Shadow Slave

The island Sunny was resting on was a strange one. It was rather large and covered in soft grass, with ancient stone columns protruding from the ground here and there. Most of them had long toppled and been shattered to pieces by some unknown disaster. The ground itself was full of depressions and generally uneven, as if it had served as a battlefield for giants once.

The reason why Sunny had come up with such a metaphor was not coincidental. The main feature of the island was situated at its center, and appeared to be a giant, rusty metal hand. Hence, the isle was unimaginatively called the Iron Hand Island.

It was well known to the Awakened anchored in the Sanctuary because very few Nightmare Creatures ever came here, and thus, many humans used it to rest during their journeys.

However, today, Sunny wasn't the only visitor to the peaceful island.

A rather ugly monstrosity lay dead in the shadow of the giant iron hand, its blood forming a large pool. It had a body like that of a snake, two powerful hands protruding from a human-like torso, a head with a long and toothy muzzle, and two leathery wings.

From the looks of it, the creature had landed on the island due to heavy injuries, and then succumbed to the most recent Crushing. Its body seemed broken and flattened, with sharp bone splinters protruding from the torn scales.

Sunny's interest was naturally piqued, because it wasn't every day that he stumbled on free soul shards. Additionally, and more intriguing, the shadow had noticed something glinting on the ground near one of the abomination's hands.

'Huh…'

Standing up, Sunny looked around, and then headed to the center of the island.

Soon, he reached the rusty metal arm and dove into the shadows, emerging on top of it. Standing a good ten meters above the ground, he stared at the carcass of the dead Nightmare Creature to make sure that the shadow didn't miss anything.

…Everything seemed to be fine.

With a shrug, Sunny jumped down and landed softly on the grass near the massive monster. Walking around it, he approached the spot where the abomination's hand lay on the ground, its five long fingers ending in terrifying claws.

You were a scary one, weren't

each other. Winged ones like this one were often caught by the inhabitants of the dark

one had been relatively lucky, all

object that seemed to have fallen out of the creature's hand and stared at it with a dubious

"...A coin?"

a heavy golden coin. Which

were not exactly known for participating in commerce, and humans did not use coins. If they needed to trade, they either bartered with suitable items or used credits — of course, credits

could a gold coin come

a depiction of an archaic ship on one of its sides, with a tall mast that had an actual

were a man or a woman, just that they seem rather charming. There was a crescent moon drawn on

studied the coin some more, and then

is

a mysterious coin near the corpse of a monster that had

seem to be

the

coin, Sunny expected to see a malevolent spellweave, or at least something strange, but there

it, the coins… was just a

only strangeness about it was that it seemed a little bit warm

"Huh…"

sketch of a genuine Dream Realm coin. Cultural artifacts like this were few and far between. It wouldn't result in Sunny receiving any contribution points,

Sunny shoved the coin into his pack

how many shards

was on his side. He quickly retrieved two bright soul shards… so quickly, in fact, that Sunny grew sure that there had to