Shadow Slave

\'Where the hell is it…\'

Reluctant to let go of sleep, he blindly searched for the blanket. Instead of finding it, though, Sunny suddenly felt his whole bed careen to the side. Startled, he opened his eyes… and saw nothing but darkness surrounding him.

\'What the?! Oh… right.\'

He wasn\'t in his small room in the Sanctuary. He was plummeting into a lightless abyss atop the corpse of a Fallen Devil, instead.

Sunny stared into the darkness for a bit.

Then, he yawned.

\'Well. At least I slept well.\'

Indeed, he was feeling rather refreshed. Most of his aches had either disappeared or grown milder, and even his wounded mind felt soothed. He felt rested, energized, and much better overall.

The only problem was, he was still falling into the endless void of the Sky Below.

Sunny scratched the back of his head, though about this predicament, then summoned the Endless Spring and drank some water. Then, he concentrated and tried to assess the situation.

...The situation was absolutely the same.

He was surrounded by nothing, nothing had changed while he slept, and there was nothing he could do about it.

Sunny sighed and stared at the treasure chest beneath him. After a while, he thought:

\'If you think about it, this is just next-level pettiness. Not only did I kill this poor bastard, I even went so far as to take a nap on top of its dead body. Talk about insulting…\'

Somewhere down, down below, false stars shimmered with white light.

Judging by how much of his shadow essence had regenerated, Sunny judged that he slept for about twelve hours. A bit longer than usual, but he was really exhausted after everything that had transpired.

These calculations of his, of course, were very rough. But if he assumed them to be correct, that would mean that he had left the Sanctuary six days ago.

He had no idea how long it was going to take to reach the thing on the end of the golden String of Fate, but had to assume that it would take at least a week… much longer than that, most likely.

Back in the real world, his body was safely hidden in the luxurious sleeping pod in the basement of his house. The pod would keep it alive for months, so Sunny was not too worried about his physical well-being… yet.

Would anyone miss him?

...Probably not. Kai and Effie were used to his long ventures into the Dream Realm, and even if none of them had been as long as this one was going to be, they would just assume that he was too lazy to answer their messages and go about their business. They were famous heroes now, after all, with packed schedules and plenty of problems of their own.

Teacher Julius didn\'t expect any reports from him, too. The lookouts in the Sanctuary were not in the habit of keeping a detailed record of who went in and out of the Citadel. The most anyone was going to think about him would be when Cassie arrived from the Night Temple, and he wasn\'t there to help Saint Tyris receive her.

But she would just think that he was avoiding her, as he had done before.

Sitting on the lid of the dead treasure chest in boundless darkness, Sunny realized that no one was really going to care that he was gone. So many things had changed, but even more remained just the same.

Throwing a long look at the beautiful glass bottle in his hand, Sunny remained motionless for a while, then dismissed it and knocked on the lid of the dead Mimic.

\'Whatever. I have my coins, at least!\'

***

Some time later, he was performing a strange aerial dance. Holding onto the rope connecting him to the dead Mimic with his one functioning hand, Sunny summoned the Dark Wing, then cautiously climbed onto the side of the big chest and tried to balance it so that the heavy thing didn\'t flip.

Because of the fact that both of them were plummeting down with incredible speed, his body felt pleasantly light. Sunny thought about it for a while, then frowned.

How did that even make any sense? Yesterday, he had thought that the speed of his fall was going to increase exponentially, which meant that at some point his body was bound to be simply torn apart… probably.

But now, he realized that his assumption was wrong. Since he could breathe in the Sky Below and felt the wind — or rather, the air moving past him as he fell through it — it meant that the speed of his fall had a limit dictated by the air resistance.

He did not, however, feel that resistance too much. By all accounts, he should have been hearing the roaring of the wind and feeling it assault his body, instead of falling through the emptiness in something that resembled comfort.

Common sense didn\'t seem to be working the Sky Below.

\'Better not think about it too much.\'

What was the point of trying to understand the laws of a place that simply denied all logic? He had far more practical things to do.

Trusting the leather rope to hold his weight, Sunny let go of it and summoned the Moonlight Shard. Then, perched precariously on the side of the treasure chest, he inserted the narrow blade of the ghostly stiletto between its lip and the lid, and tried to pry it open.

The task turned out to be far more difficult than Sunny had anticipated. Not only did he have to do everything with only one hand, he also had to balance the chest to prevent it from spinning in the empty void… as well as keep an eye on the rope, hoping nervously that it would not break.

After some time and plenty of exasperated curses, however, he finally managed to pry the jaws of the dead devil open.

Inside its maw, a pile of golden coins was waiting for him to claim them.

A dark smile appeared on Sunny\'s face.

Then, he let out a shaky, slightly unhinged laugh.

"Ah! It feels nice to be rich…"