Sunny opened his eyes.
'Where… Where am I?'
Looking around, he… he wasn't in that lighthouse again, and the man was nowhere to be seen, which meant—
He survived.
Burning himself had worked.
He had bested the creature in its own game.
However…
The Nightmare Spell had not announced the end of the nightmare.
'Damnation!' Sunny cursed. "Burning myself isn't enough? What else must I do? Kill the creature behind this twisted dream?'
His eyes darted around the darkness. There was no rest for him until he escaped this place.
He had to continue onwards.
In the suffocating gloom, only his Attribute—Child of Light—offered a flicker of visibility. A dim flame seen only by him illuminated his path, revealing a cave buried deep in the earth.
The uneven floor was littered with jagged rocks, shadows pooling in their crevices. Damp air clung to the walls, and Sunny had to focus just to breathe. It was so different from the damned lighthouse, which was shining and ethereal and…
Ugh.
Just thinking of it made him shudder.
At least in this abyssal darkness, he could still tell friend from foe.
He walked forward.
At least he tried to.
Something was stopping him.
Looking down, black, slimy silk covered his legs, sticking it onto the ground.
'So that's where I was trapped.'
The dream had been real. He had killed the demon within, but the true architect remained alive. Time was running out; he needed to act before it realized what he had done.
With a furious swipe, he tore away the silk and stumbled forward, desperate to find a way out.
Soon, he arrived in a clearing, a big, vast place that— he froze.
All around him lay black cacoons, victims of various ages trapped in a grotesque embrace.
Some of them were from his world, flesh still sticking onto their skin, as they stared into the cave's ceiling like it was their salvation.
Some wore clothes Sunny had never known, their flesh rotting and broken, a mystery he would never unravel.
However, some… didn't even have clothes. They were skeletons, their bones blackening as a mark of all the ages they had been stuck here. They had been meant to die and turn into ash, yet were forbidden from doing so.
But something between all of them was similar… Their eyes were open and yet they were blank, their mouths wide open, curving into a peaceful smile.
A chill ran down his spine.
'What… What is this?' He asked.
And yet, he knew the answer. The people all around him were trapped in an ethereal dream, as their bodies rotted and decayed.
'Would I be like them if I didn't….'
Sunny couldn't finish the thought.
Lifting his head, he followed the trail of where all of them looked — the ceiling of the cave.
On top of there, laid a revolting creature, its grotesque form nearly making him retch.
Thousands of miniature legs scuttled across a massive body wrapped in silk, extending to each cocoon. Its eyes glowed with a deep, bloody red, exuding joy as it feasted on dreams.
'Is… Is an Awakened Nightmare Creature even supposed to look like that?'
As the creature passed by one of the more prominent cacoons — one with a young man who looked like he would have been living a dream life back in NQSC, it stopped, climbing down from its perched position on the top of the cave, arriving near the bottom.
Opening its mouth, it reached out its tongue, curling around the cocoon.
With a snap of its jagged teeth, it tore through the cocoon. The man would soon be dead.
And…
It was the only chance that Sunny had to kill the creature.
It had to be dead now that its guard was down.
'But.. But can I even succeed? I could die after all!'
He was ready to die, at least before he entered this nightmare.
The memory of the lighthouse, the memories of Ivan replayed in his tired mind.
'Spite. Yes, that's it, I'll live to kill that thing!'
He could always try to do so after all. Besides, he had nothing left to live for.
Eyes shifting across the cave, he tried to find something, anything, that was sharp and lethal enough to pierce the hide of an Awakened Creature, and soon, his eyes landed upon a sharp piece of bone that laid upon the cave's floor.
It was small and unnatural, curvingly bent like the rib bones of a human being.
And yet, it was sharp, lethal even. Though it might not kill the creature immediately, it would surely make it suffer enough for him to find a better replacement.
'Perfect. Just like the knife I had used a few months ago…'
Gripping the bone, Sunny crept from the entrance of the clearing, eyes locked on the creature.
He had to know what its weakness was.
He only had one chance.
As the creature finished its gruesome feast, it gracefully fell onto the cave's floor, along with pierced flesh that had blood splattering everywhere.
Sunny crouched low, moving with the shadows until he reached its back.
He was ready.
As if to challenge that declaration, the creature clamped its teeth around its next victim.
In the same breath, the child of light lunged with a powerful leap, aiming for the creature's exposed neck.
It's only vulnerable spot.
And his strike rang true.
The knife pierced the slick flesh, a deafening shriek reverberating through the cavern.
Sunny had succeeded.
The creature was injured.
Quickly gaining footing on the back of the abomination, he used the momentum from the hit to twist the stuck knife, ignoring the way his body creaked as he did so.
He had never learnt how to properly strike after all, the outskirts only taught him the way to beat a bigger opponent — to strike at the moment they let their guard down.
Soon, the creature thrashed as it struggled to rid it's unknown assailant.
Crashing into the nearby wall of the cave, the black cacoons were destroyed as its body slammed onto them, blood, flesh, and all kinds of organs in the human body spilling onto the wall.
Yet Sunny endured; he couldn't be flicked off the abomination at this height. He had to stay there until it was truly dead.
After a few more thumps and crashes, he… he stopped being flung around, the gigantic monster coming to a still.
Removing his knife, he slid down the body of the creature and onto the ground, looking at the scene before him.
'What… what now?'
The Nightmare was yet to be over.
'But– didn't I kill the creature?'
The Spell…
It hadn't declared his kill.
'Wasn't the Spell supposed to announce kills?'
That was what he had seen in those Awakened webtoons, what the police officer had said.
The Creature wasn't dead yet.
Quickly rushing over to one of the undestroyed black cacoons, Sunny spared one last look at the human within it and stabbed his knife into it.
He had to confirm this.
[You have slayed an awakened beast — Khan]
Sunny's heart dropped. He had suspected it, but…
His instinct was right, the Creature — it wasn't dead, it was pretending to be.
An abomination with that kind of intelligence had to be a Devil—or worse.
'It can't possibly be a Tyrant, could it?'
Sunny didn't know how to manage to fight a Tyrant among all things, along with its minions of course. He was already struggling with… with everything going on here.
It was at this moment that a screech echoed throughout the caravan.
The Creature had awakened, and it was determined to kill the one who had disturbed its feast.