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.

other detail was that, unlike all human Awakened, he did not receive a portion of all the accumulated soul fragments after killing others of his own kind, and instead received

a divine shadow, after all, and shadows recognized

had been a Shadow created by one of the Chain Lords. An Awakened Terror possessing six cores, and with a thousand years of battles and bloodshed behind his shoulders to fill them to the

fragments accumulated by the tenebrous courser throughout

certainly supported

Sunny's eyes ignited.

'That… that is it!'

one of the

form and possess multiple cores, Sunny had been wary of the eventual toll hunting down enough Nightmare Creatures to create a new one would exert.

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

how much he could gain from destroying true shadow creatures… perhaps, there

now these hundreds he gained by slaying the nightmare steed. Neither of these feats had been easy… in fact, both rewards had cost him an unimaginable amount of pain, torment, and

…Almost.

months later, Sunny

it is still amazing. I survived,

reminded of the horrors he had been subjected to in the Nightmare, Sunny stared at the

welcomed, be it strangely unexpected. In fact, Sunny stumbled upon it almost by accident while seeking the runes describing his

he concentrated on them and shifted his gaze to the last string describing the enchantments of the onyx armor… the

Now, it read:

Vanquished Foes: [3291/6000].

He blinked.

'Huh…'

in the Read Colosseum had not counted toward the requirements of the

where had the thousand vanquished foes come

Sunny frowned.