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Chapter 435 Listening to Nothing

Sunny shuddered.

The voice he heard… was not his own. It sounded pleasant and calm, and seemed to have come from the darkness of the Sky Below itself.

'...Have I finally lost it?'frёewebnoѵēl.com

His first thought was that he had gone crazy again and was now hearing things.

His second thought was much less comforting…

'Damnation!'

Had he summoned some unholy titan from the depths of the Sky Below, after all?!

Sunny outstretched one hand, ready to manifest the Cruel Sight, but then hesitated.

If the owner of the voice was not a figment of his imagination, but some harrowing being of the void, was it really wise to agitate it? Would the silver blade even do anything against it?

'Calm down. Calm down. Maybe you just imagined the whole thing…'

As if to answer his thoughts, the void laughed softly.

"Ah, my apologies. I seem to have startled you."

Sunny gulped.

The pleasant voice seemed to belong to a young man, but no matter how hard he looked into the darkness, he couldn't see anyone… or anything… nearby.

He was reminded of his first meeting with Kai, only this time... this time, things were much more frightening.

"N—no worries. I just… didn't expect to hear another human's voice here. You, uh… you are a human… right?"

The void was silent for a while, then answered in a neutral tone:

"A human? I used to be a human once, I guess."

Sunny realized that he couldn't even pinpoint the direction from which the voice was coming. It was just… there, somehow. Everywhere. Around him...

He tensed, then asked cautiously:

"Used to? Then what are you now?"

The voice disappeared for a few moments, then sighed. Finally, it answered:

"...Lost."

Sunny blinked.

'What the hell does he mean?'

"Lost? As in lost in the Sky Below?"

The darkness let out a sad laugh.

"...No. Not in the Sky Below."

As Sunny felt cold shivers run down his spine, it hesitantly added:

"I am sorry. I haven't spoken to anyone in a long, long time. Instead of lost, It would be more proper to say that I am one of the Lost. My body in the waking world was destroyed, but my soul continues to exist here, in the Dream Realm. I hope that explanation is more clear."

One of the Lost…

Sunny knew of these people, although he had never met one in person. Just like there were Hollow — people whose souls were destroyed, leaving an empty body behind — there were also the Lost. People whose bodies had somehow died in the real world, leaving their souls stranded in the Dream Realm. There wasn't a lot of them, since most of the time the soul perished shortly after the body had, but there were some.

Knowing that the owner of the voice was one of these lost souls made Sunny relax a little… not that he had any reason to believe that the stranger was telling him the truth. He could have been a Nightmare Creature, still.

Or something worse...

But even if he was Lost, that didn't explain how they were able to converse. The Lost, from what Sunny knew, were just like any other Awakened in the Dream Realm. It was just that they couldn't return to the real world.

What they certainly were not were disembodied voices coming from the void.

He shifted his weight slightly, ready to… do something to protect himself, if need be, and asked:

"Sorry to hear that. But how is it that I am able to hear your voice, but can't see you?"

The voice lingered for some time, that answered with a bit of amusement:

"That is a good question."

Sunny waited patiently for him to expand on that answer, but that seemed to be it. A bit irritated, he said:

"Well? Aren't you going to explain?"

Instead, the voice suddenly asked:

"Why are you descending into the Sky Below? This is a very dangerous place."

Sunny blinked a couple of times, then coughed.

"Ah, that… well, you see… I am not so much descending into the Sky Below as I am falling into it. I got stuck on an island because of the Crushing, and sadly, that island broke off its chain. So, I had to jump off. And here I am."

Then, he frowned.

"Wait… dangerous place? Why is it dangerous? I haven't seen anything dangerous anywhere in this dreadful pit!"

The voice lingered for a while, then sighed with regret.

"You'll see. When you reach the stars… then you will see."

Then, it disappeared.

Sunny stared into the darkness, a bit disturbed. A deep frown appeared on his face.

"What do you mean? What will happen when I reach the stars?"

But there was no answer.

No matter how long Sunny waited, the voice did not speak to him again. The void was silent and empty, just as it had been before.

In the end, he just massaged his temples and cursed.

"What the hell was that?!"fгee𝑤ebɳoveɭ.cøm

Did he imagine the whole thing? Had his mind finally cracked?

Sunny stared at the Ordinary Rock, as though expecting it to actually talk and collaborate his story. Sadly, the Memory could only repeat the sounds it had recently heard…

'Wait… the sounds it had heard!'

Sunny hurriedly commanded the Rock to repeat everything it had recorded in the past few minutes. Then, feeling cold sweat appear on his forehead, he listened to his own voice speaking to nothing. His words were repeated, but where the words of the strange voice should have been, there was nothing but silence.

Dismissing the Ordinary Rock, Sunny clutched his hair and groaned.

"Crazy… I've gone completely crazy… curse it all, it has been just four days, and am already turning back into a lunatic!"

Not even a full week passed by, and he was already going insane.

"This is the worst vacation ever!"

After a while, he frowned.

Despite being mostly sure that the whole thing was just a symptom of his sanity slowly breaking apart, Sunny cautiously crawled to the edge of the chest and looked down, at the distant shimmering stars.

..Was he imagining things, or did they seem to be a little closer?

Chapter 436 Nothing to worry Aboutfreewebnøvel.coɱ

After the conversation with the disembodied voice of the void — whether it was real or not — Sunny felt different. Not exactly better, but at least not as lost and unmoored as before.

'That would be really ironic if the voice was just a figment of my imagination, wouldn't it?'

The empty void around him didn't seem as empty anymore. Even if it was now full of potential danger, the danger was better than nothing.

…Anything was better than nothing. After four days spent in the endless silence of the dark abyss, Sunny realized just how terrible nothingness was. The human mind was simply not built to withstand it.

In any case, he wasted some time staring at the distant stars, and then got to thinking.

Now that his cores were once again full of essence, he had no tool left to measure time. After considering his options for a while, he summoned the Cruel Sight and activated the [Dark Mirror] enchantment.

Even though he had no enemies to fight in the Sky Below, simply keeping the enchantment active was going to drain his shadow essence. Sunny felt that he could keep it going for about two hours straight.

After his reserve of Essene became approximately half-empty, he dismissed the Cruel Sight and sat cross-legged in the center of the dead devil's lid.

Plummeting through the lightless void, Sunny inhaled deeply and closed his eyes. Then, he concentrated on the flow of essence through his body, feeling it permeate every fiber of his being.

Directing it into the coils of the Soul Serpent, he felt its flow accelerate and widen.

By using the Shadow, he was going to replenish all of the spent essence in about a day. That was going to be his clock from now on.

Sunny exhaled, directed the shadow essence into his left hand, and concentrated it in his thumb, then in his index finger…

Thanks to the Soul Serpent, his control of the essence was better than that of most Awakened. However, it was still rather crude. Sunny innately knew how to enhance his physical attributes by expending it, but wasn't really efficient with how he did it. To him, it was a matter of instinct — he just thought about making his hand stronger, and the essence flowed like a torrent to achieve the desired effect.

That was how all young Awakened used it.

True masters, however, were much more intricate in their control of essence. They could isolate every muscle, every nerve, every bone in their body and only enhance those parts of it that they needed to perform an action. Their expenditure of essence was more akin to a trickle than a torrent, but achieved the same result.

That's why between two Awakened with similar soul core capacity, one could be able to fight at his peak physical prowess for much longer.

…Now that Sunny had nothing else to do, he decided to really work on this aspect of mastery over his own body and soul. He had practiced essence control before, of course, but between the constant need to hunt down Nightmare Creatures and the fact that Soul Serpent served as an effective replacement for months of training, not as much as he could and should have.

Directing the flow of essence into his right hand, Sunny sighed and thought:

'Vacation is over.'

***

Two more days passed… or rather, two cycles of spending shadow essence with the help of the Cruel Sight and then waiting for it to regenerate, which Sunny had decided to count as days.freewёbnoνel.com

He spent that time meditating as he controlled the flow of the essence through his body, sleeping, and feeling hungry.

Now that Sunny was rationing his food, the feeling of hunger that he had forgotten ever since becoming infected by the Nightmare Spell returned. Even then, his supplies were on the verge of running out.

He only had enough for two meager meals left. After that, Sunny was either going to have to starve, or consider opening the treasure chest again and gnawing on the dead devil's raw meat.

Both possibilities seemed rather bleak.

What he was more concerned about, however, were the shimmering fake stars of the Sky Below.

Now, he was more or less sure that they were slowly growing larger. If not for the conversation with the voice of the void, he would have never noticed the subtle change. But after being alerted to their importance and spending a lot of time observing the stars, he had become convinced that the voice — whether it was one of the Lost, a Nightmare Creature pretending to be human, or simply a manifestation of his damaged psyche — had been right.

He was slowly drawing closer to the stars burning in the deepest reaches of the abyss.

If only the voice had told him why, exactly, the stars were dangerous…

Luckily, on the seventh day of his plummeting through the Sky Below, the voice returned.

Sunny was grimly eating his second to last piece of food and staring into the darkness, feeling his mind teetering on the verge of madness, when the voice resounded from the void again:

"...What a curious creature you are."

'Oh, thank god!'

Sunny choked on a piece of dried meat, took a sip of water from the Endless Spring to chase it down, and glanced at the empty expanse of the Sky Below with a dark expression.

"Where the hell have you been?!"

The voice remained silent for a bit, then answered apologetically:

"Talking like this is draining for me. I was recovering."

Sunny frowned, trying to glean some information about the nature of the owner of the pleasant voice from this statement, but then gave up. He had too few clues to guess.

"Well… if you are about to disappear for a few days again, at least tell me what's the deal with these stars first. Why are they so dangerous?"

The void hesitated:

"You don't know?"

Sunny blinked.

"Of course, I don't know! Why would I ask if I knew?"

When the void answered in a few moments, it sounded slightly surprised:

"Well. Those lights are not really stars. They are actually remnant conflagrations of the divine flame."

Sunny thought about what he just heard, then tilted his head to the side.

"Divine… flame? What? Why would divine flame burn in the depths of the Sky Below?"

The voice chuckled. Then, it said with a bit of amusement:

"How do you think the Sky Below came to be? A long time ago, this was a beautiful and prosperous land, you know."

The amusement drained from its voice, replaced with something much darker.

"But then, its prideful ruler provoked the wrath of the Lord of Light. The Lord… ah, you probably only know him as Sun God… brought down his heavenly flame upon the lands, shattering the earth and burying an unquenchable fire beneath it."

The void grew silent, and then sighed.

"Over the ages, that fire devoured everything — the earth, the land, even reality itself. All that is left is this empty abyss, and the remnant fragments of the divine flame still burning deep below. So, I am sorry to say this… but unless you know a way to survive the searing heat of the all-destroying heavenly fire, you will probably burn to death in a few weeks."