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.

was the most relentless

with

eaten

delicious food,

dejectedly, Sunny looked around,

than they had been the day before. The burns were still rather painful, but within his capacity to endure without being

really

was going to have

the Moonlight Shard, Sunny gave Saint a command to follow, and went

***

the outer corridor had collapsed and turned to dust, some remained standing and required him to use a tiny bit of shadow essence to

kinds of rooms. Most of them were empty, suggesting that 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 spent a lot of time trying to understand what all these things

'...Such a shame.'

to other levels of the tower. He still had to find the thing that had pulled him toward this place, as well as — hopefully — some means of returning either to the Chained Isles or

of being stuck on this island forever did not seem very

there was no food anywhere

anything interesting on the first level, Sunny decided

seemed as though the Obsidian Tower had six levels, which really surprised Sunny. He had expected there to be seven. However, after finding two stairwells — one stair leading up, the other down — he realized that there was an underground level, too,

tendency to be tied to the number seven… except the gods,

bind them. Not even such a weird and random law as all

looked up, then looked down, and decided to explore

ahead, he entered the spiraling staircase and descended into the depths of the dark

Obsidian

And in it…

Sunny recoiled.