Shadow Slave

In the deadly silence that settled over the underground arena after the Spell had spoken its last sentence, Sunny stared motionlessly at the flakes of ash swirling in the air.

'...An Echo?'

He was now in possession of a new Echo.

A human Echo.

Of course, it was only logical that an Awakened could leave one behind. Sunny had received his first-ever Memory after killing a human, after all, and those were not too different. However, somehow, he had never considered commanding an Echo left behind by a dead man. One that he had killed with his own two hands, no less.

Wasn't it a little bit too ghastly?

He imagined the soulless, empty copy of Kurt staring at him with lifeless eyes, and shivered a little.

The situation was only made more morbid by the fact that a softly glowing soul shard was left in the pile of ash that the killer had turned into. Just like with Nightmare Creatures, the strange nature of Sunny's Aspect left the crystal intact despite absorbing the shadow fragment. If an ordinary Awakened was in his place, the shard would have formed empty and cracked.

Sunny had never dug into the corpses of his human victims to retrieve one, so this was his first time seeing a soul shard left behind by one of his own kind.

…Before Master Jet could see it, too, Sunny bent down, picked up the luminescent crystal, and hid it in his sleeve. His face twitched slightly.

Just as he did, an amused voice resounded from behind him:

"Well, I'll be damned… that was fast."

He hesitated for a moment, and then turned around.

Master Jet was surrounded by a scene of devastation, the interior of the underground theater in her vicinity completely destroyed. She was casually leaning on her glaive, and there was an amused expression on her face. Kurt's Echoes, of course, had disappeared after his death… however, Sunny didn't know how many of them she had killed before that happened.

In any case, there were no wounds on her body.

Master Jet whistled.

the bastard all by yourself. That's, uh…

least ten years of experience under his belt, with a fully saturated soul core and an insidious, deadly Aspect.

a kid from

He shrugged.

his powers. A little knowledge

shook her

had quite a reputation back in the day. But hey, why am I surprised? They gave you the SS designation

looked at the pile of ash with a complicated

few moments of silence, she

a promising young Awakened too, once. One of the

young and promising. It wasn't too hard… however,

was better to remember him as he had been at the end — a depraved, demented murderer. More of a

scratched the back of

then what

jet lingered for a bit, and then

cut out for the

a few moments, and then asked the question he

he told about having a powerful protector. What was that all about? Are

Jet smiled.

him. Kurt became of no use to them the moment he lost control. What's more, he turned into a liability. So, if anything, we did them a favor by taking care of

smile suddenly grew

so easy to deal with, Sunny. And they would have to go through

people were also practical sort. They wouldn't hesitate to discard a

I would have become

else came to his

had said right

You know about the Obel scale, so why even bother?

did he mean? It almost seemed as though the knowledge of this mysterious Obel scale was the real reason for

few moments,