Shadow Slave

Soon, the vile creature drew close to the Twisted Rock. It crouched near the vertical stone wall of the floating island, giggled, and then suddenly shot upward, jumping no less than twenty meters high. Its talons pierced the weathered stone, and the abomination nimbly climbed up, soon disappearing from view.

Far below, on the rusted surface of the damaged heavenly chain, a hunched human figure suddenly appeared from the deep shadows.

Sunny felt the chain sway as the island rose higher and higher, then looked up with a dark expression.

In this direction, Twisted Rock was the last piece of land before the empty expanse of the Tear. It also only had one iron tether connecting it to the rest of the Chained Isles, so now that the bizarre monstrosity was up there, it had nowhere else to run.

With a pained grimace, Sunny summoned the Moonlight Shard, cut one of the straps off his pack, then tied it around his neck to create a makeshift sling for his broken arm. He was going to have to set the bones and make a proper splint later, but for now, this was going to have to do.

With his arm secured and cradled against his chest, Sunny waited a few seconds for the sharp pain to subside, then activated the Dark Wing and used the Prowling Thorn to fly up the overhanging slope of the stone island.

The dragonfly cloak only allowed him to levitate if there was a surface beneath it to support the enchantment. If there wasn't, he was only able to slowly glide down instead of falling without any control. So, to travel up, he had to either push off of something or pull himself toward something. The Prowling Thorn made that process easier.

Due to the burden of the early stages of the Crushing, Sunny had to exert more strength than usual to propel himself upward. After using the heavy kunai to do so several times, he finally crested the edge of the Twisted Rock and soared a few meters above it.

The Twisted Rock… was a dreadful and miserable place.

however, looked really strange. It

from the molten stone, telling the tale of countless humans and beasts who had drowned in that scorching inferno. The sight of them was eerie and disturbing, like something

the dark stone and swayed, then supported

to attract the attention of the chest

froze, then turned around and faced

Sunny scowled.

Chain Worm was hanging from beneath the half-closed lid of the chest. As the creature turned, the tail

opened its maw and swallowed the remainder of the Chain Worm whole. Despite the fact that the demon was at least five times bigger than the chest that served the

time, its laugh sounded rather

appeared on Sunny's

at

***

at full three meters of height, the Cruel Sight shifted and turned into a somber shortsword. Its silver blade

its rusted links scraped against each other,

smile disappeared from

The thing was tall, fast, and incredibly strong… much stronger than he was, especially now that his reserves of shadow essence were almost completely drained. Despite the fact that it was heavily wounded, both by his sword and by the claws of the Chain Worms, it still appeared agile,

to be as suicidal as it might have seemed. There were three main