Shadow Slave

The path to the throne room was guarded by a swarm of mercenaries, who had hastily prepared for the assault. The corridors and halls of the great castle were full of construction materials and furnishings stored there in preparation for the grand exhibition—all of it was used to build makeshift barricades and gun nests. The halls had become miniature arenas.

“This is... a bit exhilarating.”

Hiding behind a large crate while bullets whistled past him, Sunny felt a dark sense of thrill. Their assault was a singularly deadly affair, since one stray bullet could be the end of them. Death soared on invisible wings, too quick to be seen, and too numerous to be evaded.

Every second could be their last, and all they could do was try their best and hope that luck would be on their side. Mundane humans were just that vulnerable and powerless in the face of firearms...

But that was nothing new. Sunny had spent all of his adult life as an Awakened, and while Awakened were countless times stronger and more resilient than mundane people, they lived every day of their violent lives with this exact feeling.

In the world of the Nightmare Spell, it rarely mattered how powerful you were—there were always beings who could erase you from existence with the mere fact of their presence, so in that sense, being vulnerable and helpless in the face of conventional guns was simply more of the same.

At least he had a bulletproof vest, this time. “Move!”

There was a lull in the barrage of bullets peppering his cover, which meant that the mercenaries targeting him were reloading. Using this chance, Sunny dove out of his cover and sprinted forward.

He shot his pistol a few times as he ran, forcing his enemies to duck down, and then jumped over their makeshift barricade.

A dozen seconds later, they were dead. Effie had cleared the second barricade by then, and Morgan calmly shot a lone henchman who had hidden himself on a tall scaffold and tried to pick them off from under the ceiling.

As his body fell down, the Other Mordret tentatively raised his head and emerged from behind a tall vertical crate.

Looking around, he let out a wistful sigh. “What a travesty... the statues...”

The crates the mercenaries had shot at contained priceless statues that were supposed to become the centerpiece of the exhibition in this hall. Now, the statues were destroyed—even if they had not been shattered completely, they were at least damaged too severely to be displayed. Sunny gave the Other Mordret a quiet look. He wanted to say that there was no point in worrying about the statues, but remained silent.

Of course, there wasn’t... the grand opening of the Mirage Museum the Valor Group had been preparing would never happen. Worrying about the destruction of the statues was meaningless, as well—soon enough, the entire Mirage City would follow. This illusory reality was coming undone, one way or another.

But even though Sunny knew that the Other Mordret was acting foolish by regretting the damage done to the statues, he did not express his feelings aloud. The man knew how misguided his regret was better than anyone... his entire world was ending, and his entire life was being erased. Sunny was in a unique position to appreciate how terrible such a fate was.

The fact that the Other Mordret still seemed composed and even somewhat calm despite that—instead of breaking down or flying into uncontrollable rage—was another proof of how broken and incomplete he was. Despite how different the two sides of the Prince of Nothing were, neither of them could be called whole. “Hurry up!”

They rushed out of the statue hall and faced another firefight in the corridor beyond. The darkness was torn apart by the muzzle flashes, and the deafening sound of gunshots reflected from the stone walls, growing almost unbearable.

After the corridor, there was another hall, and after the hall, there was a deadly clash in a narrow stairwell. Sunny and his companions used the scavenged guns to push the enemy back—other times, they had to resort to hand-to-hand combat and deal with the mercenaries in a more visceral manner.

But no matter what kind of obstacle they met around the corner, nothing could stop them. They tore through the defense of Madoc’s private security forces without ever losing momentum, leaving a trail of slaughter and dead bodies in their wake.

It was no surprise.

Out here in Mirage Castle, met with the ferocious resistance of elite forces hired by Madoc, Sunny could fully appreciate just how fearsome his contemporaries were. Mirage City... was a reflection of a place that had existed in an era of peace. Sunny’s own time, however, was an era of strife and war. Everyone received combat training from early childhood, regardless of gender or social status. There was no distinct martial culture in the real world—martial culture was simply culture. The government was ostensibly the command center of a vast planet-wide army, and every human living on that planet was a conscript. 𐍂𝓪₦óᛒΕꞨ

It was just that, similar to an actual army, not every conscript was assigned a combat role. Some maintained the infrastructure, some produced tools of war, some generated supplies that the soldiers needed to function... but even these non-combatants were trained fighters.

And that was merely the mundane population.

There were also the elites of this militant society—the Awakened, who had been forged into a perfect warrior caste by the Nightmare Spell. Only those who survived the horrors of the First Nightmare and the harrowing expanse of the Dream Realm remained, and that cruel selection left little space for a lack of martial talent or inherent weakness.

Among these hardened survivors, only the best of the best rose to the top and became Masters. And among the Masters, only the strongest became Saints.

But Sunny, Effie, and Morgan were not merely Saints. They were not merely some of the strongest humans out there—they were the absolute best among the absolute elites... the most lethal and vicious children of the cold new era.

Sunny in particular had risen higher than almost anyone before.

So what chance did these mercenaries have against them?

..Carving a bloody path to the heart of the Castle, the four of them reached the throne room at the same time as Saint and Mordret.