Shadow Slave

Sunny zoned out for a little, not paying attention to Samara and the MWPs discharging their weapons from time to time to pick off the most stubborn of the pursuers. The rate of their fire was slowing down, anyway, meaning that the bulk of abominations had either fallen behind or were already killed.

The [Prince of the Underworld] enchantment and its dreadful counter of vanquished foes... gods, he had been stuck with that thing for so long. Despite the fact that Sunny had inherited the onyx armor with some of it already filled, it still took him years to accumulate six thousand victories.

Come to think of it, the whole Mongrel debacle had happened because of his desire to increase the number on the counter somewhat.

'T can't believe I've finally done it.'

Curious to see what changed, Sunny looked at the runes. He was a bit tense... after all, the description of the [Prince of the Underworld] only said that the armor would be growing stronger the more foes he vanquished, and it had - over the years, the cost of keeping its active enchantments running had diminished slightly, and their effects had become a little more pronounced.

The description said nothing about the Mantle receiving an upgrade after the counter was filled. That was just his assumption.

'Come on...'

Concentrating on the name of the Memory, he read:

Memory: [Mantle of the Underworld].Memory Rank: Ascended.Memory Tier: VII.

...Oh.

The Mantle seemed to have grown from a Tier Six Memory to a Tier Seven one. That was... not bad, but it did leave Sunny a little disappointed. He had hoped that it would increase in Rank, instead.

He sighed, then continued to study the runes, turning his attention to the enchantments.

The [Living Stone], [Feather of Truth], [Stalwart], and [Underworld Armament] enchantments remained exactly the same. None of them received any enhancements. The [Prince of the Underworld] had not changed, either, except for the fact that the counter now showed a pleasant [6000/6000] as the number of vanquished foes.

new enchantment at the end

[Soulbound Relic].

a couple

'Huh?'

he concentrated on the enchantment to read its description. The description, however, left him largely confused. It

shimmering

[Bind the relic?]

probably supposed to answer "yes" or

However, Sunny lingered.

armor... or his soul, for that matter. Of course, the effect was

He knew that from his own Aspect, for example... its innate Ability, [Shadow Bond], had become the

a Memory of an artifact created by Nether, the Demon of Destiny, most likely for one of his stone children. Sunny suspected that it had once belonged to the Stranger, one of the seven heroes of the Forgotten Shore, who had been of Saint's tribe and possibly her previous

actually happen if he bound that artifact to

Huh...

the runes. Not because he had decided against activating the new enchantment, but rather because his shadows had noticed something strange on the road

whatever reason had

'Damn it.'

the action plan he had established. Luster was not

into a shadow, and glided to the front of the caravan. Returning to his human form near the Rhino, Sunny dismissed the helmet of the Mantle and

it was in charge of that

neared the small crowd, he heard a pleasant, but

commanding