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.

that he had never

running out of monsters to

abundant in the Dark City to begin with, let alone those whom he had already tracked, studied, and felt confident attacking. After

had cleaned the

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

is how you

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

you know, you'll be trying

a confrontation with a Fallen Beast… 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

could start investigating one of the Awakened creatures that he knew of. Or

was bothering Sunny. There was this feeling in his head that he had a seed of an idea, but then

I thinking about

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

'Oh, right!'

thought that this would be a cool trick to learn. And at that moment, he got a feeling that

learn it… I should learn

eyes

Stone Sait… what else would he be able to learn from her? This Shadow

a better teacher for someone

stagnating because of the lack of guidance, there was no

excited, Sunny summoned the taciturn monster back into his shadow and

***

Sitting on the bed, she was lazily staring at the ceiling and whistling a cheerful tune. Her long legs were somewhat covered by the blanket, but

It was very hard...

you're back. Good

Sunny walked over to his chest, glanced

contents of his rucksack inside. Seven soul shards fell on the pile, which

was still nothing to scoff at,

Effie whistled.