Shadow Slave

As it turned out, the cohort had endured the fury of the heavens for almost an entire day. Before the storm had appeared, the night had still been far away, and now, it was already a new morning.

The colossus was steadily marching south, completely unshaken by his terrifying battle with the abyssal leviathan. Sunny was growing more and more certain that the ancient statue, while brought to a semblance of life by some unknown power, was not truly sentient.

The headless giant was more like an Echo than a living thing, but then even Echoes seemed to possess some remnants of a personality — at least his poor Scavenger had one. Quiet Dancer often behaved like a prudish and cantankerous young woman, too… no matter how strange it was to describe a flying rapier in that way.

Not to mention Shadows, who were much more alive than Sunny felt comfortable admitting.

Compared to all of them, the colossus seemed rather… lifeless.

Just what kind of a being was he?

Sprawled on the ground, Sunny glanced sideways and observed the Stone Saint, who was standing indifferently at the edge of the platform. He wondered what this living statue thought of her strange colossal sibling. Was she in awe of him or didn't care one way or another?

It was hard to tell. But then again, he was not in the mood to think too much right now.

Sunny was truly exhausted and hurting all over. Everyone was, really.

Despite the incredible achievement of surviving the onslaught of two entire tribes of Nightmare Creatures, the storm, and an encounter with an actual horror of the depths — or rather, because of it — the members of the cohort looked truly pathetic.

Each of them was either laying on the stone surface of the swaying platform or sitting with a lost look on their face. They were all wounded, tired, and wet.

Even Kai had lost his usual luster, and that alone screamed of how rough this recent hardship had been on them. Even when compared to the usual ruthless reality of the Forgotten Shore.

…Well, no matter. They had survived. More than that, if Sunny wasn't wrong, the stone giant had already brought them more than a thousand kilometers to the south. And by the evening, that number was going to double.

A quick way to travel across the Labyrinth, indeed. In two days, they were going to traverse ten times more ground than Sunny, Nephis and Cassie had managed in two months of their bloody journey to the Dark City. And they had only achieved that much thanks to the desperate decision to travel by boat.

Not bad, even if they had to endure a few hours of pure torture and a couple of near-death moments.

…Plus, the speed wasn't the only benefit that riding atop the ancient colossus had brought them.

With a subtly satisfied expression, Sunny listened to his body and smiled. Even without summoning the runes, he knew that he was once again at the same level as he had been before creating the Shadow Saint, and even above it.

But there was no harm in looking, right?

As the shimmering runes appeared in the air in front of him, Sunny found the familiar cluster… and blinked.

Shadow Fragments: [494/1000].

'This is… this is… what?'

Although he knew that the battle against giant locusts and ghastly flowers brought him a bountiful harvest of fragments, he was still astonished to see just how many he had gained. In the short span of time after Cassie had warned them about the coming storm and before the wall of darkness appeared on the horizon, Sunny managed to reap more than one hundred of them.

One hundred and thirty-two, to be exact.

'Incredible!'

Most came from the Blood Flowers. In a direct confrontation, Sunny would have never been able to kill that many, but yesterday, all he had to do was cause their hosts to plummet to the ground and let gravity do the rest. Between those sent to their deaths by the Prowling Thorn and those he had cut down with the Midnight Shard, about two dozen abominations had died by his hand.

…And another one by his blood, but Sunny didn't want to even think about that experience, ever again.

Each of the ghastly flowers was an awakened monster, bringing him four fragments per kill. With the addition af a dozen or so locusts slain by the Stone Saint, Sunny ended up with this mind-boggling windfall.

Not only did he return to his peak form, but he was now stronger by just shy of a hundred shadow fragments.

'All in a day's work…'

Still stunned, Sunny couldn't help but shake his head. If this continued, he was going to come close to fully saturating his Shadow Core by the end of this expedition.

…Which was one of the reasons he had joined it in the first place, but before today, his ambitious plans had been just a conjecture.

Now, they were becoming reality.

By accumulating a thousand fragments and saturating his core, Sunny was also going to learn yet another secret of his divine Aspect. What exactly was going to happen once the runes showed "Shadow Fragments: [1000/1000]"?

He was now almost halfway to finding out.

But even that wasn't all.

Looking at another cluster of runes, Sunny read:

Memories: [Silver Bell], [Puppeteer's Shroud], [Midnight Shard], [Ordinary Rock], [Prowling Thorn], [Endless Spring]...

And right after that, two new sets glimmered in the air:

...[Blood Blossom], [Dark Wing.]

'Two new Memories. Jackpot!'

The only thing that slightly ruined his exhilaration was the fact that, recently, Sunny was having trouble finding Memories that were actually useful to him. Of course, the Stone Saint had a ferocious appetite and could consume anything that he wasn't going to incorporate into his arsenal.

But simply feeding his spoils to the Shadow, while rewarding in its own way, was not as pleasant as acquiring a new powerful tool.

With a sense of cautious anticipation, Sunny concentrated on the new Memories.

'Well… let's take a look. Maybe it's something useful after all.'