Shadow Slave

Sunny got comfortable on his criminally soft bed, picked up a few succulent grapes from the tray placed on an intricate table near it, threw one in his mouth… and finally summoned the runes.

'Let's see…'

The first thing he glanced at was the shadow fragments counter. He vaguely remembered receiving what felt like much more than six after slaying the black steed, who had been an Awakened Terror. So, Sunny was hopeful to see a pleasant number…

However, when he did see it, he almost choked on the grape juice to death.

'What… what the Spell?! What?!'

He even rubbed his eyes, thinking that he was seeing things, but no. The counter was the same.

Shadow Fragments: [2823/3000].

Sunny stared at it in disbelief.

'Six hundred… I received almost six hundred fragments for killing that damned horse?'

Absentmindedly, he threw another grape into his mouth, and proceed to almost bite off one of his fingers from the sheer disorientation of it all.

'How is this even possible?!'

He thought about it for a bit, stunned, and then tilted his head a little.

'Could it be…'

One of the advantages, but also inherent drawbacks of Sunny's Aspect was that it operated through shadow fragments instead of the usual soul ones. So, while Sunny didn't need to collect and absorb shards to grow stronger, he also could not use the shards of creatures that he had not personally slain for that purpose.

Awakened, he did not receive a portion of all the accumulated soul fragments after killing others of his own kind, and instead received just

human? He was a divine shadow, after all, and shadows recognized him as one of their own. So… would it be safe to say… that in this context, his own kind were actually not humans, but

Terror possessing six cores, and with a thousand years of battles and bloodshed behind his shoulders to fill them to the brim

the fragments accumulated by the tenebrous courser throughout his long and grim life, as a normal

math certainly supported

Sunny's eyes ignited.

'That… that is it!'

only was he correct… he might have just stumbled on one of the most crucial secrets about his

cores, Sunny had been wary of the eventual toll hunting down enough Nightmare Creatures to create a new one would exert. As a Sleeper, or even an Awakened, he was too small and vulnerable. Any

would be, and thus, the higher his chances of survival were going to become. However, that also meant that there

true shadow creatures… perhaps, there was still a way

by slaying the nightmare steed. Neither of these feats

…Almost.

But now, just a few months later, Sunny was already near the finish line. This fact

No, it is still amazing. I

the horrors he had been subjected to in the Nightmare, Sunny

accident while seeking the runes describing his Shadows. Before that, he had noticed

last string describing the enchantments of the onyx armor… the counter of victories tied to the [Prince of the Underworld]

Now, it read:

Vanquished Foes: [3291/6000].

He blinked.

'Huh…'

he had managed to raise the counter by almost a thousand victories. He knew that the Nightmare Creatures and humans he had killed in the Read Colosseum had not counted toward the requirements of the strange enchantment for a simple reason — he had not been wearing the

thousand vanquished foes come

Sunny frowned.