Shadow Slave

For a long while, they just sat quietly together. Nephis was looking at the horizon, thinking about something only she knew about. Sunny's mind was strangely empty.

From time to time, he would cast a glance inside his Soul Sea, observing the recuperating Echo. The scavenger managed to survive its fight against the Carapace Centurion, even if it was just barely. Now, enveloped in a cocoon of light, it was flowing in the calming darkness of Sunny's soul and slowly regenerating.

If an Echo managed to retreat into the Sea of Soul alive, it would eventually recover from any wounds. The holes on the scavenger's carapace were already beginning to close. Its lost pincer arm, however, was not growing back any time soon.

Sunny sighed and summoned the runes. He decided to go over the spoils of the harrowing battle.

Shadow Fragments: [28/1000].

Since it was his Echo that delivered the final blow, the kill was considered to be his. Thus, he received four shadow fragments, two for each of the Centurion's awakened cores. The shards of the cores themselves went to Nephis as per their agreement. She decided to consume one herself and give the other one to Cassie.

The reward was sizable, but seemed disproportionate to the amount of trouble they had gone through to get rid of the terrifying monster. Ultimately, dormant humans like them were really not supposed to battle awakened Nightmare Creatures.

'No way, really?' he thought to himself, full of sarcasm.

It was just their bad luck that there was not a single Dormant-rank creature in this whole damned region of the Dream Realm.

Sunny remembered his lofty plans of hunting weak monsters while safely protected from all their attacks by his tier-five Awakened armor and couldn't help but smile bitterly. Who knew that the Puppeteer's Shroud would turn out to be merely a minimum requirement for survival, as opposed to a huge, odds-defying advantage.

Still, that armor had already saved his life twice, so it was doing its job.

Speaking of armor…

He lowered his gaze.

Memory: [Starlight Legion Armor].

Memory Rank: Awakened.

Memory Type: Armor.

the all-consuming darkness, seven valiant heroes made an oath to return light to the cursed land. Time has erased their names and their faces, but the memory

Julius would have been ecstatic

Awakened Academy and settling down in one of the most prosperous human Citadels. He was still one of the

had no idea when

cleared his throat and looked

a

at him with a bit

"A… present?"

Sunny smiled.

to tell you that I received a Memory after

However, Changing Star did not guess. In fact, her expression did not

It's an armor. So, give me

Otherwise, he would have preferred to avoid it for as long as possible. There had already been too much contact between them for his mental

a strangely intimate experience. Not to mention

in any condition

Nephis slowly held out a hand. Sunny hurriedly grasped it in his own, wishing to be done with this

was

to get distracted, he willed the Starlight Legion Armor to be expelled from his Soul Sea. One of the spheres of light disappeared from the Shadow Core's orbit. Immediately, he felt something akin to a spark of electricity

blinked and retracted her

stood up, walked a few steps away from the edge of the cliff, and summoned the