Shadow Slave

'I should have known that something like that would happen...'

During one of his conversations with Professor Obel, Sunny had learned of a thing called Murphy's Law. Anything that can go wrong will go wrong... he did not know who Murphy was and why that person had been in a position to establish world-governing laws, but their veracity was hard to dispute

...Perhaps that Murphy had been a bit of a tenacious cockroach himself, to come up with such an undeniable rule.

In any case, that was exactly what had happened. Everything had gone wrong. Sunny had hoped to receive information and resources through the Dream Realm, but now, that hope was destroyed. The strange nature of the endless tunnel prevented Awakened from traveling across worlds.

He had not even known that something like that was possible.

'Damnation.'

Instructing the members of the cohort to keep the news to themselves, Sunny hesitated for a bit, and then gave the convoy an order to break camp. They had to continue moving forward.

At that point, he did not expect to reach the exit... however, Sunny still needed information. The tunnel was not looping on itself, as yesterday's experiments had proved, so there had to be some other type of magic involved. IIe suspected that it was spatial in nature, but had to observe more to come to a reliable conclusion.

The Rhino rolled forward, and the civilian transports followed. Once again, they waded through the silent darkness, cutting it with beams of light. Stone walls flew by, and since their surface always looked the same, it was easy to imagine that the convoy was not moving at all, and was instead stuck in place, cursed to repeat the same moment in time over and over again.

The only thing that broke the monotony were the foreboding entrances to the side passages that occasionally appeared from either left or right.

...Sunny knew that the most logical solution would be to try and explore them instead of stubbornly trying to reach the exit of the main tunnel. However, he felt reluctant to do so, at least for now. it was as though everything was forcing him to make that decision... which was exactly what sent his paranoia into overdrive.

'It's almost like something is trying to lure. us deeper underground... curse it...'

The side passages were too narrow for the Rhino to pass, anyway. And he was not going to abandon the APC unless absolutely necessary.

Sunny did pay the side passages a lot of attention, though. As he studied the entrances and the darkness that shrouded them, a small hint of suspicion appeared in his mind.

Apart from that, he was not remaining idle... even if it might have looked like that to the rest of the people riding inside the Rhino.

Throughout the next day, Sunny remained in his chair in the command suite. He did glance at the screens from time to time, but rarely. Mostly, he just moved his fingers in a strange way, making it seem as though they were performing a complicated dance.

At some point, Beth couldn't stay quiet anymore and asked in an irritated tone:

"What on Earth are you doing? Are you trying to cast a magic spell, or something?"

There was deep unease and fear hidden behind that annoyance, though.

Sunny smiled.

"...Actually, that is exactly what I am trying to do. i am an amateur sorcerer, you see."

The young woman scoffed.

"Fine, don't tell me. I guess you finally lost your mind!"

But Sunny had told her the truth. Although she could not see them, he was actually weaving strings of essence between his fingers.

At that point, Sunny was proficient enough to not cut off any of his fingers in the process, like he had in the Red Colosseum. There was not even a single cut on them. However, creating strings of shadow essence. - not to mention arranging them into an actual weave - required a lot of time, concentration, and, most of all, of essence itself.

That was why he had not been able to practice weaving a lot, if at all, after disembarking in Antarctica. The Chain of Nightmare was too dire and hectic, and demanded too much of him to waste those precious resources on unnecessary things.

...But now, things were different.

By the end of the second day inside the tunnel, Sunny was able to create enough strings to turn an object into a Memory. He needed a bit more for what he wanted to achieve, though, so he continued with the task through the night.

On the third day of traveling though darkness, when people turned quiet and fear spread through the convoy like a plague, he produced Weaver's Needle from the Covetous Coffer, as well as one of the Transcendent soul shards he had stored there before.

Any shard would have worked, but Sunny only had these at hand.

The needle glowed with soft golden radiance. Using it to create the basic weaves, he began the process of turning it into a Memory. Doing so was relatively easy for him, since he had done so many times in the past.

This time, however, there was an especially thorny part of the process. Sunny had learned how to name Memories through their weave at some point, but each rune took time and additional strings to create. Learning how to weave runes had not been easy, either, and had required both a good understanding of weaves and a deep knowledge of the runic language the Spell used.

He could skip that step, of course, in which case the Memory would be simply called [???] by the Spell. But Sunny was going for something else this time.

In the end, he tiredly put the needle down and let out a shaky breath. Both Professor Obel and Beth were staring at him with curiosity.

The old man had not wanted to break Sunny's concentration before, but now he finally asked:

"Young man... I am sorry, but could you perhaps explain what you were doing these past two days? I must admit, it looked quite bizarre in the start, but now, we are both very intrigued."

Sunny smiled.

"Ah... I was preparing to send a message."

With that, he dismissed the needle, which disappeared into a rain of golden sparks, making both Professor Obel and Beth blink.

Then, Sunny summoned the runes and looked at the list of his Memories.

Visible only to him, the runes shimmered in the air.

[Sin of Solace], [Bitter Cusp], [Stilled Scream]...

...And then, the last one:

Memory: [I Am Stuck in an Endless Tunnel Full of True Darkness. How the Hell Do I Get Out? Ask Cassie].

Memory Rank: Transcendent.

Memory Tier: I...

The corner of his eye twitched.

'What an ugly sight. I'll definitely rename it later...'