Chapter 3038: Saints of the Dark City |
In a short succession that could only be interpreted as a confluence of fate, all cohorts of the original Fire Keepers returned from their Nightmares. Almost at the same time, the Blood Sisters of Seishan — the women who had been the Handmaidens once — returned from their own trials.
The casualties among the two groups of challengers were minimal, as well, which meant that in the span of only a few months, humanity had gained more than fifty Saints — and not just any Saints, at that.
Both the Fire Keepers and the Blood Sisters were elites among elites, so naturally, they were exceptionally powerful Transcendents. The overall number of Saints humanity possessed easily crossed the two hundred mark, and in almost an instant, its overall strength greatly increased. Needless to say, it was a tectonic shift.
The situation on the many battlefronts changed rapidly as the Fire Keepers and the Blood Sisters joined the fight. In many cases, the pressure on the forces of humanity was greatly lessened — in some cases, the dynamics of the bloody confrontation between humans and the Nightmare Creatures were even completely reversed.
Observing that stunning change, Sunny could not help but remember the time the Dreamers of the Dark City had just escaped the Forgotten Shore.
Back then, their return sent waves through the Awakened society, becoming the most-discussed issue and threatening to upset the balance of power between various powerful factions. Everyone scrambled to recruit the newly returned Awakened, mobilizing their treasuries and assets to offer the most alluring incentives.
It was not because skilled Awakened were that rare or valuable, of course. In the grand scheme of things, the resurgence of a hundred or so Awakened warriors meant little to the world or to those who ruled it. Neither did the world care about how skilled or powerful those who had escaped from the Forgotten Shore were back then. However, what everyone did care about was their potential.
After assessing the information provided by the survivors of the Forgotten Shore, the government assigned each of them a special status,
Nephis, Cassie, Effie, Kai, Seishan, and Sunny were assigned the Special Strategic Asset designation, while the rest of the Dreamers of the Dark City were designated as Strategic Assets — which meant that all of them had the potential to go far on the Path of Ascension.
The result was just as staggering and impactful as those in power had believed it would be.
Now, Sunny could better understand why Clan Valor had been so determined in its attempts to recruit Nephis and her followers, even resorting to forceful methods to get them. If it had managed to survive until today, its already fearsome power would have exploded, leaving Clan Song no choice but to be crushed.
It was quite an irony, therefore, that neither Clan Song nor Clan Valor existed anymore. Their decision to go after the Dreamers of the Dark City had been quite shrewd, but neither side managed to reap the rewards of their foresight.
Instead, it was the Human Domain that ended up benefiting...
And that benefit was immensely impactful. Now, finally, the tides of the apocalypse were shifting in favor of humanity. With five Supremes — Nephis, Sunny, Cassie, Mordret, and Ananke — as well as hundreds of Saints led by the Fire Keepers and the Blood Sisters resisting the onslaught of Nightmare Creatures, the situation had finally stabilized...
At least for now.
There were still unsolvable problems facing the Human Domain, of course. Even if its direct combat power had been drastically increased by the arrival of dozens of new Saints, and even if some of its non-military crises had been solved or alleviated by those of them who possessed Utility Aspects, many issues remained just as dire.
The gradual collapse of Earth's infrastructure because of the spreading interference of the Call, for example. Or the realm boundary that continued to crumble. Or the Darkness, which continued to slowly expand and swallow more land in the east... But, still, Sunny and Nephis finally received a chance to catch their breath.
Both of them were demigods and, therefore, possessed absolutely inhuman levels of endurance and stamina. And yet, having gone directly from the Dreamspawn Plague into the jaws of apocalypse, even they were feeling the weight of mounting fatigue. The past year — a year of unrelenting pressure and ceaseless bloodshed — had been tiresome even for Supremes.
Especially for Supremes, perhaps, who had to do more and carried greater responsibility than anyone else.
Now that things were looking, if not good, then at least tolerable for a change, they could finally allow themselves to relax a little.
Looking at the six Memories that still lay on the marble altar, whole and undamaged, they could allow themselves to feel hope.
...They could also allow themselves to turn their attention to issues that were important, but had been overshadowed by all the other demands of the apocalypse before.
For Sunny, that meant one thing — an opportunity to finish something that he had begun a long time ago, but was yet to finish.
He turned his gaze to the Hollow Mountains.
There, under the currents of flowing mist and the impenetrable mass of stone, shrouded in true darkness, lay the Underworld — the ancient domain of the Demon of Destiny.
And somewhere in the Underworld, the last piece of Weaver's inheritance was waiting for him, waiting to be claimed.
The Shadow Weave.
Sunny had not been able to attempt recovering it before for a number of reasons. One of them was that among all the Death Zones humanity had discovered, the Underworld promised to be one of the deadliest. Another reason was that the Underworld posed an especially dire danger to him — true darkness was the nemesis of shadows, after all.
Out there in the dark depths of the Hollow Mountains, Sunny would be robbed of most of his power. So, up until now, he had hesitated to aim his sights at the Underworld.
His time was running out, though. The return of the Fire Keepers had given humanity a moment of respite, but that moment was not going to last long. Sunny knew that if he did not venture into the Underworld now, he would not receive a chance to complete his Lineage in a long, long while — maybe ever.
Unfortunately, he could not challenge the Underworld alone.
However...
Luckily, Sunny’s lover was someone whose light was just as calamitous to true darkness as true darkness was calamitous to shadows.
And so, he asked Nephis to delve into the darkness with him.
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