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!'

no matter how alluring the image of the miraculous coins was,

'What… the hell?'

words Noctis had just said… weren't they mentioned in the description of the Covetous Coffer? Yes, they were! So Sunny was, and had always been, the pale friend mentioned in

'Huh?!'

then, Sunny had not even known about the existence of the Nightmare Seed in the Ivory

possible answers,

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

time and return to the past, they would have been able to cause changes in

inclined to consider the

allowed Sunny to steal a glance at

of the tapestry as well, and

possibility was, perhaps,

'Damnation, my head hurts.'

Coffer had turned out to hold a key to a very important piece of the grand puzzle, one that was too important to be considered hastily. The

And speaking of excruciating…

that shameless crook. He gritted his teeth, thinking of all the ways he would have made the bastard pay, if he

crook in question, meanwhile, smiled widely as he pulled a sparkling emerald medallion out of the chest and threw

you are... here,

expression. There seemed to be an almost invisible, intricate string of

his flimsy body into tiny pieces, and listen to him scream. I would have started with the fingers, I think, and worked my way up. One

stared at him with a

Sunny frowned.