightly, as if she had smelled shit.
At the same time, a familiar shadow began approaching the house.
His eyes drifted into emptiness as the door creaked and then slammed violently against the stone.
'Damn idiot.'
Jack burst into the living room. With a gigantic grin on his face, he said something that momentarily shattered Sunny's composure.
"Daddy is here!"
The room instantly fell silent, everyone staring at him with annoyance—some for different reasons.
Lilia, above all, looked like she wanted to wipe that smile off his face with a punch.
A short while later, Jack was kneeling, bruised, in a corner. Sunny pinched the bridge of his nose as he formulated a question.
"I have to ask—why did you have a child? No, why did you have a child with this idiot?"
Lilia frowned and pinched the bridge of her own nose.
"Well, two years ago…"
- - -
Two years ago, the first wave of nightmare creatures reached the walls of the Dark City. The Sleepers, unprepared and still inexperienced, faced the danger with bravery. Many died, and others grew stronger.
The survivors organized a celebration at the Shining Castle to celebrate the defeat of the creatures and to give the dead a proper ceremony.
Young, with death's edge at their throats, two Sleepers talked. Driven by alcohol and desire, they both laid their souls bare before one another. There, in the madness of the night, a small seed was planted in the girl's womb.
Months later, upon learning of her pregnancy, the girl—frightened and unsure of what to do—sought out the one who had planted the seed. She told him the situation, and to her surprise, the man knelt and said, "I swear to care for you and my progeny with my life."
The girl refused. She would not bring a child into hell. But the man insisted. He gathered support from his friends and money, promising to give the infant the best life possible. After many doubts, the girl accepted, without truly knowing how it would all turn out.
- - -
Some time later, he was walking back toward the Shining Castle with Seishan.
The sun had been gone for quite a while.
It still seemed strange to him that Lilia had agreed to have a child with that idiot.
Despite everything, he understood why she had done it. He had never had children, so he couldn't know for certain—but from what he had seen, parents felt a love for their children so immense it was strange to him.
Despite not even knowing the child or knowing what they would be like, the child in her womb was as precious as her life—perhaps even more—to Lilia.
Children were the future, and also the most precious treasure of parents.
"Why did you show me that?"
She glanced at him with a small smile.
"Why do you think?"
Sunny narrowed his eyes.
"You wanted me to see my disciple's stupidity?"
"In part."
"And the other part?"
She fell silent for a moment and looked at the Shining Castle in the distance. It was like a beacon of light in all that hell of darkness, reminding him greatly of the towering buildings of the waking world.
"I don't know if you noticed, but Nephis and you have grown very distant."
He didn't react. He had realized that fact a long time ago, though he hadn't cared much in the first place.
"We were never very close, really," he replied.
The smile on her face dimmed.
"That's not what I mean. We were desperate. We didn't know if things would actually work out. But what choice did we have? It was help you or die. So despite everything, we did what we could. But watching you was frustrating."
Bitterness seeped into her expression.
"You seemed just as hopeless—or even more so—than we were."
"And we kept fighting anyway."
She nodded.
"I don't deny that. But in the future, when you become humanity's gods again, you can't be the same. It won't just be us—the ones who always look at you from behind instead of from below—who will suffer because of you."
Sunny felt his heart sink a little as he remembered those dark years—losing everything and knowing there was no hope in the future was anything but encouraging.
"So what did you want to show me, then?"
She stopped and looked at him.
"Hope."
They both fell silent, holding each other's gaze—one trying not to show his emotions, the other trying to understand them.
In the end, she gave up and walked on, completely ignoring the conversation they had just had.
After a few minutes, they reached the walls of the Shining Castle.
They walked past the few guards left to protect it and entered the now-silent castle.
Most people had withdrawn to the secondary bases, leaving only the minimum required to maintain the castle, so only a handful wandered about.
They climbed the stairs and arrived at the Lord's hall. Waiting for them were Nephis, Effie, Vaen, and Kai.
They were about to organize a plan to gather followers for Nephis.
As they entered, Sunny caught Kai's voice—it was strangely agitated and shrill.
"That thing was… a demon, or even a devil."
The archer was on the floor, slight tremors running through his body.
"Its body was gigantic. It looked like a building cutting through the skies—at least three times the size of a normal Needle Messenger."
His face dropped to the floor.
"But the worst part is that it… was accompanied by dozens and dozens of other Needle Messengers."
- - -
At the northern base of the Dark City.
There was an enormous number of Sleepers—at least a thousand. Even so, it was the base with the fewest compared to the others.
The reason was unknown, but this place usually received the fewest assaults during monster waves, so the smallest number of Sleepers—and the weakest ones—were stationed here.
Which was something terrible. Very terrible. The poor boys lazily defending the walls of that fortress never saw it on the horizon.
A gigantic lion was approaching. Each beat of its wings stirred hurricanes, and even the beings of the depths feared to come near.
It had four hind legs and four forelegs. Two enormous arms adorned with gigantic claws rested on its chest. Its mouth looked like a diabolical labyrinth of sharp, horrifying teeth.
Even ordinary Needle Messengers looked small beside it—it was like seeing an eagle next to a chicken.
In the darkness of the night, no one could see it, which was unfortunate, because it was already minutes away from reaching the wall.