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.

speed of progression, he would have to wait for 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

Forgotten Shore for more than ten years. The King of the Castle himself had only

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

his painstakingly accumulated fortune of soul shards. Distracted, he froze for

His fortune could buy him a lot of things in the castle,

in that pit of despair he didn't even

Powerful Memories with useful enchantments were not cheap. In fact, they

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

of his shards, her power would instantly leap by a considerable amount. In the future, he would be able to cultivate the Shadow at double the speed, too — half of the materials coming from the Memories he would be acquiring from slaying monsters, the

a big problem with this

lot of attention. Dealing with random daredevils who would try to rob him, while

any sort of planning futile for

deaf to the

turned away from

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

Stone Saint could absorb shadow fragments by slaying Nightmare Creatures, just like he

***

with the shadows, he had a certain advantage over anyone else who would dare to explore these cursed ruins in the absolute darkness of the night. However, even he was always just one

dwelled here from the ancient times, would be the end of him.

and seek out weaker monsters to hunt. There weren't a lot of lesser creatures who

was what Sunny had made into his