The sky made no sense here.
Above the broken expanse of pale rock stretched a dome overflowing with stars — thousands, tens of thousands, far more than the night should ever hold. They flickered unnaturally fast, pulsing in patterns that made the air itself twist. Every few breaths, gravity shifted for a heartbeat, turning the ground light or heavy at random. Space bent in places like stretched glass, warping distance in sudden lurches.
The Noble Creatures didn't care. Beasts and Monsters tore into each other, Demons rammed horns and claws into anyone close, and Devils bellowed as they crushed anything smaller beneath them. The entire field moved in chaotic currents of violence, bodies colliding at angles that made no physical sense thanks to the warped space.
***
[The Third Seal is broken.]
[Awakening dormant powers…]
Sunny was about to Ascend.
Just as before, he felt as though something was waking up inside him. His two Shadow Cores ignited with intense heat, the power within them surging. The heat spread through his soul and his body, rejuvenating and changing them.
The feeling was familiar and euphoric. He felt his body being reforged into a stronger, better, more perfect version of itself. His soul was going through the same sublime transformation.
This process was already familiar to Sunny, since more or less the same thing had happened to him before. However, this time… something was different…
***
A young man in a white button-up and jeans appeared behind one of the Devils. A spear of darkness jutted from the back of its neck, the point protruding cleanly from its throat.
[You have slain an Ascended Devil, Star Squanderer.]
[Your shadow grows stronger.]
Pitch-black orbs eyes the corpse in curiosity, before casually shrugging his shoulders.
The young man was not very tall, but his slender build and simple attire made him look very charming. With his porcelain skin and raven black hair, he looked like an exquisite doll.
Not that these strange beings would care. After all, the shadows were growing deeper…
Sunny let the weapon dissolve and stepped forward as the Devil collapsed.
The test began.
A gravity swell hit him without warning — weight must have increased by a hundred times or so, then vanished. A Beast lunged awkwardly in the shift, but Sunny adjusted instantly and drove his fist into its sternum. Bones caved. He seized the creature's skull with both hands, leapt, twisted his body in the air, and screwed its head off before landing lightly beside its falling body.
***
Instead of stopping after reaching the threshold of qualitative change and immense fortification, the transformation continued. His body and soul, both turned incandescent and malleable by the furious heat flowing through them, started to melt into each other.
They were slowly merging.
But they were not simply joining into a single whole… instead, the two parts of his being resonated with each other, reinforcing one another. The power of that resonance grew stronger and stronger, and then exploded once it reached his two Cores.
Under the influence of the resonance, the threshold was demolished, pushing him even further on the path of evolution. And as his body and soul became one…
A profound change took place.
***
A spatial ripple distorted the ground. The next Devil that charged seemed to stretch sideways, its limbs appearing a fraction of a second before the rest of its body caught up. Sunny slid under the delayed swipe and punched upward. The impact snapped the Devil's arm at a warped angle.
He didn't stay still.
A Monster tried to flank him. He wound up a kick… and travelled through the shadows. He reappeared behind it with the same kick already in motion, the momentum snapping its spine clean through.
More creatures swarmed. Sunny still fought barehanded, slipping between their strikes even as folded space tugged at his balance. A Demon's horn grazed his shoulder when a distortion yanked him an inch off course. He corrected immediately and slammed his elbow into its jaw, sending it spinning into a cluster of Beasts.
***
Suddenly, Sunny felt the Shadow Essence coursing through every fiber of his being with stark clarity. The difference was so staggering that he almost yelped. The measure of control he could exert on his Essence became incredibly precise and fine.
Additionally, since his body and soul were now deeply interconnected, the effect of one on another also went through a fundamental change. He could do much more, and with much less.
This was the true boon of the Ascension.
And there was something else… a deep and vast shift in his very being that he could feel, but not understand or express with words yet. All Sunny knew was that it had to do with his relation to the waking world, the Dream Realm, and his connection to both.
Slowly, the heat suffusing his newly reforged self subsided and turned into a pleasant coldness. The coldness then disappeared, absorbed into his spirit, his flesh, and his bones.
***
Distance stretched in a sudden vertical pull. A Devil leapt toward him but ended up sailing too high, hanging in the distorted air for a breath. Sunny jumped after it, caught its ankle, flipped it over, and smashed it into the ground hard enough to crater the stone.
Only then did he pull a weapon from the dark.
A short shadow blade formed in his grip. He stabbed through a Beast's chest, let the blade dissolve, appearing behind a Demon as it feasted on a corpse. The announcement the Spell gave for the kill was like music to his ears.
***
Sunny looked at the black void with new eyes.
He felt…
Powerful.
He felt as though there was furious might boiling under his skin. He also felt calm and confident. Balanced.
As he listened to his body, the Spell spoke from the darkness:
[Awakening Aspect Ability.]
[Aspect Ability acquired.]
Sunny held his breath.
[...Aspect Ability Name: Shadow Manifestation.]
He clenched his fists.
'Is this… is this what I think it is?!'
***
Tendrils whipped out from the ground, dragging a Monster into a star-glimmered fissure. Spikes formed around him and shot upwards in a widening circle, punching through ribs and armor. A Devil slammed into him from the side after being pulled by a gravitational flux. He rolled with the impact, shadows cushioning his landing, then ripped the Devil apart with two sweeping saws of darkness.
'Hm… I'm hungry.'
Good thing he brought his lunch. For now, however…
A odachi formed of shadows rose into his grip, causing him to perform a quick practice swing as he nodded in satisfaction. Whipping the blade around once more, he sliced one of the creatures right between their upper and lower jaw, causing the latter to hang uselessly. A lance of darkness followed-up from below, impaling it upwards.
Sunny suddenly appeared somewhere else, his eyes widening as he was forced to parry a swipe that he almost couldn't perceive.
'Huh?'
Once again, his position was forcibly altered, forcing him to duck under a row of teeth that threatened to give him a crappy haircut. Thanks to his shadow sense, he quickly figured out where he was moved to… and that an unlucky Monster seemed to have taken his old place, being ruthlessly slaughtered.
'Position-swapping?'
He had already noticed that the Devils present in the horde tended to have spacial abilities. Gravity, warping, attraction, teleporting… if this went on, he was going to have to abandon the small amount of food left in his guts.
'Ugh..'
Diving into the shadows once more, he existed as an unmoving silhouette. The area around him began to darken as shadows spread outwards, denying the faint light of the stars. Some of the creatures instinctively ran from the encroaching darkness, mostly Demons and Devils. As for the Beasts and Monsters, as well as the stronger creatures that were too slow to escape…
Countless hands reached out from the shadows, each of them ghastly and bearing sharp finger tips.
They erupted across the ground in a writhing wave, dragging long black streaks through the air as they surged toward the nearest creatures. The beasts barely had time to react before the hands reached them — clutching limbs, tearing hides, ripping muscle from bone with frantic, animalistic strength. Spatial distortions flickered and collapsed as bodies were shredded mid warp. Screams, snarls, and the wet crunch of rended flesh filled the star drenched field until nothing was left moving but him.
Sunny looked at the surviving creatures — startled, limping, stumbling away from the massacre — and let out a low, irritated groan.
'Only half of them? Damn, that's weak…'
Sure, he had the Essence to do more, but the quality of the manifested shadows just wasn't very effective against those of the Ascended and Fallen Rank, and would surely be completely ineffective against the Transcendent and Corrupted Rank.
It seemed that he hadn't found the proper use for his new Aspect Ability.
'Eh… whatever.'
Sunny raised a brow as the seemingly incorruptible creatures with pristine Soul Cores tore into eachother — not to devour souls… but because they were hungry. Like normal animals.
With that observation, he walked off, trying to figure out where north was again — he had lost track after accidentally stepping into an invisible wormhole.