Shadow Slave

Just like Dreamers gained the ability to perceive and interact with Soul Cores, Awakened were able to interact with Soul Essence. By channeling it inside their bodies, they were able to utilize it more efficiently and achieve greater results.

The ability to channel soul essence was also vital to unlocking the full potential of higher rank Memories. Besides the general rarity of such Memories, there was another reason why Legacy clans did not just equip their scions with weapons of tremendous power and let them sail to the Gateway without meeting any resistance.

It was because Sleepers simply had no way to activate powerful enchantments. Even Gunlaug was mostly using his Transcendent armor just for its durability, with a single passive enchantment serving as a nice, but unimportant bonus. In the hand of an Awakened with the ability to channel soul essence into it, the golden armor would have been far more formidable.

Which is where the paradox that rendered the onyx armor unusable came into play.

From his experience dealing with the Stone Saint, Sunny knew that her armor, just like the strange creature itself, had a very special spellweave. It was, in essence, a living armament. Unlike most Memories that could function on their own, it was simply a piece of dead stone when the main enchantment wasn't active.

So, after the onyx armor was damaged, it had to be awoken with soul essence to assume its true form and repair itself. However, there was no human on the Forgotten Shore capable of channeling soul essence, and so it remanded broken, which in turn made it useless to all the humans here.

'What a shame… that I'll be able to buy it for a measly sum of soul shards from these fools and feed it to my Shadow, ha!'

Sunny didn't really care whether the armor was intact or not. All he cared about was that it had six Ascended embers that his Stone Saint could devour. Maybe she'll even gain something extra because of her close affinity with the armor… after all, they came from the same source!

For a moment, Sunny considered the idea that his Shadow might refuse to destroy the Memory for the same reason… but then discarded it. She was just a Shadow, after all. His will was her will, right?

Now all that remained was to make the purchase…

Sunny scoffed.

"So it's, uh… just a decoration? How tacky."

Shaking his head, he threw one last glance at the onyx armor, forced himself to turn away, and continued to walk around the Memory Market.

Ten minutes later, he walked over to Kai and silently handed him the rucksack. Then, he named the Memories he wanted him to buy.

The charming young men blinked a couple of times, then said:

"Wait… you weren't joking? You really want to buy t—ten Memories?"

Sunny frowned at him and hissed:

"Keep your voice down! We need people to think that you are the one buying them, remember?"

hesitated, then

don't take it the wrong way, but you

Sunny

"Open it, you idiot."

sighed and opened

almost

dozens of soul shards were softly glowing in

hands trembled. Raising his head, he stared at Sunny with wide eyes and whispered

did you get all

shards was more than most of the people in the Dark City would see in their lifetime. The contents of the unassuming rucksack were enough to start a chain of bloody conflicts that could

at him

mean? They were just gathering dust in my bedroom. I would bring more, but the rest wouldn't fit in

as though he was on the verge

to bribe me with a

was silently gloating, a sudden shadow ran over the beautiful archer's face. In a small voice, he

Did you

Sunny raised an eyebrow.

"Sure. Why?"

Kai shut his eyes.

actually live in

in

"That's right."

pleading expression, the

Devil? Is there really a

at him with

bastard? Yup, he's there. What

shook his head, opened

suddenly realized that nothing

to speak, his enchanting voice sounded strangely

buy the Memories,

him a

"That'd be great! Thanks!"

the archer called Stev over and slowly listed the Memories that Sunny told him to buy — including

he named, Stev's expression grew weirder and weirder. By the end, he