Shadow Slave

For a while, Sunny stood motionlessly in the living room. Then, he slowly wandered around the house, looking at its walls and tastefully furnished rooms. Finally, he found himself near the refrigerator and took out a glass bottle full of clear, pure water.

With it in hand, Sunny walked outside and sat down on the porch.

The terrace district was quiet and peaceful. The air was still cold, but the sunlight was already full of warmth, promising a vibrant spring. The wind rustled the leaves gently, and streams of meltwater murmured softly as they ran down the pavement. Sunny stared at the piece of land that he now owned and opened the glass bottle.

He spent quite a while there, sipping water and looking at nothing in particular. As hours passed, several PTVs drove by. He saw a few people in clean and warm clothes. A bit later, droves of children and teenagers in school uniforms walked past, on their way home from their studies.

After that, he sighed, retrieved his shadows, and went back inside.

Bringing the empty bottle back to the refrigerator, he stared at it for a few moments.

Inside, there was food… so much food. Enough food to last him for a month. All easily accessible, delicious, and well within his means.

…Before Sunny knew it, his fist slammed into the door of the refrigerator, easily piercing the thin metal sheets and turning the vegetables stored on the other side into vapor. Pieces of metal and plastic flew in the air, and the whole house trembled slightly. The refrigerator itself cracked and deformed, nearly bursting apart from the force of the impact.

Sunny stared at his hand in shock, then awkwardly retrieved it from inside the devastating device and looked at the broken thing with dismay.

"...Crap!"

Now he was going to have to buy a new one. And replace all the food. And clean up all the mess…

'What the hell is wrong with me?'

Shaking his head, he put the empty glass bottle on the counter, sighed, and went to find a mop.

***

Some time later, Sunny returned to the basement and approached the Dreamscape pod. He looked at it for a while, then turned around and paced around the armored dojo, frowning.

'Come on now… you've been preparing for this for a long, long time.'

As he paced, his whole presence slowly changed. The way Sunny walked, the way he held himself, the way his hands moved all became slightly different.

"There are six gods. The War God, also known as the God of Life. The Beast God, also knowns as the Goddess of the Moon. The Sun God…"

As he recited the names of the gods and their various aspects, the manner in which he spoke also changed. The difference was subtle, but noticeable.

One after another, Sunny changed every little bit of behavioral traits that could be traced back to him. He had spent a lot of time training for this moment, using the physical malleability of a Shadow Dance practitioner to make himself unrecognizable. Surprisingly, the task had turned out much easier than he had thought. It was basically his specialty, anyway.

Weaver's Mask could protect his identity from all who would wish to learn it through magic, but he had to deal with mundane forms of identification on his own.

After a while, when he was ready, Sunny undressed, approached the simulation pod, and climbed into its cradle. As the polished mask of black wood appeared on his face, the lid closed.

A string of shimmering letters appeared in front of him:

"Enter Dreamscape?"

"Yes" "No"

He sighed, then concentrated on the "Yes".

A few moments later, his vision darkened.

***

Sunny found himself standing in a boundless, black void. All around him, countless stars burned with ethereal light, an inconceivably complex weave of strings connecting them together.

…There was, however, no logic or sense in the pattern. He didn't feel any meaning hidden in the beautiful weave of the strings of light. It was just a pretty backdrop, and nothing more.

A fake.

Other than that, though, the simulation was pretty realistic. He looked down and saw his naked body, the Soul Serpent coiling around his arms and torso. The Dreamscape recreated his appearance to the sma… uh… in great detail.

'...Huh.'

Shaking his head in bewilderment, Sunny summoned the Mantle of the Underworld. It weaved itself from black threads and covered his body. As soon as it did, a pleasant voice resounded in the darkness:

"Challenger! Welcome to the Dreamscape."

Sunny summoned the Autumn Leaf — a small charm that allowed him to change the color of his hair. After a short hesitation, he made them appear white.

'What next? How do I fight people?'

The pleasant voice promptly responded:

"Before proceeding further, please choose an alias."

He blinked a couple of times, then scratched a back of his head.

'Oh, right. An alias…'

After some though, Sunny remembered the legend of Odysseus that Neph like to talk about, and smiled.

"Nobody."

That would be a good alias… he could already imagine how funny it would be, to hear something like "Nobody has defeated the enemy!" or "Nobody has won!".

His thoughts, however, were interrupted by the voice of the Dreamscape:

"Alias "Nobody" is taken. Please choose another."

"Uh…"

He did not expect that. What would be a better…

"Alias "Uh" is taken. Please choose another."

"What? No, wait!"

"Alias "What? No, wait!" is taken. Please choose another."

Sunny shut his mouth, then thought for a while.

His alias had to not only sound nice, but also be the opposite of what he would ever call himself in real life. Just like his movement and speech patterns, it had to be a part of the disguise. That's why coming up with one was not that easy…

In the next few minutes, he tried a dozen different aliases, all to the same result. The level of coolness of the aliases he could come up with rapidly dropped, while the level of his irritation quickly rose. He felt as if the damned simulation was mocking him.

Finally, Sunny growled in frustration and said the first word that came to his mind:

"...Mongrel!"

The Dreamscape was silent for a while. Then, it said:

"Welcome, Mongrel. Please, choose a dream of your liking."

'Really?! Mongrel?! Well… mission accomplished, I guess! This is indeed the last thing I would want to be known as!'

Oh, the irony…

As Sunny huffed and puffed from frustration, several images appeared in front of him. All contained depictions of different environments, although most looked like an arena of some sorts.

From his research, Sunny knew that the choice of an arena decided what type of opponents he would get to fight against. Some were available to everyone, some required a certain number of victories to be accessed. Professional duelists all spent their time in those elite dreams.

'Dreams… what a stupid name. If I was dreaming, I would be on the Chained Islands right now, wouldn't I?'

His body was, indeed, awake right now. It's just that his mind was inside of an illusion.

Regardless, what he needed was a place where he could fight sufficiently skilled amateurs without drawing too much attention. He knew just the place.

Pointing at one of the images, Sunny said.

"There."

A moment later, the black void disappeared, and he was suddenly somewhere else.

A loud voice thundered from somewhere above:

"Challenger Mongrel has entered the Colosseum!"