Shadow Slave

Sunny woke up from the oppressive feeling that drowned the whole world. The sunset was drawing near, and with it, the abyssal shadow of the Crimson Spire had once again fallen on the cursed city.

The distant spire could be seen from anywhere in these somber ruins, looming over the Forgotten Shore like an eternal dark omen. It was cyclopean and unimaginably high, with its roots growing from the endless sea of crimson coral and its peak lost somewhere beyond the veil of grey clouds.

In these past few months, Sunny had gotten accustomed to its presence and learned to not pay it any attention. Thinking about the Spire was a sure road to madness.

After all, somewhere inside that inconceivable structure lay their only hope of ever returning home.

And hope was a poison.

Yawning, Sunny stood up and stretched his arms. His good mood, which he had momentarily lost for some strange reason, was already returning.

Now that he had some time to put the events of the previous night into perspective, he understood even more clearly how amazing his luck had been recently. The acquisition of the Stone Saint and her following transformation into a Shadow were nothing short of miraculous.

His life was about to change for the better!

However, Sunny had to think things through thoroughly. He was in uncharted waters in regards to how to cultivate his pet monster.

The initial excitement he felt after realizing that the Shadow Saint was capable of consuming Memories to collect shadow fragments was gone. In its place, there now was a series of uncomfortable questions.

Sunny had spent somewhere around six months on the Forgotten Shore. In all this time, he had only been able to collect three Memories that were suitable to be fed to the Shadow, giving her mere six shadow fragments.

sixteen full years to see his labor bear fruit and find out what exactly was going to happen once the Stone Saint had accumulated all two hundred shadow fragments that

the elites of Gunlaug's army, the was no one who had survived on the Forgotten Shore for more than ten years. The King of the Castle himself had only been here for eight,

Sunny's battle ability would grow dramatically once the deadly stone knight was added into the equation, but still, it

the math, Sunny's eyes fell on the iron chest that stored his painstakingly accumulated fortune of soul shards. Distracted, he froze

incredibly rich man. His fortune could buy him a lot of things in the castle,

could be easily bought in that pit of despair he didn't even want to

a large amount of Memories. Powerful Memories with useful enchantments were not cheap. In fact, they were extremely expensive. But he

Stone Saint could get the same amount of fragments from the most useless of Memories, all he

Shadow at double the speed, too — half of the materials coming from the Memories he would be acquiring from slaying monsters, the other from the Memories he would be buying with

big

spend a large number of soul shards, he would inevitably draw a lot of attention. Dealing with random daredevils who would try to rob him, while not pleasant, was not a big problem. But if Gunlaug himself were to become

then there was Nephis, whose presence made any sort of planning futile for reasons that only she

deaf to the truth, which

and turned away from the

come back to this idea later. But first, I'll have to check if consuming Memories

wanted to know if the Stone Saint could absorb shadow fragments by slaying

***

maze of the forsaken city. Able to become one with the shadows, he had a certain advantage over

dwelled here from the ancient times, would be

avoid the Fallen Ones and seek out weaker monsters to hunt. There weren't a lot of lesser creatures who were able to secure a

into his profession, and