Shadow Slave

Because of the sudden influx of so many shards, Sunny got disoriented and swayed. His body was subtly rebuilding itself, growing stronger, more powerful… the difference was stark enough for him to feel it with every fiber of his being.

As Awakened absorbed soul shards — or shadow fragments, in his case — the capacity of their cores grew, and their physical capability was slightly enhanced. Usually, it happened at such small increments that the difference was hard to judge, but this time, Sunny had done something pretty preposterous and consumed fourteen hundred shadow fragments all at once.

He wondered if anyone else in history had accomplished the same feat.

'Not… not likely…'

Grabbing the edge of the altar to support himself, he endured the strange and euphoric sensation as best as he could.

How could anyone do such a thing, if — as far as Sunny knew — everyone except Nephis and him were limited to having only one core? They wouldn't even be able to absorb this much…

'Argh…'

Back on the Forgotten Shore, Sunny had gone from having almost no shadow fragments to fully saturating his core at a thousand. In the process, he went from being no different from a mundane human, to the pinnacle of humanly possible, to breaking past those limits.

Becoming an Awakened had elevated him even further above what was considered normal. He was much stronger and faster than any mundane human could ever hope to be, and capable of enhancing his prowess even more with essence, achieving truly superhuman might.

And now, he went through a transformation that was similar in scale to his rise on the Forgotten Shore, becoming so much more powerful. In fact, he was now probably the strongest Awakened both in the waking world and in the Dream Realm, with the exception of those whose Aspects directly enhanced their physique.

And even then, he could still double… even triple his physical ability with the help of the shadows.

'Insane!'

Sunny drew in a deep breath, then silently flexed his muscles, feeling a new strength course through his veins. He felt… incredible. Incredibly strong, incredibly fast, incredibly resilient.

But that wasn't all.

The capacity of both of his Shadow Cores was also dramatically enhanced, almost doubling in a matter of seconds. Therefore, his reserves of shadow essence were now also much deeper.

That meant that he could fight at his peak form for longer, use the active enhancements of his Memories more, remain in the form of a shadow for a bigger amount of time, control his shadows at a larger distance, and travel further when using Shadow Step.

In short… Sunny had just become even more of a menace.

Slowly getting accustomed to his new and improved physique, he couldn't help but smile.

Now that he had finally made use of the miraculous coins, his previous disaster of an expedition came into perspective. Despite how much he had suffered and how close he had brushed with death, it all felt worth it, somehow.

His goal was to grow stronger, and Sunny had just made a big step toward that goal.

…It felt good.

While Sunny was consumed with triumphant thoughts, his gaze fell on the obsidian knife that lay on the altar.

He lingered for a while, then cautiously reached with his hand and touched the cold stone handle.

'Will it work?'

That knife remained on the altar of the Sanctuary for as long as humans lived there. Pretty much every Awakened that had ever set foot into the Citadel tried to raise it off the white surface at least once… including Sunny.

But none of them succeeded. The knife seemed to weigh more than the entire island itself, as if it was glued to the altar. No matter how much people tried, no one had ever managed to move it even by a millimeter.

However, when Sunny used the miraculous coins for the first time, he seemed to have noticed that the obsidian knife moved a little.

Therefore… he had made a conclusion that if he were to place enough coins on the altar, the knife might become detached from it, and fall into his hands.

Holding his breath, Sunny wrapped his fingers around the handle.

'...Here goes nothing?'

Putting all of his strength into the pull, he tried to lift the obsidian blade of the altar.

The knife, however, offered no resistance at all. It behaved like any knife would, easily sliding off the white stone, which then caused Sunny to lose his balance and tumble to the ground in a graceless roll.

Sitting up, he stared at the knife in his hand with wild eyes. Then, he shuddered.

'Crap!'

Sunny half-expected for the entire Sanctuary to suddenly plunge into the Sky Below, or for the Gateway to stop functioning. That's why he wanted to just lift the knife a little, and then place it back down if something had gone awry. Instead, he was now a few steps away from the altar, with no way of getting back to it immediately.

…Luckily, none of his fears came true.

Despite the fact that the obsidian knife had left its usual spot on the altar, the island seemed fine. Everything was just as it had been a few seconds ago.

He exhaled with visible relief.

'Well… good. I wouldn't want to mess things up too bad for everyone here on the Chained Isles.'

Rising to his feet, Sunny looked at the obsidian knife. It seemed to have been cut from a single piece of black stone, with its blade sharpened and polished. There wasn't anything special in how the knife looked. In fact, it seemed a little bit crude, almost primitive.

There was also one little problem.

The knife did not turn into a Memory.

'Huh…'

Sunny had expected it to disintegrate into a rain of sparks and enter his core, just like Weaver's Mask had done, or like Shard Memories behaved when raised by a new wielder. Mordret had mentioned something to that effect when speaking about the ivory knife in the Night Temple.

He told Sunny that one had to spill blood on the black altar, to receive a Memory of the blade that rested on its surface.

But the obsidian knife did no such thing. It just remained in his hand, as material and palpable as one could imagine.

What was even stranger, though…

Was that the knife didn't appear to have a spellweave. It was, without a doubt, a magical item. Sunny could feel that it was, even if he didn't know what properties that entailed. However, when he looked beneath the surface of the knife, he didn't see the familiar pattern of ethereal strings weaving themselves around anchoring lights.

What he saw instead was just brilliant radiance, as though the knife was filled to the brim with soul essence. And in that radiance was just a single string…

It wasn't the same type of ethereal string, though.

It was a…

Sunny frowned.

A String of Fate.

A single String of Fate was somehow placed inside the obsidian knife, folding on itself endlessly, with its two ends connected to create a perfect, neverending circle.

Sunny stared at the strange String for a while, and then furrowed his brow.

'...Now, what is that all about?'