Shadow Slave

Caster stared at him for a long time, then suddenly laughed. Even Cassie giggled, entertained by Sunny's earnest delivery.

Shaking his head, the handsome young man smiled and said:

"I see your sense of humor did not change. Good, that is good. Few people manage to preserve it here."

Sunny blinked a couple of times and said, pretending to be offended:

"What do you mean, sense of humor? It's the honest truth."

He received another bout of laughter instead of an answer.

'...There was food, safety, and laughter,' he thought suddenly, remembering how Cassie had described the Bright Castle after dreaming of it for the first time.

She had also seen Sunny leading her through its gates. Her prophetic visions were turning out to be frighteningly accurate.

'Makes you wonder about that other vision she saw…'

Not allowing himself to become distracted, Sunny chased away the ominous feeling and hid a smile. Then, with a shrug, he scoffed.

"Well, don't believe me if you don't want to. That was just one of my many adventures, anyway. Although the other ones were, admittedly, less remarkable — you know, the usual stuff: slaying dozens of awakened creatures, being resurrected from the doors of death by a beautiful princess, summoning ancient horrors from the depths of the cursed sea, outsmarting ancient fiends to escape from their clutches, sailing through the abyss on a boat made of demon bones, fighting gargantuan leviathans underwater, and so forth. Mundane crap like that."

As he was talking, Cassie gradually stopped laughing and turned to him with a somewhat startled expression on her face. It seemed as though it was only now, with the harrowing journey already behind them, that she had finally realized how outlandish it all actually was.

Put together, the facts of their bloody struggle to survive sounded like something out of a fairy tale. But they both knew that all of that had actually happened.

It had happened to them.

Caster chuckled.

of lame. I just entered the Dream Realm near the city wall and spent a few days running away from a bunch of terrifying monsters, then stumbled on a hunting

He sighed.

did you guys arrive? I'm sure I haven't seen

no reason to lie, and Sunny couldn't anyway. Looking longingly at his monster stew, which was slowly growing cold, he sighed and

Dark City two days ago, and

Legacy stared at him,

do you mean? Did you guys really spend two months in

'Uh-oh.'

had been wary of came. Sunny really didn't want for anyone to think that he was some kind of a powerful figure. First of all, there was no better advantage than being underestimated by the enemy. Secondly, he still had to hide the fact that

had long thought

in trouble, blame everything on

Sunny pretended

want to think about it. That place… it's pure hell. Honestly, if it wasn't for Changing Star, both

help, too,

mentioning Neph's name anywhere near the names of two losers like Cassie and him were believed to be would make anyone think that she had single-handedly carried the both of them

turns out, he

Nephis, something changed on Caster's face. With a strange look in his eyes, the

Lady Nephis is alive?

for someone like Sunny to survive a long journey through the

more intense than he had anticipated. It was on the border of

and handsome Legacy had seemed to be strangely enamored with Nephis even

'You bastard!'

Sunny

"Yeah. She's around."

his direction, Cassie hesitated for a moment, and then

shards when we came to the castle. So she is staying in the outer settlement. For