"Shut the fuck up, you mongrel."
Vale's cold, smooth, and feminine voice cut through the silence, a harsh prelude to Chrollo's teasing.
"Come on, please! A man needs some relief! I mean, I can't even, like, you know, do it with you around—so why not?!" Chrollo whined like a child, though the subject of his complaint was far from innocent.
Vale began moving away from the pillar she had been lazily leaning against. Her slender figure was clad in a set of black light Armor, most likely crafted from the hide of some fallen nightmare creature.
"Stop your blabbering and check my core. I think I cracked it—it's leaking essence."
She stepped in front of Chrollo, grabbing his hand and guiding it to the center of her stomach, where her core lay. If Chrollo had to put it in other terms, it was like her dantian or something similar.
Usually, Echoes lost their soul cores. Despite having a form of one, Echoes always lacked an essential part of the soul. After all, they were merely imitations—constructs forged by the Nightmare Spell out of soul essence. Echoes lacked selfhood, ego, or a true sense of identity.
"Sure thing."
Channeling his aura into Vale, Chrollo used Shu, shrouding her in his Nen. With it, he reached deep into her existence—into a space that dreamers called the Soul Sea.
It was a clear, still ocean. Chrollo stood on the surface of icy water, its sheen smooth beneath his feet. Above, a bright sun—the manifestation of Vale's soul core—shone with a strange luminance, purer than a typical core, likely a side effect of her being infused with Nen.
He moved toward the star, shrouding his fingers in a denser layer of aura. After a few minutes of walking, he reached the space directly beneath the sun.
The waters below were inscribed with symbols in a foreign language—a visual representation of Chrollo's latest Nen application.
"Well, the divine scripture is still intact... wait—this part's smudged. Hmm. Maybe I should add something to prevent this kind of distortion…"
Chrollo had gained insight into divine script and substituted its expression with his main programming language: Python. Through a one-time-use Hatsu, he had deciphered basic principles of divine script, and began implementing the fundamentals—like Nen infusion and the systematic behaviour of scripted constructs—into his own version.
To do that, he'd used a language he was most comfortable with. After all, divine script was a language too—just one bound to metaphysical rules.
He began writing code into the air—or rather, into the icy water. Scribbling, erasing, reviewing, rewriting—the process lasted hours.
By the end, he had not only repaired the original script but reinforced it to prevent degradation and added a few quirks for personal amusement.
"Let's see you call me all those oh-so-mean names now."
Exiting Vale's Soul Sea, he returned to his body. The shift in perspective was mildly disorienting.
"What took you so long, you mo... mon... mo... mong... master?!" Vale's face contorted into a shocked and furious expression as she realized what Chrollo had done.
He'd added a restriction to her ability to speak.
"Change it back to how it was before, you... you... master!"
"Not until you apologize for all the mean things you said. That stuff hurts, you know. A delicate soul like mine can't handle such cruelty."
"Urrrgh. Okay, sorry—my bad. Shouldn't have been so harsh, especially when it's just the two of us in this empty land."
"Better. I'll change the script back tomorrow."
Vale let out a strained hmph of annoyance, accepting her fate. After all, she was only Chrollo's Echo—not a truly living being.
"Well, Vale, have you thought of any way out? Because the only one I've come up with needs a lot of work. And I wouldn't even get the benefits—I'd just be stuck as a dreamer."
"I've been working on my Hatsu," Vale said. "I think I've figured something out with moving between shadows—between two distinct points. If I train more, we could Shadow Step out of the Forgotten Shore."
"But we'd need a location to jump to. I'm guessing you need a clear image of the destination?"
"Yeah. That's the issue."
The two fell into a heavy silence. Colored light filtered in through the stained glass windows of the cathedral, casting vibrant hues into the otherwise somber white space—a stark contrast to the atmosphere inside.
"I might have a way out," Chrollo muttered. "I think I can describe a place clearly enough for you to teleport us. But you'll probably need to train more—your soul core's aura shell wasn't looking great. Soul Sea was fine, though."
He began to think of anchor points—places they could use to escape the Forgotten Shore, the place where he'd been left to be forgotten.
"The Chained Islands... I think that's part of Volume 3. Sunny should be there by now. One of the TikToks I watched described the closest island to the Hollow Mountains. There's a small ruined castle, once connected to the island above by a massive chain."
Leaving Vale to her training, Chrollo took his well-deserved rest.
For Echoes like her, soul essence and Nen were interchangeable yet distinct. They lacked a soul core by default, but Chrollo had taken essence from fallen nightmare creatures, forged a core, and embedded it into her. Through Nen, he forced the core to fuse with her source—creating a real, cultivatable soul core.
A personal variation of Sunny's shadows.
"Good night. Don't slack off, okay?"
"Fuck you. The sun just rose, you lazy scoundrel."