Fate's Slave - Shadow Slave X Honkai Star Rail

Sunny crawled out of the simulation pod and lay on the cold floor for a while, breathing heavily.

’How come an illusory arena is so exhausting?’

The designers of the Dreamscape were really weird. The people who frequented the Colosseum were even weirder, though. Sunny couldn’t even begin to understand the quirks of their behavior.

’That’s how subcultures are, I guess?’

To be fair, he couldn’t even understand Seele’s own behavior. And that was only one person.

After a while, he stood up and went downstairs into the Party Car, traveling to the kitchen to make himself some food and replenish all the energy he had spent during this intense and taxing hour.

Sunny made himself a light dinner, avoided the strangely bitter-smelling coffee bags, devoured it with wolfish hunger, and then relaxed in the Party Car while drinking a cup of delicious tea. He had lowered the lighting, causing him to become slightly less noticeable.

He stared at the bar counter in curiosity.

’Shouldn’t somebody work that?’

Sunny has never been to a bar before, so he didn’t know.

As he rested, his phone buzzed.

He took a sip of tea, then opened the message March had sent him.

"I just noticed that Mongrel has really similar armor to your Echo. I just thought it was funny, lol."

’How is that funny... wait, what?!’

Seeing a video link attached, Sunny clicked it... and stopped himself from spitting out his tea.

"What... what the hell is this?!"

The video was... of him.

Of his duel in the Dreamscape, to be precise.

***

Caught in stunning quality, the recording of his short duel against the young man in azure armor was playing on a loop, set to menacing and epic music. The caption read "Mongrel Victorious". Sunny stared at it for a while, then slowly lowered his gaze and looked at the view count beneath the video.

’E—eleven... eleven zeroes?!’

How much was his bounty again?!

Now, Sunny wasn’t oblivious enough to think that he wouldn’t draw attention with his act of impersonating an intergalactic war criminal — one that was really just himself. However, he thought that people would calm down if he outed himself as a cosplayer...

’What the hell is happening?’

Feeling apprehensive, he went on the network and typed "Mongrel, Dreamscape" in the search bar. Immediately, thousands upon thousands of results showed, all featuring the fearsome image of Weaver’s Mask.

And instead of Mongrel the Stellaron Hunter, plenty of them depicted Mongrel the Fan... or, Mongrel’s Son, as some individuals seemed to believe.

Now, he held a moniker to differentiate from his criminal identity:

Mini Mongrel.

Sunny gulped.

"Oh, no. Oh, no."

He opened the first link, and almost spat blood.

Feeling an approaching headache and a bit of panic, Sunny scrolled through the feed, growing paler and paler with each second.

There were countless videos, captions, and discussions. Thousands of people were fervently debating his duels, his identity, and the hidden meaning of his words. It seemed as if they had somehow become convinced that he was some sort of a profound sage, going around spouting words of enlightened wisdom.

There were whole discussion boards dedicated to interpreting his ’teachings’!

He groaned.

...At least no one seemed to have any idea about who Mini Mongrel was. His efforts to obfuscate his identity were working, as was Weaver’s Mask.

But the worst was still to come...

As Sunny was studying the mess he had made, new notifications started appearing in the feed.

"Mini Mongrel returns!"

"Mini Mongrel decimates the Colosseum!"

"Seventy victories in sixty minutes: Mini Mongrel’s shocking rampage!"

"Mini Mongrel is the bastard child of the infamous Stellaron Hunter: Confirmed!"

He closed his eyes.

’...Gods. What is this crap?’

Opening a random link, he read in horror:

Mongrel #1 Sympathiser: "I was there, guys! It was incredible! He was like a natural disaster! So awesome..."

Random Shoe: "Did you hear what he said?"

Mongrel #1 Sympathiser: "Words are worthless, silence is gold! So profound. My whole outlook on life changed. If he’s like that, then what about his dad? And the other Stellaron Hunters!"

Mod: "This message has been deleted for violating the IPC code of conduct."

Random Shoe: "...Well, that happened."

Sunny closed the link and went to another page.

"Silence is Gold. One strike of a sword is worth more than a thousand words: an in-depth analysis of the postneonihilist philosophy of (Mini) Mongrel."

’Postneo... what?’ 𝗳𝚛𝗲𝕖𝚠𝚎𝚋𝗻𝗼𝕧𝗲𝐥.𝚌𝚘𝐦

Stupefied, he opened another link.

"Reacting to Mini Mongrel’s 70 wins! You gasp you lose!"

And another:

"Mini Mongrel does not believe in styles. Styles only separate men..."

And another:

"I spent a night with Mongrel: a candid confession of a former idol trainee."

Deactivating the communicator, he sat quietly for a while, and then groaned again.

"Damnation!"

The new recording of Mongrel’s stunning performance in the Colosseum flew around the globe in no time at all. Starved for new information about the mysterious demonic fighter, people became glued to the screens of their communicators...

They were not disappointed by what they saw, to say the least.

Mongrel’s already considerable renown — or infamy, depending on who you asked — became even more widespread.

Sunny had grown up in the outskirts, so he had never been really exposed both to the network culture and to the peculiar fanbase of the Dreamscape. That was why he had severely underestimated the effect his recent visit to the amateur arena would have on the people interested in these things.

He had only wanted to reach the number of victories required to access the professional duels as fast as possible, but failed to take into account how outstanding the feat of defeating seventy opponents in just one hour would look from the side.

...Especially considering the fact that he had killed the last half a dozen or so with his bare hands, not even bothering to use a weapon. These last few duels looked especially striking, impressive, and gruesome.

If before people called Mongrel a sword demon, now his son had become just a demon in their eyes.

What’s worse, even though it took all of his power and lots of effort for Sunny to achieve these victories, due to the fact that his face was always hidden behind the fearsome mask, he appeared to be completely calm and indifferent, as if defeating so many people in a row was nothing to him.

A walk in the park.

He also looked through the news that pertained to the actual Stellaron Hunter. It seemed that even the real Mongrel wasn’t safe...

"Mongrel X Silver Wolf equals Mini Mongrel? What does that even mean?!"

Sunny instinctively felt like he stumbled across something he shouldn’t have, so he immediately clicked away.

He almost thought that his eyes were going to melt, even if he didn’t know why.

"According to the internet, I’m my own son..."

Sunny didn’t even want to imagine how that would work. Or worse, what would happen if he spoke those words before the general populace.

He would have laughed if he wasn’t so pissed.

He turned off the communicator, sat in the darkness for a while, then stood up and went to the kitchen. Retrieving all the things that could spoil quickly from the ruined refrigerator, Sunny cooked himself a decadent dinner and ate in tense silence.

’...To hell with this. I’ll deal with all these problems after returning from the Shipwreck Island... it shouldn’t take me that long to reach it, investigate, and come back anyway. A day at most...’

Why waste time on all this nonsense when there was a treasure waiting for him in the Dream Realm?

With a dark grimace, Sunny washed the plates, spent a few moments admiring their design and craftsmanship, then went about preparing himself for a long stay in the Dream Realm.

Soon, he entered his barren room, locked the door, and entered the steel coffin that was his sleeping pod.

As the lid of the sarcophagus closed, he sighed and thought:

’One week... I bet everyone will forget all about this Mongrel idiocy in a week...’

His Gloomy shadow dejectedly shook its head.

***

It took Sunny a whole day to talk to everyone he needed to talk to and gather enough information about the Shipwreck Island and the routes he could take to reach it.

As it turned out, the journey promised to be even more perilous than he had expected. Awakened did not usually go that far into the wilderness of the Chained Isles alone, and even established cohorts were reluctant to venture this close to the Tear — the center of the Chained Isles, which was simply a massive void in the sky. There were no islands there, and it was theorized that the Ivory Tower once stood in it’s place.

The Nightmare Creatures out there were ferocious and powerful, and the islands themselves presented more danger than here on the edges of the region.

...Those people did not have his Aspect, though. Sunny did not consider himself to be more powerful than a full cohort of experienced Awakened would be, but his powers were tailored perfectly for scouting, traversal, and escape. Even if he was going to find himself facing against an overwhelming foe, he was reasonably certain of his ability to at least run away.

Plus, he had Saint. The taciturn demon was worth half a cohort alone and by herself.

As the sun was crawling down from the heights of the Sky Above, he found himself in his room, studying the makeshift map of the Chained Isles. On it, Sunny had marked the potential routes to the Shipwreck Isles, as well as known dangers he would face on the way.

Of course, such a map was not completely reliable. Nightmare Creatures tended to migrate and travel between islands to escape the Crushing... but the really terrifying ones tended to stay put.

Even taking into account that some of the places he wanted to go through could turn out to be inaccessible due to entering the ascent phase, Sunny was more or less sure that he could reach the Shipwreck Island in three to four days — which was much more than his estimate — while remaining comparatively safe.

...With one exception.

No matter how he looked at it, he was going to have to traverse an island known among the inhabitants of the Sanctuary as the Reckoning.

Not much was known about that place except for the fact that several cohorts lost members there, while others had not come back at all. Apparently, the creature that inhabited the island was especially twisted and deadly, and was capable of messing with a person’s sight.

No one really knew what it was, however. All that Sunny was able to find out was that the creature was most likely not Corrupted. People were under the impression that it was of the Fallen rank, but had different opinions on what its Class was, exactly. It didn’t seem to be a Tyrant, at least.

’I can fight perfectly well even if it plays tricks with my sight. And it’s not like I have to defeat it... or even fight it, really. I can just slip past and be on my way...’

With a sigh, he rolled the map up and placed it in his pack. There was already a bit of food and a few supplies for a prolonged journey there. Sunny couldn’t take too much with him, since there was a rather small limit on the weight of things he could pull with himself into the shadows.

He could also only do so with inanimate objects... at least for now. He had no idea if that was going to change in the future.

Finally, he opened his chest and took out the fang he had retrieved from the dead Chain Worm on the Iron Hand Island.

Sunny stared at the fang for a long time, a dark expression on his face.

’Should I tell Sparkle?"

Honestly, he didn’t think it was worth bothering her. She’d probably ask to come along — or rather, force him to take her. For a moment, he wondered if she would end up worrying if he suddenly disappeared.

...She probably would.

He wasn’t sure how to feel about that.

’Whatever. She could just do a divination or something...’

With a grim smile, he locked the chest, picked up his pack, and headed to the exit.

As the sun rolled into the dark embrace of the Sky Below and disappeared, he left the safety of the Sanctuary behind, approached the edge of the island, and jumped toward one of the heavenly chains.