Shadow Slave

[Your shadow grows stronger.]

With a rather unpleasant noise, the monster's head fell down. Sunny indifferently bent his arm and wiped the Midnight Shard on the sleeve of his armor, watching as the massive body slowly topple over.

Standing on the other side of it, the Stone Saint simply flourished her sword in and stopped it abruptly mid-swing, sending every drop of blood flying to the ground. Then, she just stood there absolutely still, pretending to be a statue.

Sunny sighed.

'That's a cool trick. I should learn it.'

Honestly, cleaning his blade on the Puppeteer's Shroud was not very fair to the tier-five armor. He felt guilty.

"Watch my back."

With the taciturn Shadow observing the surroundings, he summoned the Prowling Thorn and used it to recover the soul shards from the carcass.

This was the fourth Nightmare Creature Sunny had killed this night. With the help of the Stone Saint, his hunts became much easier than before. Not even mentioning the fact that the Shadow was as powerful as most of his marks, the mere fact that he had a partner to draw the enemy's attention away changed a lot of things.

Sunny was somewhat capable of, but preferred to avoid engaging in direct battle with these abominations. His way of doing things was to strike from the shadows and, ideally, kill the enemy with a single strike. If everything went smoothly, the prey would never even see its killer.

Of course, such a hunting method required a lot of cunning, patience, and preparation. He had to observe the enemy for a long time to learn its behavior and weaknesses. The confrontation itself took just a few seconds, but only because days had been spent in adnvance to make that immediate resolution possible.

After hunting in that meticulous way for three months, Sunny felt strange simply overpowering the monsters with brute force. The combination of Stone Saint's indomitable defense and his swift blade was nothing short of miraculous.

It was almost like fighting side by side with Neph.

Almost…

With a sigh, Sunny threw the soul shards into his rucksack and stood up.

a problem that he had never expected to face. It was honestly

out

Dark City to begin with, let alone those whom he had already tracked, studied, and felt confident attacking. After tonight's massacre, pretty much every one

cleaned

stronger now, so much more dangerous. With the help of the Stone Saint, maybe there was

how

the apex predator in the ruins. In fact, he was the opposite of that.

all sins. Next thing you know, you'll be trying to hunt

maybe… but actually defeating one was a whole other conversation. And if he had the misfortune to stumble on something of a higher class, his chances of making it out alive would not be

one of the Awakened creatures that he knew of.

feeling in his head that he had a seed of an idea, but then

was I thinking about

again tonight… how powerful he had become with the help of the Shadow… how it was not very practical to wipe

'Oh, right!'

off the blood of her sword, he had thought that this would be a cool trick to learn. And at that moment, he got a feeling

should learn it… I should learn

eyes became

trick from the Stone Sait… what else would he be able to learn from her? This Shadow of his had an Attribute called [Battle Master], which apparently meant that

there a better teacher

technique stagnating because of the lack of guidance, there was no one better than the masterful

monster back into his

***

he returned to his hidden lair, Effie was already awake. Sitting on the bed, she was lazily staring at the ceiling and whistling a cheerful tune. Her

It was very hard...

back. Good

to his chest,

soul shards fell on the pile, which was sadly visibly diminished because

still nothing to

Effie whistled.