Chapter 641: Haunting Madness

If time was a concept, then the speed of the entity before Sunny was so ridiculous that it may as well have lived in a timeless world.

Morana’s body exploded, revealing the faint image of something Sunny couldn’t quite understand...

No, there was something he understood.

He couldn’t look!

Sunny had shut his eyes, closed off his shadow sense, and slowly backed away. He didn’t know what it was, or why he felt the urge to resist the natural craving for perception.

It was that third eye...

It stirred something within him, and internally, he felt as if he made the right choice.

After all, he was still alive.

’What, what, what...’

...But now, blinded and caught off guard, how long would he survive before this mysterious abomination killed him? It had taken Morana as a vessel, it seemed, so would he be next?

Sunny would have shivered at the possibility if it weren’t for the fact that he was rapidly summoning his Memories. Cancerous Bond was manifesting in his right hand while Ghastly Hunger manifested in his left. The Marble Shell’s presence fully imposed itself on the world, encasing his body beneath macabre plates of shifting onyx.

None heeded his call, save for the Marble Shell. He found his hands empty and unarmed, and all the tools he had spent hours to create were useless. But he was not perturbed, as he still had other means.

Sunny called upon the serpentine tattoo coiling around his entire body to take the form of a great odachi...

’...’

Serpent did not respond.

’Shit.’

He called upon Tingyun, who was resting within his nerves.

She did not heed his call.

’Shit...’

Sunny augmented himself with his shadows, multiplying his strength fourfold.

...The little fucks were nowhere to be found.

He could not use the Shadows he had already summoned. He could not summon the Shadows. He could not control his shadow helpers...

"Hey, hey, open your eyes! If I’m so ugly that you can’t even bear to look at me, then that’s an insult to yourself, too, you know?"

"No..."

He forced that out under his Flaw’s impulse.

Sunny let his shadow sense slowly expand... but found nothing. He immediately had it recede back into his mind, not daring to perceive the creature due to a gut feeling.

It was more accurate to say, even with this troublesomely cheerful and maniacal voice in his ears, that he had been ’separated.’ He was completely isolated from anything and everything, athough, the only way to confirm that—

"Is to open your eyes! Seriously, seriously, you’re pissing me off with this crap, you old geezer!"

Sunny felt a blade pass through his neck.

He let out a violent gasp, eyes wide as he clutched at this neck, gauntlets digging against the neck guard of the Mantle.

Sunny froze.

He expected to find a bloody stump — assuming that decapitation could even bring him to bleed. Even if he couldn’t, Sunny had no doubt in his mind that this terrifying foe could bleed him dry in seconds. He was left in the dark regarding its nature, but the thought came naturally.

He was facing a natural predator, one that wouldn’t hesitate to rip out his organs.

"What, what?! There’s an order to these things, you silly goose! Well, whatever a goose is."

A lilac eye was in front of him.

Sunny made a noise.

"Ah."

He had opened his eyes.

Nothing was happening.

Sunny blitzed into motion, simultaneously expanding his shadow sense while manifesting the shadows around him to claw at the eye. Luckily, his Dormant and Ascended Ability still worked, even if his shadow helpers weren’t present.

He didn’t dare activate his Awakened Ability, not knowing what could happen. Although Sunny’s Aspect was shadow-related, Shadow Step effectively was a spatial Ability. He didn’t know how this isolated world would interact; perhaps he would be torn to pieces, perhaps this place would shatter, perhaps his attacker would die, perhaps Sunny would escape unharmed, perhaps it wouldn’t even work—

Pulling on the shadows around him, the world having become darker than dark and absent of any and all light, a tsunami of liquid darkness surged towards the eye, separating to coalesce into different forms. Some were jagged claws, serrated sawblades, pointed javelins, compressed hammers, chained whips...

More importantly, they were stronger. Sunny felt it in the way his Essence reacted while flooding the various constructs. A small drip in Ascended Essence created something beyond even Transcendence, granting him firepower no Master should ever wield.

A great odachi manifested out of the shadows before him, his onyx-covered hand gripping tightly around it. Even through the sensitive touch of his bones, strengthened and altered by the terrible Lineage of Weaver, the Daemon of Fate, he could feel that the shadow blade he held was different.

Even a Great One would be greatly wounded by this.

But he had no time to contemplate. Everything was already upon the eye, and he was about to lunge forward, as well, when—

"Ugh, that felt weird."

The feminine voice radiating from the eye complained in revulsion, the lilac pupil flickering around for a few moments before narrowing in displeasure.

What happened next could not necessarily be described as something that ’happened.’

Because, for Sunny, one moment he was launching an attack, and the next—

"Why, why, why?! Why do you try to stop me at every turn?! Do you hate me that much?! Everything, everything I do is for us! Who cares about those people, they never mattered! Just... just let me bring them back, please. My siblings, my comrades... won’t you lend me your strength, just to make me happy?"

Those words did not come from the entity.

They came from him...

From herself.

From a past that never happened...

Or a future.

The weapon — not yet the girl — watched in horror as Sunny let the Transcendent Tyrant known as Serpent form into a blade. He, deaf as he was as he listened to Tingyun’s audial illusions, gave her an answer without following her orders.

His expression was unchanged, a light, infuriating grin on his face even as she tried heal the Embryo of Philosophy. The Dreamscape held no master — Sunny’s Spirit was exhausted, the Embryo was completely collapsed, only held together by her fire. Her sunset-colored eyes shook—

Sunny slung the dark blade over his shoulder, sassily planting a hand on his hips in a way that violently contrasted from his casual, careless words:

"No, I don’t think I will. I mean, if I had to choose between one hot babe, and more than one hot babe, isn’t it a simple question of quantity? So, I don’t think I’ll feel much regret killing you."

"What...?"

Firefly’s expression contorted in an indescribable manner. It was as if she was bracing herself — something that would rob her of all reason, something beyond even the sensation of haunted souls digging their searing fingers into her flesh, begging her, asking her...

Why didn’t she choose them?

"Why didn’t you choose me?"

Ripples of foreign Will trickled through the Memoria-governed dream, leaving behind faint vestiges of the world-shattering battle of Sovereigns occurring across Asdana. Hopelessness, Severance, Longing, Unbreaking...

The two newborn Supremes must have been barely hanging on, faced with a Domainless Divine Aspect holder and the man standing atop the the IPC’s diamond throne.

Just as her patience was wearing thin.

"Tell me!"

Her voice was like an indignant shriek, and yet, Sunny could not hear her. He only heard what his dutiful slave wanted him to hear, and that was enough.

Firefly’s heart split in two as he revealed a wicked, heartless grin, full of sadism and guiltless pleasure.

"Why don’t you ask Wolfie? She could tell you all about it, I’m sure..."

An inferno burst through her—

Through his body.

Sunny gasped, escaping the ocean of sorrow and longing, of jealousy and contempt, of an endless plea that was cursed to forever be unheard.

"What...?"

He uttered through the darkness, deep and boundless as it was. His head turned upwards, the lingering emotions from the unbelonging memory fading away.

Three lilac eyes looked down upon him — one in disappointment, one in amusement, and one...

With an emotion he simply could not place.

An endless horde of maws parted in the dark, twisted into an empty grin as they spoke in Harmony.

"Woah, woah, you’ve got some nerve, picking on a hottie like that! Kidding, kidding, you wanna pay attention now, though?"

Sunny filed away what he saw for later. It had concerning implications, but... wait.

Sunny’s gaze searched deeper into the eyes... finding no soul.

He turned and twisted his head. No Soul Core.

What was this thing?

Could he actually die, in this Simulated Universe?

Sunny lingered for a moment, finding all his manifested shadows gone. He straightened himself, getting back on his feet as he realized that his illusion had sent him into into a sprawling position.

He brushed off the imaginary dust on his thighs.

And a moment later, he was smiling like nothing happened.

"I do, actually."

"Woah, gross. For a guy who can’t lie, you’re a bit too good at acting. Gross, gross, anyways, check this out!"

The shadows around him shifted — proving that this world was never Sunny’s battlefield, but that of the creature. They coiled and parted, revealing another figure.

The lilac eyes floated above, gazing down upon him... and the other.

It was a beautiful young man, with black hair and onyx gems for eyes. His skin was pale and smooth like porcelain, expression uneasy as he turned to face Sunny—

Both of them froze.

That was how Sunless and Chernobog met.