Shadow Slave

1025 The Fall of Falcon Scott (43)

Sunny followed the network of underground tunnels to reach the barracks, and then emerged from them near where the Rhino was parked. Breathing in the cold air, he spent a moment to enjoy the lack of desire to cough — the strange trauma he had received after touching the Nightmare Gate was all but gone now — and walked forward through the darkness.

Snow was crunching under his feet.

'Weird. Is this a good sign, or a bad sign?'

The street illumination in the city often went awry because of the numerous Gates outside and within the wall. Usually, the army technicians and civilian personnel would fix and replace the damaged components promptly, but this section was barely lit. No one seemed to have cleaned the snow in a while, either.

Had the state of the city deteriorated to the point where no one bothered with these things anymore, or was it simply the result of so many people having already been evacuated? By now, only about a third of the initial two hundred million remained trapped in Falcon Scott. Maybe the person assigned to maintain this small corner of the city was already safely across the strait, with no one to replace them.

Perhaps it was both.

Glancing at the dark sky, Sunny rubbed his face and walked toward the Rhino.

The last few days had been... hectic.

By all accounts, he should have been dead tired and on the verge of collapsing from sleep deprivation. However, Sunny felt fine... in fact, he felt rather great. His body was full of vigor and vitality, while his mind was fresh and focused.

The reason, of course, was the Shroud of Graceless Dusk.

He glanced down, studying the Transcendent Memory.

The Graceless Dusk looked like a simple tunic of fine, soft silk.

He had expected it to be white, but to his surprise, the tunic turned out to be of a rich and beautiful black color, with intricate patterns embroidered along its collar, hem, and sleeve edges with silver thread. The hem reached just below his knees, while the sleeves ended at his elbows.

The tunic was tied at the waist by an unadorned cord of black silk, and came with a pair of dainty shoes made of the same fabric, with a soft sole that was more suited for a well-tended garden than wilderness. Sunny enjoyed the fact that it allowed him to move around without making the slightest noise.

The shoes only looked dainty, too.

The black silk that the tunic and the shoes were made of was light and soft, but more durable than tempered steel. Sunny had tested how impervious it was, exactly, and was surprised to find out that the Cruel Sight could not pierce the thin fabric no matter how hard he tried.

It did not burn, get wet, dissolve in acid, or suffer damage from any other elemental attacks he had at his disposal. Only the Sin of Solace managed to cut the black silk, and even then with a lot of trouble.

...Which was not to say that the Graceless Dusk could serve as a good suit of combat armor.

The tunic itself left his forearms, shins, head, and neck exposed, while the soft shoes only covered his feet and ankles. Worse than that, neither were rigid — while the black silk was very hard to pierce, it did nothing to stop blunt attacks and concussive trauma. The Marble Shell could deal with that, to some extent, but it was still not an ideal situation.

However, Sunny did not really care. The Graceless Dusk did not make any noise and was extremely light, not constraining his movements at all. More importantly, the other benefits of the Transcendent garment far outweigh its lackluster defense.

The four Blessings were a great boon, as well as the reason why he felt so invigorated despite the recent lack of rest and sleep.

The [Blessing of Flesh] and the [Blessing of Spirit] made him tire much slower, both mentally and physically, while the time he needed to recover from fatigue was drastically cut. In the days after the battle with the Devouring Cloud, Sunny had only slept for a couple of hours at best, and yet he felt very refreshed and energized.

The [Blessing of Soul], meanwhile, boosted the rate at which his essence regenerated. That was an awfully pleasant and valuable benefit, especially here in Antarctica.

Finally, there was the [Blessing of Mind]... that one was the strangest, but also the most powerful.

The enchantment did not exactly make him smarter or more insightful, but it did make his mind more... productive. It was as though there were several compartments within his head now, each capable of running a separate task concurrently — as long as it was not too demanding. That made simple calculations and analyzing clear information easier and faster.

The effect was not new to Sunny, since he had been doing more or less the same thing for a long time, in order to control his shadows. He was long used to perceiving and comprehending the world from several different viewpoints, which all but required him to sort of split his consciousness into several streams... however, after doing some research due to the Graceless Dusk, he had discovered that most people found such a task to be hard, or even impossible.

In any case, his already deviant ability to partition his mind and multitask was boosted even further by the [Blessing of Mind].

...Needless to say, all of that was extremely useful when applied to weaving.

With his mental capacity increased and his essence regenerating at a much faster rate, Sunny had finally been able to crack the case and turn the devil's needle into a Memory. He was not sure that he would have been able to achieve quite the same result without the boost provided by the four blessings.

There was the fifth blessing, too...

The Blessing of Dusk.

This active enchantment was a very insidious one. It allowed Sunny to establish a telepathic connection with another person, or even several, to communicate with them through words and other, more crude means of sharing information such as emotions and vague images.

Sadly, he could not simply read their minds, since the communications had to be intentional. That said, the recipients of the link were also unable to refuse it — if Sunny wanted, he could bombard them with the most gruesome and loud thoughts, causing something akin to a mental shock.

Those with weaker minds were outright stunned, while those with resilience and discipline were at least bound to be disoriented.

Of course, the first person Sunny had tried to communicate with telepathically was Saint. To his disappointment, the [Blessing of Dusk] did not work on her at all, probably due to the Shadow's immunity to mind attacks. He still did not know what was going on in that beautiful onyx head of hers.

And speaking of Saint-

Entering the dark interior of the Rhino, Sunny called the taciturn knight forth. She stepped out of his shadow, the plume of her helmet brushing against the vehicle's roof. Suddenly, the massive APC seemed cramped and narrow.

Looking up at his loyal devil, Sunny smiled.

"Are you hungry? How about a late-night snack?"