Sunny had an amazing idea on how he could get his final core. Using even Anvil and Ki Song to help him exploit this.
Sunny summoned the [Shadow Lantern]. Instead of releasing a flood of shadows, he sent all of his incarnations, including his main body, with the sole exception of the incarnation that got injured in his battle against the Winter Beast.
Inside the Shadow Realm, once again, Sunny was greeted with its beautiful sight. However, there was one difference, a large number of shadows were walking around. Grinning, Sunny had hit the jackpot.
He had learned something when he killed Condemnation. For some reason, when he killed Condemnation in the Shadow Realm, Sunny received a staggering amount of Shadow fragments. Not only that, but Condemnation also appeared in his soul sea as a shade.
It never made sense to Sunny why the Shade also appeared, and he received so many shadow fragments, but then Sunny realized that it's most likely because of Sunny himself.
Sunny made a mistake. When he took in Shadow's to his soul sea, he was comparing himself to a god, the God of Shadows. Most likely, Sunny's conversion rate was massively different from the Shadow Realm. It could be because he was wrestling authority from the Shadow Realm itself every time Sunny killed a creature.
The pull of the Shadow Realm was strong, Sunny experienced it firsthand in the future at Eternal City. So, most likely, Sunny had the potential to store more fragments, but it was getting lost while it was in a tug of war with the Shadow Realm.
Sunny formed a large odachi. This would be fun. Sunny had will. So, unless someone like Slayer showed up, this was his hunting ground. Sunny split his consciousness and manifested his shadow avatars.
Including himself, he currently had six bodies here and one currently up at East Antarctica. Each one of them summoned a blade and went on a killing spree.
Sunny found a shadow of a Corrupted Devil quickly. He cut it down, and his incarnation up at the waking world looked at his runes.
Forty shadow fragments entered his soul. Sunny was ecstatic. But then he soon found out there were differences between every creature.
Not every creature at the same rank and class was equal here in the Shadow Realm. There were plenty of factors. Depending on what they achieved before they died and how long they were in the Shadow Realm.
There were a few Corrupted Devils that only gave Sunny a few fragments. Around ten. Even then, that was almost double what he would normally receive.
For once, he felt like Nephis and Mordret's peer in creating cores. They created and destroyed cores like it was water.
He was always a bit envious of that.
There was also one major downside. It was that he didn't receive any shards or materials for memories.
Sunny continued cutting down the residents of the Shadow Realm. They were his guests and he their host. He would give them a warm welcome before an essence storm would come and utterly destroy them.
There was also an occasional awakened or master here that most likely died from the chain of Nightmares. Sunny felt bad for them. If he fought in the waking world, maybe there would be way fewer casualties, but Sunny couldn't afford to do that.
He had to focus on his tasks with the utmost fervor, and just like that, Sunny lost himself in the song of battle. He sliced, carved, bashed, ripped apart, and clawed each Shadow he came across.
Sometimes his incarnations would find themselves near each other. Using his Transcendent Art, Sunny had the most flawless teamwork.
Just like that, a month had passed. In the future, it took Sunny almost four years to create a new core. Now he was looking at his Lazy shadow once again.
He was fearful that a new shadow might appear, but luckily, that wasn't what happened. Sunny was surprised that after a month of being in the Shadow Realm, Slayer was nowhere to be found.
But then he remembered that the Shadow Realm was massive. When Sunny met Slayer, he entered the [Shadow Lantern] at Godgrave in the Dream Realm. Now he was in the War Gods' Realm.
Sunny looked at his Shadow Fragment counter [12/7000]. It would take a while for that to fill, but he already reached a qualitative change when he created his new core.
Now it could only be a quantitative change if he saturated his core.
Sunny continued to look at his runes and found what he was looking for.
Shadow: Serpent
Shadow Rank: Supreme
Shadow Class: Titan
Below it listed its attributes, but Sunny wasn't interested. It seems like the knowledge of when Sunny completed the fourth step still pushed Serpent into Supremacy.
In NQSC, inside Rain's shadows, there was a Supreme Titan. That was an amusing thought. He would visit her now. He needed Serpent for the future, and he needed to give her something.
Unfortunately, all of the anchors in the Dream Realm were severed since traveled back. The silver lining was Sunny's citadel. It should still be where he found it. Using his citadel Sunny didn't have to travel to the Forgotten Shore through the Hollow Mountains again.
That would be incredibly time-consuming.
Sunny had decided not to Supreme for a simple reason now that he had all seven cores. He had to go back to NQSC, and to do that, he had to travel the waking world.
That would prove challenging if the waking world was actively trying to kick him out. So, once more, Sunny would have to swim back.
A tiny voice spoke in his head that it was tiring of walking around everywhere. It truly was getting time-consuming.
Maybe when he had time, he would look at the component of his citadel. It seemed like it just teleported wherever it liked. If he could, he would create a powerful memory to help him teleport around.
Sunny wrapped all of his shadows around himself once and set off to NQSC.
He was done with Antarctica for the time being.