Shadow Slave

As the dust settled, Sunny abandoned his hiding spot on the roof of one of the buildings surrounding the square and jumped down. Avoiding the puddles of fetid blood, he walked among the corpses littering the ground and approached the dying stone monster.

The Nightmare Creature was lying on her back, her body battered and broken. From up close, Sunny was able to see it better.

The black armor of the strange monster was slowly turning to stone. In its gaps, he could see her slightly lighter skin. It was smooth like polished granite and dark grey in color. Streams of ruby dust was flowing from the terrible wounds, looking almost like blood.

Two crimson gems that served her as eyes slowly moved, focusing on Sunny. There was no particular expression in them, just tired stillness. The flames that used to burn inside were slowly dimming.

The statuesque creature stared at him without making a sound. In fact, Sunny wasn't sure that these monsters were even capable of producing sounds. Throughout the whole fight, she had remained eerily silent.

He sighed.

"Life is not fair, huh?"

With these words, he summoned the Midnight Shard and thrust it through the visor of the dying creature's helm. Even at the death's door, the stonelike flesh of the living statue proved to be extremely tough. However, he put enough strength into his strike, not wishing to make the poor thing suffer more than necessary.

He was always glad to kill a Nightmare Creature, but this one deserved a quick death. To be honest, he was very impressed by the small stone warrior's desperate last stand.

"They didn't know who they were messing with. But you showed them…"

At that moment, the familiar voice of the Spell resounded in the darkness:

[You have slain an awakened monster, Stone Saint.]

[Your shadow grows stronger.]

Sunny smiled.

four shadow fragments. Finally! Four

in the next second, he forgot what he was thinking about. Because the

ear, it

received an Echo:

***

Sunny's eyes opened wide.

hear it

Echo? He had finally received

around, Sunny lowered his voice and

heard it

in exasperation, then gestured at its mouth,

He smiled.

That's what the

he paced back and forth for some time,

I should get out of here. Now that the stone people are gone, who knows what kind of horrors

made a move to leave, but then stopped and looked at the scene

I really should get some mementos

dead Nightmare Creatures before the carrion eaters arrive to feast on the corpses. This was a

which monsters to approach first. The spiders were obviously much stronger. If they were really

anything with a bunch of Ascended soul shards would be very suspicious. Plus, it would take a while to find the crystals inside the massive bodies of

to search. The

pile of shattered stones and kneeled beside it, hoping to notice the gleam

barely done with the second dead statue when a sudden noise made him stop. Knowing that greed had doomed a lot of people to their deaths, Sunny suppressed