431 Fall From Grace

As Sunny and the treasure chest plunged through the skies into the boundless black abyss, pieces of the shattered island pursued them. The Crushing was slowly growing weaker, but it was still strong enough to kill most Awakened.

If not for the power of his shadows, Sunny would have been long dead. And even with it, he was much closer to becoming a corpse than he would have wished to be. His whole body was bruised, bloodied, and in pain.

…Which he could see very clearly, because, in addition to being terribly banged up, Sunny was also currently completely naked.

'What a… glorious sight. Damn it!'

He had dismissed the Puppeteer's Shroud to absorb the shadow essence spent on its summoning, and had none of it left to manifest the armor again. The last drops had been spent to summon the Dark Wing.

As the result, Sunny found himself falling into the Sky Below atop a lop-sided treasure chest while wearing nothing but his pack and the strip of leather holding his broken arm in place. His only hope right now was that neither Master Roan nor Saint Tyris would suddenly appear to save the day and see him in this state.

He would rather plunge into the Tear than live through that embarrassment.

Well… not really.

'I take it back. Both of them can descend from the clouds and carry me away in their arms. I won't mind! No, really!'

But no one came to his rescue. Dodging the heavy slabs of shattered stone and desperately trying to glide through the field of debris, Sunny slowly pushed the chest toward the empty expanse of the Tear and prayed that nothing would damage his fragile cloak.

It was having enough trouble obeying his commands already.

The Dark Wing wasn't really designed to carry heavy weights. It could barely support just Sunny himself… and that was in normal conditions. Now that Sunny was refusing to let go of the dead Mimic, and with both of them being affected by the Crushing, the enchanted cloak was on the verge of breaking apart. Instead of gliding smoothly away from the falling rocks, Sunny and the treasure chest were more or less just falling between them at a slight angle.

Needless to say, dodging the debris of the destroyed island in these circumstances was not easy. But, somehow, Sunny managed to protect both himself and the Dark Wing for long enough to escape the danger zone in one piece.

By then, the Crushing had become almost bearable.

Sitting on the lid of the treasure chest and feeling the terrible pressure grow weaker and weaker with each second, Sunny grimaced from pain, then let out a relieved sigh. The cool breeze was softly touching his burning face, as well as his... well, everything. All things considered, the fall was not unpleasant.

But then, a sudden thought appeared in his mind.

'...What are you feeling relieved about, idiot?'

Oh… right.

Looking down, Sunny saw nothing but the swiftly approaching, boundless dark expanse of the Sky Below.

The endless abyss that stretched downward forever, and from which there was no escape. Not unless one knew how to fly.

That was where he was headed.

***

Except for the golden String of Fate Sunny had seen disappearing into the depth of the Tear, he had no reason whatsoever to believe that he would survive the fall into the Sky Below, let alone ever be able to return to the Sanctuary and the real world. Most likely, he was going to go mad and either be devoured by some terrifying abyssal titan or die of hunger.

His life, almost literally, was hanging by a thread.

…But right now, he didn't care. All he cared about was the physical relief of not being pressed down upon by the Crushing. He was still wounded all over and in pain, but experiencing just the normal amount of it was almost euphoric.

'It's the small things that matter…'

Like not being constantly crushed by an invisible, murderous magical force. Or resting comfortably on a wide lid of a treasure chest instead of having your limbs being crushed in its jaws.

…Simple stuff like that.

Now that the Crushing was almost gone, Sunny used the Dark Wing to push the dead Mimic deeper into the Tear, as well as keep it level in the air. The treasure chest was wide and long, and its lid was flat. In a sense, it was almost like a firm, narrow cot.

There were worse ways to fall into an endless abyss, really.

Sunny stared at the wide sweep of the Tear, trying to burn the memory of the golden string of light into his mind.

The Tear was situated in the center of the Chained Isles, and was both vast and absolutely empty. Some people believed that the Ivory Tower had once stood in its middle, and was the first island to break free of its chains. Over thousands of years, islands that had bordered it were slowly destroyed one after another, causing the Tear to grow.

By now, it was a couple of hundred kilometers across, and from what Sunny could tell, the String of Fate led to somewhere in its very center.

The question was… how deep in there was the thing on the other end of the String? The longest someone had flown down into the Sky Below before turning back was a week. Was the mysterious object hidden in an even deeper part of the abyss?

And what was that object?

Sunny could not even guess. The only thing he knew was that his intuition had pushed him toward the Twisted Rock because of it.

If so… it should have been something that would allow him to survive.

Right?

Of course, his fate might have been to just die there. Fate didn't really discriminate against any type of occurrence, including fatal ones. Regardless, Sunny was going to find out.

…It's not like he had a choice now.

Feeling the air get colder, he shivered and watched the sky around him grow darker and darker.

Soon, there was no light left in it at all.

Sunny had fallen into the Sky Below.