Shadow Slave

After the Shadow Saint had ruthlessly eviscerated the carapace centurion and confirmed Sunny's suspicion that he wouldn't be able to cultivate her in that way, he was left with nothing much to do.

The night was still young, but he had already achieved his goal. Now, he was free to do whatever he wished… however, there weren't very many options available in the cursed city.

He could continue to hunt, reveling in the newfound power. With the Stone Saint at his command, Sunny would be able to bathe the ruins in monster blood. However, that thought, no matter how seductive, left him uneasy.

Hunting in this hellish place required patience and preparation. He only survived this long by carefully scouting the potential battlegrounds in advance and studying his prey from the shadows to learn its strengths and weaknesses, not rushing into a fight until he was absolutely sure that there was a solid chance of victory.

Shadow Saint or not, betraying these principles would still get him killed. And with his mental state, uh… slightly unstable, Sunny didn't trust himself to stay cautious once the easy wins kept piling up. He had to proceed slowly.

Looking around the quiet ruins, Sunny smiled slightly. Actually, he wasn't that far from the Library…

He had indeed turned hunting Nightmare Creatures into a sort of profession, but it was just that: a job. Like any well-adjusted young man, he also had a hobby.

In his free time, Sunny liked to explore the ruins.

The warm feeling of satisfaction he had experienced after finding the hidden nest of the Vile Thieving Bird never left his memory. There was something deeply engaging in uncovering fragments of long-lost history and piecing them together. Maybe Sunny had inherited this passion from Teacher Julius, or maybe it had always been slumbering deep within his heart.

In any case, he enjoyed exploring the ancient city a great deal. It was full of all kinds of mysteries, both large and small. After thousands of years had passed, most traces of the past had been erased by the merciless flow of time. But by looking in the right places and exercising critical thinking, insight and imagination, it was possible to piece together tiny shards of truth.

Every time the seemingly disparate clues clicked into a coherent picture, Sunny felt a pleasant rush. Interestingly enough, it didn't matter whether that picture pertained to something important or completely useless.

In fact, he enjoyed learning about the small details of the daily life that the inhabitants of the ancient city had once led much more than he enjoyed learning about the possible origins of the catastrophe that had befallen them — despite the fact that the latter was directly related to his own survival.

For example, he was very curious to learn more about the young priestess whose private quarters he had made into his secret lair. The things she had left behind told him a lot about how the people of the city used to dress and think about the world, filling his imagination with colorful pictures of crowded streets and solemn cathedrals. But it was still not enough.

of years in the cursed darkness. Luckily, the people who used to live in the city before its fall were very fond of stone engravings. He spent

rubble. Sunny had managed to clear some of it away, but most pieces of the collapsed roof

reason, Sunny felt strangely reluctant to return to the exploration of the library on that

what else can

from the stone column and approached the dead

think of it… come to think of it, the spot marked on the crude map that he had found on the body

could check

shook his

no… the map has

task at hand. Once the meat and the shards were

fake, that's even worse. Who knows what kind of horror those

hidden there. This whole thing smelled of nothing but peril. In fact, it reeked of something sinister,

Sunny sighed.

honestly, what's the harm in taking one tiny look? It's just

***

approached the spot marked on the map. For some strange reason, very few Nightmare Creatures seemed to choose this remote part of the city as their hunting grounds. It was as though they were

away. In normal circumstances. But with the Stone Saint hiding in his shadow, he felt

to run away

over the collapsed

was a well. Its round mouth loomed like an open wound in the stone, filled with nothing but empty blackness. The well was covered with a strange, ornate iron grate. It must have weighed several tones at least, as though someone desperately wanted to prevent anything from ever lifting it from its place

the grill of the grate. The

…Maybe there wasn't one.

The black mouth of the well swallowed the

but there was no sound of