Shadow Slave novel Chapter 61

Chapter 61 Sea Of Ash

In the morning, Sunny woke up feeling grim and uneasy. The memory of the frightening dark mirror was still fresh in his mind, making every shadow seem sinister and foreboding. He scowled sullenly.

'What the hell. I'm the Child of Shadows. Why do I have to be afraid of my own domain?'

But then again, darkness and shadow were not the same, even if a lot of people tended to mistake one for another. Shadows were born from the absence of light. In a sense, they were manifestations of emptiness. True darkness, on the other hand… true darkness was its own entity.

In a sense, shadows shared more in common with light than they did with darkness.

'I mean… I guess they do. Do they?'

Philosophical debates with his internal monologue were not the best way to start the day, at least as far as Sunny was concerned. His already sour mood only got worse. With a short sigh, he sat up and stretched his arms, yawning.

"Good morning."

The sound of his voice was almost drowned by the echoing noise of rushing water. With the sun rising, the dark sea was in a hurry to retreat. Sunny was finally able to relax a little.

"Morning."

Nephis had been guarding the camp during the latter part of the night, so she was already awake. As usual, she was meditating with her eyes closed — in the absolute darkness of the night, "watching over" something actually meant listening for suspicious sounds, so keeping one's eyes open was not that useful.

For everyone except Sunny, that is, who had perfect night vision thanks to his Attributes.

Hearing him stand up, Changing Star slowly opened her eyes. A soft afterglow left behind by the dancing white flame could still be seen in their depth, quickly disappearing as her sight adjusted to the twilight of dawn. She looked at Sunny and offered him a polite smile.

In the past two weeks, Nephis had also been training, perhaps even more diligently than him. However, she wasn't trying to improve her swordsmanship. _{freēwebnovel.com}

She was actually trying to learn how to behave like a normal human. As the result, their interactions had become slightly less awkward… for the most part.

Sunny was able to recognize Changing Star's efforts because they were very similar to a phase he himself had gone through many years ago. On several occasions, he had caught her intently observing how Cassie talked and behaved around them. Sometime later, Neph would randomly try to mimic small details of her friend's behavior. The results were… a mixed bag, to say the least.

The first time she tried to greet him with a smile in the morning, Sunny panicked and almost summoned the Azure Blade. However, Nephis was very smart and persistent. Today, her polite smile looked almost natural.

He had no idea why Changing Start decided to work on her social skills, of all things, during their perilous journey through the monster-infested hellscape that was the Forgotten Shore. But he didn't mind.

It was actually rather entertaining to watch!

…Watching her torture herself every day, enduring terrible pain in hopes of learning to better control her Aspect Ability, on the contrary, was not fun at all. They never talked about it, but Sunny knew that every time Nephis pretended to meditate, she was actually subjecting herself to the excruciating agony of her Flaw.

When he thought about it, his heart ached. Sunny wasn't used to feeling such things, but he suspected that this was what other people called "compassion". At least it was similar to how it was described in books and dramas.

Not that he knew a lot about that stuff.

After they had breakfast, Nephis stood up and looked at the beam of light falling through the nearest gap between giant vertebrae. Turning to Sunny, she said:

"Let's study the surroundings."

They needed to get the lay of the land and decide on their next step. Usually, that implied looking for the nearest natural features that were high enough to stay above the surface of the sea and deciding on which one they would try to reach next.

Then came a day or two of scouting and hunting, followed by moving the camp to that feature.

Sunny gave her a nod.

"Alright."

He summoned the Echo to guard Cassie while they were away and left the shadow behind to keep an eye out, just in case something happens. Then Sunny followed Nephis to the gap.

Boosting her, he watched as Changing Star flew through the air and then seemingly ran up the wall, kicking herself off at the last moment and propelling her body even higher before grabbing onto a bone protrusion. Relying only on her upper body strength, she then climbed up and disappeared into the cascading light. Soon, the golden rope fell down, allowing him to follow.

Nephis helped him climb atop the gargantuan spine and then straightened, turning to take a look west. Sunny shook his hands and did the same, expecting to see the usual picture — an endless expanse of the crimson labyrinth, dotted here and there with rare high points.

However, what they saw left them both speechless.

Some distance away, the labyrinth seemed to lose color. The crimson blades of coral stood grey and misshapen, as though struck by some unknown disease and drained of all life. The stone-like material looked brittle and fragile, ready to crumble to dust at any moment.

The patch of dead coral spread for as far as the eye could see. Further away, the walls of the labyrinth seemed to have collapsed into a sea of ash-grey sand. This ashen wasteland looked so alien and strange after weeks of seeing only the endless crimson pathways that Sunny felt a shiver run down his spine.

The fact that they didn't notice even a single monster moving through the mud beneath made him feel even more disturbed.