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.

never expected to face.

was running out

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 of them was

had cleaned the

so much more dangerous. With the help of the Stone Saint, maybe there was no need

how

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

is the gravest of all sins. Next thing you know, you'll be

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. Or simply

was this feeling in his head that he had a seed of an idea, but then got distracted and

was I thinking about just

had become with the help of the Shadow… how it was not

'Oh, right!'

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

learn it… I should learn

Sunny's eyes

learn this trick from the Stone Sait… what else would he be able to learn from her? This Shadow of his had an Attribute

better teacher

of

monster back into his shadow and headed

***

and whistling a cheerful tune. Her long legs were somewhat covered by the blanket, but still… that white chiton of hers

It was very hard...

back. Good

answering, Sunny walked over to his chest, glanced at the huntress with

the contents of his rucksack inside. Seven soul shards fell

was still nothing

Effie whistled.