Shadow Slave

Chapter 863: Fractured

Sunny had seen souls that were radiant and full of light, and he had seen souls that were being consumed by a spreading corruption.

However, he had never seen a soul like Jet's.

It was lightless and shrouded in darkness, almost like his own. A single powerful core burned in its depths, superposed against her heart... the core itself was strange, bizarre, and filled him with an eerie sense of profound unease.

The ethereal orb was irregularly shaped and much larger than it was supposed to be, grossly overshadowing the size of other Ascended cores he had witnessed. Its surface was covered by a net of deep, twisting cracks... no, not quite. It was more like the whole core was assembled from numerous shards, as if it had been shattered once and then crudely assembled back into an uneven sphere.

Some shards seemed to match each other, while others did not fit well. bringing a sense of chaos to an already flawed and fractured, disfigured construct of Soul Reaper's core. However, there was also a certain order and beauty to the ugly disharmony of it.

The patchwork sphere of broken shards shone with furious, radiant light. It was brimming with a stunning amount of soul essence, which was much more than an Ascended should have possessed. However, unlike most cores, this one's radiance was not uniform. Instead, most of the light was concentrated in its depths, while the outer edges were dark and dull.

More than that, thin streams of light were constantly flowing through the cracks of the shattered core and dissipating into nothingness. They were like water slowly seeping out of a cracked vessel.

Despite that, Master Jet's essence did not seem to be diminishing. Instead, as Sunny watched, the strange soul core only grew brighter.

'What the...'

At that moment, Soul Reaper had just slaughtered another Corrupted abomination. This one had taken her longer to put down, since as a Monster, it possessed two cores. Each had to be destroyed with separate strikes.

soon as both perished, however, the creature twitched and collapsed to the ground. Then,

permeating

by what he had just seen... and a

really are all kinds of bizarre

was one to talk. His own soul was not exactly the picture

It was as if, unlike all the other Awakened, Soul Reaper's ability to reinforce herself

despite possessing only a single core. This just went to show that having multiple cores was

wouldn't be as

to win against her in

He was reasonably confident in his ability, but then again, as someone who often achieved victory through being underestimated, he did not want to fall into the

two cores was not going to kill him, most likely, but being left with a crippled soul was

Reaper despite being much more powerful than her... and why many people

these issues, but sadly, his time was

over the carcasses he had used to hide behind, and their frenzy was

forward and pushed it into the tough carapace

***

With Soul Reaper diving into their tide alone to hunt down the most dangerous foes, the initial clash was not

First Company captains - was somehow holding off the entire flanking force of abominations by himself. Even if Irregulars had time to look back, they wouldn't

of parting chitin that resounded from