Араатны оюун

"Shadow! Shadow! Shadow!"

…Sunny swayed, looking at the broken sword in his hand. When did it break? He didn't quite remember. This was one of the first weapons he had picked up in the arena, right after killing… wait, who had he killed for that sword?

Dead faces spun in his mind, staring at him with empty eyes. There were so many that he couldn't even tell whether all of them had once belonged to real enemies or were simply created by his imagination. No, that one was real… the first human he had killed in the coliseum. That had been the battle where he took the sword.

These days, he was having trouble remembering things.

Sunny threw the broken sword away and looked at the crowd that was chanting his name. Shadow… right! That was him.

'What is wrong with you, fool… since when was that your name?'

He growled, wishing that he had thrown the broken weapon at one of the humans. Not that it would have done any good, there were powerful enchantments permeating the ancient stones of the coliseum. Some of them were meant to prevent the fighters from escaping, others protected the audience from their ire. Some, he had no idea about.

All his attempts to break free of this cursed place had failed… for now.

"Demon… are you alright?"

Sunny lingered for a few moments, then glanced at Elyas, slowly returning from the bizarre state of mind the battle had sent him into. The young man was looking at him with a strange expression on his face, a bit of apprehension hiding deep in his light blue eyes.

The youth had grown considerably stronger in the weeks they had spent fighting all kinds of monsters, both of the Nightmare and human kind, in the arena. All those soul shards had not been wasted on him. His healing Ability was now much more potent, and his skill as a warrior blossomed. His face also changed, becoming gaunt and angular... almost mature.

One had no choice but to grow up quickly in hell...

The pain of the Flaw washed over Sunny, finally shattering his strange trance. He gritted his teeth, and nodded.

"Well… good. You are being weird recently, you know. I have some essence left, so let me heal you before they take us back to the cages."

Sunny allowed the youth to approach and activate his Aspect Ability, staring at the Warmonger they had just killed. This one was a bit of a challenge… the bastard had almost taken one of his arms off.

The slavers they fought were growing stronger lately.

'Something is wrong.'

Sunny was not thinking about the Warmongers. He was thinking about his own state. At the start of all this, he had been in very bad shape… day after day, he had fought in the arena, receiving terrible wounds and being beaten down, time after time, just to claw his way to survival, somehow, and be thrown back into the cage.

At first, he had kept his spirits high despite all the horror of his situation. He kept thinking and studying his surrounding, searching for a way to escape. He still had hope.

But after a while, when nothing had worked, the weight of pain, torment, and hopelessness had grown heavier and heavier, and then heavier still. A seed of despair had taken root in his soul. And once there, it grew uncontrollably, threatening to break him into pieces.

…Sunny had not broken. But he had to search for a way to survive in the arena without losing pieces of his flesh each time, to bide his time until an opportunity to escape presented itself.

He had found that way in Shadow Dance.

The idea had been kept in the depths of his mind for a long time, but only now, faced with this soul-crushing despair, had Sunny summoned it into the light. He had decided to try and expand the purview of his battle style to include not only shadowing humans, but also Nightmare Creatures.

The result... was a resounding success.

Armed with a demon's body, Sunny had found it surprisingly easy to peer into the very essence of how the mad abominations carried themselves in battle, how they used their monstrous bodies and vile abilities to tear, ravage, and obliterate everything in their path. And then, he had stolen it.

He had claws, too. He had fangs and horns, too. He had plenty of hatred and cruelty burning in his heart, too.

…Not that having a demon's body mattered, in the end. It was the willingness to shift the way he thought that was needed.

Why couldn't he learn how to ravage, rip apart, and obliterate from these creatures?

He had done exactly that, and slowly, his performance in the arena started to improve. Being able to shadow the Nightmare Creatures not only enhanced his battle style, but also made them more predictable, and thus less dangerous.

Of course, the task had not been easy. In fact, understanding how the Corrupted fought and what impulses guided them was, in a sense, much harder than deciphering even the most sophisticated battle style. Their minds were perverted, bizarre, and alien to everything he had ever known.

And yet, he had nothing else to do but practice, as if his life depended on it. Because it quite literally did.

And eventually, his efforts bore fruit.

Sunny couldn't quite remember when he had made a breakthrough, but at some point, he found himself being able to understand the Nightmare Creatures much better. From that point onward, his mastery of Shadow Dance, which had been stagnating since the Dreamscape tournament, finally started advancing once again.

And with frightening speed.

Now, Sunny was able to use Shadow Dance to assume the shape and form of all his enemies, at least in his mind, and thus know how they were going to try and destroy him. By knowing that, he had been able to anticipate and kill them first, instead, one after another, day after day, week after week…

And here he was.

Barely remembering who he was.

As Elyas healed his wounds, Sunny stared at the dead Warmonger, his scowl growing deeper and deeper.

'Am I… becoming a Nightmare Creature?'

The thought sent a cold shiver running down his spine.

How did one become Corrupted, anyway?

…Some time later, back in the cage, Sunny stared into the darkness, scared. This… this was not a danger he had anticipated. Thrust into the terrible meat grinder of the arena, he had been so focused on surviving the terrifying battles that the possibility of having his very self annihilated, piece by little piece, had never occurred to him.

What, exactly, was happening to him?

Sunny stared at the unbreakable bars of his cage, and shuddered.

'Damn… I really, really need to get out of here…'

But how? He had been trying to escape all this time, with not even a hint of a chance. The damned collar around his neck made sure that he would never be able to leave the coliseum...

His black eyes narrowed.

'No… no, I have to hold on, just a little longer. This madness is not going to last forever.'

It simply couldn't. Half of the cages in the dungeon were already empty, their inhabitants slaughtered on the red stones of the arena.

The Warmongers were slowly running out of slaves to kill.

And when their number decreased too much, with only the most ferocious and deadly monsters left…

Something was bound to happen.

...Wasn't it?

A cold feeling of despair drowned his mind.

'But what if it doesn't?'