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.

bastard all by yourself. That's,

was… had been an Awakened with at least ten years of experience under his belt, with a fully saturated soul core and an insidious, deadly Aspect. While Sunny… Sunny had become an Awakened less than a year ago. He was never

a kid from

He shrugged.

powers. A little knowledge of the shadows

slowly shook her

day. But hey, why am I surprised?

looked at the pile of

moments of silence, she

a promising young Awakened too, once. One of the few who didn't treat me like a walking corpse

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

he had been at the end — a

scratched the back

then what

for a bit, and

out for the kind

a few moments, and then asked

told about having a powerful protector. What was that all about? Are you going to be in trouble? Wait… am

Jet smiled.

a fuss about someone like him. Kurt became of no use to them the moment he lost control. What's more, he turned into a liability.

suddenly grew wider… but

easy to deal with, Sunny. And they would have to go through me first to get

sort. They wouldn't hesitate to discard a broken tool, and that was what people like Kurt were… tools to be used and discarded once

thing I didn't join a Legacy clan. I guess that is what I would have become

something else came to his

Kurt had said

anyway. You know about the Obel

the knowledge of this mysterious Obel scale was the real reason

few moments,