Shadow Slave - After the Third Nightmare - A different Story

Invitation to the tower

Aiko organized more than two hundred interviews that day. Of course, she didn't do them all herself. It would take too much time. Instead she hired a few persons to conduct the interviews for her.

There was also another Awakened to help her, Kim. Since Sunny wanted to establish his own organization he wanted to have some of his old comrades in it. It will be easier to order people he actually knows. Even if they don't know him anymore... So he turned to his old cohort or rather what was left of it.

Just before the fall of the Falcon Scott Kim, and Luster were sent away by him. Luster lost his arm, and therefore couldn't contribute to the Antarctica Campaign anymore, and Kim went together with Luster to take care of him. Ironically, only thanks to that they're still alive. The rest of his cohort is dead. Quentin's whereabouts are still unknown. Some healers miraculously regrew Luster's arm so he's fine. How dare he be fine? He expected him to die first!

After the departure they or perhaps even before it they fell in love with each other. It's recently that they married each other. They still didn't decide to return to the army or rather it's the Government that didn't want them to return immediately. The campaign left many mental scars, and time was needed to come to terms with them.

Sunny decided to capitalize on that a bit. He approached her, used his medals to convince her he's a veteran too or even a hero. This way he could get on her good side. He promised her that if she'll gather war veterans for him he'll help turn many of them into Awakened. In return she agreed to participate in what he's doing.

After they quickly interviewed the huge group, which somehow took only a bit more than two hours, next they had to sort out who's going to be Sunny's 'apprentice'. They actually did that automatically. With some simple questionnaires in digital form, and the calculation based on the answers decided in advance, the results could be announced almost instantly after the last interview.

It wasn't the fairest way to treat 'applicants', but the precious passion he ignited could be extinguished by making them wait. So he did't spend time to analyze all the candidates personally. Also otherwise they would have to track them in the outskirts, which translated into a lot of work for the lack of proper addresses to send the message. It was more effective to do everything immediately

The results were announced. Many people were sad for the unrealized hope. Hope hurts. Those who were accepted showed some discomfort as well. Sunny had some guesses about the source of such feelings, but that wasn't the time to think about it.

When the results were announced he called out the group of the fifty, and ordered them to gather before his little tower. He skipped on congratulations, there was nothing to congratulate. Finally there was a change to the tower. On its walls a pair of wooden doors manifested. Very huge, pretty, but simple. In the Outskirts there weren't many pretty things so a sight of something beautiful could catch too much attention.

'So complicated.'

He's got down the tower by making a jump, and slowing down the fall with the [Feather of Truth]. Almost everything about his performance was unnatural, which made the crowd even more startled. After jumping down he made the doors open with mental command. He again had to wait for the shock to subside.

"Sorry for make it look that way. I have too many conveniences these days. Please, step in. Oh, and another convenience I have to mention: The tower is bigger inside than outside. We can fit inside without a problem."

The group didn't say anything. Shock, and bewilderment was written on their faces. They were walking into a magic tower, which is magically bigger inside than outside, through magic doors that were magically opened wide by the man who jumped from high, and landed as if he weighed as much as a feather. That's more than they could see in the movies.

For Sunny it was his Covetous Coffer in a new form.

When they got a glance what's inside the shock was only amplified. Behind the doors was a huge hall. The room seemed to be made of kind of titles, very similar to the ones they could see in a factory, underground factory. The look of the material wasn't anything special. Special, however, was the structure of the room itself. For example, there were wide curvy glass windows on the ceiling, and beyond the windows there was something bright blue, sky blue precisely. But it wasn't the sky. It was just another ceiling. On the sky blue wall there were some sources of mild white light.