Shadow Slave

"Shadow! Shadow! Shadow!"

…Sunny swayed, looking at the broken sword in his hand. When did it break? He didn't quite remember. This was one of the first weapons he had picked up in the arena, right after killing… wait, who had he killed for that sword?

Dead faces spun in his mind, staring at him with empty eyes. There were so many that he couldn't even tell whether all of them had once belonged to real enemies or were simply created by his imagination. No, that one was real… the first human he had killed in the coliseum. That had been the battle where he took the sword.

These days, he was having trouble remembering things.

Sunny threw the broken sword away and looked at the crowd that was chanting his name. Shadow… right! That was him.

'What is wrong with you, fool… since when was that your name?'

He growled, wishing that he had thrown the broken weapon at one of the humans. Not that it would have done any good — there were powerful enchantments permeating the ancient stones of the coliseum. Some of them were meant to prevent the fighters from escaping, others protected the audience from their ire. Some, he had no idea about.

All his attempts to break free of this cursed place had failed… for now.

"Demon… are you alright?"

Sunny lingered for a few moments, then glanced at Elyas, slowly returning from the bizarre state of mind the battle had sent him into. The young man was looking at him with a strange expression on his face, a bit of apprehension hiding deep in his light blue eyes.

The youth had grown considerably stronger in the weeks they had spent fighting all kinds of monsters — both of the Nightmare and human kind — in the arena. All those soul shards had not been wasted on him. His healing Ability was now much more potent, and his skill as a warrior blossomed. His face also changed, becoming gaunt and angular... almost mature.

One had no choice but to grow up quickly in hell...

The pain of the Flaw washed over Sunny, finally shattering his strange trans. He gritted his teeth, and nodded.

"Well… good. You are being weird recently, you know. I have some essence left, so let me heal you before they take us back to the cages."

Aspect Ability, staring at the Warmonger they had just killed. This one was

they fought were

'Something is wrong.'

the start of all this, he had been in very bad shape… day after day, he

situation. He kept thinking and studying his surrounding, searching for a way to escape. He still had

had grown heavier and heavier, and then heavier still. A seed of despair had taken root in his soul. And once there, it grew uncontrollably, threatening

survive in the arena without losing pieces of

that way in Shadow

his mind for a long time, but only now, faced with this soul-crushing despair, had Sunny summoned it into the light. He had decided to try and expand the purview

result... was

found it surprisingly easy to peer into the very essence of how the mad abominations carried themselves in battle, how they used their monstrous bodies and vile abilities to tear,

too. He had plenty

mattered, in the end. It was the

how to ravage, rip apart, and obliterate from

to shadow the Nightmare Creatures not only enhanced

and what impulses guided them was, in a sense, much harder than deciphering even the most sophisticated battle style. Their minds

nothing else to do but practice, as if his

his efforts bore

to understand the Nightmare Creatures much better. From that point onward, his mastery of Shadow Dance, which had been stagnating since the Dreamscape

And with frightening speed.

assume the shape and form of all his enemies, at least in his mind, and thus know how they were going to try and destroy him. By knowing that, he had been able to anticipate and kill them first, instead, one after another, day after day,

And here he was.

who he

at the dead Warmonger,

becoming

cold shiver running down his