Shadow Slave novel Chapter 1071

1071 Familiar Role

Nephis stared at Sunny for a couple moments, then briefly glanced at her apron and quietly cleared her throat.

"Right."

She turned around and got back to stirring the rice. A couple seconds later, site added without looking back:

"You'll have to wait for a couple more minutes. And... welcome back, Sunny. Did you make it out of the Antarctic Center alright?"

Sunny wondered how much Changing Star knew about the situation in the Southern Quadrant as he followed Cassie, Effie, and Kai to sit behind a dining table. Settling on a wooden chair... which was far inferior to his own Shadow Chair... he sighed.

"I wouldn't call it "alright". But yes, I made it out. I'm already inside a siege capital in East Antarctica."

Neph's shoulder moved slightly.

"...That's good."

Effie grabbed a few cans of something sugary and refreshing, then pushed one toward Sunny. _{fɾeewebnoveℓ.co๓}

"Kai and I spent a whole month in transit, aboard those giant ships. We were in the first batch of the Second Army to arrive, so we've been in East Antarctica for about a week. Gods... I thought the ocean was bad, but Antarctica! I havenever seen that many Nightmare Creatures in my life, not even here in the Dream Realm. It's like the two worlds switched places."

Kai nodded southerly.

"Indeed. Even though there are secure evacuation corridors between the inland siege capitals and the harbor strongholds, we had to fight a couple battles just to reach our designated sector. Luckily, there were no casualties."

The Second Army was twice the size of the First Army, so it was going to take two trips for the naval convoys to bring all of it to the Southern Quadrant. Both Effie and Kai were in the first wave of reinforcements, which was why they had made landfall around the time Sunny himself reached East Antarctica.

Sunny looked at them, wondering. East Antarctica was a large place, and it was not a given that their paths would cross until the end of the operation... he really hoped that they would, though.

Effie shook her head.

"Enough about us! What happened to you? You... you look a bit different. Sunny."

He did indeed look slightly different because of the Marble Shell. However, Sunny knew that that was not what Effie meant.

He sighed and took a sip from the cart she had given him.

"Well... as you know. I was assigned to the First Irregular Company. In the first month after our contingent of the army made it to the Antarctic Center, things were. more or less fine. The field army split into seven divisions, with one remaining in the city of l-'alcon Scott, while six others moved south to establish six more siege capitals."

Sunny paused.

"I was assigned to the southernmost siege capital, and then went on a mission to retrieve a VIP from a remote research station. That was when everything went from bad to worse. The Chain of Nightmares had gone into overdrive. and three whole titans spawned in the Antarctic Center... including an especially troublesome Corrupted one."

It took a lot to keep his voice from shaking at the mention of the Winter Beast. The others looked at him intently, and Sunny sighed.

"I ended up stuck in that research station for about a month, waiting to be evacuated by a battleship. However, the ship never arrived, and everyone in the settlement was eventually eviscerated by a powerful Terror. My people and I were the only ones to survive. We were in a bit of a predicament, though, because by that point, reaching the nearest siege capital was more easily said than done."

He leaned back, remembering L049 and the start of the calamitous march north. His face darkened.

"And then we leamed that the nearest siege capital had actually already been destroyed. So I had to go to the second nearest one, picking up a few refugees in the process that was when I got trapped in that weird tunnel. Thanks for helping me out, by the way."