Shadow Slave

Jumping off the dead scavenger, Sunny retrieved his sword and whistled, letting Cassie know that it was safe to come out. Soon, she crawled out of a small opening in the coral wall and carefully put her feet on the ground. Leaning on her staff, the blind girl stood up and slightly turned her head, listening to the light sound of his footsteps.

Sunny approached Cassie and took her hand, gently placing it on his shoulder. Then, carefully avoiding puddles of blood, he guided the blind girl to the Echo. They talked on the way.

"Did those centipedes show up?"

During their journey through the labyrinth, they discovered that the scavengers were not the only creatures populating it. Different types of monsters lived in the crimson forest, hiding inside the reefs during the night and coming out to hunt once the sun was up.

There were sentient colonies of carnivorous worms that attacked from beneath the black mud, flesh-eating flowers that strangled their prey with bloodsucking vines, and weird transparent tentacles that they had once seen dragging a desperately resisting scavenger into a dark, cavernous crevice.

They still didn't know what type of creature had been hiding in the crevice. Sunny hoped that they would never find out.

In short, the labyrinth was home to all kinds of horrors, every one of them at least of the Awakened rank. They were all carrion eaters, living off the remains left behind by the monsters of the dark sea. Given the opportunity, they were also more than willing to devour each other — not to mention the three juicy humans.

Luckily, the carapace legion turned out to be extremely territorial and seemed to have the upper hand in this region of the crimson reef. While their armor, size and physical strength made the scavengers formidable opponents, dealing mostly with one type of creature was infinitely better than constantly facing unknown danger.

The centipede monsters were the latest enemy of the carapace legion they had met. Some of these critters were more than three meters long, with glistening red chitin and hundreds of tiny, scurrying legs. They were abhorrently fast and agile, being able to move through mud, climb the coral walls and even drop on the unsuspecting victims from above with incredible speed.

What's worse, their bodies were able to secret a corrosive black oil that melted through the strongest armor in seconds. The only redeeming quality of the centipede monsters was that their chitin shells weren't very tough and could be easily pierced by a sword.

Sunny answered without turning back:

"Yeah, six of them. And a few scavengers, too. We let them fight each other and then finished off the survivors."

Cassie gulped.

"Were you hurt?"

"Nothing our armor couldn't handle."

"What about the centurion?"

He glanced at the half-devoured carcass and smiled.

"It's not going to bother us again."

after entering the Dream Realm. Compared to the first encounter, this

even kept both of

soul shards did we

Sunny counted.

"Should be eleven."

was Cassie's turn

biggest haul so far!

He nodded.

"Yeah."

been able to acquire a single

never be

He sighed.

he and Cassie liked to play during camp was to discuss what they would buy after coming back to the real world and

approached the

"Hey, you! Stop chewing!"

froze, a piece of meat still hanging from its

"Spit it out!"

climb to her seat and handed

the centurion. What's up with that? Of all the

sentiment. Sunny squinted at it. What a rare show of solidarity. The shadow didn't have

was it stuck

'Cheeky bastard…'

Cassie laughed.

a great

a "he"

his head again and got to stripping the remaining meat off the centurion's carcass. Then, he placed the meat into the seaweed saddlebags attached to the scavenger. He had made these bags himself to increase the group's carrying capacity. After all, the scavenger was supposed

them, connected to a special gland. The whole

to utilize the centipede oil yet, but Nephis insisted on collecting as much of it as possible. She was sure that it was going to

very least, the oil was highly

shards and was standing in front of the Echo. He showed her his trophies and carefully placed them in

"All done?"

She nodded.

right above them, high in the grey sky.