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

by nothing, nothing had changed while he slept, and there was nothing

stared at the treasure chest beneath him. After a while,

this poor bastard, I even went so far as to take a nap on top of its dead

false stars shimmered

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

But if he assumed them to be correct,

golden String of Fate, but had to assume that it would take at least a

in the basement of his house.

Would anyone miss him?

even if none 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

not in the habit of keeping a detailed record of who went in and out of the Citadel. The

just think that he was avoiding her, as he had

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

beautiful glass bottle in his hand, Sunny remained motionless for a while,

my coins, at

***

Mimic with his one functioning hand, Sunny summoned the Dark Wing, then cautiously climbed onto the side of the big chest and tried to balance it so that the heavy

down with incredible speed, his body felt pleasantly light. Sunny thought about

did that even make any sense? Yesterday, he had thought that the speed of his fall was going to increase exponentially, which meant that at some

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