Shadow Slave

In the end, Sunny did make a trade with Naeve. He had a surplus of Memories after slaying many Nightmare Creatures to defend the convoy, and the Nightwalker was in dire need of weapons and armor suited for land combat, to arm his own Awakened.

There had been a full cohort of them aboard the battleship once, but now, only four remained. Since these warriors of the House of Night would be defending the caravan along with the other Awakened in the near future, and Saint was still slumbering, Sunny did not drive a hard bargain.

That was how he received two new Memories, which were meant to cover the gap in his arsenal when it came to traversing and fighting in the water.

One of them was a simple Awakened charm that allowed him to breathe underwater. It was called [Essence Pearl], and had two enchantments. One passively produced air, the other had to be activated and gifted the wielder with the ability to see clearly, as if they were wearing a glass mask.

The description of the charm simply stated that breathing was the essence of life, and beauty was its purpose. One had to be able to see clearly to appreciate beauty, and live long enough to enjoy it.

'How romantic.'

The second Memory was Ascended, and appeared to be an... armor, of sorts. In truth, it was more of a harness made out of a fisherman's net, which provided no protection whatsoever, but allowed the wearer to swim with surprising speed.

The harness was called [Nimble Catch], and its description told the story of a muskrat king who had sworn to eat a wondrous fish, only to learn that it could only be caught by using the eyes of the monarch of birds - his brother - as bait. The whole thing was very weird.

'...What's a muskrat, though? Do rats eat fish?'

The only drawback of the strange harness was that, as usual, no other armor-type Memory could be used while wearing it. Nevertheless, Sunny was happy with his acquisitions. The inability to defend himself in water had been eating at him ever since the sea journey to Antarctica, and even though he hoped to never have to use these new Memories, simply possessing them was calming.

Several hours after encountering the beached battleship, the caravan drove forward once again. The length of it remained the same, but there were much more people in the vehicles now.

Naeve had not been joking when he said that there were thousands of sailors on the mangled vessel. And even then, those were only those who had survived. Sunny honestly did not know whether to consider them soldiers or refugees, but he knew that Sergeant Gere and the other officers would sort that out for him soon.

The caravan had a lot of spare weapons, especially now that they had unloaded the surviving cargo holds of the battleship, so there was a good chance that many of the sailors would become active combatants. Even if not, Sunny was already satisfied to have another Master around.

also did wonders for the morale of everyone in the caravan, not only because he was an Ascended, but also because of how flamboyantly he had appeared. If there was a sure

maybe I should remember that

the coastal highway behind, climbing back into the mountains. It was only then that he allowed himself to relax and descended from the roof of the

exchanging a few words with Professor Obel and Beth, he climbed into one of the sleeping niches and closed

he lingered for a few moments, and then summoned

decided to take the risk and bind the Mantle of the Underworld to his soul. He did not know what would happen, and the idea of being left without a proper suit of armor was more than slightly

tell the truth, Sunny was extremely curious

was staring at a string of

[Bind the relic?]

few moments,

"Yes."

was now wearing the soft fabric of the

a few seconds,

voice of

It said:

Memory has

Sunny's eyes widened.

'What?!'

his head on the roof of the niche. His

the hell?! What do you

voice of

received an