Shadow Author



Laying out on the island, I was doing my best to recover and stabilize my rugged breathing.

Once I finally felt decent enough I pushed myself up and sat on the shore of the tiny island.

Feeling a sharp pain coming from the leg that was attacked I examined it to see how much damage I had taken.

As I looked over the wound there were a few tears in the wetsuit where blood was leaking out but overall the damage didn't seem to match up to the attack.

Satisfied with the amount of protection the suit gave I figured that if I wasn't wearing it my leg would have been completely torn off.

Coming to this conclusion I once again realized how horribly wrong things could have gone and how stupid it was of me to wait in the water.

As I continued to check my leg I grew more concerned. My legs were still aching from the fall after jumping off the worm and now one of them was shredded.

I had a strong feeling that I wouldn't be able to put pressure on the foot which severely lowered my mobility and practically left me stranded on the island.

Although I could swim back it would be much harder to do so with only one functional leg and it didn't help that I was bleeding all over which would alert any nearby monsters.

Plus I had just made a huge commotion when fighting the last monster which I could have only assumed drew in more creatures.

Knowing these things I was in quite the predicament as there was a lot of exploring I still needed to do in order to find the specific monster I was after.

But as I looked down at my leg I knew that it would be an impossibility thus as both mental and physical fatigue caught up with me I figured it would be best to set up camp.

The location wasn't what I was expecting and most definitely wasn't very safe but I wasn't left with much of a choice.

Therefore I pulled out the tent I had packed away in the spatial ring.

Setting it up was much harder than I expected because of my leg but I managed to get it standing.

Before entering I made sure to take off the wetsuit and switch back into my uniform so that way I didn't get the inside wet.

Once I was inside I zipped the tent shut and grabbed some food to eat while pulling out some medical supplies.

I was glad that I was prepared for the trip and once I had my fill of food I took out a sleeping bag and laid it out on the floor of the tent.

The tent was quite spacious as there was enough room for me to crawl around and even some leftover room after I displayed the sleeping bag.

The only problem with it was that I couldn't stand up inside of it but that wouldn't affect me too much as I didn't see a reason I would need to do so.

Sitting down on the bag I grab a small flat circular can that contains healing ointments.

Unscrewing the lid I used two fingers to scoop up the jelly-like substance before rubbing over the wounds on my leg.

When applying it there was a terrible burning sensation that came with it but I clenched my teeth together before managing to completely cover the injury.

Once I was done I slipped into the sleeping bag and got as comfortable as I could given the circumstances.

But before I went to bed I knew I needed to secure the area.

Making use of the [vision] aspect of puppeteer I began giving commands to the monster I had previously fought with to survey the surroundings.

Gaining sight into the murky water I watched through the eyes of the monster I took control over.

Although I was still unaware of what type of monster it was, the fact that it could see and move incredibly quickly in the water while also being able to go on land I had an idea of what it could be.

Yet I didn't want to reveal anything by having the creature surface just to get a look at it.

Thus while laying on my back in the sleeping bag I commanded the monster to circle the island and attack anything that approached.

Once everything was set up I disabled [vision] and when sight returned to my own eyes I let out a sigh.

I was going to sleep inside of a deadly dungeon in the most dangerous part of it with a monster under my control acting as a lookout.

Reflecting on that thought I wanted to be nervous and scared but I couldn't let that happen as I had an extremely important mission to complete.

Knowing that I needed rest for the next day of searching I quickly calmed my mind before turning on my side and drifting off to sleep.

*

Kalya was one of the shadows recruited at a young age to serve her master.

She spent her whole life a part of the organization as she was too old to remember a time when she wasn't working toward her goal of climbing the ranks.

Everything she did was to rise higher and higher as she was determined to become strong enough to stand next to her master.

Having already successfully completed four missions assigned to her, she was on her last, and if everything went right after she returned to the base she would go up a rank.

Thankfully the last mission wasn't too difficult compared to the others as she only had to guarantee the life of a student in a low-level dungeon.

What was surprising to her though were the other shadows assigned to watch over the boy.

Normally these types of missions only required one shadow and on rare occasions, if the person was of a high priority there would be two.

However, there weren't just two looking over him but double that.

This really piqued her interest as she could only assume that the boy was somehow related to her master as he might be a distant nephew.

With this being the only explanation she could come up with, Kayla decided that she would give this mission everything she got and make sure that not even a single scratch would appear on the boy… at least that's what she thought until he slaughtered a monster the moment he entered the dungeon.

No matter how prepared a student could be, they were still just a student and seeing a monster in real life rather than hearing about it in a classroom was bound to scare them.

But not the boy.

That she was wrong about that!