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.

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 just one or two,

did not consider him a human? He was a divine shadow, after all, and shadows

and with a thousand years of battles and bloodshed

by the tenebrous courser throughout his long and grim life, as a normal Awakened would

math certainly supported

Sunny's eyes ignited.

'That… that is it!'

stumbled on one of the

would exert. As a Sleeper, or even an

However, that also meant

gain from destroying true shadow creatures… perhaps,

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 damage both mental and physical… but the result almost made it seem as if

…Almost.

a fourth core had seemed so distant and unreachable. But now, just a few months later, Sunny was already near the finish line. This fact was

still amazing. I survived,

and reminded of the horrors he had been subjected to in the Nightmare, Sunny stared at the unbelievable number for some time, then shifted his gaze

stumbled upon it almost by accident while seeking the runes describing his Shadows. Before that, he had noticed that the runes of the Mantle of the

the enchantments of the onyx armor… the

Now, it read:

Vanquished Foes: [3291/6000].

He blinked.

'Huh…'

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

the thousand

Sunny frowned.