Shadow Slave

"Draw! Aim! Endure!"

Just as Night shouted these words, Aiko tripped and fell. The bundle of arrows she was carrying in her arms scattered on the ground.

"Ouch…"

Picking herself up from the coral, she hurriedly gathered the arrows and dashed to the nearest archer, then placed them near his feet.

In this battle, the role of people like her — those who were too weak to fight and did not possess a useful Aspect — was simultaneously the most simple and the most chaotic. They were charged with supplying the Sleepers participating in the battle with everything they needed, be it arrows, crossbow bolts, stones for their slings, or anything else.

There were several teams of runners doing different things. Initially, she was supposed to help carry the wounded from the first and second lines to the makeshift hospital at the back of the formation. There, a few people with Aspect Abilities having to do with healing waited, ready to help. Her friend Stev was one of them.

…But as it turned out, there wasn't a lot of wounded in this battle. Most simply died on the spot. So she was left with nothing to do and ended up here, helping to supply the archers.

She had just brought two quivers to Night, and was on her way…

…Wait, how crazy was that?

Trying to catch her breath, Aiko glanced around and shivered.

'Crazy, this is crazy…'

The scene in front of her was just too bizarre to be true. Several hundred Sleepers were besieged by a horde of Nightmare Creatures on the ground, with another falling on them from above. All that in front of an ugly, endless tower of crimson coral. Surely, she was dreaming…

'Of course you are! This is the Dream Realm, you dimwit!'

this craziness with none other than Night from Nightingale, the breathtakingly beautiful idol whose posters hung on the walls of most girls her age back home. Despite the fact that the two of them had known each other for more than a year and were even… uh… on

was exactly the kind of weird dream a teenage

Stev and another Sleeper carrying

he was wounded himself, albeit not too seriously. Running up to them, Aiko took over and helped the ample giant

body was not easy, but she

hurried to the

had to run past the desperate archers and the exhausted crews of the siege engines, who were slowly but

look of it, things weren't going well for

be able to hold. The second line was now entangled with the Nightmare Creatures, too. The initial plan had been for these two forces to switch positions to give the exhausted warriors time to rest, but now, it was never going to

more corpses were falling on the invisible iron net. Despite that, the number of the flying abominations did not seem to diminish at all.

all going to

dread spread through her body, Aiko trembled and involuntarily turned her head to the tallest point

Nephis herself. The other was

is that

person was none other than Sunny, the strange young man who had

the important people were and what positions they held in the Bright Lady's cohort. Everyone's

…Except for Sunny.

a member of Lady Nephis's cohort, but Sunny himself always insisted that he was not.

knew him for his tendency to keep to himself, ridiculous bragging, and carefree attitude. They simultaneously

and kill

mind, Sunny was very mysterious.

him with Lady Nephis now, she suddenly felt a tiny bit of

Star had

going