Shadow Slave

Sunny stared at the painfully familiar chest, his black eyes full of fright and venomous resentment. Of course, he had recognized it instantly. It was his old nemesis, the Mordant Mimic… the vile creature that had almost eaten him alive once, in the distant future.

Granted, he had ended up being the one to feast on the flesh of the abomination, instead. Which had been a traumatic experience in and of itself.

But who was to say that he would be able to kill the Fallen Devil again? Sure, Sunny was much stronger and more experienced now. He had more cores, thousands more shadow fragments reinforcing them, much better equipment, and inhabited the body of an actual demon. But there was also no Crushing in this era to help him hold the creature down while the Broken Oath did its job.

Thankfully, the bastard seemed to be behaving itself, maybe out of fear of its master. Actually…

Sunny looked closer and frowned, noticing that the chest had only three soul cores, none showing any sign of Corruption. They were bright and pristine, just like that of any other creature following the path of Ascension. However, they were also too dim to be of the Ascended Rank.

The Mimic was neither Fallen nor a Devil yet. It was simply an Awakened Demon masquerading as a treasure chest.

Which was a bit of an improvement, but still didn't really explain why Noctis was using a powerful demon as a piece of furniture.

'I guess the Mimic grew stronger sometime in the future… and was also Corrupted, somehow.'

Sunny relaxed a little, but then his scowl deepened.

While Noctis opened one of the other two chests and started enthusiastically rummaging through it, two thoughts entered Sunny's mind.

One was very simple…

'Coins!'

the miraculous coins was,

'What… the hell?'

said… weren't they mentioned in the description of the Covetous Coffer? Yes, they were! So

'Huh?!'

not even known about the existence of the Nightmare Seed in the Ivory Tower, let alone harbored any thoughts of entering

two possible answers, both of them

that the Nightmare was not, in fact, a recreation of the past. Instead, it was just… just the past. The Spell knew what Noctis was going to say because this conversation had already happened thousands of years ago, and possessed the power to

ready to believe that, though. Things didn't really add up... if each Nightmare allowed Awakened to travel through time and return to the past, they would have been able to cause

more inclined to consider

answer had to do with the nature of the Spell and the domain of its alleged creator. Weaver was called the Demon of Fate for a reason, after all. Their mask allowed Sunny to steal a glance at the tapestry of fate, and see the past,

as well, and hence knew that it was Sunny's fate to enter the Nightmare, meet Noctis, and have this conversation in the treasury of the flying

perhaps,

'Damnation, my head hurts.'

a very important piece of the grand puzzle, one that was too important to be considered hastily. The whole nature of

And speaking of excruciating…

at Noctis, suddenly remembering all the torment he had gone through because of that shameless crook. He gritted his teeth, thinking of all the ways

he pulled a sparkling emerald medallion out of the

you are... here,

and studied it with a dubious expression. There seemed to be an almost invisible, intricate string of runes carved

now, I wonder? Ah, I wish I could rip his flimsy body into tiny pieces, and listen to him scream. I would have started with the fingers, I think,

him with a strange expression, his face

Sunny frowned.