Shadow Slave

The heartland of the Eastern Quadrant—if the desolate wasteland could be called that—was gradually changing as Sunny drew closer to the coast. He was almost in the territory controlled by humans now, so Nightmare slowed down a little.

Sunny cast his shadow sense far and wide, guiding them around local settlements, military outposts, and scattered patrols—after all, it would be quite troublesome if the Lord of Shadows had been noticed riding his frightening steed despite supposedly being dead.

A small sigh escaped from his lips.

The duel between Saint and Slayer had not happened yet. He was a little disappointed, but mostly, he felt content.

Swaying in Nightmare’s saddle, Sunny hummed quietly.

”I’ve gotten quite strong, haven’t I?”

He was Supreme, and commanded four Supreme Shadows on top of that—Saint, Slayer, Serpent, and Fiend. Nightmare was bound to attain a higher Rank before too long, as well... even Mimic had become Transcendent.

That was an amount of power far greater than he had ever imagined wielding. The Shadow Legion had grown significantly in the Burned Forest, too, and there were Sacred shades among his silent soldiers now.

Such a harrowing amount of power...

Was the prerogative of a god, not of a mortal man. Denying that would simply be an exercise in futile modesty—after all, he alone was enough to conquer and destroy entire worlds. If that was not divine, then what was?

”The answer is pretty simple, though: Destruction was not what made one divine. Any fool could destroy something built by another. Instead, it was their stunning ability to create that distinguished gods from all other beings, and Sunny was not capable of creating a world.”

He was not a stranger to crafting miraculous things, though.

Raising a hand, Sunny briefly touched his chest. Then, he smiled tiredly, remembering the long weeks he had spent in the forge of the Dark City.

That was where he had created a shadowbound Memory of his own, and although the process was so difficult that he was yet to fully recover from its strain, he was quite satisfied with the result.

”Took me long enough...”

And it would have taken him even longer without Mind Weave.

The great hall of the ruined cathedral was enveloped in silence. That felt strange, considering that the shade of the King of Swords had been hammering here for the past year without ever growing tired.

That was because the Shadow Legion had retreated back into Sunny’s soul while he was unconscious and slowly recovering from assimilating Mind Weave.

Sunny did not pay the unfamiliar silence any attention, looking at the model of a vast spellweave spanning the great expanse of the cathedral and reaching all the way to its distant ceiling.

”I think... I am about finished, now.”

This weave had been long time in the making. Sunny had been designing it for around two years already—he had started thinking about it immediately after forging the Blessing.

Most of the work had been done before his unfortunate fainting spell, but Mind Weave allowed him to solve the final lingering conflicts much faster. Of course, the great weave above him was merely a theory—it was a model created from manifested shadows, so there was no saying if his theoretical design would actually take shape in practice.

But Sunny knew that he would not be more prepared than now any time soon, or maybe ever.

A shadowbound Memory was different from an ordinary one, anyway—it had to be. Its weave had the capacity to grow and learn, so the patterns had to be designed in a completely different way from what he was used to, containing both a rigid structure and a degree of freedom.

Sunny had learned that while creating the Blessing, and after witnessing how the Spell improved upon his design, he felt confident enough to attempt forging a shadowbound Memory of his own.

”No time to waste, then.”

With the threat of the Dreamspawn looming on the horizon and two fragments of Weaver’s Lineage left to collect, Sunny felt a bit of urgency.

The vast tapestry of black strings above him rippled and dissolved into a torrent of shadows as he released them from the grasp of Shadow Manifestation. A second later, three figures stepped out of the darkness, walking toward the forge with determined steps. 𝐫АΝÖBĘ𐌔

They were his own incarnations, of course. One was in the Burned Forest, while two were south of the Hollow Mountains, with Nephis—so, four pairs of hands were what he had to work with.

Even the Dark Lord of the Forgotten Shore had abandoned his throne to dedicate himself to forging the shadowbound Memory, leaving Aiko to manage the operations of the Shadow Clan alone.

The great anvil of the Shadow Forge was empty, with the shadow of the King of Swords standing behind it silently. Each of the incarnations placed the materials they had brought on its weathered surface.

The last one landed on the anvil with a metallic ring, finally breaking the silence. Sunny looked down.

There were shadows that had remained forever frozen after the Winter Beast’s death.

There was a fragment of polished ivory—a splinter of bone from the colossal Soul Serpent whose bones Sunny had found in the Shadow Realm, and then used to kill Slayer.

There was a spool of Netherr’s diamond thread he had recovered in the Ebony Tower.

There were strands of black silk woven by the Puppeteer.

And lastly...

There were seven iron rings.

They were not simple rings, of course. Rather, they were links of an ancient chain—the chain Sun God had used to bind Hope which Sunny had pried away in the Gateway Hall of the Ivory Tower.

One ingredient was still lacking, though.

It was his blood.

Letting a sigh, Sunny looked at the shadow of Anvil and smiled.

”You’d better ready your hammer.”

Today, he was going to require some assistance.

Soon enough, fire roared in the forge, and the sound of the hammer striking an anvil resounded in the ancient cathedral once more.

Sunny was crafting a shadowbound charm.