Shadow Slave

'Gods... oh gods...'

The pain... was exquisite. It was inconceivable.

It was the kind of pain that could kill a person, or at least make the pass out in an instant. Sadly, the latter did not happen, because the pain was not physical.

Instead, its source was Sunny's soul, which was being altered and transformed.

Not in a way it had been changed every time a new core was formed, but rather in a way his blood and bones had been altered in the past.

"Aaargh!"

Sunny hit the lid of the sarcophagus with enough force to split his skin and fell to the ground, the carpet of leaves softening his fall.

'Wh—what... what the hell?! How... is... this possible?!'

He knew what was happening to him. However, he had no idea why it was happening, and how eating the golden fruit from the tree growing above the grave of Oblivion had caused it.

In any case, Sunny had no choice but to endure.

He wasn't shy about screaming and howling in pain, though, especially because there was no one here to witness his sorry state.

"D—damn it! Damn it! D...damn it all!"

After an eternity — this time, quite a literal one, considering that time did not exist in the Estuary — Sunny found himself laying on the ground, staring blindly at the beautiful crown of the mystical tree. His body felt weak, and his face was wet with tears.

'...Curses.'

That one was definitely going into the collection of the most horrendous agonies he had experienced. What place? Probably not the first, which was still held by activating the [Where is my eye?] enchantment of Weaver's Mask. But it was a confident second.

Sunny groaned, and then shakily rose to his feet. Then, he took inventory of his soul.

It felt... different, somehow. And much, much more potent. Already knowing what he would see, Sunny summoned the runes.

'It can't be... can it?'

But it could.

There, in the shimmering field of runes, a new string appeared in the list of his Attributes.

Pale as a ghost, Sunny read:

Attributes: [Fated], [Flame of Divinity], [Master of Shadows], [Blood Weave], [Bone Weave], [Marble Shell]...

And at the very end, a new one:

[...Soul Weave.]

in air,

'How the hell...'

new string,

of Weaver's forbidden lineage. Your soul has been altered and imbued

lonely demon shed tears standing above a forgotten grave. A tree grew from the ground where the demon's tears fell,

at the runes for a while, then

It felt... reinforced, somehow.

robust and durable, capable

did not look very different, at the surface, apart from the fact that the dark flames burning within them seemed

once he peered into the depths of his cores... was he seeing things, or had he glimpsed a weave of

the Soul Sea, both elated

of Weaver's lineage. Soul Weave.

was, indeed,

what the hell was it

was a fragment of Weaver's lineage left there? If anything, it

as though Weaver lost a part of his... her?... soul at the grave of Oblivion, for some

the two of them been

do with the strange incongruity in the number of daemons that had participated

Sunny did not know.

of it... was

even the

it's great that my soul

How was Soul Weave supposed to break the

lips, unsure of what exactly

then, something distracted him

Guiding Light, which had rolled away from him when

of the sacred staff was still shining. However, it wasn't pointing at

it was pointing into the darkness behind

felt as though a ripple spread through the world. His

His eyes widened.

Nightmare... it's starting

Nephis must have delivered a fatal blow

Sunny could not concentrate on that thought for too long. Because just then, he

towering shape that filled him

did I

had been hiding in the darkness of the vast cavern, hidden completely from his sight, his nose, and even his shadow sense, despite being the size of a hill. It had a hunched back, a disheveled

soul filled with more Corruption than he had ever seen, spreading outward from six grotesquely

'A... a Cursed Terror...'

an

just as he did, a pair of round, utterly