Shadow Slave

Sunny blinked.

[You have received a Memory: Drop of Ichor.]

'Wait a moment… wait a moment…'

A Great Devil? He gulped.

Nightmare Creature with four soul cores was called a devil, just one class below the dreaded tyrant. From that detail alone, the evil ancient egg had been potentially more powerful than the Carapace Demon.

However, what shocked him the most was its rank, not class.

The quality of most things having to do with the Nightmare Spell followed a similar hierarchy, from Dormant to Awakened, Ascended, Transcendent, Supreme, Sacred and Divine.

Humans had only ever managed to reach the Transcendent rank. These heroes were known as Saints, each wielding an unimaginable amount of power and leading humanity in its war against the Nightmare Creatures.

The Nightmare Creatures, too, were different from each other in a similar fashion, with seven ranks of power. They were, in order of growing strength: Dormant, Awakened, Fallen, Corrupted, Great, Cursed and Unholy.

A Great Devil, therefore, was a Nightmare Creature with four soul cores, each one of the Great rank. Which were the same in terms of power as a Supreme soul core would have been if a human ever managed to pass the Fourth Nightmare and rise one step above the Saints.

…Sunny had just killed one of the most powerful Nightmare Creatures to ever fall by a human hand. At least as far as he knew. Victories against the Great Devils were rare enough to be of historic importance.

'Uh…'

What a stroke of luck, to find one absolutely defenseless, yet to be fully born and weakened by thousands of years of neglect. Not to mention the fact that he was probably the only human alive to be partially immune to the egg's terrifying life-sucking powers.

'Wait… how many shadow fragments did I get?'

Sunny felt stronger… a lot stronger…

He was used to receiving two fragments for each awakened beast he killed. Thus, it was fair to assume that a Fallen beast would give him four, a Corrupted beast would give him eight, and a Great beast would give him sixteen — forgetting the ridiculousness of the notion that a Sleeper would ever be able to slay a great beast.

not a beast, it was a devil. It had four

his excited state, he even disregarded the insistent

Shadow Fragments: [196/1000].

number, he was giddy with

coming to the Ashen Barrow. I received sixty-four just now, that makes it hundred and sixty. Where did the additional thirty-six fragments come from? From the fruits? No way… we've been eating them for less than a week, one fruit a day. To get that much…

so much time pass without him noticing?

to concentrate on the discrepancy, but it was very hard, for some reason. The more he thought about it, the less clear he became on what exactly he was

to remember? Something

few minutes later, he massaged

killing that

time celebrating the insane amount of shadow fragments he had received, but there was

Great Devil! A real, actual

'Fantastic!'

once more and

Bell], [Puppeteer's Shroud],

he concentrated on

Memory: [Drop of Ichor].

Memory Rank: unknown

Memory Type: unknown

However, it only cared about shiny things. Enamored by Weaver's beautiful eyes, it stole one of them on a dark, starless night. Impatient, the vile creature looked at its bounty while still in flight. However, when it saw the reflection of -unknown- forever frozen in the depths of Weaver's pupil, it went mad and screamed, dropping the eye

Sunny frowned.

the hell

of a Memory with an unknown rank and type. How was this even possible? Did the

itself… what were these words that it failed to translate? He tried to forego the automatic translation and look at the runes themselves, but they were beyond his ability to translate. In fact, he had never seen runes of this type before. Weirdly,

very, very

had to admit that he had no idea what the word "ichor" meant. It simply wasn't in

then cautiously summoned the strange Memory. Instantly, golden sparks of light

am I supposed to do

finished his thought, the Spell spoke again. Its voice sounded a

a drop of ichor. Do you wish