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.

was facing a problem that he had never expected to

was running out of monsters to

whom he had already tracked, studied, and felt confident attacking. After tonight's massacre,

had cleaned the

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

This is how you

was a dangerous mindset. Despite his recent growth, Sunny was still in no way the apex predator in the ruins. In fact, he was the opposite of that. Of

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

would perhaps survive 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,

one of the Awakened creatures that he knew of. Or

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

was I thinking about just

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

'Oh, right!'

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

it…

eyes became

would he be able to learn from her? This Shadow of

a better teacher for someone

his technique stagnating because of the lack of guidance, there was no one

monster back into his

***

on the bed, she was lazily staring at the ceiling and whistling a cheerful tune. Her long

It was very hard...

back.

walked over to his chest, glanced at the huntress with

he poured the contents of his rucksack inside. Seven soul shards fell on the pile, which was sadly visibly diminished because of his

nothing

Effie whistled.