Shadow Slave

Sunny lay still for a while, then summoned the runes and looked at the dreadful number:

Shadow Fragments: [197/2000].

He sighed.

The task of pursuing power had turned out to be much more difficult than he had anticipated, and for one simple reason: after becoming an Awakened, he now received fewer fragments from killing Nightmare Creatures.

If before he could get two by slaying an Awakened Monster, now it was one. If before he could receive four by slaying a Fallen Monster, now it was two. What's worse, his hopes of growing strong by hunting down scores of Dormant creatures had been mercilessly crushed, because he didn't receive any fragments from killing those weaker than him at all.

Which was a real disappointment. Who didn't love punching down? Sunny was at the very bottom of the power structure for most of his life, so he had been really looking forward to having an opportunity to bully something weaker than him, for a change. Alas, it had turned out to be a waste of his time.

Of course, Sunny had also become tremendously more powerful. He could handle himself in a fight with Fallen Beasts, and even Monsters… especially with the help of Saint. That was the only reason why he had not fallen off behind Nephis, who was still alive somewhere in the Dream Realm, and growing more powerful with each day.

He had not managed to diminish the gap between them by a lot, but at least he was not worse off than at the start of this.

Thinking of Changing Star, Sunny looked into the distance. A somber expression appeared on his face.

'...Think about something else.'

There was only one bright side to all of this.

While Dormant creatures did not bring him any shadow fragments, they did bring him Memories. And those Memories could be fed to Saint.

Her own counter now showed:

Shadow Fragments: [157/200].

'Not bad…'

eerie sound of giant iron links scraping against each other interrupted his thoughts. The island Sunny was currently on seemed to have entered

up with a sigh, Sunny summoned the Moonlight Shard and walked over to the corpse of the Dread Wolf. He had to retrieve the soul shards before

Isles… the Chained

north of the territories claimed by humans, they bordered the Hollow Mountains. That was one

wasn't the only

the air, connected to each other by gargantuan iron chains. It was mostly unexplored, and the Awakened population here was not very large. Notably, there were not a lot of Masters and Saints here,

Creatures of all kinds, from Dormant ones, to Awakened, Fallen, and terrifying Corrupted abominations. Each island had its own menagerie of horrors, and the level of threat differed from one to another. Most were utterly deadly, though. Much more deadly than an average Awakened was supposed to be able to

he could sharpen his blade without being seen by those who served the Sovereigns. Or at least he had thought that way, at the start… right now,

like Master Jet said, the Chained Islands were a

Nightmare Creatures. The place itself was capable of killing a person… or, rather, its

the usual sky with the sun, the moon,

another sky in this strange land, the one that was below the islands. It was always dark, and the ethereal lights burning at an unimaginable distance in its

that the Sky Below was seemingly endless. On his first day on the Isles, Sunny had asked what was down there.

"Nothing."

the islands and spent a whole week flying straight down. He had

absolutely empty, the Sky Below did not seem to

went, the more crushing their weight would become, until

human on the Chained Isles knew to pay attention to the sound of rattling chains. Every island in the region went through cycles of ascending and descending, and as they rose too high, the pressure on their surface grew tremendously, to the point where it was impossible to

off the

from the corpses of

eyes glistened with