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.

of course, was the Shroud of

studying

but to his surprise, the tonic turned out to be of a rich and beautiful black color, with

fabric, with a soft sole that was more suited

only

more durable than tempered steel. Sunny had tested how impervious

from any other elemental attacks he had at his disposal. Only the Sin of Solace managed to cut the black silk, and

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 Shell could deal with that, to some extent, but

not constraining his movements

were a great boon, as well as the reason why he felt

was drastically cut. In the days after the battle with the Devouring Cloud, Sunny had only slept for a couple

at which his essence regenerated. That was an awfully pleasant and valuable

of Mind]... that one

more... productive. It was as though there were several compartments within his head now, each capable of running a separate task concurrently — as long as it was not too demanding. That made simple calculations and analyzing clear information easier

was not new to Sunny, since he had been doing more or less the same thing for a long time, in order to control his shadows. lie was long used to perceiving and comprehending the world from several different viewpoints, which all but required him to sort of split his consciousness into several streams... however, after doing some research due to the Graceless Dusk, he had discovered that most people found such

case, his already deviant ability to partition his mind and multitask was boosted even further by the

all of that was extremely useful when applied to

to crack the case and turn the devil's needle into a Memory. He was