Shadow Slave

Sunny continued to ponder as he walked from the train station to his home. Once there, he opened the door and walked inside, then sat down in the living room and stared at the wall for a while.

'This is not good.'

Right now, he was supposed to be mentally preparing for tomorrow's meeting with the representative of Valor. Antarctica or not, these negotiations had the potential to decide the course of his life… maybe even whether or not he was going to live at all.

The sudden revelation of the impending disaster discombobulated him, making it hard to concentrate on the immediate issue.

Facing the emissary of Valor… was going to be a delicate dance. Sunny was helped by the fact that he had never intended to set Mordret free. However, he was not entirely innocent, either… after all, he had sided against Welthe and Pierce, even slaying one of the two Knights of the great clan with his own two hands.

Not to mention that Mordret had followed him into the Nightmare and Ascended.

Sunny had many things to hide... but could not lie. Even though he was confident in his ability to twist the truth with misleading answers, the negotiations could still derail really quickly.

'Whatever. As if anyone would believe that an Awakened like me was able to kill one of the famed Knights of Valor…'

Now that Sunny had become a Master himself, he lost most of his ability to feign weakness. However, no one but his closest friends knew how powerful he really was, and especially had been. This was another fact that played to his advantage.

'It all depends on the emissary and how they conduct themselves.'

If Valor sent someone cavalier and arrogant, Sunny would be able to dance circles around them. He had plenty of practice dealing with haughty individuals, after all.

If they sent someone smart, however… that could be a problem.

Sunny stared at his shadow, then sighed and stood up.

He really hoped that everything would go smoothly tomorrow, but it paid to be prepared. Worst case scenario, he was going to have to join the Fire Keepers in their Dream Realm exile for a while. So… unless he wanted to return to a monotonous diet of eating nothing but monster meat, it was best to prepare a few things.

Soon, a big metal chest appeared in front of him, then opened its heavy lid, revealing rows of massive triangular fangs.

…Covetous Coffer had changed after the Second Nightmare, as well.

The [Mendacious Coffer] enchantment allowed it to mimic the form of any inanimate object, but was limited by Sunny's core capacity. Now that he was an Ascended, the capacity of his cores increased tremendously, so there were a lot of options.

Sunny had experimented with the form of the Coffer a lot in the past six months. He had made it into all kinds of things, from alloy safes to leather armchairs and sleeping pods. He had even made it into a refrigerator once. However, after having fun with it for a bit, Sunny came to the conclusion that not all forms suited the Memory well.

Items that already had the function of storing things worked the best. So, he ended up simply turning it into a large chest of reinforced alloy.

Now that the Covetous Coffer had grown up, its size and strength were enough to make the [Lurid Trunk] enchantment truly dangerous. If before the small box could only bite off a few fingers, now it could swallow a potential thief whole.

The [Capacious Chest] enchantment had grown stronger, as well, vastly increasing the Coffer's storage capacity. Now, it could store an entire room's worth of items. The [Locomotive Chiffonnier], meanwhile, did not change a lot, but due to its new size, the chest could move around much faster.

…In fact, the Coffer was now large enough for Sunny to sit on top of it, using the Memory as a bizarre mount. In that regard, it was not too different from the original Mordant Mimic, whom Sunny had ridden all the way down to the Ebony Tower once.

Not that he wanted to repeat the experience!

And speaking of mounts…

If there was one thing that had really frustrated Sunny in the past few months, it was that he had no opportunity to learn how to properly ride Nightmare. He had even ordered a custom-made saddle from an exclusive leatherwork boutique.

The mundane professionals working there often received commissions to create various harnesses for Echoes of all shapes, so they were used to strange requests… and since only wealthy Awakened possessed Echoes, their prices weren't cheap. The cost only ballooned when Sunny had to sacrifice a precious soul shard to turn the saddle into a Memory.

And yet, it had all been to no avail. Sunny was unable to travel to the Dream Realm, and summoning the dreadful steed to move around the city would not have been too convenient. Even if he did not mind attracting the wrong kinds of attention, there surely were laws and regulations in place to prevent exactly that.

…It was not all bad, though.

As a terror, Nightmare possessed an ability similar to that of a tyrant. In his case, the stallion accumulated literal nightmares instead of corporeal minions, and the more of them he ruled, the more his power grew. Eventually, the dark destrier was supposed to unlock his final ability, [Dream Curse], by gathering an army of a thousand nightmares.

Sunny had not known where to find these phantasms or how to create them, but the six months of idleness allowed him to figure it out.

There were two ways: Nightmare could either create his dream minions, or subjugate them.

Creating one was not easy. First, the black steed had to sow a seed of terror into an enemy's soul. If the enemy escaped and the seed took root, they would be haunted by the memories of the dreadful destrier and see him in their dreams. The weaker the will of the victim was, the more chances there were for the nightmare to grow and become more and more potent. However, a brave person would cause the seed to wither and die.

Eventually, if the nightmare fully formed, the stallion would be able to use his [Dreamwalker] Attribute to harvest it.

The second way was also troublesome. The black steed could travel into the dreams of powerful beings and subjugate their own nightmares. In the waking world, that meant Ascended. However, that task was not easy — the more powerful the dreamer, the more powerful the nightmares haunting them were. To subjugate such a nightmare, the Shadow had to defeat it in battle inside the dream.

Nightmare had returned severely wounded more than once from such battles.

Still, he managed to gather several minions that way. Neither of them faced any real enemies since returning to the waking world, so for now there was no other option.

…Sunny gathered a bunch of supplies and stored them in the Covetous Coffer, then dismissed the Memory and sighed. Accumulating a thousand nightmares for his Shadow was not going to be easy. Maybe he should have accompanied the black steed into other people's dreams. However, there were enough things haunting him already. He did not need to experience someone else's fears, as well. Getting close to sleeping Masters was also rather perilous...

At that moment, one of his shadows noticed a familiar figure walking toward the door.

Sunny checked the time and smiled.

"Oh, she's already here. My favorite pupil is nothing if not punctual!"