Shadow Slave

Sunny slept for a long time, the exhaustion slowly leaving his battered body. After a while, though, his consciousness rose from the deepest layers of slumber, summoned back by pain and thirst. With a sigh, he turned to his other side and tried to go back to sleep. After a few more hours of tossing and turning, though, Sunny was finally awoken by the loud sound of something crashing to the floor.

'...What is Saint doing?'

He reluctantly opened his eyes and sat up.

As Sunny's weight shifted, the bed beneath him suddenly broke with a loud crack. He rolled onto the floor with a startled yelp.

"Huh?!"

Standing up, Sunny looked at the broken bed, then at the hall of the Obsidian Tower, which was now submerged in darkness. A bewildered expression appeared on his face.

The room he had entered before had gone through a dramatic transformation while he was asleep. The magical lanterns were now extinguished, and everything inside seemed dilapidated and decrepit, almost on the verge of crumbling to pieces.

The magnificent tools and implements had rusted through and deformed, the worktable had collapsed under its own weight — that was the sound which had awoken Sunny — the food he had enjoyed yesterday had turned to dust. The pristine condition of the hall was gone, and now it was full of darkness, debris, and dirt.

It was as though eons had passed since he fell asleep.

A cold feeling appeared in his chest.

'...Have I slept for a thousand years?!'

Remembering fairy tales where similar things often happened, Sunny felt a hint of horror, but then thought about it for a few moments and calmed down.

No, he had not… judging by how much shadow essence had accumulated in his cores, he slept for about twenty-four hours straight, which was a lot, but nowhere near a thousand years. Saint, who was keeping watch nearby, also didn't look as if she had been guarding him for a few centuries.

Instead, it was the pagoda itself that had aged. As if an invisible seal that had kept it untouched by the passage of time for all those thousands of years was now broken, and time was finally catching up with it.

most relentless destroyer,

with relief,

should have eaten more

delicious food,

Sunny looked around, then accessed his

much better than they had been the day before. The burns were still rather painful, but within his capacity to endure without being slowed down in battle…

really

going to

Sunny gave Saint a command to follow, and

***

fully explore the first level of the ancient pagoda. Some of the doors in the outer corridor had collapsed and turned to dust,

the master of the tower had moved away a long time ago, taking all the valuable things with him, while some contained weathered debris and dust. Sunny

'...Such a shame.'

strangely disappointed, Sunny decided that it was time to move on to other levels of the tower. He still had to find the thing that had pulled him toward

idea of being stuck on this island forever did not seem very

there was no

anything interesting on the first level, Sunny decided to explore

He had expected there to be seven. However, after finding two stairwells — one stair leading up, the other

to be tied to the number seven… except the gods, of whom there

can bind them. Not even such a weird and

then looked down, and

go ahead, he entered the spiraling staircase

Obsidian

And in it…

Sunny recoiled.