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.

situation was

was surrounded by nothing, nothing had changed while he

sighed and stared at the treasure chest

think about it, this is just next-level pettiness. Not only did I kill this poor bastard, I even went so far as

false stars shimmered

of his shadow essence had regenerated, Sunny judged that he slept for about twelve hours. A bit

calculations of his, of course, were very rough. But if he assumed them to be correct, that would mean

long it was going to take to reach the thing on the end of the golden String of Fate, but had to assume that it would take at least a

his house. The pod would keep it alive for months, so Sunny was not too

Would anyone miss him?

of them had been as long as this one was going to be, they would just assume that he was too lazy to answer their messages and go about their business. They were famous heroes now, after all, with packed

The lookouts in the Sanctuary were not in the habit of keeping a detailed record of who went in and out of the Citadel. The most anyone was going to think about him would be when Cassie

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

on the lid of the dead treasure chest in boundless darkness, Sunny realized that no one was really going to care

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

have my coins, at

***

strange aerial dance. Holding onto the rope connecting him to the dead Mimic with his one functioning hand, Sunny summoned the Dark Wing, then cautiously climbed onto

of them were plummeting down with incredible speed, his body felt pleasantly light. Sunny thought about it

that even make any sense? Yesterday, he had thought that the speed of his fall was going to increase

in the Sky Below and felt the wind — or rather, the air moving past him as he fell through it — it meant that the speed of his fall had