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.

of his Shadow Cores was also dramatically enhanced, almost doubling in a matter of seconds. Therefore, his

that he could fight at his peak form for longer, use the active enhancements of his Memories more, remain in the form of

had just become even more of

his new and

his previous disaster of an expedition came into perspective. Despite how much he had suffered and how close he had brushed with death,

to grow stronger, and Sunny had just made a big step

…It felt good.

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

cautiously reached with his hand

'Will it work?'

as humans lived there. Pretty much every Awakened that had ever set foot into the Citadel

glued to the altar. No matter how much people tried,

for the first time, he seemed to have noticed that

made a conclusion that if he were to place enough coins on the altar, the knife might become detached from it, and fall into

breath, Sunny wrapped his fingers around the

'...Here goes nothing?'

strength into the pull, he

off the white stone, which then caused Sunny to lose his balance and tumble to

in his hand with wild eyes.

'Crap!'

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

of his fears came

altar, the island seemed fine. Everything was just

with visible

want to mess things up too bad for everyone here on the

feet, Sunny looked at the obsidian knife. It seemed to have been cut from a single piece of black stone, with its blade sharpened

also one