With the sunlight streaming through the window without glass, I lazily lifted the thin blankets covering my body and summoned the [Solar Mantle]. Despite having better armor, this thing feels too good not to use.
The soft fabric wrapped around my body, enveloping me in a pleasant warmth that kept me warm and protected me from the cold.
With the sun just rising, I decided to take a walk. My intuition told me that something good would happen.
When I left the cabin, located quite far from the town hall that was also home to Sunny, Nephis, and Cassia, I planned to head there to see how my day would go.
Normally, we would go hunting in a few hours, but the time before and after the hunt was somewhat boring. Sometimes I trained with Sasha or Ludwin, but they usually sleep more than I do, so I just spent my time walking through the streets of the settlement.
After about half an hour of walking, I reached the entrance/exit of the settlement, where magnificent stairs led down to the lowest point of the mountain and to the entrance to the cursed city.
Looking down the stairs, I noticed movement, or more precisely, two movements.
They are people.
I don't feel any irrational desire for madness coming from them or from their corrupted and senseless minds, so they can only be other sleepers.
Curious to know who could be in the cursed city so late, I leaned my head out further while descending a few steps and... honestly, I couldn't have expected to see who I think they are.
Both boys had onyx-black hair that absorbed the light, one had pale skin while the other had healthy white skin, one had eyes as black as the night while the other had a pair of eyes red like rubies.
They are Jon and Sunny...
Descending the stairs faster to meet my friend who hadn't been in contact for more than two months, I let myself be seen while they both directed their gaze in my direction.
A slight smile appeared on my face as I watched them and Jon waved with a hand in the air.
After a few minutes, they both got close enough to talk.
"Jon! It's good to see you're well. And hello to you too, Sunny."
A broad smile appeared on Jon's face, and then he greeted me back.
"Isa, it's so nice to see a good friend's face after so long."
He paused while pulling something out of a pocket in his armor and gave me a quick look, with a somewhat strange smile on his face.
"Here, a little gift after not seeing each other."
With that said, he finished pulling out a shining dark orb that he then tossed to me.
"This is..."
I couldn't say more as he interrupted me and finished my sentence for me.
"That's right, a fallen-rank core."
A fallen core... This will give me quite a few spectral fragments. I put a bit of strength into my grip and the dark sphere burst into a small whirl of sparks.
[You have consumed a spectral remnant, your soul strengthens.]
I felt the essence enter my core and opened my runes out of mere curiosity.
Name: Isac
True Name: Light Seeker
Rank: Latent
Class: Demon
Spectral Cores: [3/7]
Spectral Fragments: [357/3000]
Memories: [Water Bowl] [Cursed Oath] [Solar Mantle] [Light Shadow] [Thorn Needle] [Arachnid Silk]
Echoes: -
Attributes: [Destined] [Mentally Strong] [Cold Mind] [Gluttony] [Flame of Divinity] [Unfathomable Soul] [???]
Aspect: দুর্যোগ
Aspect Rank: Divine
Innate Ability: Subtle Presence
Description: [Your presence is so low that it is hard to notice you]
Aspect Ability: Invisibility
Description: [You can become invisible to all normal senses within a large radius around you]
Defect: Moment of Forgetting
Description: [Your existence is temporarily forgotten at inopportune moments]
Only 8 fragments... It's really not worth upgrading with cores, my [Gluttony] is far superior.
Of all the creatures I've killed all this time, the awakened cores only gave me 4 fragments, while the fallen cores only gave me 8 each. It's to be expected that a corrupted one would give me around 16, which is really little for how hard it is to kill those things.
As for me, I consume the fragments differently.
My soul is special, and the way to improve it is equally strange, I don't obtain normal soul fragments, but rather I directly devour a kind of "specter," which is the remnant left by the will of a nightmare creature after its death.
My [Gluttony] attribute allows me to completely devour this remnant and obtain a large number of spectral fragments, and a fallen beast usually gave me 40 spectral fragments, which is completely crazy considering their cores only give 8 the normal way.
Uh... Shit, I was thinking for a long time.
An entire minute has passed since I spoke to them... What should I do now?
"Uh... thanks. So, will you stay here or go back to the castle? Sasha and Ludwin would like to see you after so long. Everyone was worried about you."
His expression, which had become somewhat complicated by my prolonged silence, now seemed to brighten at the mention of those two.
"Sure! I'll go see them immediately. Uh, Sunny, thanks for helping me out there, you can leave me here, Isac will show me what I need."
Sunny looked at me and Jon once more and shrugged.
"Sure, whatever you want, I'll go to sleep."
With that said, Sunny walked away from Jon, and we were left alone.
Should I say something special now? A "you had me worried" or "why didn't you leave the castle and stay with Gunalgu?" No, he'll surely tell us in due time. So...
I prepared to talk about the first thing that came to mind. But before I could say anything, he started first.
"So... How have you been? You know, with the fact that there's no way back. Are Sasha and Ludwin okay?"
Suddenly, a strong feeling of concern and... guilt? appeared in Jon's mind. He really cares about us, huh? I can't deny we share the feeling.
"Yeah, well, I guess I've never been better with my growth, and about the other thing, I think we should talk about it somewhere else. Do you want to come over to my house for something to eat, or do you want to go find Sasha and Ludwin now? At this hour, they should be training at the town hall. Uh, it's also Sunny, Nephis, and Cassia's house."
He thought for a moment and then replied, with a soft smile on his face:
"Let's go find the other two, I should at least greet them. We also need to catch up with everyone."