Shadow Slave

That night, the island was quaking without pause. Sunny and Nephis hid in their fissure, not daring to close their eyes - even though a mass of impregnable black rock separated them from the flesh of the Black Turtle, it was unnerving to know that thousands of Corrupted Beasts were currently slithering somewhere below them, shredding the meat of the Great Monster with their terrible glass-like teeth.

The Azure Serpent was also there, hunting down the invaders. Although they couldn't hear its roars, the violent vibrations spreading through the island told them what was going on.

Sunny looked away from the shimmering runes, somewhat startled at how easily he had earned a large amount of shadow fragments. After another violent tremor had shaken the island, he finally closed his eyes.

However, it was not to sleep.

Instead, Sunny tried to imagine... tried to convince himself that he was the Azure Serpent. He was crawling through the grotesque tunnel of bleeding flesh, which he himself had created to kill the hateful carapace monster, furiously hunting the vile creatures who dared to steal his trophy. His long, mighty body was burning from pain, but Sunny did not care.

All he cared about was slaughter, blood, and retribution.

Noticing a tiny warm gnawing on the wall of the tunnel, he let out a terrifying growl and shot forward, destroying the vermin and tearing a large chunk of meat out of the wall with his powerful jaws.

But, behind it, more vermin were revealed, stolen meat digesting in their transparent stomachs.

With madness painting the cloudy world red, Sunny roared and slammed into them with obliterating fury.

'Is this the feeling? Am I on the right path?'

Opening his eyes, he stared into the darkness with an absent expression. Then, he looked at Nephis.

Some time later, Sunny said:

"I feel like our chances of making it off this island alive are dwindling."

silent for a

what if

eyes, illuminating them with

been

Hearing that, Sunny chuckled.

never

to look at the Sin

a thousand times

at him, then

course. In the worst case, we'll just die once. That's nothing,

shook and quaked around them, Sunny

do it.

quietly, the Sin of Solace

smile was bright and full

***

day after the attack of the krill swarm, the butterfly descended from the skies again. And two days after that, another flying

It seemed that it was the butterfly that had battled the late contender this time, ripping it to shreds before it had the chance to approach the remains

Azure Serpent received

River Locust swarm lasted for an entire day, and its result was pretty much the same - thousands of translucent abominations slithered into the carcass of the Black

what met it inside was another Great Beast - a vile creature made of numerous tentacles and spongy pale flesh - that had snuck to feast on the

Serpent brought its revolting body outside and rose high above the water before swallowing the corpse whole. That was how

surface of the Black Turtle's shell. It was not too large, but the fact that the stone carapace of

of practicing with Sunny, as they usually did, and spent several hours staring at the water. Then,

higher than it had been before. The parts of it that