lerbook Chapter 561: Ghostbusters (XIV)
Chapter 561: Ghostbusters (XIV)
Sunny’s Brilliant Emporium was not only a vendor for Memories — but a buyer, as well. The main reason Sunny had to get his hand on new Memories was to expand the collection of Spellweaves stored in his mind. By doing so, he could not only have more enchantments to copy, but his own attainment of the elusive laws that governed the mysterious sorcery of the Daemon of Fate rose, as well. He can make more edits to enchantments, and eventually, make completely original ones.
What did Sunny do with those Memories after getting the knowledge he needed from them, though? Well, most of them were useless trash of the Dormant and Awakened Ranks — nothing that he could realistically use. Thanks to [Fated], he had a tendency to get excessively powerful Memories... though, they had a tendency of having insane drawbacks, such as the Dark Scale.
So, if he was anyone else, he would simply sell back the Memories he had no use for...
Of course, he wasn’t anyone else.
Sunny’s Aspect gave him a special use for unneeded Memories. Instead of simply selling them, he could use them as sustenance for his Shadows, feeding them Shadow Fragments and increasing their strength.
With Serpent being the only exception to this rule, he had three options to choose from: Saint, Nightmare, and Tingyun.
Saint... was currently undergoing an evolution within the dark embrace of his Shadow Core. Moreover, she was an Ascended Shadow anyways, so feeding her Memories would be very expensive.
As for Nightmare, he also recently evolved into the Ascended Rank. Thus, it would still cost too much to bring him to the Transcendent Rank.
Then, there was Tingyun, who Sunny had the most complex feelings about.
Despite wanting to avoid using her Aspect due to her Flaw — which used her own memories as fuel for her flames — he ended up abusing it quite a bit recently. Whether it was to smelt, create an immolating blade of flames, or to release a deadly arrow forged from flame and Destruction.
Killing Tingyun was the one and only time he regretted a murder. When he turned her into a Shadow, it wasn’t out of consideration for her worth as a weapon, as a tool for him to use to achieve his goals. He had been willing to become a slaver, as disgusting as it was, just to give her a second chance at life.
And here he was, burning away what remained of her past life just so he could perpetuate more murder.
Sunny couldn’t help but apprehensively wonder if he was some kind of beast who couldn’t even follow his own thoughts and decisions properly.
...In any case, something in his gut continued to recoil whenever he considered using Tingyun’s power. Still, he couldn’t deny that it was useful. It was something that he needed to use if he wanted to stay alive, considering the situations he keeps getting put in. Plus, she didn’t seem to forget anything major, right?
Increasing Tingyun’s Rank wasn’t a hard decision, anyways. Even if he didn’t use her fire, what if she suddenly decided that she wanted independence? Though, he didn’t know how she would go about that in her current state, being a Shadow who was mentally altered to put Sunny above all else. If she happened to succeed, however, it wouldn’t be a great idea to leave her powerless, right?
So, Sunny threw a whole bunch of Memories her way, watching her Shadow Fragment counter hit its limit.
And just as she was about to Awaken...
...She didn’t.
She didn’t Awaken.
Instead, she gained a new Shadow Core.
From Dormant Beast to Dormant Monster.
What an improvement.
Sunny had been a little depressed. An increase in Rank was a qualitative change, while an increase in Class was a quantitative change. It was only natural that he had been hoping for the former, something he had been expecting, even, considering his other Shadows.
Then, he was confused. Saint and Nightmare increased in Rank once their Shadow Fragment counter was maxed out. So why not Tingyun?
After some pondering, he figured that she was in a weird position. She was not just any Shadow, after all. She was cast by a human being — Foxian being? — and ended up with a different progression path than Sunny’s other Shadows. Saint was cast... well, by Saint, and Nightmare was a Shadow when they met. Though, he had to be cast by something, right?
He shivered when trying to imagine the wicked being that a horrific creature like Nightmare could have been born from.
Meanwhile, Sunny suspected that Serpent was directly cast by Sunny himself, though, there was no way to really find out. The Shadow gifted to him by his Aspect Legacy was from Shadow God, but he doubted that Serpent was literally a God’s Shadow. That would be a little extreme.
For humans, gaining Soul Shards led to saturating their Soul Core. Nothing else happened after that. For Sunny, and other Divine Aspect holders like AR-26710 and Mordret, they gained a Soul Core once they reached that limit — Shadow Cores, in Sunny’s case. Tingyun, however, was not a Divine Aspect holder... but she was still a Shadow Creature.
Between Sunny’s shadow helpers and Mordret’s Reflections, it was safe to assume that AR-26710 also had some kind of special Ability associated with her Soul Cores. That was the boon of Divine Aspects. They aren’t limited by a single Core, and their Aspects are specifically tailored to develop further the more Cores they had.
Tingyun, on the other hand, experienced a simple quantitative growth. According to her, the only thing that changed when she evolved into a Monster was an increase in strength as well as a greater base Essence capacity — the amount of Essence she is summoned with if Sunny didn’t use Shadow Amplification.
Her Aspect didn’t benefit directly from the extra Core.
It was only of the Transcendent Rank, after all.
All of this information led Sunny to a strange conclusion. Tingyun was a human, but also a Shadow. In this paradoxical boundary, she was beholden to the laws of both, but not all of them. She had the progression of a Divine Aspect holder, but not the boons associated with them. She didn’t develop Class Abilities either, like a Nightmare Creature.
This brought up a question, however: How was Sunny supposed to Awaken Tingyun?