Shadow Slave

"Night&Gale representative agency publishes an official statement: popular idol and fashion icon, Night, is NOT the controversial Dreamscape sensation, nor has he ever participated in any scandalous activities under the alias Mongrel…"

Sunny read the latest news title on the screen of his communicator and covered his face with a hand.

'Oh, gods…'

How did poor Kai end up being involved in this mess? Had the world gone completely insane?!

He stared at the message icon at the bottom of the screen nervously, half-expecting to receive an angry message from his friend. Or was it up to Sunny to apologize in advance? Kai had seen him purchasing the Mantle of the Underworld, after all. Even though the onyx armor did not look the same as it had before being repaired and turning from pure stone to the strange stonelike metal, there was a possibility that he would recognize it…

'Ugh. Why is life so hard?'

Sunny shook his head resentfully and stared at the ceiling.

...And then there was the issue of Rain.

Sunny had watched her walk home through the eyes of the shadow, and was once again consumed by uncertainty. Did he need to intervene? What was the best way to help her? Did she even require his help?

There was no easy answer to any of these questions.

He turned off the communicator, sat in the darkness for a while, then stood up and went to the kitchen. Retrieving all the things that could spoil quickly from the ruined refrigerator, Sunny cooked himself a decadent dinner and ate in tense silence.

'...To hell with this. I'll deal with all these problems after returning from the Shipwreck Island… it shouldn't take me that long to reach it, investigate, and come back anyway. A week at most…'

waste time on all this nonsense when there was a

all the pertinent information he could find from the Academy database. All Awakened had some level of access to the base of shared knowledge about the Dream Realm and the Nightmare Creatures, and due to his position as the research assistant assigned to the Wilderness Survival faculty,

basic understanding of what to expect. The rest he was going to have to learn from the

also Cassie… she could help him even

plates, spent a few moments admiring their design and

basement, activated the maximum level of security measures, and climbed into the steel coffin of the

the lid of the sarcophagus closed,

I bet everyone will forget all about this Mongrel idiocy

gloomy shadow dejectedly

***

to talk to and gather enough information about the Shipwreck Island and the routes he could

Awakened did not usually go that far into the wilderness of the Chained Isles alone, and even established cohorts were reluctant to venture this close to the

were ferocious and powerful, and the islands themselves presented more danger

not consider himself to be more powerful than a full cohort of experienced Awakened would be, but his powers were tailored perfectly for scouting, traversal, and escape. Even if he was going to find himself

had Saint. The taciturn demon was worth half a cohort

was crawling down from the heights of the Sky Above, he found himself in his room, studying the makeshift map of the Chained Isles. On it, Sunny had marked the potential routes to the Shipwreck Isles, as well as known dangers he would face on

tended to migrate and travel between islands to escape the Crushing… but the really terrifying ones tended to stay

some of the places he wanted to go through could turn out to be inaccessible due to entering the ascent phase, Sunny was more or less sure that he could reach

…With one exception.

how he looked at it, he was going to have to traverse an island known among the inhabitants of the

had not come back at all. Apparently, the