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.

coming from the other side of the dead

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

jumped on top of

tough flesh of the dead demon. The pathetic

a mouth full of sharp triangular teeth, though, which were doing a surprisingly good job of tearing

guess even

the little imp tore a piece of bloody meat off with its teeth, raised its head, and swallowed the chunk of its former master's flesh with

then that the vermin noticed the human looking

of Dread] enchantment of the Sin of Solace, or perhaps because the adolescent abomination had enough brain to feel terror

froze for

carcass of the Myriad Eater, trying to

Sunny blinked.

'Well, that's a first.'

he simply summoned the Prowling Thorn. By the time the heavy kunai manifested itself into his hand, the vile critter was already far

was a split second away from dying, but at the last moment, it tripped and pathetically tumbled down. As a result, the blade of the kunai only sliced two fingers

summoning the Prowling Thorn back to throw it again. This time, he wasn't going to

pull of the Call, he banished every other

was then that someone said, in a

"Fool."

flinched and looked

'Huh? Who said that?'

if it came from somewhere very

Sunny knew that

he scratched the back of his head with the tip

that an intrusive

distraction, the wounded Scavenger was getting farther and farther