Shadow Slave

1025 The Fall of Falcon Scott (43)

Sunny followed the network of underground tunnels to reach the barracks, and then emerged from them near where the Rhino was parked. Breathing in the cold air, he spent a moment to enjoy the lack of desire to cough — the strange trauma he had received after touching the Nightmare Gate was all but gone now — and walked forward through the darkness.

Snow was crunching under his feet.

‘Weird. Is this a good sign, or a bad sign?‘

The street illumination in the city often went awry because of the numerous Gates outside and within the wall. Usually, the army technicians and civilian personnel would fix and replace the damaged components promptly, but this section was barely lit. No one seemed to have cleaned the snow in a while, either.

Had the state of the city deteriorated to the point where no one bothered with these things anymore, or was it simply the result of so many people having already been evacuated? By now, only about a third of the initial two hundred million remained trapped in Falcon Scott. Maybe the person assigned to maintain this small corner of the city was already safely across the strait, with no one to replace them. Perhaps it was both.

Glancing at the dark sky, Sunny rubbed his face and walked toward the Rhino.

The last few days had been... hectic.

By all accounts, he should have been dead tired and on the verge of collapsing from sleep deprivation. However, Sunny felt fine... in fact, he felt rather great. His body was full of vigor and vitality, while his mind was fresh and focused.

was the Shroud

down, studying the Transcendent

Dusk looked like a simple tunic of fine, soft silk. He had expected it to be white, but to his surprise, the tonic turned out to be of a rich and beautiful black color,

pair of dainty shoes made of the same fabric, with a soft sole that was more suited for a well-tended garden than wilderness. Sunny enjoyed the fact that it allowed him to move around

only looked

durable than tempered steel. Sunny had tested how impervious it was, exactly, and was surprised to find out that

managed to cut the black silk, and even then with a lot of

exposed, while the soft shoes only covered his feet and ankles. Worse than that, neither were rigid — while the black silk was very hard to pierce, it did nothing to stop blunt attacks and concussive trauma. The Marble

Sunny did not really care. The Graceless Dusk did not make any noise and was extremely light, not constraining his movements at

reason why he felt so invigorated

while the time he needed to recover from fatigue was drastically cut. In the days

[Blessing of Soul], meanwhile, boosted the rate at which his essence regenerated. That was an awfully pleasant and valuable benefit, especially

one was the strangest, but also the most

mind more... productive. It was as though there were several compartments within his head now, each capable

and comprehending the world from several different viewpoints, which all but required him to sort of split his consciousness into several

to partition his mind and multitask was boosted even further by the

all of that was extremely useful when applied

essence regenerating at a much faster rate, Sunny had finally been able to crack the case and turn the devil's needle into a Memory. He was not sure that he would have been able to achieve quite the same result without the boost provided by the four