The giant Great Beast grew smaller and smaller as Sunny rose higher into the sky.
The wind howled furiously in his ears, and he was slowly starting to feel a cold sense of apprehension about how long it would take him to fall back down.
The view from this height was breathtaking…
but even from such an absurd vantage point, Sunny could not see a single scrap of land.
There were no islands, no continents, and no ships.
There was not even another piece of floating flotsam.
He sighed.
‘What a predicament.’
He was completely alone in the sky, suspended between an endless expanse of liquid glass and a vault of blinding radiance.
Sighing, Sunny summoned the Dark Wing.
A moment later, a pair of translucent, membrane-like wings manifested on his back, turning into a silent blur.
He shifted his shadows, pulling them from the black needle to wrap around the translucent wings, augmenting their power and steering capacity.
Illuminated by the light of seven suns, Sunny glided forward along the current of the Great River.
To his right, the firmament was painted in delicate hues of lilac by the perpetual dawn.
To his left, the water resembled a sea of churning, liquid blood beneath a fiery crimson dusk.
All around him, the vast blue expanse was suffused with the bright radiance of day.
‘There has to be something—anything—in this Nightmare.
It can’t just be an infinite ocean.’
Sunny reasoned that there had to be solid ground somewhere.
Otherwise, the trial was completely absurd; anyone lacking specific utility Memories like the Essence Pearl or flight artifacts would drown within hours.
The Nightmare Spell was cruel, but it was not an executioner without purpose.
Of course, given his terrible luck, he might have been dropped thousands of kilometers away from the nearest piece of land.
It wouldn’t be the first time fate had decided to personally spit in his face.
There was only one way to find out.
Well, actually, there were two—he could always try surviving the agony of using [Where is my eye?] for a third time, though he preferred to keep that as a desperate last resort.
Below him, the giant sea serpent tracked his flight with cloudy, rotten eyes before slowly submerging.
However, its vast, dark silhouette remained visible just beneath the surface, moving lazily through the water to match his speed.
Sunny’s expression darkened.
‘Not willing to let go, huh?’
Did he personally offend the serpent’s ancestors in a past life?
Hours bled away into the strange, timeless void of the Great River.
The sea monster followed doggedly, occasionally breaking the surface to cast a chilling, hungry glare upward.
Whenever his altitude dropped too low, Sunny winced, pulled the black needle from his arm, and plunged it back into his flesh to catch another rising thermal.
The Heavenly Burden continued to poke neat little holes into his skin, which healed almost instantly thanks to the [Living Stone] trait of his Marble Shell.
First, Sunny grew angry.
Then, he grew depressed.
Then, he grew thoroughly bored.
Eventually, he found himself actually enjoying the surreal sensation of flying through this breathtaking world of endless light and liquid glass.
A small, dry smile touched his lips.
A harrowing abomination was waiting to snap him in half, yet he felt strangely peaceful drifting above the clouds.
‘…Maybe I really have lost my mind.’
The seven suns slowly crawled across the heavens.
Eventually, the lilac dawn to his right dissolved into darkness.
The seventh sun dipped below the horizon, dragging a shroud of deep night behind it.
One by one, the suns drowned in the western waters until absolute darkness swallowed the world.
There was no moon.
There were no stars.
Yet, moments after total darkness fell, the waters of the Great River itself began to emanate a soft, shimmering radiance.
Sunny held his breath, stunned by the quiet, sublime beauty of the scene.
The entire boundless expanse of the river glowed from within, as if the seven suns were now submerged miles beneath the depths, casting their muted, ethereal light upward through the water.
‘How pretty…’
Sunny admired the glowing abyss for a long time, until his gaze landed on the massive black shadow gliding just below the surface, its giant eyes gleaming with maddening hunger.
His expression flattened.
‘I wonder how many days I can survive like a human hot air balloon…’
The night passed into another surreal day.
The glowing river dimmed as the eastern sky flared with lilac fire, signaling the return of the seven suns.
They rose one after another, painting the world in gold and blood once more.
Sunny stared down at the Azure Serpent with cold resentment.
He was sorely tempted to summon Morgan’s Warbow and turn the ancient leviathan into a pincushion.
Even if his arrows couldn’t pierce its heavy azure scales, irritating the bastard would bring him a small crumb of satisfaction.
He abandoned the idea almost immediately.
Wasting essence out of spite in an unknown Nightmare was an amateur’s mistake, and Sunny was nothing if not a survivor.
So he flew onward.
Time lost all meaning.
Without a proper clock, he could only guess at the passage of hours based on sheer intuition.
Flying through a world where time flowed like water was already giving him an existential headache.
‘I am really starting to—’
Sunny abruptly froze, his dark eyes locking onto a specific point on the distant horizon.
There, far ahead amidst the sparkling expanse…
a tiny black dot rested atop the water.
His heart skipped a beat.
‘Land?’
He hesitated for a fraction of a second, checked the giant shadow lurking beneath him, and slightly adjusted his flight path, speeding up.
There was no guarantee that reaching land would save him from a Great Beast, but at the very least, it offered a chance to stand on solid ground, rest his muscles, and summon his Shadows.
As he drew closer, the wind whistling in his ears, the black dot grew larger, revealing its jagged silhouette.
It was a small, desolate island—no more than a kilometer across—composed entirely of weathered black rock.
Steep, craggy slopes rose from the water, marred by deep fissures and ancient grooves.
Sprawling patches of pale green moss clung to the dark stone, interspersed with jagged outcroppings that gleamed like tarnished silver.
Sunny felt a flicker of genuine hope.
The island was small, but it was solid.
If the sea monster wanted to pursue him onto land, it would have to drag its massive body out of the water, stripping away its aquatic advantage.
With Saint, Nightmare, Imp, and all five of his shadows augmenting his strength, he might actually have a chance to drive the beast off—or slaughter it outright.
Furthermore, an island meant potential clues about the Tomb of Ariel.
Ignorance was a death sentence in a Nightmare, and Sunny desperately needed information.
‘Let’s just hope the old snake hesitates to crawl ashore…’
Deciding to land, Sunny pulled the Heavenly Burden from his forearm, allowing his altitude to drop smoothly toward the dark slopes.
As he drew closer, details became clearer.
The base of the island was heavily encased in tarnished silver plates, thick with barnacles that hissed as the gentle waves crashed against them.
Then, his eyes caught something else—massive, ancient iron chains rising from the depths, disappearing directly into the deep fissures near the island’s summit.
Sunny frowned, a sudden, cold sense of unease pooling in his stomach.
The island was strange…
even for this bizarre world.
But more importantly, the Azure Serpent below had noticeably slowed its approach, circling at a distance with sudden caution.
Sunny’s eyes narrowed into slits.
‘Wait a minute…’