Luckily, both of them were experienced hunters and worked well together. Sunny fell into the familiar rhythm of cooperating with Effie without skipping a bit, as though three whole months had not passed since they last saw each other. It was honestly nothing short of jolly.
At some point, the unruly huntress glanced at him and asked:
"But seriously. How did you survive, Sunny?"
He gave her a dark look, then shrugged.
"How do you think? You know that I am very good at hiding in the shadows. I slept during the day and hunted during the night. Observed my prey carefully before striking at their weak spots. If I ever met something I wasn't sure I could kill, I ran."
She became thoughtful for a while, then said:
"It's noticeable, you know. You've changed. You look… feel like a true hunter now."
Sunny grinned.
"Well, I would hope so. I hunted more Nightmare Creatures than was reasonable, really."
She smirked.
"How many?"
That was a good question. Sunny hesitated before answering:
"Around sixty? Yeah, no more than that, I think."
Together with those terrors he had slain in the Labyrinth, his kill count had long ago moved past a hundred.
Effie blinked and looked at him with a dark expression. That many hunts in only three months… the number was nothing short of staggering.
Actually, it was completely insane. Out in the real world, it was widely known that Awakened Nightmare Creatures were too tough for mere Sleepers to fight. Anyone who managed to prevail in a battle against one would earn themselves a proper reputation. Killing a dozen would make a person famous.
If Sunny were to return home and claim that he had slaughtered a hundred, most of them in a cursed ruin populated by Fallen abominations, the news of his accomplishment would fly around the whole planet in an instant. He would be hailed as an unparalleled genius and a hope of the entire generation.
…And yet, there were dozens of people just like him in the Dark City, many of them even more accomplished. Much more. Effie had several hundred hunts under her belt. There were a couple more hunters in the outer settlement whose track record was just as impressive… even if with the death of Jubei, their numbers had shrunk.
Inside the Bright Castle, there was Gunlaug himself, his five lieutenants, all the Pathfinders of the Host, more than a few experienced Hunters, and even a handful of Guards with a lot of battle scars to prove their prowess. All of them were at a level that Sleepers simply weren't supposed to ever achieve.
The Forgotten Shore was truly an... interesting place.
If Nephis were to somehow succeed and bring even just several of them back to the real world, how would the world change? Would other things that had been considered impossible before suddenly have their status put under scrutiny?
Was it the reason why the Spell gave her the name Changing Star? Was Neph destined to not only create change, but also be the catalyst of it?
Consumed with these thoughts, Sunny walked through the cursed ruins. Soon, a familiar shape of the cathedral appeared before his eyes.
Looking at it, Sunny shuddered.
He had been honest when he told Effie about how he managed to survive all this time.
However, he had failed to mention how close he came to dying in the process.
The memory of his first visit to the cathedral, and its consequences, was something he really liked to avoid…