Shadow Slave

As the city was slowly waking up, Sunny finished his coffee and leaned back, enjoying his last moments of peace. He did not have a lot of regular customers, but there were some. They were probably going to start arriving soon, which meant that he would be busy for the next few hours.

Before that, however…

He glanced at his shadow, his gaze becoming distant for a moment.

Then, a familiar voice whispered into his ear:

[You have slain a Great Demon.]

[Your shadow grows stronger.].

It was his own voice.

Sunny brushed his fingers across the black bracelet on his left wrist and slowly exhaled. The bracelet was a Memory he had created a while back… it was a crude knockoff of the Spell, replacing some of its simplest functions. Announcing his kills was one of them.

He shifted slightly.

'That… went better than expected.'

He had just killed a Great Demon.

Well, technically, it was his other self that had done it. His avatars were not beholden to the maximum range of Shadow Control, so there was a vast distance between them.

Currently, Sunny was simultaneously in three separate locations. His original body was here in Bastion, enjoying a peaceful life in the company of the gloomy shadow — he had kept that guy so that people had no reason to ask why he was walking around without a shadow at all. His second self was incarnated by the happy shadow, keeping an eye on Rain. His last avatar was far away, in one of the most dangerous regions of the Dream Realm, incarnated by the haughty shadow.

Haughty, naughty, creepy, and crazy were together. Saint, Fiend, Serpent, and Nightmare were with them, as well. Unlike the first two, the third Sunny knew no peace. He wielded the most power of the three and spent his days in eternal darkness, often clashing with dreadful abominations.

Of course, the three of them were actually one person. So Sunny had been enjoying a peaceful morning in Bastion, accompanying Rain, and battling the Great Demon at the same time, all along.

But he had grown good at compartmentalizing over the years, allowing him to at least pretend to live three separate lives.

So that thing is finally dead, huh.

It had taken him almost a month of meticulous preparations to finally attack the abomination in its lair. Sunny had expected to sustain heavy injuries, but the battle ended well. With the demon's death, there was no one left to challenge him in the immediate vicinity of the temple…

He had designed this whole thing himself, after all, tying the enchantment to his memory, perception, and the

The runes read:

Name: Sunless.

True Name: —

Rank: Transcendent.

Class: Terror.

Shadow Cores: [6/7].

Shadow Fragments: [1591/6000].

he could not earn another while banished from fate. As for his shadow fragments… seeing the measly number, which had been very slow to increase in the past four years, made

blood would have been enough to fill the lake surrounding Bastion… the problem was, his soul only grew stronger when he killed Corrupted and Great abominations, which

they would have slapped him across the face.

gone entirely extinct during or soon after the Doom War. Come to think of it, discounting Fiend, he had never encountered a corrupted shadow creature. Were there none, or had they remained somewhere far away, in a place that he wasn't able

his head, he glanced back

Mask], [Shadow Lantern], [Shadow Chair], [Overpriced Saddle], [Weaver's Needle], [Nebulous Mantle], [Handy Bracelet],

for himself. He did not

Sunny did not plan to forge himself new equipment in the future. It was just that what he wanted to create was too ambitious to be crafted in a hurry, and he

he crafted for himself was the [Quintessence Pearl], which was basically an improved version of the destroyed Essence Pearl, and the [Handy Bracelet] — the poor replacement for the Spell. He also modified Ananke's Mantle a bit, renaming it the Nebulous

but the last one was of vital importance for him. After all, it was the Nebulous Mantle that allowed him

turned back

Echoes: —

Saint], [Soul Serpent], [Nightmare],

Shadows, which was created from the modified Covetous Coffer and the shadow of the Mordant Mimic. It was the only Shadow that he kept with himself in Bastion instead of sending it to his third

reason was that he needed it. It was

Marvelous Mimic, who had taken the

shapeshift, devour

from the tapestry of fate, so

he glanced

They read:

[Flame of Divinity], [Blood Weave], [Bone

[Master of Shadows] had evolved into the [Lord of Shadows] during his

you

He could remain the form of

short… it wouldn't be an exaggeration to call Sunny