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…

field of familiar symbols appeared in front of him… the runes themselves might have been the same, but they looked a bit differently. He had designed this whole thing himself, after all, tying the enchantment to his memory, perception, and the black bracelet. So, Sunny had taken liberties

The runes read:

Name: Sunless.

True Name: —

Rank: Transcendent.

Class: Terror.

Shadow Cores: [6/7].

Shadow Fragments: [1591/6000].

seeing the measly number, which had been very

lake surrounding Bastion… the problem was, his soul only grew stronger when he killed Corrupted and Great abominations, which were not that easy to find, and harder still to

if anyone heard Sunny being disappointed about only killing a thousand Corrupted and Great Nightmare Creatures, they would have slapped him across the face. But for him, it was a sign that he would not be able to become a

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

glanced back at the

[Puppeteer's Shroud], [Extraordinary Rock], [Endless Spring], [Weaver's Mask], [Shadow Lantern], [Shadow

was no surprise there. Sunny made his living by creating Memories, but strangely enough, he was not in a hurry to create many Memories for himself. He did not need to seek power in them,

was just that what he wanted to create was too ambitious to be crafted in a hurry, and he had only opened

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

Handy Bracelet were simply for convenience, but the last one was of vital importance for him. After all, it was the Nebulous Mantle that allowed him to live in Bastion, pretending to

back to

Echoes: —

Saint], [Soul Serpent],

latest of his Shadows, which was created from the modified Covetous Coffer and the shadow of the Mordant

he needed it. It was next to him right

was located was, in fact, not a cottage. It was the Marvelous Mimic, who had taken the

house could also walk, swim, shapeshift, devour

existence was erased from the tapestry of fate, so he made sure that his new home would be able to follow him wherever

glanced back at the

They read:

[Flame of Divinity], [Blood Weave],

evolved into the [Lord of Shadows] during his Transcendence. Its description

you as

of forty kilometers, and he could extend his shadow sense just as far. He could remain the form of an incorporeal shadow indefinitely, and cover great distances with each Shadow Step. The depths and intricacy of what he could manifest wild

it wouldn't be an exaggeration