Shadow Slave

The first infected was a young solder from Sergeans Gere's unit. The other two were refugees - a man in his thirties and a woman who seemed enough to be Sunny's grandmother.

All three were outside the usual age for a Sleeper, but the soldier, at least, was young and strong. He had a higher chance of survival, from what Sunny could tell... not that anyone knew a lot about how and why people survived the First Nightmare. It was a mystery why the Spell had eventually settled for teenagers of about sixteen to eighteen years old after devastating the First Generation indiscriminately.

But even back then, younger people had been more likely to survive. Humans might have not known the reason, but they were very good at gathering statistics.

Perhaps it had something to do with the soul. Some believed that it was hard for a soul to form a stable core after becoming set in its ways... so, a situation was possible where an older person could survive their Nightmare, only to die anyway after their soul collapsed while trying to create a core.

'That hardly seems fair...'

But fairness was a human concept, in the end. The Spell had its own principles, which did not always coincide with what humans considered just.

...Currently, the soldier and the male refugee were stirring, as if on the cusp of waking up. Sunny observed them from above, holding the Moonlight Shard in his hand.

He was strangely fascinated.

To his eyes, the changes happening to the souls of the Sleepers were revealed in detail. The weak, faint golden light inside them was swirling and moving, caught in the throes of a growing turmoil.

Sunny had gone through the process himself, many times. However, he had never seen it happening in front of him, to someone else.

Right now, the souls of the two humans were weak and... insubstantial. They were more like an idea of something than an actual thing. They were alive, and had shadows, but that was pretty much it. However, through a mysterious process, the formless state of a mundane soul was being galvanized, slowly creating a more solid shape.

A soul core was not a soul. Rather, it existed within the soul, serving as both its fulcrum and nexus. At least that was how Sunny perceived it. Encompassing a core granted a lot of benefits to a soul, but it also placed a burden on it. Not every soul was powerful and vast enough to sustain one, let alone several.

The proof of it was the terrible pain he went through every time his Class rose.

Regardless... both the soldier and the civilian seemed resilient enough for the task at hand. The faint golden light saturating their bodies grew slightly brighter, and in it, streaks of a stronger radiance appeared. These streaks flowed to their chests and swirled, slowly merging into spheres of brilliant light. The whole process seemed miraculous.

the two spheres grew fuller and more defined, the familiar shapes of two soul cores started to emerge from

then, there was a

with a flood of ethereal flame, which

The civilian, however...

center of the forming core. It quickly expanded,

light was consumed, the

'...Corruption.'

A living being succumbing to the Corruption. The Corruption had existed long before the Nightmare Spell, and although he did not know its source and purpose, he knew

The enemy, perhaps.

close to becoming corrupted himself, on the second level of the Ebony Tower. The terrible rot that had eaten through Weaver's arm and forced the cunning daemon to sever it... had it not been the same thing, only in a

of the Corruption spread through the body of

body started

suddenly elongated, piercing

man's chest, going straight through his heart. The forming soul core, now parasitized by the Corruption, was torn apart. The grotesque body convulsed and grew still, its last breath escaping as a hoarse

sighed and looked at the dead man with

while, he

well, now. Your Nightmare

'Find peace within me.'

for the young soldier. His soul core was all but formed, as there were faint streams of weak essence coursing through his body. The body itself was being rebuilt by it, growing healthier and stronger... getting

too long, the convoy would welcome

a while, then dragged his chair closer and sat down, dismissing the Moonlight Shard. Several shadowy tentacles rose from the ground and dragged the

create and demanded the least essence to maintain, but came short in

any case, for now, all

felt

of the shadows had already returned from its trip to the peak of a nearby mountain, so he

then another. Then,