Leon slowly opened his eyes. He sat up and looked around at the seemingly infinite view of the red coral. It stretched everywhere — its red branches tangled across the land, like a forest.
His head throbbed, as if it was forced to process a large amount of information, compressed into words.
Leon looked at Noah, who seemed to be out of spirits.
'So does he feel fear? Or did the creature from last night create fear in him? Would I actually feel fear again if I see the creature?'
"You alright?" Leon asked.
Noah didn't answer.
Ignoring Noah's expression, which seemed lost, he opened his runes.
Memories: [Crown of Ember], [Azure Scythe]
Leon focused on the runes for his new memory.
Memory: [Azure Scythe]
Memory Rank: Awakened
Memory Type: Weapon
Memory Description: [On this forgotten shore, only steel remembers.]
Enchantments:
[Predator's Continuity] :
The blade carries the memory of its wielder's last kill. Strikes against the same species makes the blade grow sharper and more durable.
Leon summoned his new memory, excited to finally have his first weapon memory.
The Azure Scythe was forged from a single piece of translucent blue metal, its surface smooth and glasslike. Its long, slender shaft shimmered faintly, pale azure light flowing beneath the surface.
Leon began playing with his new weapon. He spun the blade around and sliced through the air a few times.
'This will take time to get used to.'
But his mind drifted back to the previous night. The creature began using a language he couldn't recognize. Even trying to remember the words it spoke brought unimaginable pain.
Leon looked back at Noah. "Still angry?"
Noah remained motionless.
Leon sighed as he got up and began descending the coral high point. He knew that staying there would not solve anything. When his feet touched the ground again, he immediately ran forward, trying to find targets to test his new blade on.
He noticed a Carapace Scavenger nearby, crawling between the rocks. It looked injured. Leon lunged forward at the beast. The beast reacted, snapping its pincer at him.
Leon read the movement and slid beneath it. Due to the Scavenger's size, he easily got under it and tried to drive his scythe into its underside.
The scythe felt foreign to him. He adjusted mid-swing, bringing the blade toward the Scavenger's face, as he had to use all of his strength to behead it.
However, the scavenger's flesh was too dense to sever in a single strike. Before its pincers could reach him, Leon summoned the crown and detonated five charges behind the blade, blasting it forward. The scythe shot forward and severed the scavenger's head.
[You have slain an Awakened Beast, Carapace Scavenger.]
Losing the grip on his scythe, he was thrown back by the small explosion. Standing up again, he looked at its corpse.
'I need to be smarter with the crown.'
Leon opened his runes again.
Name: Leonar
True Name: -
Rank: Dreamer
Resonance Core: Dormant
Resonance Fragments: [2/1000]
Leon frowned.
'Nothing?'
He sighed as he began moving onto his next enemy, or so he thought.
As soon as Leon moved, his muscles tightened, and he immediately fell down.
'Shit, that hurts.'
Leon was still not strong enough to face a Scavenger head-on. Though his skills were keeping up, his body couldn't, and he ended up tiring them only after one fight. Even though he had not done much, it was as though his body refused to move.
'Was it because of the creature last night?'
Leon sighed as he slowly got up and walked toward the corpse of the Carapace Scavenger he just killed.
He extracted the soul shard and cut off some of its meat.
He hadn't eaten in a day, but his main problem was thirst. He needed water soon, or he would die. Leon didn't panic, simply because he couldn't. But the thirst was real, and he had no real way of harvesting water.
He thought of using the saltwater from the sea, as taught by Teacher Julius, but Noah had warned him the previous day that it was best not to interfere with the dark sea.
When asked why, Noah replied that it wasn't really a sea. When Leon insisted, Noah told him to wait a day. Climbing back up to the top, he tried to heal his body with the crown, but there was no response.
'What kind of damage did that creature even do to me?'
He used the crown to sear strips of the pink scavenger flesh and began eating. Looking down, he admired the soul shard he had just obtained. The radiant crystal was mesmerizing to look at.
He tried absorbing the shard as he remembered others doing it.
Yet after trying various methods, he couldn't absorb it.
Leon frowned as he stared at the soul shard in his hand. It was completely useless to him, yet he knew it had other uses.
Soul shards were used to trade for a lot back in the waking world. It had become the new currency in both realms. Leon could effectively get rich if he didn't have to absorb soul shards.
"Go make some clothes." Noah said.
'Oh right, I'm naked'
He finally acknowledged the fact that he was naked after two whole days. His flaw was at work yet again. Although shame was not that simple — to be absent because fear was, it still depended on Leon's own perspective.
Leon remembered back to when he tried summoning the creature of the depths. His flaw had allowed him to do so without fear, and yet he could have died if not for Noah.
"Finally talking again?" Leon asked with a grin.
Noah looked at him with an indifferent expression.
Leon sighed, "Alright, I'm... sorry, I won't be reckless again."
Noah stayed silent for a while and then nodded.
Leon then went on to collect some weed and, using the teachings of Wilderness Survival, started making some makeshift clothes and a small bag to hold his soul shard and food.
He knew that if Noah decided to think it's time to make clothes, then it means that he'd meet some people soon. He began humming as he got to work.
***
Sunny descended the statue as he saw multiple Carapace Scavengers rush toward the corpse of the shark devil that had nearly killed him on the first night. This allowed him to travel ahead without being noticed too much.
Although he mostly used the shadows to travel, that hid his presence — he eventually ended up facing one of the scavengers.
This one looked different. Its carapace was completely blackened. Sections had fractured outward, as if it had withstood a huge explosion.
Sunny smiled.
'An injured one shouldn't be too bad right?'
He wrapped himself with his shadow and lunged at the scavenger.
***
Leon was near one of the coral reefs as he climbed up for a higher vantage point. He tried looking around for more scavengers but all of them seemed to travel in one direction.
He grew confused, looking at the horde of them moving together.
'Are they having a party or something? Or is there something coming towards me?'
He smiled, imagining a monster bigger than the Carapace Scavengers approaching him.
'More loot for me.'
But his body still remembered the pain from last night, which made him reevaluate his next move.
'Maybe I should join these ugly bastards...'
But then Leon suddenly noticed something near the ground.
A shadow.
Leon narrowed his eyes onto the shadow. It moved around, like it was alive. He jumped down and landed right in front of the shadow.
The shadow was startled seeing Leon jump down.
'A shadow creature?'
But after observing its surroundings, he then realized what the shadow was, as he slightly smiled.
The shadow then calmed down, and then waved its hand.
"Sunny?"
The shadow nodded as a young man appeared near one of the coral rocks.
Leon looked up to see his friend.
He smiled and walked toward Sunny.
"I'm glad to see you here dude!"
He paused, scratching his head. "Maybe not glad? Well you know."
Sunny sighed. "Good to see you too Leon. Know where we are?"
Leon looked at the sun which seemed to be setting.
"Let's talk later, I know a really high coral rock, let's go climb it, the sun is setting."
Sunny nodded as the two began walking.
***
That night, a storm had descended. Leon was overjoyed as he got to drink water for the first time in days.
Although he was constantly at risk of getting washed off, he held on and persevered. He looked at Sunny who seemed to be doing fine too.
The next morning, Leon and Sunny descended the corals as they looked around.
"So according to our Memories, this is the Forgotten Shore."
Sunny clicked his tongue.
"Just my luck, ending up in an undocumented part of the Dream Realm."
Leon laughed as they looked around for scavengers to hunt.
"They're all heading toward the shark corpse near the statue."
Sunny said, admiring his new blade.
"Still hard to believe something that large, missing its head."
Leon said, trying to compare his new scythe to Sunny's Azure Blade.
Leon then stopped in his steps.
"Wait. You said the shark devil was huge and... Corrupted?"
Sunny nodded.
But then his face paled.
"No, wait. I mean it probably—"
But he was interrupted by Leon.
"Soul shards. Transcendent soul shards."
Sunny wanted to interject by saying that it's a bad idea, but he stopped to think.
"Transcendent..."
He shook off his thoughts as he asked.
"And how do we deal with the seemingly infinite amount of scavengers eating its corpse?"
Leon thought for a while before summoning his crown.
He showed it to Sunny and explained what it could do.
"That's... What did you even kill to get a memory like that?"
Leon's smile disappeared as he stared at the crown.
"A princess."
Sunny stayed silent.
Eventually, unable to find a single scavenger, they decided to head back to their coral rock.
"I still think it's a bad idea to just blow up everything. Firstly, your ember charge thing will go down, we might need it for later, for healing." Sunny said as they climbed.
Leon nodded. "Alright, let's first get to the knight statue, then we will think of a plan later."
"Plus, remember that orange light? What if there are more people?" He added.
Sunny frowned. "Let's hope it's more people."
At night, Leon would meditate for a while, trying to simulate different battle styles he could use with the scythe, while Sunny would lay down looking at the sky.
"I want a bow." Leon said, as he slowly opened his eyes.
Sunny and Noah both sounded at the same time.
"…Why?"
Leon shrugged. "Because it looks cool."
***
After days of being stranded on the rock, he finally left it behind. He and Sunny were moving across the mudflats, keeping distance from the stray Scavengers.
Both Sunny and Leon had remarkable teamwork because of their training in the academy. They could easily kill two or three scavengers with their teamwork. But they didn't.
Even though he wanted to fight them, time was of the essence.
"Sunny, why aren't you absorbing the soul shards—"
he paused, remembering his flaw.
"Mind telling me?"
Sunny narrowed his eyes. "I'm saving up you could say."
Soon, Leon saw it — a huge statue. He could see that it was headless, almost as if it was ripped out. It was an ancient, colossal statue at least two hundred meters tall. The scale of it was massive.
It depicted a knight clad in an elaborate plate armor, with seven shining stars carved into his breastplate. In his hands, he was holding a gargantuan sword, pointing it to the ground.
Leon studied the statue until Sunny nudged him and pointed toward the direction where Carapace Scavengers were grouped up, feasting on something.
As they continued moving near the statue, Sunny noticed another group of scavengers a distance away from the shark corpse that were moving unnaturally.
He continued to scout with his shadow and noticed a girl with silver hair, carrying a girl with blonde hair on her back, trying to outrun the group of scavengers.
Sunny frowned as he turned to Leon.
"I can see Changing Star, she's running away from a group of scavengers."
Leon continued to stare the statue as he exhaled slowly.
"Is she heavily injured?"
"No but..."
Leon interrupted Sunny before he could finish.
"If she's not injured, she'll reach the statue. We intercept there after we grab the soul shards."
Sunny stared at Leon silently for a second.
'Was I too direct?'
Leon wondered if he had sounded too cold.
"Cassie is with her."
Leon froze and slowly turned toward Sunny. Noticing the seriousness in Sunny's eyes, he let out a slow breath.
Although he wanted to say that Changing Star could handle a group of Awakened Beasts, the thought of Cassie being swarmed by them, brought a sharp pain to his chest.
***
Nephis was running away from the group of Awakened Beasts. She had been running for a while now.
This was not like her, to be careless.
And yet, a sudden surprise from a scavenger buried deep in the mud was all it took for her to run.
Nephis grimaced in pain as she kept healing her legs. She was carrying Cassie on her back.
"Please Nephis, just leave me." Cassie spoke in a shaky voice.
Nephis ignored her words, and continued running toward the knight's statue in the distance.
'Just a little longer.'
She was so close to the statue. They had left the small mountain they had arrived on to go west, so that statue was the only thing that would protect them from the sea. Yet she had encountered an abnormally large group of scavengers all around.
She was simply too unlucky.
As Nephis continued sprinting toward the knight statue, one of the scavengers broke from the mass and lunged. Its pincer almost caught her thigh, but only grazed it.
Nephis screamed in pain. That small graze had torn off a portion of flesh from her leg. She lost her balance and fell down. Cassie was thrown aside. The two tumbled down as Cassie rolled away from Nephis.
Nephis gripped her longsword but it was batted away instantly by one of the Scavengers. She gritted her teeth, staring at the Scavenger in front of her.
'No...'
Losing all strength in her legs, she fell down. The wound on her leg didn't allow her to regain balance. She closed her eyes, thinking it was all over.
Her body was too exhausted. She was already in agony from using her flames countless times, and now she couldn't anymore.
'I'm sorry...Father...Mother...'
Gritting her teeth, she opened her eyes and glared at the scavenger.
'No... I refuse.'
Slowly getting up, she tried to summon her longsword again. It was too slow though, as the scavenger was already upon her.
But before the large pincer could grab her, something flashed in front of her eyes. An azure blade was thrown at the Scavenger's head.
It dug deep into its neck, and before the scavenger could react, someone landed on top of it, gripping the blade and severing the beast's head.
The scavenger's body lost all strength and fell down.
A young man with black hair, covered in black armor, brandishing an azure blade, stood in front of her, facing the horde of scavengers.
***
'Phew... Just in time.'
Sunny had barely reached Nephis, beheading the scavenger. It took too much effort to kill it though, as he could feel his hands strain from the impact.
He turned toward Nephis and then toward Cassie.
Leon held her in his arms, as he wielded his azure scythe, fending off a scavenger.
Sunny turned back toward the scavenger horde approaching them. He rushed toward Nephis and grabbed her arm.
"Can you run?" he asked in a serious tone.
Nephis shook her head, her leg was still far too injured. Sunny frowned, as he carried her on his back.
"Leon! Retreat!"
Leon looked at Sunny and nodded. He carried Cassie and detonated the area between them and the approaching scavengers.
They then ran toward the statue at full speed.
The scavengers were dazed for a while before continuing their pursuit. The other beasts near the shark devil's corpse seemed to hear the explosion as they too rushed toward the group of humans.
Sunny wrapped his shadow around his body, increasing his speed. He approached the foot of the statue and kneeled down slightly, jumping up with full force.
The jump wasn't very large, but it was large enough to cover a considerable distance on the statue. He wrapped his shadow around the blade and stuck it into the statue.
Looking back, he saw Leon running toward the statue, and a horde of scavengers chasing him.
Sunny gritted his teeth.
'Damnation.'
Everything seemed hopeless. Until—
The scavengers suddenly stopped their pursuit, sensing some unknown danger. They immediately scattered away, finding spots to hide themselves.
Sunny did not know what was happening, but he still shouted.
"HEAL HER!"
Leon looked up at Sunny, and frowned. He did not want to reveal his arsenal to Changing Star. But sensing the urgency in Sunny's voice, he complied. Instantly, bright orange flames surrounded Nephis, washing away her fatigue.
For a second, he thought he saw a pair of emerald eyes beside Nephis. Leon froze but soon shook his head, he could not be distracted right now.
Nephis felt a warm flame dig into her body. The pain dulled, replaced by a strange lightness in her limbs. Sunny then slowly let go of her as she gripped onto the rock and began climbing.
She threw a rope down to Leon. He caught it and slowly lowered Cassie from his back.
"Climb. Now."
Cassie opened her mouth to speak, but closed it as she felt Leon's grip on her arm tighten.
She gripped onto the rope and began climbing, while Leon fended off the few scavengers who rushed toward the statue. Sunny was prepared to drop down and help but—
"GO!"
Leon shouted. Sunny gritted his teeth, but resumed climbing, trusting Leon's abilities. Soon, Sunny was nearing the top of the statue. He looked down to find Leon swarmed by a few scavengers.
He frowned, but before he could do anything, a large explosion occurred right where Leon stood.
'Huh?'
Then something shot upward through the smoke and debris.
He smiled.
'Smart.'
But he also realized how badly Leon must have damaged his legs to propel himself so far.
Sunny began climbing again. Nephis was already at the top, pulling on the rope which had Cassie. He reached the top of the neck. Looking down, he saw Leon land near the statue, digging his scythe into it.
But Sunny saw something else that made his heart sink.
Two monsters that looked like the scavengers, but not quite, were approaching the corpse of the shark. Their carapace seemed to be thicker. It was colored in deep black and scarlet, like ancient armor drenched in blood. Here and there, vicious-looking spikes were growing out of the carapace.
Additionally, instead of heavy pincers, their upper arms ended with long, curved, terrifying bone scythes.
'What the hell are those things?'
Sunny frowned as Cassie pulled herself onto the statue. Leon soon joined them. Following Sunny's gaze, he noticed the two new monsters approaching the shark devil's corpse.