Chapter 433 More of the Same Nothing
Sunny's bed trembled slightly, and he felt the wind blowing across the room. Still mostly asleep, he sighed and tried to pull the blanket higher. However, that damned thing was nowhere to be found.
'Where the hell is it…'
Reluctant to let go of sleep, he blindly searched for the blanket. Instead of finding it, though, Sunny suddenly felt his whole bed careen to the side. Startled, he opened his eyes… and saw nothing but darkness surrounding him.
'What the?! Oh… right.'
He wasn't in his small room in the Sanctuary. He was plummeting into a lightless abyss atop the corpse of a Fallen Devil, instead.
Sunny stared into the darkness for a bit.
Then, he yawned.
'Well. At least I slept well.'
Indeed, he was feeling rather refreshed. Most of his aches had either disappeared or grown milder, and even his wounded mind felt soothed. He felt rested, energized, and much better overall.
The only problem was, he was still falling into the endless void of the Sky Below.
Sunny scratched the back of his head, though about this predicament, then summoned the Endless Spring and drank some water. Then, he concentrated and tried to assess the situation.
...The situation was absolutely the same.
He was surrounded by nothing, nothing had changed while he slept, and there was nothing he could do about it.
Sunny sighed and stared at the treasure chest beneath him. After a while, he thought:
'If you think about it, this is just next-level pettiness. Not only did I kill this poor bastard, I even went so far as to take a nap on top of its dead body. Talk about insulting…'
Somewhere down, down below, false stars shimmered with white light.
Judging by how much of his shadow essence had regenerated, Sunny judged that he slept for about twelve hours. A bit longer than usual, but he was really exhausted after everything that had transpired.
These calculations of his, of course, were very rough. But if he assumed them to be correct, that would mean that he had left the Sanctuary six days ago.
He had no idea how long it was going to take to reach the thing on the end of the golden String of Fate, but had to assume that it would take at least a week… much longer than that, most likely.
Back in the real world, his body was safely hidden in the luxurious sleeping pod in the basement of his house. The pod would keep it alive for months, so Sunny was not too worried about his physical well-being… yet.
Would anyone miss him?
...Probably not. Kai and Effie were used to his long ventures into the Dream Realm, and even if none of them had been as long as this one was going to be, they would just assume that he was too lazy to answer their messages and go about their business. They were famous heroes now, after all, with packed schedules and plenty of problems of their own.
Teacher Julius didn't expect any reports from him, too. The lookouts in the Sanctuary were not in the habit of keeping a detailed record of who went in and out of the Citadel. The most anyone was going to think about him would be when Cassie arrived from the Night Temple, and he wasn't there to help Saint Tyris receive her.
But she would just think that he was avoiding her, as he had done before.
Sitting on the lid of the dead treasure chest in boundless darkness, Sunny realized that no one was really going to care that he was gone. So many things had changed, but even more remained just the same.
Throwing a long look at the beautiful glass bottle in his hand, Sunny remained motionless for a while, then dismissed it and knocked on the lid of the dead Mimic.
'Whatever. I have my coins, at least!'
***
Some time later, he was performing a strange aerial dance. Holding onto the rope connecting him to the dead Mimic with his one functioning hand, Sunny summoned the Dark Wing, then cautiously climbed onto the side of the big chest and tried to balance it so that the heavy thing didn't flip.
Because of the fact that both of them were plummeting down with incredible speed, his body felt pleasantly light. Sunny thought about it for a while, then frowned.
How did that even make any sense? Yesterday, he had thought that the speed of his fall was going to increase exponentially, which meant that at some point his body was bound to be simply torn apart… probably.
But now, he realized that his assumption was wrong. Since he could breathe in the Sky Below and felt the wind — or rather, the air moving past him as he fell through it — it meant that the speed of his fall had a limit dictated by the air resistance.
He did not, however, feel that resistance too much. By all accounts, he should have been hearing the roaring of the wind and feeling it assault his body, instead of falling through the emptiness in something that resembled comfort.
Common sense didn't seem to be working the Sky Below.
'Better not think about it too much.'
What was the point of trying to understand the laws of a place that simply denied all logic? He had far more practical things to do.
Trusting the leather rope to hold his weight, Sunny let go of it and summoned the Moonlight Shard. Then, perched precariously on the side of the treasure chest, he inserted the narrow blade of the ghostly stiletto between its lip and the lid, and tried to pry it open.freewēbnoveℓ.com
The task turned out to be far more difficult than Sunny had anticipated. Not only did he have to do everything with only one hand, he also had to balance the chest to prevent it from spinning in the empty void… as well as keep an eye on the rope, hoping nervously that it would not break.fɾēewebnσveℓ.com
After some time and plenty of exasperated curses, however, he finally managed to pry the jaws of the dead devil open.
Inside its maw, a pile of golden coins was waiting for him to claim them.
A dark smile appeared on Sunny's face.
Then, he let out a shaky, slightly unhinged laugh.
"Ah! It feels nice to be rich…"
Chapter 434 A Lot of Nothing
Summoning the Covetous Coffer, he commanded the toothy box to climb inside the… bigger, toothier box and open its lid. Then, he started whistling a lighthearted melody while throwing the heavy coins inside.
'One, two, three, four… ah, what a day to be alive… five, six…'
One after another, the miraculous golden discs disappeared into the Coffer. After a while, Sunny shifted his weight slightly, got more comfortable, and continued gathering his spoils.
In the end, he had recovered almost fourteen hundred coins from inside the dead devil. Just as Sunny had expected, the entire top layer of the treasure pile had turned out to be real.
That was an incredible, astonishing boon! Suddenly, everything that had happened seemed worth it…
Almost.
Glancing at the lightless void around him, Sunny sighed.
'Who knows if I will even be able to return to the Sanctuary? Without the altar, these coins are just dead weight.'
Somewhat disheartened, he lingered for a few moments, then turned his gaze back to the opened treasure chest.
The top layer of the treasure pile that he had successfully plundered was indeed real, but beneath it…
Sunny struggled to keep the contents of his stomach inside. Beneath the treasure, the limbs and organs of the Mimic were tightly packed together, taking up most of the chest's volume. The whole thing was soaked in black blood and producing a sickening stench, not to mention looking like a butcher's nightmare.
'Disgusting… so disgusting…'
Thinking about how repulsive the sight in front of him was, Sunny used the Moonlight Shard to cut through the terrible sludge and fished out four large soul shards with a wide smile on his face. After cleaning them up a little, he placed the alluring crystals inside the Covetous Coffer and dismissed the Memory with a feeling of great satisfaction.
After that, Sunny stared inside the treasure chest with a dubious expression on his face.
The thing was… he only had around three days worth of provisions left, stored neatly inside the Covetous Coffer. If he rationed his food, it would probably last him for about a week. After that…
Sunny scratched the back of his head, then shuddered and closed the lid of the chest with a loud thud.
'...I'll think about it when the time comes. But, hopefully, it never does!'
With that, he climbed back onto the dead devil and rested for a while, looking into the darkness.
As time slowly passed, Sunny grew more and more solemn. Finally, he came to a frightening realization.
…He had nothing else left to do.
***
"This is going to be a problem."
An eternity later — or just a few hours, who knew — Sunny was sitting on top of the treasure chest and dying from boredom.
He was still falling through the boundless dark abyss. Of course, what else would he be doing? There was nothing else to do!
The Cruel Sight was in his hand, the silver blade shining with a bright radiance. He was using its [Light Eater] enchantment to summon the sunlight the somber spear had absorbed and project it into the darkness of the Sky Below. Thanks to that light, the shapes of his two shadows could be clearly seen, one resting on the surface of the chest to his left, the other to his right.
Sunny shook his head, then said:
"I am dying of boredom here. I have never been this bored. How are we going to survive weeks of this crap? What do you guys think?"
The happy shadow to his right hesitated, then raised a fist encouragingly. Its sentiment was quite clear:
"You got this!"
The gloomy shadow to his left stared at him grimly, then simply shook its head. Its meaning was clear, too…
"Just give up already…"
Sunny blinked a couple of times, then smiled.
"Well, I think it's going to be fine. I'll just… think about it as a vacation. Yeah. When was the last time I could just relax and do nothing? That's right… never! If you think about it, guys, this is a godsend opportunity. An opportunity to rest and laze about as much as I want."
He remained silent for a while, then added:
"I literally have no choice but to do nothing. Lucky me, right?"
The gloomy shadow glanced at him, then covered its face with a palm.
Even the happy shadow hesitated for a bit before giving him a timid shrug.
Sunny frowned.
"What do you mean, go crazy? I am not going to go crazy! I'm so done with being crazy. Been there, done that, as they say. There is zero possibility that I will go crazy."
The shadows didn't answer, making him huff angrily.
"Whatever! Why am I even speaking to you two? It's not like you even have enough decency to pull your weight in the conversation!"
He scowled and dismissed the Cruel Sight, letting the darkness shroud everything once again. The shadows became invisible.freēwēbηovel.c૦m
After a while, Sunny said scornfully:
"And it's not like I don't have better alternatives to talk to, anyway."
…Where had he put the Ordinary Rock?
***
By the time three days had passed — at least Sunny suspected that it had been three days, since that was how long his shadow essence usually took to fully recover without the aid of the Soul Serpent — he was, indeed, on the verge of losing his mind.
It wasn't even the boredom that was the worst, it was the absolute lack of any external stimuli.
Nothing ever changed in the Sky Below. Nothing ever happened. Nothing ever appeared, or disappeared, or was there at all. There was nothing but empty darkness, the distant shimmering stars, and him.
And falling.
At the start of it all, Sunny had been worried that he would encounter evil, colossal, inconceivably horrifying creatures in the abyss. That was what one would expect from an abyss, right? But there was none.
By now, he almost hoped to encounter a stray titan or two.
He had heard that people were prone to going insane in isolation, but never expected to be in such a situation himself.
Sunny had spent the first day thinking about this and that, remembering his experiences and trying to learn something from them.
He wondered about the Mirror Beast and the Cruel Sight. Why was the silver spear even called that? Then, he understood.
It was called the Cruel Sight because its polished blade showed a person their own reflection.
He wondered about the shipwreck, the coins, the Mimic, and the person called Noctis. How were all of these things connected?
After a while, he guessed that Noctis had been the captain of the ancient ship, the master of the Mimic, and the person whose face was depicted on the miraculous coins. Noctis was also probably the one who had created the coins, in the first place.
That's why they could only be used in his Sanctuary.
He wondered about what Kai, Effie, and Cassie were doing.
He wondered about Nephis.
On the second day, he summoned the runes and saw that she had become a devil. Sunny stared at the counter that showed [2/4000] with a deadpan expression, then sighed and dove into the Soul Sea.
There, he had studied all of his Memories and the shadows of all the creatures he had killed.
That only took him a couple of hours.
...Or an eternity.
On the third day, Sunny just lay on the lid of the dead mimic and stared into the void. His mind was starting to behave in strange ways. Although there was nothing around him, Sunny could sometimes see strange shapes and silhouettes in the darkness, as well as hear distant noises.
He wanted to think that they were real, but knew that it was just the result of prolonged sensory starvation. Human minds were weird that way… they couldn't really withstand a lot of nothing.
Suddenly, the story of a man who had to turn back after seven days of descending into the Sky Below out of fear of going insane made much more sense to him.
To make himself perceive at least something, Sunny summoned the Silver Bell and rang it in the darkness, listening to the melodious ringing as it disappeared into the abyss.
And now, he was sitting on the treasure chest, looking at the distant stars, and speaking with the Ordinary Rock.freeweɓnøvel.com
"So, how has your day been, Rock?"
The Memory answered in his own voice:
"Same old nothing. Yours?"
Sunny remained silent for a while, then said:
"I am enjoying my vacation."
The Ordinary Rock laughed.
"Sounds wonderful! How is your vacation going?"
He sighed.
"Splendidly. I've yet to hit the rock bottom."
For a while, there was nothing but silence. Then, a new question came:
"...Why is it so dark?"
Sunny smiled weekly.
"Why wouldn't it be dark? This is the Sky Below, after all!"
But then, he froze.
'...What?'
The voice that asked the question… had not come from the Ordinary Rock.
That voice was not his own.