Chapter 1236 Great River

Chapter 1236 Great River

'Be careful of what you wish for.'

Sunny considered these words despite feeling that thinking about them too hard was, perhaps, not too wise. The aura of madness radiating from the carvings was just too intense to ignore.

The sight of the thousands of runes carved into the underside of his makeshift raft was more than a little bit ominous. However, he was not very concerned about how urgent and demented they looked.

What really made him wary were the symbols themselves.

There were familiar runes, and unfamiliar symbols, too... although Sunny had extensively studied the various known languages of the Dream Realm, he could easily admit that there might have been writing systems that he had never seen.

Even if it was a little strange that they were not only completely unknown to him, but also bore no passing resemblance to any of the ones he had brushed against before.

However, how could there be the letters of human language here? VIsit n0(v)eLb(i)n.com for the best novel reading experience

That was what really disturbed him.

'...Have someone from the Evacuation Army entered this Nightmare already?'

But no, that made no sense. The chances of an Awakened from his world entering the same Nightmare, finding the exact same piece of flotsam, and carving words from a dozen different languages — some of which even a researcher like Sunny had never stumbled upon, let alone mastered — into the wood before disappearing without a trace were infinitely small.

Not to mention that the markings did not seem fresh. They seemed like they had been made a long, long time ago.

So... what the hell was the meaning of this?

In fact, what the hell was the meaning of this entire Nightmare?

There had been no vision of reversed time when Sunny entered it. There were apparently millions of challengers who had entered it before him. There was no desert, no pyramid. Instead, there were the seven suns and a seemingly boundless expanse of water that sparkled under their light.

None of it made any sense at all. Even his shadows looked perplexed.

With a quiet groan, Sunny rubbed his temples and glanced at the Sin of Solace.

"What do you think about all this?"

The pale apparition looked at him with a smile.

"I am a part of you, so you should already be aware. No?"

Recognizing his own words, Sunny sighed and turned away.

"...Bastard."

The Sin of Solace laughed.

Then again, this river was supposed to exist outside of time. So it was just as likely that, should he survive the Nightmare, he would return to the waking world at the exact same moment that he had left it.

'Come to think of it...'

If this Nightmare had a strange relationship with the flow of time, then it could possibly explain how thirteen million challengers — way more than there were Awakened in the waking world — had ended up inside of it.

Maybe they had entered, entered, and would enter the Nightmare at various points in time before Sunny was alive, during his life, and long after he was dead.

That was a very confusing and incredibly troublesome thought, though...

Because it meant that in all that time, none of them had managed to conquer the Nightmare.

Sunny shivered.

'I'm just guessing, though. I might be completely wrong about the whole thing. In fact, it's most likely that I am.'

He still needed more information.

Although Sunny had a very good memory and could easily remember the descriptions mentioning the Great River, he still decided to summon the runed and take another look at them.

The shimmering symbols appeared in the air in front of him.

Name: Sunless.

True Name: Lost from Light.

Rank: Ascended.

Class: Tyrant.

Shadow Cores: [5/7].

Shadow Fragments: [1236/5000].

Memories: [Silver Bell], [Puppeteer's Shroud], [Midnight Shard]...

He searched for the runes of the Stifled Scream, but then froze.

A strange expression appeared on Sunny's face.

'...What?'

At the end of the long list of his Memories...

There was a string of runes that had not been there before.