Shadow Slave

After donning her new armor, Saint turned slightly and gazed at Sunny with her usual indifference. He would have loved to study the design of the onyx suit — it was not every day one saw an armor forged of pure darkness, after all — but sadly, he couldn't.

That was because Sunny only saw the world through Saint's eyes, and she was looking at him, not herself.

'How frustrating.'

This must have been what Cassie felt when conversing with someone in private. The

confusion was only made worse by the fact that Sunny did not only share Saint's vision — he shared all of her senses, just like Cassie shared all the senses of those marked by her Ascended Ability.His avatars were identical copies of his own body, after all, while Saint was very different from him. At least he was already used to her stonelike nature after years spent together...

As it turned out, his Shadow was not done surprising him today. The ability to summon a pool of elemental darkness and manifest a suit of armor was not the full extent of what she had gained by slaying Revel's Reflection.

There was some distance between Sunny and Saint, still. The debris was charred and highly unstable, making it hard for her to move — after all, she was close to three meters in height and weighed a literal ton. A few of them, actually. So, the debris could very well fail to support her weight.

Which was why Saint did not walk. Instead, she simply turned into a torrent of darkness and traveled all the way to where Sunny was standing in a heartbeat.It was not quite as instantaneous as moving between shadows with Shadow Step, but still quite fast. The sensation of becoming a stream of darkness was also very different from what Sunny usually felt when traveling through shadows — in many ways that he found hard to describe, but mainly because of how... hollow it felt, to be one with the darkness.

He did not feel embraced by the flow of elemental darkness. Instead, it was a cold and unfathomable thing, too alien and indifferent to be welcoming. Even being a part of it, Sunny felt nothing but profound solitude.

A moment later, Saint was towering above him, standing only by a few meters of scorched wooden debris away.

The ground shook precariously, and the blackened wood creaked, as if ready to crumble into embers and ash.

Of course, neither Saint nor Sunny would be seriously hurt if they fell beneath the upper layer of the wreckage. They would not be burned in the infernal depths of the smoldering ruin, either.

Still, he would have liked to avoid becoming smeared from head to toe in soot...Before Sunny could do anything, though, something about Saint changed subtly.

'Did she just...'

She had. Saint had effortlessly changed the weight of her stonelike body, making it as light as a feather.

Sunny blinked a couple of times.

'Feather of Truth?'

It was the same ability he possessed, granted by the Onyx Shell. Saint had not been able to adjust her mass while wearing her original armor, but now that it had become a part of her personal darkness, she could.

The effect was more or less the same, but the process was different.

Sunny had only vaguely felt it, but it was as if she had not simply changed her mass... instead, it was as if a negative quality was added to it, thus reducing the weight. Where had that negativity come from? He did not know.Then again, he did not know how the [Feather of Truth] worked, either. Perhaps he had always done the same thing without realizing it.In any case, Sunny was quite pleased with the fact that Saint could change her weight at will now. Naturally, an ability like that was an incredible boon in combat — he had woven it so deeply into his own battle art that fighting any other way seemed clumsy and ineffectual now.

However, it was also quite useful outside of combat, since Saint's great weight often presented a problem in mundane situations. Like walking on fragile floors, traveling by boat... or swimming.

Considering how often Sunny found himself inexplicably thrown into large bodies of water, that alone was an invaluable boon.Saint stared at him from above for a bit. Then, she stared at him some more.

He shifted from one leg to another, trying not to take offense.

'No, but... am I really this tiny?!'Since he was looking through Saint's eyes right now, he was staring at himself from her great height. From that perspective, Sunny indeed looked like a little toy.

Was that how Saint always saw him?

He ground his teeth, missing the days when she was a mere Monster, and of the same height as him.Fiend had started out as a scrawny gremlin, as well... but now, that gluttonous idiot was five meters tall.

Sunny did not even want to imagine what he looked like from Fiend's perspective...

'He might be huge, but he's still an annoying imp inside! In fact, I should start calling him Imp again, just so that the overgrown bastard does not get a big head!'

Saint, meanwhile, tilted her head a little.Then... he felt her body turning into a torrent of darkness once again.

But it did not rush anywhere. Instead, it shrank in size and then solidified back into the figure of the graceful knight. Only now, she was smaller.

Suddenly, Sunny was looking at himself from a

new perspective... one level with his own eyes.

'Huh?'

He remained motionless for a moment.

So Saint had not just gained the ability to reduce her weight. She had also gained the ability to reduce her size, and used it to return to her original modest stature...Which was great news for Sunny! Simply wonderful news...

He smiled behind the mask.

But as soon as he was done talking, Saint raised her chin slightly, and changed her size once more.This time, she made it so that she was a full head taller than Sunny.

He froze.Nodding with a hint of satisfaction, Saint looked down at him, and then headed away.

Sunny remained motionless, absolutely dumbfounded by the outrageous sequence of events.

He only managed to regain his composure a few seconds later.

'What the hell? Where is she even going? There's nowhere to go!'