LGHTNOVELBOOK Chapter 13: Preparations
Sunny had spent seven years forging the memory "second chance"— and regressing back to his three year old self.
He had also survived quiet a few years between the domain war and the forging of second chance.
All in all, he had been 38 years old when he regressed, going back 35 years.
When he did that, time flew in reverse. As if the spell was initiating a nightmare,
Except it was not, this time it was real.
And so, everything reversed back to its original place 35 years ago as sunny regressed.
However, sunny could not reverse time for the entire universe itself, he was not anywhere as powerful as that.
So he instead went back in time by himself—alone, but what did that mean?
The space time continuum was like a river. If something happened in the future, the past was affected too.
Sunny's return to the past caused a massive ripple in the flow of time—
A huge, huge ripple.
The effects of this event hit the farthest past the hardest.
The moment sunny woke up as a 3 year old, Nightmare gates all around the world, who were to be closed for years, opened up.
Because corruption came from outside the realm of war. Outside that which was bound. Outside all universes in fact.
And when corruption regressed to its weaker self in the past,
It retained some ripening from the future, and thus the gates were opening early.
For a while, humanity was overwhelmed.
So was the spell, and thus it started a chain reaction.
The spell reacted to the corruption and went on a frenzy, trying to infect as many people as it could.
There were so many infected at one point that the government had to upgrade the academy to hold much more sleepers.
They also constructed observation buildings, one in each quadrant, to hold the infected entering their 1st Nightmare en masse.
There were simply too many to guard separately.
Eventually, seven years passed.
Sunny was now 10. The gates weren't opening so much faster anymore. But they were still opening a couple years faster.
The spell was now infecting people less too, only around four times the normal rate.
They were all slowing down.
Then seven more years were about to pass, sunny was one year from becoming 17.
The gates were opening much later now, and humanity had adapted the obel scale to predict the new timings too.
The spell was closer to three times the infection rate now, when sunny turned 17 in the future, the rate would be at exactly 3 times.
And then it would decrease again.
Ofcourse, some gates simply never accelerated in their opening, and some Opened much earlier. So it wasn't all too predictable.
---
For some time in the beginning, there had been so many Nightmare creatures that they ended up overflowing.
And invaded human cities directly, most of them were just dormant or Awakened, but still a threat if allowed to do as they pleased.
So humans were forced to play tower defence with them, defending against invasions of nightmare creatures every few months.
The term given for this phenomenon was "raid".
Slowly it became less and less prominent as time went on and the overflowing of gates slowed.
Since there were more infected now, there were also more sleepers, and so more people entered the dreamrealm.
And more people were thrown at unconquered places.
---
A door opened, and someone walked out.
Jet barely glanced up from the table she was sitting on, at the observation building. "So how was today?" she asked carelessly.
"Five people failed their Nightmare, around my area" Sunny replied, walking out of the room of the infected. "So I had to kill them."
Jet hummed, indifferent. "Well, that's another five fragments for you."
Sunny exhaled, suppressing a twinge of frustration. He knew Jet wasn't heartless—it was just her way of dealing with the daily bloodshed. But still...
"Yeah," he muttered. "But it still sucks. People died, Jet."
She finally looked at him properly, her dark eyes cool but not unkind. "When you've spent a few years as an Awakened, you'll witness more pointless deaths than you can count. The trick is not to dwell on them. Otherwise, you'll drown in it."
"I know, I know." Sunny rubbed his temple. He understood that, logically. his past self had endured worse afterall.
His current self hadn't yet built up the same tolerance. He had the memories, but his body and soul were much younger and pure.
For the past five months, he had been granted permission to oversee the first Nightmares of newly infected Sleepers...along with the other awakened stationed there.
Courtesy of being kingmaker's son and Soul reaper's brother.
His strength had been deemed sufficient to slay whatever emerged from a failed Nightmare too.
When sunny had arrived at the academy in his previous life, there were about a hundred or so sleepers waiting for induction. And the academy did induction ceremonies every month.
So a total of 1200-1500 people every year became sleepers in NQSC.
2400-3000 died instead. For a total infected of 3600-4500. Now with the spell infecting way more people,
The number of infections was over 9000. Infact, it was around 12000.
There were 1000 people every month who came here, and only 1/3rd of them left alive.
So about 22 people died here everyday, but since the place was so big, and immediate execution of monsters from a failed nightmare was essential,
Sunny had only been gaining 4.5 fragments on average every day.
...at a slow but decent pace.
'For an average person,' he thought bitterly. 'But I'm not average. I've barely gained any fragments! At this rate, I won't even reach the level of a Demon before the Forgotten Shore!'
Indeed if this was to continue, he'd have 1668 fragments by the end of the year, 26 of those coming from his own first Nightmare.
It wasn't the best feeling, killing those who failed their Nightmares, but they were already dead too so, sunny would rather take the fragments than discuss philosophy.
After five months of relentless work, he had accumulated 676 fragments from this job. Paired with the 26 from before, he had a total of 702 fragments.
He had also obtained two dozen or so dormant memories, all of them useless.
They were worth feeding to saint, atleast.
But there was one significant benefit to all this effort.
Defiance, his sword forged from Auro's death, had the ability to grow. And through this grim work, he had finally discovered how.
'It requires saving people. The more I rescue, the more it evolves. Eventually, it'll reach the Seventh Tier and become a Soulbound Memory. It's a jackpot!'
Sunny had slain 676 creatures from failed Nightmares, moving tirelessly Between different rows of housed sleepers. The task had been grueling, but he had managed.
For every creature he slayed, he 'rescued' only the sleepers in its near vicinity, because of the defence systems in place, even if he failed, not many would die.
So they didn't count.
For each Nightmare Beast he killed, he 'saved' around 20 sleepers. Sometimes, multiple Sleepers failed and became monsters at the same time, so his numbers were affected.
There was also a cooldown before a saved person could be 'saved' again, so that lowered his numbers too.
All in all, after these 5 months, he had registered a total rescue count of 3000, bringing Defiance to tier 3, but he wouldn't know for sure until he obtained Blood Weave.
---
Sunny looked at jet with curiosity, she hadn't been stationed at the building, so her being here meant something was up.
"Why are you here?"
Jet smirked. "To give you a gift."
Sunny blinked. "A gift? What is it?" He already knew, but he wanted to hear her say it.
"The storage Memory you wouldn't shut up about." She tossed a small smirk his way. "I pulled some strings and got one that fits your needs."
She extended her hand, gesturing for him to take it.
"Though I gotta ask," she added, raising a brow. "A storage Memory with as much space as possible, and where things don't rot? Most kids your age would want a fancy sword or a powerful Echo."
Sunny scoffed. "Come on, you know I'm not that stupid."
"Yeah, but you could've asked for a Charm or armor. That fancy 'armour' of yours won't protect you much, it's a garment afterall"
Sunny shrugged "Yes, but I want to make sure I can take things back to the waking world if I find something cool in the dream realm."
Sunny wanted that memory to take back his bed from the cathedral...and some other things too. But jet didn't need to know that.
She rolled her eyes. "Never mind. You are that stupid."
"Oh, shut up."
She smirked. "Oh? So you don't want the Memory, then? Alright—"
Sunny tilted his head slightly and brought his hands together, tapping his two index fingers together as he tried his best puppy dog eyes impression.
"No, no! Noona, my dearest, most generous noona, please give me my gift!"
Jet recoiled, looking utterly disturbed. "Stop that."
Sunny snickered and took her hand. A rush of electricity surged in his veins, taking a deep breathe, He closed his eyes, and dove into his Soul Sea.
There was the Puppeteer's shroud, Guardian's Creed and Defiance. There were his other three dormant memories.
There were about 24 more dormant memories, from the failed nightmares he dealt with, none of them were particularly useful.
There was an echo of a dormant beast from someone who must have had a tough nightmare. The echo was called 'dust falcon' and true to its name, it was an auburn coloured falcon that left dust wherever it flew.
Sunny wasn't going to make it a shadow though. It was too weak.
'anyways, here's my treasured gift!'
Sunny looked at the tool memory he had been nagging his dad and sister for, it took him months, but the nagging paid off.
'sometimes being spoiled had its perks.'
He focused on the memory and read it's runes.
Memory: [Frozen].
Memory Rank: Ascended.
Memory Type: Tool.
Memory description: [Born from a witch's subconscious magic, He dreamt of basking in the sun, dancing on the beach, and experiencing warm weather—completely unaware of the fate that would meet him if he did.]
"Damnation. It really is an Ascended memory. Getting one for free in the name of preparation against the dream realm is crazy.
The perks of nepotism shine again huh.
What is that ominous description though... doesn't matter, not my problem."
Sunny opened the memory to check it's storage space.
What he saw was similar to a cold storage uses to store perishable substances.
"And I'm pretty sure it has multiple tiers, given how much space it can hold."
Indeed the memory had a lot of space, it could possibly hold multiple giant carcasses.
"And a giant three eyed skull."
Sunny left his soul sea, satisfied, infact, he was grinning widely when he left.
Jet noticed his consciousness return and continued
"You could still ask for some actually useful memories on top of that. Dad wouldn't refuse yknow."
"Yeah, but then I'd be relying way too much on you guys, I need to carve my own path."
With that, jet sighed in defeat. Then she remembered something.
"I also have some news for you."
She leaned in and whispered in his ear.
"Cassie and 'june' have been infected".
"What!?"
The butterfly effect was finally catching up to Sunny in unexpected ways too.
"Chill out it's not like it wasn't expected. Why are you so freaked out?"
"Oh...uhm..nothing I just didn't expect both of them to fall at the same time. How are they doing?"
"Let's get out of here first."
Jet and sunny walked out of the station and entered jet's ptv. She continued while driving.
"Basically Cassie fell asleep first, then after sometime so did nephis. Both cases happened last night, cassie will be transported to the observation building in an hour, and rengoku is watching over nephis.
So... You wanna go see your friends?"
Sunny had not expected them to be infected early, he had simply assumed that they would be infected just like last time, and that the spell was only infecting new people more.
Now he knew that wasn't the case.
"No. There's no point in going right now, I'll see them when they wake up, I have to focus on forming my 3rd core for now."
"It still weirds me out how you can have multiple cores. But you might be able to gain alot of fragments soon."
Sunny raised an eyebrow "How so?"
Jet shook her head. "How do I put this... Have you heard of the city raids?"
"Uhh that's when a bunch of nightmare creatures migrate and get close to the city's walls right? And to ensure they don't try breaking in we have to send a force of awakened to kill them? Is that what's coming?"
"Yeah, it's very rare and usually done by a high amount of soldiers, there's one next week. Apparently some corrupted creatures showed up far south of the city, so the fallen ones inhabiting that place are running towards us, which in turn is causing three different tribes of awakened creatures to move towards us as well."
"On such short notice?"
"Yeah well the gate that brought those corrupted opened unexpectedly so...what can we say.
Anyways I can get you there as one of the dormant helpers, but you will have to watch yourself, you are still much much weaker than an awakened.
And when the awakened retreat at the sight of the fallen horde, you do too. Got it?"
Sunny smirked. "Oh yeah, totally."
Jet frowned. "I'm not joking here, skilled as you are, you are still weaker than an Awakened in terms of strength.
So don't try playing strong."
"Yeah, I understand. Thank you noona, you are the best!"
Jet sighed "Alright alright, don't play cute with me now, I'm only doing this because you won't stop whining about your third core."
"It's because of my flaw you know, I just have a constant feeling at the back of my head that I'm not strong enough, working to get stronger makes me feel at ease at least."
"Yeah...to be honest your flaw is really weird, you have an endless craving for growth AND you can't lie? Seems to me the spell couldn't explain your flaw correctly."
Sunny didn't answer out loud but he had a suspicion of why his flaw was how it was.
'it must be the nature of Shadow himself.'
Shaking his slightly, he knocked off all thoughts from his mind, a constant slow whisper continued in his mind 'must grow stronger, must conquer more'. Annoying as his flaw was, it was a source of determination when he needed to focus on something. And now he did have something.
To prepare for the raid next week.