Shadow Slave

Because of the sudden influx of so many shards, Sunny got disoriented and swayed. His body was subtly rebuilding itself, growing stronger, more powerful… the difference was stark enough for him to feel it with every fiber of his being.

As Awakened absorbed soul shards — or shadow fragments, in his case — the capacity of their cores grew, and their physical capability was slightly enhanced. Usually, it happened at such small increments that the difference was hard to judge, but this time, Sunny had done something pretty preposterous and consumed fourteen hundred shadow fragments all at once.

He wondered if anyone else in history had accomplished the same feat.

'Not… not likely…'

Grabbing the edge of the altar to support himself, he endured the strange and euphoric sensation as best as he could.

How could anyone do such a thing, if — as far as Sunny knew — everyone except Nephis and him were limited to having only one core? They wouldn't even be able to absorb this much…

'Argh…'

Back on the Forgotten Shore, Sunny had gone from having almost no shadow fragments to fully saturating his core at a thousand. In the process, he went from being no different from a mundane human, to the pinnacle of humanly possible, to breaking past those limits.

Becoming an Awakened had elevated him even further above what was considered normal. He was much stronger and faster than any mundane human could ever hope to be, and capable of enhancing his prowess even more with essence, achieving truly superhuman might.

And now, he went through a transformation that was similar in scale to his rise on the Forgotten Shore, becoming so much more powerful. In fact, he was now probably the strongest Awakened both in the waking world and in the Dream Realm, with the exception of those whose Aspects directly enhanced their physique.

And even then, he could still double… even triple his physical ability with the help of the shadows.

'Insane!'

Sunny drew in a deep breath, then silently flexed his muscles, feeling a new strength course through his veins. He felt… incredible. Incredibly strong, incredibly fast, incredibly resilient.

But that wasn't all.

was also dramatically enhanced, almost doubling in a matter of seconds. Therefore, his reserves of shadow essence were

could fight at his peak form for longer, use the active enhancements of his Memories more, remain in the form of a shadow for a bigger amount of time, control his shadows at

just become even more

accustomed to his new and improved

finally made use of the miraculous coins, his previous disaster of an expedition came into perspective. Despite how much he had suffered and how close he had

grow stronger, and Sunny had just

…It felt good.

triumphant thoughts, his gaze fell on the obsidian knife that lay on

cautiously reached with his hand and touched the cold

'Will it work?'

lived there. Pretty much every Awakened that had ever set foot into the Citadel tried to raise it off the white surface at least once…

the entire island itself, as if it was glued to the altar. No matter how much people tried, no one had ever managed to move it

the miraculous coins for the first time, he seemed

if he were to place enough coins on the altar, the knife

wrapped his fingers around

'...Here goes nothing?'

pull, he tried to

offered no resistance at all. It behaved like any knife would, easily sliding off the white stone, which then caused Sunny to lose his balance and tumble to

stared at the knife in his hand with

'Crap!'

for the Gateway to stop functioning. That's why he wanted to just lift the knife a little, and then place it back down if something had gone awry. Instead, he was now a few

none of his fears came

spot on the altar, the island seemed fine. Everything was just

with visible

things up too bad for everyone here on

to have been cut from a single piece of black stone, with its blade sharpened and polished. There wasn't anything special in how the knife

also