Shadow Slave

Fiend feasted on the corpses of the Drowned Outcasts with delight. The sight of the metallic devil gorging himself on the dead abominations was a bit gruesome, but mercifully swift. The bodies disappeared into the Shadow's incinerating maw as if they had never existed... before too long, the deck was clear once again.

'Where does all this meat even go...'

This time, the infernal ogre had not gained any new Attributes or Abilities. Which was an expected result - if the Scavengers were capable of attaining new powers from each creature they devoured, Sunny would have never survived the battle with the original Ravenous Fiend. It had to be a rare occurrence, especially now that the Shadow's main Attributes were set. It did seem like he had grown a little bit stronger, though, just as the other Shadows did when absorbing a fragment.

Throwing a dubious glance at the satisfied devil, Sunny shook his head and commanded the glutton to go find a mop.

While Fiend was washing the blood off the deck, Sunny and Nephis briefly examined the ship and then gathered at the stern to divide the soul shards.

"Let's just each take half."

He looked at the small pile of shimmering crystals, calmly thinking about how to use them best. All of the shards were Transcendent... considering how nonchalant he was about this unimaginable treasure trove, remembering the awe they had felt when witnessing a pair of Transcendent soul shards back on the Forgotten Shore felt both amusing and nostalgic.

Nephis simply shook her head.

"I'll take a quarter. Your Shadows killed twice as many as I did, while you dealt with the depth dweller. That should be fair."

She was right... out of the two of them, he had contributed much more to the victory. That only went to show how powerful he had grown, armed with a developed Aspect Legacy and three powerful Shadows.

And yet...

Transcendent soul shards. If made into a Memory and fed to Nightmare, each would give him four shadow fragments. That meant that the black stallion would be most of the way to Ascension by the time Sunny finished

a Titan.

Sunny nodded.

"Alright."

the soul shards, Neph's face seemed even more reserved than usual. Was she

share of the soul shards and methodically crushed them one after another, absorbing the streams of ethereal light. Then, she rose

wasted enough time here already. I'll go

walk into the runic circle with a

has been... strangely mild ever since coming back. Selfishly, I like this Nephis more.

he also missed the version of Nephis that was like an uncompromising flame. A flame that burned with enough passion

and gathered the rest of the

the time comes, she'll burn brighter than the seven suns combined... I just

stored the shards in the Covetous Coffer and went back to peering into the complexities of

the next week, it was attacked several more times - for better or worse, by solitary Nightmare Creatures instead of groups like the

with some effort... but not too much effort. Apart from a few shallow wounds, the biggest hurdle they faced was removing the corpse of an especially large creature from the ram of the ship, which had impaled the abomination

far reaches of the future. On the positive side, Sunny and Nephis were alive. On the negative side, they had not been able to salvage