North of the Forgotten Shore lay an unseen land ripe with mystery. A truly strange and wondrous landscape stretched out before Gehrman.
What looked like innumerable charred plateaus stretched across the dead land. It was not a desert like the Forgotten Shore or Nightmare Desert, instead there were small proofs of life. Little plants that gave off an ominous air popped up between the ashy soil.
Indeed, these were not plateaus, and they were not naturally black. Instead, they were the remains of humongous trees. Each one of them would likely have reached the height of a mountain, and each were cut off and seared.
It was as if a god had taken a flaming cleaver and chopped the entire forest in one fell swoop, leaving only massive tree trunks in its wake.
Given the nature of this place, that wasn't just a wild guess.
"I think this may be the Heart Realm," Sunny mused atop one of the tree stumps.
He and Gehrman had stopped to take a break, drink some water, and cook some food. They were just now wrapping up.
Gehrman didn't want to "take it easy" but he did recognize the importance of giving himself a break. He hadn't stopped to genuinely relax for a long, long time.
Now traveling with Sunny, whose lethargy and lack of urgency was palpable, Gehrman finally allowed himself these simple pleasures.
Despite Sunny largely being despondent about everything, there was still something pushing him forward. As he put it: "and explorer's curiosity".
It was nice to know Sunny had such a hobby and inclinations. It made the guy feel more human.
Despite the feeling of warmth Gehrman had for the seemingly random guy, he was always prepared to flee or fight in case this whole thing was an elaborate trap.
These days though, he doubted that possibility more and more.
"Why the Heart Realm?" Gehrman asked.
Sunny looked out over everything, his mind seeming to be working hard.
"Well, process of elimination I suppose. It can't be the War Realm obviously, we can also cross off the Storm Realm, Shadow Realm, and Sun Realm simply due to a difference in aesthetics."
"I don't know, I could see this place being the Sun Realm, it's not as likely, but it's possible."
"Of course, this is all theory. Still, I'm fairly confident that the Sun Realm is the Chained Isles and or Godgrave. Below the Isles is a sea of Divine Flame, and the light above the clouds of Godgrave could only come from the Lord of Light."
"Good point, then why not the Beast Realm?"
"...That has a better chance of being the case. Still, the Heart God was more in line with a forest of impossible size. I'm fairly certain that another study posited a connection between the Heart God and the so-called World Tree."
Gehrman nodded.
"You think one of these trees might be the World Tree, or maybe they all are?"
"They could be, or it could be the tree trunk that's larger than Bastion that one of my Shadows just found."
…
Sunny had great control over shadows. His connection to the element along with his Aspect afforded him a great number of abilities. One of which was what he called "Shadow Shell".
By turning himself into a shadow, and then forming the surrounding shadows to his liking, he could then essentially bond with that shell, making it so he had a new body.
At that moment, he had taken on the form of a crow and was flying easily through the air.
Gehrman was gliding with blood wings, opting to stay human rather than using [Infant Great One].
It felt much calmer this way.
One other figure also joined them in the sky.
At Gehrman's request, Phantasm had been experimenting a lot more with taking new shapes. As it so happened, Sunny was a massive help in this regard.
Being a blob of grey flesh with no discernible weak points was great for defense, but when it came to generating power, having muscles and tendons were quite helpful.
Of course, developing such things required a great amount of knowledge, and though Phantasm was unique, it was tough to say if he was actually capable of retaining such information.
As it so happened, Sunny was completely unaware of Phantasm's existence, which Gehrman thought was possible.
In his memories, he had told absolutely no one about the powerful Echo, only Anvil would know about it so far as he knew. Of course, it was possible that his sharing of his Echo's existence with Sunny had been erased, so he wasn't sure until he manifested Phantsam and was treated to a torrent of curses from a disturbed Sunny.
It seemed that a faceless, formless, and scarily powerful grey fleshy mass was only cute in the eyes of Gehrman, and to anyone else it was quite a horrifying abomination.
Thankfully, he turned the corner.
Since Sunny had offered a phenomenal amount of personal information to him, Gehrman decided to return the favor after a week.
He gave the guy multiple opportunities to turn on him, but he hadn't shown any inclination to do so.
It was odd, and frankly concerning that Gehrman decided to reveal both his Aspect Legacy and Phantasm to Sunny.
However, he had a strong feeling that he would not tell another soul.
After all, who would he tell? No one knew him.
It was a unique scenario, and one that was phenomenally beneficial. With all cards on the table and a tacit agreement to help out the other as much as possible, they were both able to make great strides in a short amount of time.
The main thing Sunny provided was his unique Sorcery: Weaving. It was a marvelous thing to see the strings of Shadow Essence take on the patterns that were present in every Memory and Echo. Even more impressive were his creations.
The workaround they found for teaching Phantasm biology and even battle techniques was through one of the Attributes he had.
Since Phantasm shared the affinities and resistances of Gehrman they could grant the Echo a temporary buff to intelligence.
As a Devil, he was already capable of remembering and interpreting simple commands, but was still not quite at human intelligence.
With a Charm that Sunny created called [Phantasms Learning Aid], Gehrman could massively heighten his mental acuity and ability to retain memory. It was largely useless since Gehrman was already a savant and had multiple brains to store a truly absurd amount of memories.
However, the Charm's effect granted a mystical affinity toward knowledge, which could then be bestowed on his Echo.
All of this was to say, Phantasam had reached a level in which he had the intelligence of an average human adult.
With such power, he had now taken on the form of a pterodactyl.
The reasoning was lost on Gehrman why (after learning a great deal about biology in a short amount of time) he settled on this form.
Initially his Echo had tried to take the form of a large crow to mirror Sunny, but that stirred up some memories of other odious giant birds, and Sunny swiftly forbade him from doing so.
The compromise was – for some reason – this.
Technically it wasn't an accurate portrayal of the ancient flying reptile, Gehrman and Sunny had not taught him about the animal specifically. The Echo had just taken multiple different details about what he learned to combine it into his flying form, which just so happened to resemble a pterodactyl.
It was more confusing for Gehrman than Sunny. The shadow apparently did not have an actual academic education as he grew up in the Outskirts. So to him Phantasm's form was akin to a strange Nightmare Creature.
The only reason Gehrman knew about it was because dinosaurs and other ancient creatures were a fascinating topic to Dorian for a time.
After a little while of the rather odd trio flying, they eventually laid eyes on what Sunny's shadows had found.
Since they could detach and scout ahead, he had found this before even Gehrman's [Sixth Sense] could pick up on it.
Stopping and hovering high above the three looked down at the tree stump. Its base was indeed larger than a super city like Bastion or NQSC…Actually, if one included the Outskirts the size was similar to the combined size of all three.
And that was just the stump.
"Huh," Gehrman said blandly.
"It's big," another voice added.
This was not Sunny or Gehrman, but Phantsam himself. As a part of the biology lessons, they of course mentioned the muscles and organs required to produce speech and sound.
Though neither instructed him to do so, the Echo took it upon himself to learn how to fabricate such organs.
The only issue was that he neglected to include mouths in his creation. He had stubbornly decided that the best way to produce vocals was through some slits that could be placed anywhere on his body.
Even now, when he had a beak of a pterodactyl, he formed what looked like gills in order to speak.
"Yeah, big indeed," Sunny replied dryly.
The three just stared at the stump.
It was Sunny who broke the silence.
"We should get moving, if we're not careful, we could wake some Cursed abomination."
Gehrman nodded. So far, he had not yet encountered something of the 6th Rank, and he had no inclination to do so.
After his battle with Anvil, he regained his understanding in the hierarchy of power.
Gehrman was a unique and absurd existence, but he could only barely contend with Supremes. There was no telling how truly harrowing a Cursed entity would be.
"Where to now?" Gehrman asked.
The shadow took a moment to think, then he just shrugged.
"Further North I guess? Who knows, maybe we'll end up wrapping our way around the world and get to the Storm Sea. That is, if the Dream Realm has the common decency to actually be a globe. I wouldn't put it past it to completely break the laws of physics and just have an actual edge that falls off into space."
A chortling noise croaked from Phantasm.
The pair of humans looked at the Echo with odd looks. The grey pterodactyl stopped and looked back and forth between them.
"...Was that not funny?" Phantasm croaked.
"More grim than anything I'd say," Gehrman said.
"...but, the Dream Realm doesn't decide things, it just is. Since it is not alive. It is a place. It's an intentionally wrong thing. So…funny?"
Sunny scowled.
"I was just being spiteful."
"That is confusing," Phantasm grumbled back.
"Very much so," Gehrman agreed. "So how about you focus on other stuff instead of developing social skills. I'm proud of you for going out of your comfort zone, but at the end of the day, I'll need you to be an overwhelming powerhouse before you go about becoming more human."
Phantasm paused, and then seemed to make an attempt to mimic Sunny's scoff.
"Fighting is more fun anyway."