Shadow Slave

Chapter 2574: Shadowbound

Sunny regarded the runes for a while, thinking.

No matter how he looked at it... he had done well.

"If you don't praise yourself, who will?" Sunny scoffed and turned away from the glowing anvil, walking outside to enjoy the cool air of the Dark City.

Forging the Curse had been difficult. The true hardship, however, was in imagining what the shadowbound Memory needed to be.

Sunny had always known one thing, at least—that he wanted it to be a charm. The [Underworld Armament] enchantment of the Jade Mantle, which enhanced the effect of any charm slotted into the soulbound armor, had gone unused for too long. That had always gnawed at him a little.

At the same time, Sunny knew that he did not want to rely on external power too much, or better yet at all. That was a path that could offer him great benefits at the moment, but would lead him to a dead end in the long run. His goal was to become a god, after all, and gods did not need power in potent tools.

They were the power.

So, any charm he would forge had to help him use his own Aspect more effectively, as opposed to gifting him new powers.

Ideally, it had to close any blind spots his own Aspect had as well.

But therein lay the problem... in a way, Sunny's greatest power was his versatility. He could do a little bit of everything, and do it well—so, his powers did not have any glaring blind spots.

Which was not to say that there weren't any, of course.

For example, he lacked a truly effective tool to deal with large groups of weaker enemies. Nephis could incinerate a vast swarm of lesser Nightmare Creatures with one obliterating explosion, but Sunny would have to kill them all by hand—in the best case, he would send the Shadow Legion into battle instead.

There were other instances like that, too. So, the set of enchantments he had designed for the Curse was meant to make up for his few minor deficiencies, as well as make his strengths even more pronounced.

The [Bound] enchantment was self-explanatory—it was the core enchantment of every soulbound or shadowbound Memory, allowing it to grow alongside its Master. Both the Jade Mantle and the Blessing possessed the same one, as well.

Things got more interesting when it came to the other six enchantments, though.

The Curse had two states—a passive one and an active one. It could be summoned independently, but ideally, the Curse would only become active when Sunny summoned the Jade Mantle, and therefore always be enhanced by the [Underworld Armament] as a result.

The [Dark Embrace] enchantment was the only one that functioned when the Curse was in its passive state. It was a nurturing enchantment that enhanced the power of the dark flames of his soul by drawing on his spirit essence. As a result, the flames repaired the damaged shades and wounded Shadows faster, allowing them to return to battle sooner.

It also gave him the ability to soothe the pain of living beings by touching them. Shadow God was also the god of solace, after all... as well as death. So, Sunny had designed a pattern that he called the [Pain Killer], and wove it into the broader weave of the [Dark Embrace].

If he was honest with himself, though, that part of the enchantment had taken him a great amount of time and effort to complete—more time and effort, perhaps, than what the [Dark Embrace] was mainly supposed to accomplish, even.

His reason was easy to discern, of course. There was a particular person whose pain Sunny wanted to soothe, even if she had never asked for it and would never seek relief from that burden herself.

Nephis might have learned to endure the torment of her Flaw, but Sunny was not willing to watch her endure it. So, he hoped that she would find some measure of solace at least in his embrace.

The other five enchantments of the Curse could only be used in its active state.

The [Absence of Light] was the most straightforward. It was an altered version of the enchantment he had designed in Ariel's Game to create the Evening Star—a charm Memory that now belonged to Saint.

The [Evening Star] enhanced Saint when she was surrounded by darkness. The darker her surroundings were, the greater enhancement she received. The [Absence of Light] had a similar function, but the condition set for it was not connected to how dark it was around Sunny, but rather to how deep the shadows around him were. The difference was subtle, but impactful. Shadows were created by the absence of light, after all, and were often darker, deeper, and most stark when a powerful source of light was nearby. So, the [Absence of Light] would not grant Sunny any power in true darkness—however, it would strengthen him when surrounded by mundane darkness or stark shadows and radiant light instead.

[Mercy of Shadow] was the key enchantment of the Curse. It was straightforward in its function, as well, but while that function granted Sunny a powerful boon in and of itself, its true purpose was to work in tandem with two other enchantments of the shadowbound charm.

The [Mercy of Shadow] enhanced the Death quality of his will. It made Sunny more lethal through no other means than lethality itself.

In that regard, it was similar to the [Slaying Blade] Ability of Serpent. However, while the result was the same, the cause was different.

Serpent was able to suppress and partially ignore the Will of powerful beings that were cut by its blade. The [Mercy of Shadow], however, enhanced Sunny's own will to kill. The true beauty of it all was the dreadful synergy between the two. With the adversary's Will bypassed and Sunny's own Death Will made more tyrannical, the gap between the two grew that much wider. ṞΆNôᛒÊȿ

So, the combination of the [Slaying Blade] and [Mercy of Shadow] truly made him an incarnation of death... Death Incarnate.

That was not the only synergy Sunny had in mind while designing the Curse, though.

The [Shadow Flame] enchantment was an elegant one. It drew inspiration from Neph's Soul Flame, but not in an obvious way. Sunny and Nephis were similar in the sense that they could enhance themselves or their weapons with their Dormant Ability. However, the mechanism of their augmentations differed in one subtle, but important way.

Sunny possessed seven shadows, while Nephis possessed a single reservoir of soul flame. Therefore, the enhancement Sunny could grant was divided into seven parts, while Neph's could be divided freely in any proportion. She could pour all of her flame into making herself stronger, keep one third of it for herself and pour everything else into her weapon...

Or even divide it into a million weaker boons, sharing it with a million people bound to her Domain.

Sunny could not do that. But with the [Shadow Flame], he could—and that would allow him to strengthen not only himself, but also his Shadow Legion.

Of course, dividing the augmentation of his seven shadows between a million shades would not make each individual shade that much stronger. A few thousand elites, though? That could make all the difference. That was especially true because the gap between Ranks grew exponentially. So while a thousand Transcendent shades would not benefit much from receiving one thousandth of Sunny's augmentation, a thousand Awakened shades would benefit tremendously.

Sunny had high hopes for the [Shadow Flame].

It had another use, as well—one tied closely to the next enchantment of the Curse.

The [Weakening Curse] was what had given the shadowbound charm its name. Its function was quite simple—which was not to say that designing its elegant weave had been simple. In fact, that single enchantment had taken all of Sunny's ingenuity to create.

But the result was worth it.

The [Weakening Curse] reversed the effect of his Dormant Ability.

Instead of wrapping his shadows around himself, his Memories, his Shadows, or his shades to enhance them... it allowed him to wrap them around his enemies to sap their power away.