Shadow Slave

'One, two, three, four… ah, what a day to be alive… five, six…'

One after another, the miraculous golden discs disappeared into the Coffer. After a while, Sunny shifted his weight slightly, got more comfortable, and continued gathering his spoils.

In the end, he had recovered almost fourteen hundred coins from inside the dead devil. Just as Sunny had expected, the entire top layer of the treasure pile had turned out to be real.

That was an incredible, astonishing boon! Suddenly, everything that had happened seemed worth it…

Almost.

Glancing at the lightless void around him, Sunny sighed.

'Who knows if I will even be able to return to the Sanctuary? Without the altar, these coins are just dead weight.'

Somewhat disheartened, he lingered for a few moments, then turned his gaze back to the opened treasure chest.

The top layer of the treasure pile that he had successfully plundered was indeed real, but beneath it…

Sunny struggled to keep the contents of his stomach inside. Beneath the treasure, the limbs and organs of the Mimic were tightly packed together, taking up most of the chest's volume. The whole thing was soaked in black blood and producing a sickening stench, not to mention looking like a butcher's nightmare.

'Disgusting… so disgusting…'

Thinking about how repulsive the sight in front of him was, Sunny used the Moonlight Shard to cut through the terrible sludge and fished out four large soul shards with a wide smile on his face. After cleaning them up a little, he placed the alluring crystals inside the Covetous Coffer and dismissed the Memory with a feeling of great satisfaction.

After that, Sunny stared inside the treasure chest with a dubious expression on his face.

The thing was… he only had around three days worth of provisions left, stored neatly inside the Covetous Coffer. If he rationed his food, it would probably last him for about a week. After that…

Sunny scratched the back of his head, then shuddered and closed the lid of the chest with a loud thud.

'...I'll think about it when the time comes. But, hopefully, it never does!'

With that, he climbed back onto the dead devil and rested for a while, looking into the darkness.

As time slowly passed, Sunny grew more and more solemn. Finally, he came to a frightening realization.

…He had nothing else left to do.

***

"This is going to be a problem."

An eternity later — or just a few hours, who knew — Sunny was sitting on top of the treasure chest and dying from boredom.

He was still falling through the boundless dark abyss. Of course, what else would he be doing? There was nothing else to do!

The Cruel Sight was in his hand, the silver blade shining with a bright radiance. He was using its [Light Eater] enchantment to summon the sunlight the somber spear had absorbed and project it into the darkness of the Sky Below. Thanks to that light, the shapes of his two shadows could be clearly seen, one resting on the surface of the chest to his left, the other to his right.

Sunny shook his head, then said:

"I am dying of boredom here. I have never been this bored. How are we going to survive weeks of this crap? What do you guys think?"

The happy shadow to his right hesitated, then raised a fist encouragingly. Its sentiment was quite clear:

"You got this!"

The gloomy shadow to his left stared at him grimly, then simply shook its head. Its meaning was clear, too…

"Just give up already…"

Sunny blinked a couple of times, then smiled.

"Well, I think it's going to be fine. I'll just… think about it as a vacation. Yeah. When was the last time I could just relax and do nothing? That's right… never! If you think about it, guys, this is a godsend opportunity. An opportunity to rest and laze about as much as I want."

He remained silent for a while, then added:

"I literally have no choice but to do nothing. Lucky me, right?"

The gloomy shadow glanced at him, then covered its face with a palm.

Even the happy shadow hesitated for a bit before giving him a timid shrug.

Sunny frowned.

"What do you mean, go crazy? I am not going to go crazy! I'm so done with being crazy. Been there, done that, as they say. There is zero possibility that I will go crazy."

The shadows didn't answer, making him huff angrily.

"Whatever! Why am I even speaking to you two? It's not like you even have enough decency to pull your weight in the conversation!"

He scowled and dismissed the Cruel Sight, letting the darkness shroud everything once again. The shadows became invisible.

After a while, Sunny said scornfully:

"And it's not like I don't have better alternatives to talk to, anyway."

…Where had he put the Ordinary Rock?

***

By the time three days had passed — at least Sunny suspected that it had been three days, since that was how long his shadow essence usually took to fully recover without the aid of the Soul Serpent — he was, indeed, on the verge of losing his mind.

It wasn't even the boredom that was the worst, it was the absolute lack of any external stimuli.

Nothing ever changed in the Sky Below. Nothing ever happened. Nothing ever appeared, or disappeared, or was there at all. There was nothing but empty darkness, the distant shimmering stars, and him.

And falling.

At the start of it all, Sunny had been worried that he would encounter evil, colossal, inconceivably horrifying creatures in the abyss. That was what one would expect from an abyss, right? But there was none.

By now, he almost hoped to encounter a stray titan or two.

He had heard that people were prone to going insane in isolation, but never expected to be in such a situation himself.

Sunny had spent the first day thinking about this and that, remembering his experiences and trying to learn something from them.

He wondered about the Mirror Beast and the Cruel Sight. Why was the silver spear even called that? Then, he understood.

It was called the Cruel Sight because its polished blade showed a person their own reflection.

He wondered about the shipwreck, the coins, the Mimic, and the person called Noctis. How were all of these things connected?

After a while, he guessed that Noctis had been the captain of the ancient ship, the master of the Mimic, and the person whose face was depicted on the miraculous coins. Noctis was also probably the one who had created the coins, in the first place.

That's why they could only be used in his Sanctuary.

He wondered about what Kai, Effie, and Cassie were doing.

He wondered about Nephis.

On the second day, he summoned the runes and saw that she had become a devil. Sunny stared at the counter that showed [2/4000] with a deadpan expression, then sighed and dove into the Soul Sea.

There, he had studied all of his Memories and the shadows of all the creatures he had killed.

That only took him a couple of hours.

...Or an eternity.

On the third day, Sunny just lay on the lid of the dead mimic and stared into the void. His mind was starting to behave in strange ways. Although there was nothing around him, Sunny could sometimes see strange shapes and silhouettes in the darkness, as well as hear distant noises.

He wanted to think that they were real, but knew that it was just the result of prolonged sensory starvation. Human minds were weird that way… they couldn't really withstand a lot of nothing.

Suddenly, the story of a man who had to turn back after seven days of descending into the Sky Below out of fear of going insane made much more sense to him.

To make himself perceive at least something, Sunny summoned the Silver Bell and rang it in the darkness, listening to the melodious ringing as it disappeared into the abyss.

And now, he was sitting on the treasure chest, looking at the distant stars, and speaking with the Ordinary Rock.

"So, how has your day been, Rock?"

The Memory answered in his own voice:

"Same old nothing. Yours?"

Sunny remained silent for a while, then said:

"I am enjoying my vacation."

The Ordinary Rock laughed.

"Sounds wonderful! How is your vacation going?"

He sighed.

"Splendidly. I've yet to hit the rock bottom."

For a while, there was nothing but silence. Then, a new question came:

"...Why is it so dark?"

Sunny smiled weekly.

"Why wouldn't it be dark? This is the Sky Below, after all!"

But then, he froze.

'...What?'

The voice that asked the question… had not come from the Ordinary Rock.

That voice was not his own.