Shadow Slave

Although Awakened were still fighting the remnants of the Scavenger swarm, the battle was more or less over.

The Gate Guardian was dead, and Verne had handled the other Corrupted abomination with Kim's support. Belle, Dorn, and Samara had hunted down the most dangerous Fallen while the local garrison eradicated the rest. By now, only the weakest Nightmare Creatures remained.

They were still deadly, of course, but the Scavengers did not seem too dangerous unless they were old and had devoured a lot of powerful enemies. The lesser ones even succumbed to their bestial instincts and got distracted from the fight, forgetting everything to sink teeth into the flesh of the slain members of their own kind.

For them, any world was a dog eat dog world.

Sunny prowled the battlefield for a while, searching for Fallen abominations in hopes of earning a shadow fragment or two. Sadly, it seemed that there were none left. The rest of the defenders of LO49 were quite thorough. Eventually, he gave up and joined the soldiers of the garrison in cleaning up the remaining enemies.

What followed was a swift, but tedious chore. They quickly swept the field where the ground was drenched by blood and littered with the revolting corpses, slaughtering the last of the Scavengers.

At some point, Sunny found himself back near the corpse of the Corrupted Demon he had defeated. Since there was nothing much left for him to do, he decided to dig out the soul shards from the massive carcass. With these, both Luster and Kim would probably be able to fully saturate their cores, thus bringing the cohort to its optimal strength.

The other members had long achieved full saturation, leaving only these two. Still, even they were awfully close.

Heading for the dead giant with greed shining in his eyes, Sunny accidentally heard the subdued voices of the Awakened from the local garrison.

"Gods... look at that monstrosity."

"Damn. I heard rumors, of course, but to see it with my own eyes. He really went a Corrupted Demon it alone."

"Yeah, it was scary. I couldn't see much, but their battle must have been a fierce one. One third of the whole swarm was destroyed simply because the bastards got caught in the crossfire, can you believe that?"

"...I guess they call him Devil for a reason."

Hiding a small smile, Sunny stepped close to the carcass of the Myriad Eater and raised the Sin of Solace, planning to cut through the tough bone plate on its chest. Then, however, he tilted his head a little.

were strange sounds coming from the other side

"Nyam-nyam... crunch... nom-nom... slurp..."

on top of the massive

into the tough flesh of the dead demon. The pathetic creature looked like a gaunt, starved gremlin that was

teeth, though, which were doing a

guess even Nightmare Creatures have

its teeth, raised its head, and swallowed the chunk

then that the vermin noticed the human looking at him from

enchantment of the Sin of Solace, or perhaps because the adolescent abomination had enough brain to feel terror in front of a superior predator,

tiny Scavenger froze for

shrieked and dashed away from the carcass of the

Sunny blinked.

'Well, that's a first.'

summoned the Prowling Thorn. By the time the heavy kunai manifested

from dying, but at the last moment, it tripped and pathetically tumbled down. As a

on the invisible string, summoning the Prowling Thorn back

of the Sin of Solace and the oppressive pull of the Call, he banished every other thought away and

was then that someone said, in a tone of cold

"Fool."

and

'Huh? Who said that?'

voice sounded as if it came from somewhere

Sunny knew that voice very well.

the back of his head

an intrusive

of the sudden distraction, the wounded Scavenger was getting farther and