Shadow Slave

Sunny's bed trembled slightly, and he felt the wind blowing across the room. Still mostly asleep, he sighed and tried to pull the blanket higher. However, that damned thing was nowhere to be found.

'Where the hell is it…'

Reluctant to let go of sleep, he blindly searched for the blanket. Instead of finding it, though, Sunny suddenly felt his whole bed careen to the side. Startled, he opened his eyes… and saw nothing but darkness surrounding him.

'What the?! Oh… right.'

He wasn't in his small room in the Sanctuary. He was plummeting into a lightless abyss atop the corpse of a Fallen Devil, instead.

Sunny stared into the darkness for a bit.

Then, he yawned.

'Well. At least I slept well.'

Indeed, he was feeling rather refreshed. Most of his aches had either disappeared or grown milder, and even his wounded mind felt soothed. He felt rested, energized, and much better overall.

The only problem was, he was still falling into the endless void of the Sky Below.

Sunny scratched the back of his head, though about this predicament, then summoned the Endless Spring and drank some water. Then, he concentrated and tried to assess the situation.

was

nothing had changed while he slept,

stared at the treasure chest

Not only did I kill this poor bastard, I even went

down, down below, false

of his shadow essence had regenerated, Sunny judged that he slept for about twelve hours. A bit longer than usual, but he was

were very rough. But if he assumed them to be correct, that would mean that he had left the Sanctuary six

the golden String of Fate, but had to assume that it would take

body was safely hidden in the luxurious sleeping pod in the basement of his house. The pod would keep it alive for months, so Sunny was not too worried about his physical

Would anyone miss him?

as long as this one was going to be, they would just assume that he was too lazy to

Sanctuary were not in the habit of keeping a detailed record of who went in and out of the Citadel. The most anyone was

she would just think that he was avoiding her, as he

no one was really going to care that he was gone. So many

beautiful glass bottle in his hand, Sunny remained motionless for a while, then dismissed it and knocked on the lid of

my coins,

***

the dead Mimic with his one functioning hand, Sunny summoned the Dark Wing, then cautiously climbed onto the side of the big chest and tried to

of them were plummeting down with incredible speed, his body

the speed of his fall was going to increase exponentially, which meant that at some point

that his assumption was wrong. Since he could breathe in the Sky Below and felt the wind — or rather, the air moving past him as