She dreamed of filthy streets, inhabited by walking corpses. Just another face among the crowd, her memories were vague.
Instead of places and conversations, everything was reduced to gray smears and raw emotion.
The first feeling she could remember experiencing was loneliness, but what grew alongside her, shaping her life, her desires, and her future… was something far worse.
Hatred.
She dreamed of a sly man with an awful sense of humor. In a crowd of faceless figures, his face stood out with unsettling clarity.
What a despicable person he was. Someone who swindled people out of everything they had.
And yet, he decided that with her it would be different. That a single act of kindness would be enough. What did it cost him?
Only everything.
She dreamed of a labyrinth of mirrors. There, the dangers were not creatures, but games and tricks, orchestrated by a sadistic host.
So many people were forced to play, driven by the hope of escaping to the comfort of their homes.
Even though she had no home and no one to return to in the real world, she extinguished every hope, one by one, so she could survive… so she could win.
Guilt.
A song echoed in the darkness, thin and distant, like a lullaby.
***
"Wake up!"
Shelly's consciousness was yanked out of a deep slumber. Her body moved on instinct, recoiling from the source of the shout while she covered herself, trying to summon her knife.
Nothing appeared.
What was happening? When had she fallen asleep? Nothing made sense.
She remembered lying down in the small space they'd carved out, but she had never intended to sleep.
How could she fall asleep with a boy right beside her? Especially one she had almost fought with?
Dazed, Shelly took a moment to recognize Giovanni standing just ahead, staring at her with concern.
"What's wrong with you? No matter what I did, you wouldn't wake up."
Cold water ran through her hair and down her chest… he'd thrown it on her.
The night pressed in with a rhythm Shelly couldn't name. She almost hummed. Almost.
When it became clear Shelly was in no condition to talk, the boy sighed and left the shelter, heading up to the surface.
***
Even after hours of rest, there was still no sign of sunrise.
Being deprived of a day and night cycle would definitely mess with the boy's head given enough time, but for now, it wasn't of great importance.
His body wasn't fully recovered, but he already felt much better.
Right now, all he wanted was to wash the filth off himself.
'What the hell is wrong with that girl?'
Shelly had been acting even stranger than before. A few minutes ago, when he tried to wake her gently, nothing seemed to work.
He resorted to extreme measures.
'It's not my fault she sleeps like a rock.'
After testing the area and making sure it was safe to enter, with no creatures nearby, he stripped and bathed.
The stinging in his wounds made him tremble, but it was tolerable up to a point.
"Gaius had a heavy hand… ouch."
His thoughts drifted, arranging themselves before he noticed.
By the end of his bath, he felt renewed, ready for another day of bloody battles. Strangely, his tunic didn't seem to get dirty, no matter how much he handled disgusting things.
'I swear, if one of this outfit's powers is staying clean…'
So far, Giovanni had only discovered one of [Grafter's Tunic]'s functions. It should have one or two more abilities that hadn't yet had the chance to reveal themselves.
All he could do was wait and pray it would be useful in the future.
When he returned to the shelter, Shelly seemed to have gone back to normal. After yesterday, the atmosphere couldn't have been more awkward… but neither of them seemed willing to address it right now.
[You have slain a Dormant Beast, Painter's House Maid]
'Looks like Sofia is still going all out…'
Not long after he had managed to get his friend a weapon, she seemed to have started hunting through the corridors.
Throughout the night, he repeatedly heard the whisper of the spell announcing the deaths of nightmare creatures.
Apparently, a vassal's kills counted as his own. That meant any memory or Echo would go directly into his Soul Sea.
Opening Sofia's runes, he stared at her Soul Fragment count.
Soul Fragments: [30/1000]
'She more than doubled it in one night, good job!'
"I'm going to bathe."
Shelly walked past him, speaking curtly before heading toward the lake, accompanied by the Echo. With nothing else to do, Giovanni decided to start evaluating the available paths.
The Ivory Forest, as they had affectionately nicknamed this biome, was a treacherous place. The creatures could be dangerous, but the vegetation was the real problem.
If being blood-red didn't make the threat obvious, touching it would teach the careless. Every plant, flower, and herb was a voracious vampire, eager to tear open your skin and grow inside your blood vessels.
The two earth manipulators in the group constantly had to create compacted dirt roads as they moved, because trying to cross the thicket was far too risky.
In that regard, the area around the lake was incredible. The wet, muddy soil seemed to keep the blood-addicted little plants at bay.
Another growing problem was the power of the nightmare creatures. Perhaps because they had been summoned far from the center, the rank of common threats was exclusively Dormant, varying between beasts and monsters.
Now, however, wild Awakened aberrations had become common, usually accompanied by a pack of Dormants.
He feared that in the near future, the group would have to deal with packs of Awakened creatures.
'That's a problem for later.'
Refocusing on the task, his exploration wasn't without rewards. As he observed regions they hadn't yet reached, the disfigured carcasses of nightmare creatures caught his attention.
'This isn't the work of a wild monster…'
There were no signs of claws, teeth, or spines. The mangled beast looked like it had been struck by a single precise blow that turned its head and shoulders into paste.
There were also deformations in the earth resembling bootprints rather than paws.
Could it be that they had finally found traces of other sleepers? That was incredible news!
Satisfied with what he had found, Giovanni waited for Shelly to return so he could share the information.
Now clean, with wet hair clinging to her body, the young woman looked far less feral.
Giovanni had never really stopped to pay attention to her before, but his companion had a peculiar appearance.
Beyond her long hair dyed white and pale pink, her eyes looked like two black wells, and her pale skin seemed almost sickly.
To his misfortune, she was also taller than he by a fair margin.
"What are you staring at?"
Her comment snapped him out of his not-so-subtle analysis. The boy looked away, embaressed.
"Nothing. I have good news, or at least something close to it."
She sat against one of the shelter's walls, listening in silence. Taking that as permission to continue, he went on.
"At a good distance from here, I found signs of sleepers. Several fresh corpses were scattered through the forest, and they had been finished off by weapons rather than claws or teeth."
There were advantages and disadvantages to having another person in the group.
It was a delicate balance between splitting resources, potential interpersonal conflict, and safety.
Shelly wanted maximum gains with minimal losses.
"Did you sense footprints? Was it a group, or just one person?"
"There were footprints, but only a few, probably from a single individual."
There was also the possibility it was a humanoid monster, equipped and intelligent… but the closest thing to that they'd seen so far was Gladius, and he didn't wear boots.
"I think we should try to locate him and suggest an alliance. If that person is surviving alone in this region, it's someone we want in the group."
After a few last seconds of hesitation, the young woman shrugged, accepting the suggestion.
"Yeah, fair. Let's get the hell out of here already."
***
[You have slain an Awakened Beast, Ivory Berserker]
A quadrupedal beast had its head exploded before it could even react.
Even though it was the size of a small car, its armored bone plating looked like plaster in the face of the brute power of the giant hammer that struck it at high speed.
The furry, bloody body hit the ground with a dull thud, left behind like trash on the street.
The attacker didn't seem interested in the Soul Shards the beast carried. He didn't need them.
Around him, five other similar monsters seemed to have met the same fate at the hands of the enormous young man.
Standing over two meters tall, he made even most adults seem small in his presence.
From the neck down, his entire body was encased in layers of steel.
The armor, stripped of any cosmetic or aesthetic flair, was built with a single purpose: to offer the greatest protection possible.
In one hand, he held a bloodstained warhammer, and in the other, a heavy, wide shield.
He was a walking fortress, crushing everything in his path.
From the moment Eric had been summoned into this forest of pale trees, the only thing he had done was wander, exploring the region without haste as he searched for signs of the citadel.
In the meantime, he had found the biome's threshold.
In that area, the thicket vanished completely, replaced by mounds of earth and rock in chaotic shapes, with unpredictable paths.
Since then, he had advanced in the opposite direction, eliminating every threat in the hope of gaining more memories and possibly Echos.
That world didn't scare him. It welcomed him.
He was the danger.
It was during one of his pauses, seated atop a massive rock, that he felt something strange.
Someone was watching him.
His posture wasn't that of someone pretending not to notice.
He stood. His gaze swept the treeline.
A few seconds later, a figure emerged from the thicket, walking without haste or hostility. A path formed wherever he stepped, and within it, a young woman… no, a familiar young man appeared.
Dressed in a tunic that should have belonged to demigods, the brown-skinned boy with greenish eyes revealed himself with a gentle smile, accompanied by a young woman Eric hadn't known beforehand.
True Name: Light Seeker.
Those were the words he had read on that screen during his meal.
Even armed with the techniques and skills of his clan, that one person, who looked fragile enough to be crushed between his fingers, had been judged as superior.
Intriguing.
Eric's calm gaze met Giovanni's, the two of them judging each other in silence.
"It's good to see you again. I don't think we ever introduced ourselves properly… so if you'll allow me, it's a pleasure to meet you. You can call me Giovanni."
"Eric."
The giant slid down from where he stood, landing on the crimson grass in front of the delicate-looking boy. From above, violet eyes stared at his academy peers with indifference.
And still… something was wrong.
The scent of fear, that despicable perfume the other children exuded in the presence of danger… it wasn't there.
When the two of them had first met, face to face at the entrance ceremony, Giovanni had been a well of fear. What had he been so afraid of? Eric himself? The future? Or something else entirely?
But fate does not make mistakes.
For months, he had waited in silence, sharpening his mind, his body. Eric had decided not to be hasty and perhaps be surprised by how the fragile-looking youth would develop and evolve.
Maybe he'd become an equal.
Maybe not.
Many times, he found himself reflecting, lost in thought.
Imagining what his journey would be like should they cross paths again.
It didn't matter anymore.
Now, the scent had been replaced by a contained warmth that brushed against his skin… born from the delicate flame of conviction.
Conviction. Not courage. Not pride.
"We're looking for people to form a group and conquer the closest citadel. We've already located it, after all. Would you be interested?"
Bathed in the bluish light of the stars, a fleeting breeze wrapped around them.
The prince's tunic and the knight's tabard flowed, stirred by the wind.
For the first time, Eric's gaze lingered.
'You really changed, Light Seeker.'