Shadow Slave

As it turned out, the cohort had endured the fury of the heavens for almost an entire day. Before the storm had appeared, the night had still been far away, and now, it was already a new morning.

The colossus was steadily marching south, completely unshaken by his terrifying battle with the abyssal leviathan. Sunny was growing more and more certain that the ancient statue, while brought to a semblance of life by some unknown power, was not truly sentient.

The headless giant was more like an Echo than a living thing, but then even Echoes seemed to possess some remnants of a personality — at least his poor Scavenger had one. Quiet Dancer often behaved like a prudish and cantankerous young woman, too… no matter how strange it was to describe a flying rapier in that way.

Not to mention Shadows, who were much more alive than Sunny felt comfortable admitting.

Compared to all of them, the colossus seemed rather… lifeless.

Just what kind of a being was he?

Sprawled on the ground, Sunny glanced sideways and observed the Stone Saint, who was standing indifferently at the edge of the platform. He wondered what this living statue thought of her strange colossal sibling. Was she in awe of him or didn't care one way or another?

It was hard to tell. But then again, he was not in the mood to think too much right now.

Sunny was truly exhausted and hurting all over. Everyone was, really.

Despite the incredible achievement of surviving the onslaught of two entire tribes of Nightmare Creatures, the storm, and an encounter with an actual horror of the depths — or rather, because of it — the members of the cohort looked truly pathetic.

Each of them was either laying on the stone surface of the swaying platform or sitting with a lost look on their face. They were all wounded, tired, and wet.

had lost his usual luster, and that alone screamed of how rough this recent hardship had been

that, if Sunny wasn't wrong, the stone giant had already brought them more than a

across the Labyrinth, indeed. In two days, they were going to traverse ten times more ground than Sunny, Nephis and Cassie had managed in

to endure a few hours of pure torture and

that riding

the runes, he knew that he was once again at the same level as he had

was no harm in looking,

in front of him, Sunny found

Shadow Fragments: [494/1000].

is… this

against giant locusts and ghastly flowers brought him a bountiful harvest of fragments, he was still astonished to see just how many he had gained. In the short

and thirty-two,

'Incredible!'

the ground and let gravity do the rest. Between

by his blood, but Sunny didn't want to even think about that experience,

bringing him four fragments per kill. With the addition af a dozen or so locusts slain by the Stone Saint, Sunny ended up with this

he return to his peak form, but he was now stronger by just shy

a day's

he was going to come close to fully saturating his Shadow Core by

reasons he had joined it in the first

were becoming