Shadow Slave

Whatever it was that slumbered in the cargo hold of the ancient ship did not like one of its vines being damaged, let alone having its soul cut by a sharp blade. As the whole wreck trembled, a strong gust of warm, pungent wind hit Sunny in the back, tousling his hair. The air became even murkier than it had been before.

The chest creature froze, staring at him with something that resembled a mortified expression. Even its tongue stopped swaying in the air and retreated back under the pile of golden coins.

Now, it was Sunny’s turn to grin. An evil gleam appeared in his eyes. Retrieving the Cruel Sight, he said:

“Goodness gracious. How clumsy of me.”

The abomination lingered for a few moments, gave him a hateful look, and turned slightly toward to door of the treasury. Then, however, it halted.

‘Don’t tell me…’

Faced with the terrible danger of facing the awakened master of the wreck, the creature was still hesitating. The prey was right in front of it…

To Sunny’s misfortune, he and the bizarre monstrosity shared one fundamental character flaw.

Both were very, very greedy.

Before he could even blink, the abomination suddenly turned back and lunged at him with a shrill giggle rumbling from somewhere in the depths of it. All Sunny could do was spend more essence and use Shadow Step again, appearing on the spot where the creature had been a second ago.

As he slipped on the debris of the shattered door and fell, the abomination shot through the air and crushed into the wall of the corridor, pulverizing the wooden boards and getting entangled in the vines covering them. It huffed and puffed, then tried to extricate itself from the mess of glistening vines.

…However, they wouldn’t let go.

In fact, as Sunny watched in horror, the whole corridor moved. The reddish-brown mass that it was overgrown with rippled, and the thick vines crawled toward the trapped creature, long thorns suddenly appearing on their vernicose surface.

The abomination giggled again, this time nervously, and doubled its efforts to free itself, slashing at the vines with its talons and biting into them with its terrifying teeth. As sickeningly pungent juice flowed into its maw, the creature shuddered.

‘Crap, crap, crap…’

Turning on his stomach, Sunny lunged himself forward and rolled into the treasury. Here, there were no vines and no moss, only two empty chests and a scattering of gold coins gleaming on the floor.

As he hesitated, thinking of what to do next, something crashed with a deafening noise in the corridor behind him, and a moment later, the tall silhouette of the gaunt monstrosity appeared in the doorway.

Sunny’s eyes widened, and he brandished the Cruel Sight, preparing to defend himself.

The abomination, however, did not pay him any attention anymore. Jumping over Sunny, it landed in the middle of the armored compartment… and then ran as fast as it could toward the breach in the back wall.

Without stopping even for a second, it reached the breach and dove through it, escaping the awakening wreck. Sunny followed its escape with his eyes, and then blinked.

‘…Huh.’

Then, his gaze fell on the floor of the treasury.

The coins were still there, glinting in the bright sunlight. They didn’t disappear or dissipate after the creature had run away. The coins… were real.

‘They’re real…’

As the ancient ship shook and trembled, and the mass of vines crawled toward the treasury, Sunny gritted his teeth and lunged toward the coins, grabbing them and pushing them into his pack.

‘Real, they’re real…’

He was in such a hurry to gather all the coins that he even cut himself slightly on the piece of mirror that was still stored in the pack.

“Ouch!”

‘If these coins are real… then the rest of them inside that damned chest are real, too.’

Perhaps there weren’t as many as he had thought, since the chest turned out to have a false… everything, but just the top layer that was visible to the naked eyes had to contain a thousand or more coins, at least.

As Sunny hunted down the last shiny golden disk left in the treasury, his attention was elsewhere.

It was concentrated on his shadow — the one he had hidden in the abomination’s own shade when it jumped over him. Now, the shadow was following the bizarre creature as it ran toward the edge of the island, its gangly arms swaying in the air.

Sunny expected it to be assaulted by the Sailor Dolls, but the menacing wood wraiths seemed to be retreating from the wreck themselves. Some even dropped to the ground, turning back into piles of debris.

…The ground was moving.

‘Well, what do you know…’

He thought that the Dolls learned to fall apart and reassemble themselves as a way to combat the Crushing, since many Nightmare Creatures on the Isles had adapted to its harsh reality in one way or another… but maybe, this peculiar ability had initially been just the means to hide themselves from the being that inhabited the wreck.

In any case, he couldn’t let the chest escape. Not when a thousand shadow fragments were hidden inside the abominable thing!

Palming the last coin, Sunny threw the pack over his shoulder, then picked up the Cruel Sight and stood up. A determined expression appeared on his face.

The abomination was already halfway to the edge of the island.

“Where are you running, bastard?”

Diving into the shadows, he expended a large burst of essence and appeared out of his own shadow right in front of the creature. Since he could only use one hand now, the weapon Memory had turned back into a shortsword.

Before the abomination could react, the Cruel Sight lashed out and bit it into its thigh. The silver blade went all the way through, escaping from the back of it in a rain of black blood.

The chest let out a startled shriek… and then the monstrosity tumbled to the ground, rolling over its head and sending pieces of moss and mud flying into the air. The force of its crash was so fearsome that the ground trembled.

Or… was there another reason?

Before Sunny could do anything, brown vines shot from under the moss, wrapping themselves around the body of the bizarre abomination.

One of them, however, slid around his leg instead.