Shadow Slave

Sunny found the Rhino without any problem, since it was parked near the military barracks. Getting the Corrupted Devil's needle through the main hatch had turned out harder than he had expected, so he ended up climbing to the APC's roof and lowering it through the upper hatch there.

Eventually, though, he found himself inside the dark, silent interior of the slumbering machine. It was a bit weird to see the Rhino so empty... but not unpleasantly so. With the whole APC to himself, Sunny felt as though he could relax and took off the mask of the confident commander that he was forced to wear in front of most people these days.

"Ah... that damned thing is so heavy!"

He dragged the needle to the armory, dropped it on the floor, and returned to the lounge area to take a quick shower. Then, feeling fresh and rejuvenated - if a bit sleepy - he summoned the Endless Spring, plopped down on a couch, and put his feet up, using the Shadow Chair as a footstool.

Sunny took a sip of cool water, then carefully unpacked the sandwich and took a bite.

The sandwich, indeed, had been made with love. It was truly tasty.

Mentally thanking the generous refugee, Sunny enjoyed his meal in peace. It was going to be his last opportunity to rest tonight, so he made sure to chew as slowly as he could.

Very soon, however, the sandwich was gone, and it was time to get to work. Sunny closed his eyes, sighed, and walked to the rear section of the vehicle. There, a small pile of Memories lay on the holographic table of the command suite. Sunny summoned a few more, dropped them into the pile, and counted everything. A small grimace appeared on his face.

Sunny had not only been keeping watch on the wall the past few days. After reaching Falcon Scott, which had become the hub of everything in the Antarctic Center, he had been very busy spending all of his contribution points, as well.

Getting good Memories was hard, but luckily, he was once again going for quantity over quality. Additionally, Sunny had no reason to stick to the official channels - receiving anything through the army requisition system was a tough and slow process, especially with the network being down most of the time, so he just traded his points directly to the Awakened soldiers for the Memories that were useless to them.

He had even hired a few Sleepers from the caravan to be his errand boys, which made the whole process faster.

'...Not fast enough, though.'

table, and summoned two weapons. One of them was his old and loyal tachi, the Midnight Shard, and the other

two Memories. The intricate tapestry of ethereal strings hidden inside them was vast and mind-numbingly complicated. He could already feel a hint

do something that he had never done before... a few

more expansive and

to disassemble the structure of a particular enchantment into its basic elements, then heavily modify one of those elements and turn it into an independent enchantment of

functional Memory from scratch. That he had done on

already hard enough, but it was the last one that had turned unexpectedly troublesome. As Sunny had discovered out, not all materials had the capacity to sustain powerful enchantments. They would simply disintegrate under strain,

material to create a powerful Memory... hence the needle of a Corrupted Devil. Since Sunny

enough for his purposes,

threads of his own - he was going to need a lot of them, so there was no time

after minute, merging into hours. Sunny continued sitting motionlessly in front of the two Memories, with only the fingers of his four hands moving in the

an incoming call. Sunny lingered

as he pressed on it, Master Jet's face appeared on the screen. She was chewing on

How... ah... is

stared at her

It would go better if I was not distracted by unexpected calls in the middle of the night, though... well, anyway. Did you manage

meat, wiped the juice

cohort have no use for. Anyway, why do you need them? That's

from the corner of

giving them to a