“Well,” Orren said at last, as if deciding mid-thought, “I’ll start with the bad news.” He didn’t wait for anyone to object.
“That rocky stretch over there,” he added, voice dropping slightly, “isn’t rock.” Sunny squinted into the distance.
At first, all he saw was jagged coral-like stone formations layered across the ridge.
Then Orren continued.
“They’re Scavengers.” For a moment, no one moved.
The wind felt louder than it should have.
Cassie’s breath hitched.
Sunny straightened instantly, hand already on his weapon.
Nephis didn’t react outwardly but her gaze sharpened, locking onto the formation as if trying to force it to become something else.
Sunny was the first to break.
“…What?” Orren shrugged faintly.
“The good news is,” he said, “they’re all dead.” That earned him a very specific kind of silence.
Sunny slowly turned his head toward him.
“You could have said that first.” “Where’s the fun in that?” Cassie let out a long, relieved breath and lowered her head.
Nephis, however, didn’t relax.
Her eyes stayed fixed on the ridge.
“How many?” she asked.
Orren’s expression didn’t change.
“Too many to ignore.” A pause.
Then, as if remembering something else entirely, he tilted his head toward Sunny.
“Can you check it properly?
Shadows are better for this.” Sunny immediately shook his head.
“No.” It was his true feeling since he had just been scared by them.
Then, after a beat of internal conflict, he sighed and stepped forward anyway.
“Fine.” He slipped into the shadows.
The waiting felt longer than it actually was.
When Sunny returned, he looked slightly paler than before, not injured, just… disturbed in a way he didn’t bother hiding.
He explained how the killer is one of the awakened monsters who had taken the transcendent shards.
Nephis didn’t hesitate.
“Then we kill it.” “Yeah,” Orren agreed immediately.
Sunny stared at both of them.
“That’s not how decisions are supposed to be made.” Nephis had already turned toward the ridge.
“It works.” Orren gave a small, almost amused shrug.
“We do have a plan.” Sunny narrowed his eyes.
“We do?” Orren pointed lazily toward the ridge.
“We go and kill it.” A beat of silence followed.
Sunny exhaled through his nose.
“That’s not a plan.” “It’s a direction,” Orren corrected.
Nephis didn’t argue.
That was somehow worse.
They moved quickly after that.
The ridge offered just enough space to descend into the kill zone, a broken basin of coral stone and collapsed terrain where something massive lay half-buried in darkness.
It was already awake.
They didn’t give it time to fully react.
Draco struck first.
Orren summoned the Venomhide Tyrant without hesitation, letting its massive body drop straight down into the basin.
It didn’t land gently, it fell like a living weapon, crashing into the creature below with enough force to shake loose dust and shattered coral.
The impact forced the monster to fully reveal itself.
Spikes.
Thick armored plating.
A grotesque, slumbering bulk that immediately began to thrash under Draco’s weight.
Draco bit down hard into its torso, anchoring itself despite the spikes tearing into its hide.
That was the opening.
The three dreamers followed right after.
Nephis and Orren aimed for a scythe each and Sunny went for the legs.
Thanks to Draco’s sudden ambush the monster was left stunned for a moment and that was enough to injure it gravely.
Both his scythes now hung limply, only half attached to the limbs, while Sunny had wrapped his shadow around his body and rammed the Azure Blade at the monster’s already injured legs, because of Draco’s weight, with all his might.
The monster screeched in agony, but the three humans didn’t let it rest for even a moment.
The monster managed to shake off Draco from its back but was too wounded to get rid of Draco and thus giving Nephis, Sunny and Orren the time to keep attacking.
The continuous attack of the three and Draco’s overwhelming strength along with his venom managed to bring the monster down.
The battle had taken only a minute at most, but all three dreamers were out of breath, they had given their hundred percent from the start with the intent to take it down as soon as possible.
The plan was simple.
Orren would drop the six-meter-long Draco, who weighs about 750 kg, on top of the monster and the three would attack right after.
Silence followed.
Only heavy breathing remained.
Sunny wiped sweat from his face, staring at the corpse like it had personally insulted him.
“…We just killed an awakened monster like that,” he said slowly.
“That’s crazy.” Orren exhaled and dismissed Draco.
The echo dissolved back into his soul sea like a collapsing shadow.
Even Nephis had the faintest hint of a smile, small, restrained, but real.
“Rest,” Orren said after a moment, glancing at the darkening sky.
“Until the storm passes.” No one argued this time.
……….
Sunny had managed to secure the Starlight Legion Armor and passed it to Nephis without much ceremony.
After that, the group spent three days at the top of the cliff.
Nephis used the time to train relentlessly, refining her strikes against imaginary opponents and occasionally sparring with Sunny in short, brutal exchanges that never lasted more than a few minutes.
Cassie mostly stayed close to the fire, listening, memorizing terrain routes, and speaking only when her visions left her certain of something.
Orren, on the other hand, treated the entire pause as something closer to recovery than preparation.
He slept when he could, rested when he couldn’t, and only occasionally joined discussions with a few blunt observations that usually shifted the direction of their planning more than he seemed to intend.
When they finally moved on, the journey west became a cycle of tension and release… brief, violent encounters with Nightmare Creatures followed by long stretches of silence where only wind and shifting terrain kept them company.
Eventually, they reached the Bone Ridge.
The place looked less like a landscape and more like the corpse of a forgotten world.
Massive ribs jutted out of the earth like stone arches, some cracked clean through, others still towering intact.
The air itself felt dry and old, as if even sound had been stripped away here.
They had already gone ahead but Sunny pulled them back, affraid of their next opponent.
The Carapace Demon.
Sunny had already seen it once.
That single glimpse had been enough to stay with him for days, uninvited.
Even now, as they rested near the ridge, he was explaining it again—its size, its armor-like shell, the way it moved with a slow certainty that made it feel less like a beast and more like a force of nature.
“It’s not something we can fight head-on,” he was saying, voice tight.
“We avoid it.
We find another route west.” Nearby, Orren lay on his back with one arm propping his head up, idly turning a small bone shard between his fingers.
He didn’t even look particularly interested, like the conversation was happening somewhere slightly to his left rather than involving their survival.
“Oi, would you at least pretend to care about this?” Sunny asked Orren, exasperated.
“That’s the only way forward,” Orren said at last, as if commenting on the weather.
“So, unless someone plans to grow wings, we’re going through it.” Sunny stared at him for a moment, clearly debating whether Orren was being brave or just irritatingly calm.
He didn’t get an answer either way.
The next few days were spent refining a plan that no one fully liked but everyone eventually accepted.
Cassie’s next vision helped fill in some of the gaps, and Sunny’s cautious analysis turned it into something functional.
Nephis contributed clean, direct adjustments that cut away anything unnecessary.
Orren didn’t argue much, he mostly pointed out timing issues, openings, and a few “you’re all going to die if you do that” corrections that surprisingly turned out to be useful.
When everything was ready, they moved.
The plan relied heavily on deception.
Sunny’s shadow work, Cassie’s guidance, and Nephis’s direct strength formed the core, while Orren and Draco were assigned the most dangerous role… distraction and disruption.
Draco was sent first.
This time since Sunny didn’t have an Echo, Draco took over that part of the plan.
They disguised Draco as a beast like Carapace abominations and sent it to distract the Carapace Demon, while they sneakily ran towards the tree.
The moment Draco’s cover was flown, the Carapace Demon reacted instantly.
Draco struck first, swinging its tail into one of the Demon’s pillar-like legs with enough force to leave a visible dent in the hardened shell.
The sound echoed through the Bone Ridge like a struck bell.
That single hit was enough to trigger chaos.
The Demon turned.
What followed wasn’t a chase so much as a pursuit dictated by inevitability.
Draco ran, using every burst of speed it had, but the gap between them closed steadily.
When one of the Demon’s scythe-like limbs finally came down, it didn’t miss… steel-hard chitin sliced through Draco’s tail cleanly, the impact sending a sharp crack through the air.
Draco roared, but didn’t slow.
A moment later, just before the next strike could land, its form dissolved into drifting motes of light, dismissed at the edge of destruction.
By then, the rest of them had already reached the massive trunk of the ancient tree and begun their ascent, scrambling upward as the Carapace Demon returned with deliberate, crushing certainty.
For the first time in a while, there was no room for rest or commentary.
Only climbing.
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