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 absolutely

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

stared at the treasure chest

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

down below, false stars shimmered with

judged that he slept for about twelve hours. A

rough. But if he assumed them to be correct, that would

was going to take to reach the thing on the end of the golden String of Fate, but had to

real world, his body was safely hidden in the luxurious sleeping pod in the basement of his house. The pod would keep it

Would anyone miss him?

Realm, and 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 their business. They were famous

record of who went in and out of the Citadel. The most anyone was going to think about him would be when Cassie

he was avoiding her, as

treasure chest in boundless darkness, Sunny realized that no one was really going to care that he was gone. So many things had changed, but even more remained just the

a long look at the beautiful glass bottle in his hand, Sunny remained motionless for a while,

have my

***

onto the rope connecting him to the dead Mimic with his one functioning hand, Sunny summoned

speed, his body felt pleasantly light. Sunny thought about it for

thought that the speed of his fall was going to increase exponentially, which meant

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 it — it meant that the