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.

in a matter of seconds. Therefore,

the form of a shadow for a bigger amount of time,

just become even more

getting accustomed to his new and improved physique, he couldn't

coins, his previous disaster of an expedition came into perspective. Despite

grow stronger, and Sunny had just made a

…It felt good.

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

reached with his hand

'Will it work?'

of the Sanctuary for as long as humans 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…

weigh more than the entire island itself, as if it was glued to the altar. No matter how much people

for the first time, he seemed to have noticed that

coins on the altar, the knife might become

wrapped his fingers around the

'...Here goes nothing?'

pull, he tried to lift the obsidian blade of

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

up, he stared at the knife in his hand with

'Crap!'

Below, or 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 steps away from the altar, with no

of his

altar, the island seemed fine. Everything was just as it had been a few

with visible

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

from a single piece of black stone, with its blade sharpened and polished. There wasn't anything special in how the knife looked. In fact, it seemed a little bit crude, almost

was also