Sunny woke up again to the sound of the retreating water and once more stretched and began to move down
Serpent and Shadow Knight were both summoned once he reached the ground and before any of the creatures had even reached the corpse, the three of them moved
Well
The two of them moved while Sunny remained a decent distance in the back. He lacked a weapon and until he got one, he had no plans of joining the fray
For now Serpent and the Knight would be the main fighters while he stayed in the back and waited. The day was still young and the sun had just risen, so they had a significant amount of time to go on the hunt
The duo moved with a sort of fluid grace, taking on their own opponents and then moving on to the next while using the environment to their advantage as well as their greater mobility compared to the scavengers
Any time they had gotten surrounded, Serpent coiled up onto the red coral and attacked from above. The knight too was able to do the same due to its humanoid anatomy; using this tactic, they were able to dispose of many creatures while Sunny smiled darkly in the background.
There was previously about 120 of the scavengers in the area that were moving towards the corpse; yesterday they had lowered that number by 14, and now after Sunny thought of the tactic and evaluated their strength against the scavengers,
He had made the decision to move forward with the attack, slaughtering as many as they could.
They had used the tactic of fighting a group in a narrow hallway
If there was 1 powerful person against a 100 average ones, the 100 would be able to overwhelm the person with sheer numbers—so the person needed to think of a simple way to deal with the problem
Figure out a way to deal with them one at a time
Each time The Knight and Serpent would move closer towards the corpses and draw in a group of roughly 10 to 14, they would then return to the coral and climb up, attacking from above and killing them before repeating the process
Sure, it had taken a long time to do but it was not like Sunny had anything better to do
Not to mention that this was a increase to his won strength
He had climbed up onto a thick piece of coral himself and looked ahead, watching the creatures dying one by one, the thoughts of doubling his already increasing count when he absorbed the shards from their corpses
But then there was something that occurred, changing that plan
[You have received a memory: Hollow Carapace.]
Sunny smiled slightly
He had not been expecting to receive a memory, just the ones that he had received from his past life, but now it seemed that it was not limited to just that.
He would have been okay with it since he had always received many good memories, but now he was even more glad—killing more meant more rewards after all and he planned to go on a slaughter spree
Serpent and Shadow Knight continued their constant hunt, the ranks of the scavengers already having decreased by more than 75% of what they originally were.
Sunny smiled and turned his attention away from them and focused on his new memory, summoning it
It was an oddly shaped... pot of sorts. It had blue vein-like lines spreading across its body and the opening seemed to have a lid on it
Sunny opened the lid and looked inside, seeing...nothing. Not even the bottom—just a deep black hole. The opening was large; he could definitely fit both his hands in it.
Curious, he summoned the runes
...
Memory: [Hollow Carapace.]
MemoryRank: Awakened
MemoryTier: 1
MemoryType: Tool
Memory Description: The Scavenger was hollowed out by its own greed, leaving behind nothing but a void that begs to be filled.
...
Sunny smiled—it seemed that he had just gained a storage memory.
'I can tweak my plans a bit now...'
Sunny was planning to become a demon here on the forgotten shore by hunting like there was no tomorrow, but he needed to remain a demon to enter the body of the Shadow Spawn in the second nightmare
But that did not mean he needed to limit himself
He became a monster the same day the siege on the spire had reached completion after killing Caster.
After that it had taken him more than 2 years to become a demon after constant hunting in the Chained Isles, and that was also including the use of the Noctis coins to increase his count.
What did this mean?
It meant that if he wanted to enter the Second Nightmare and remain in the body of the shadow spawn, his runes upon exiting the forgotten shore should look something like this:
Shadow Cores: [3/7]
Shadow Fragments: 999/3000
Why only 999/3000 and not higher?
The reason is simple: it was so he would still be able to hunt the sam exact creatures as he did in the past and gain the same exact memories and echoes he did at that time
Then by the time he enters the nightmare, he would have roughly 2999/3000
Then entering the nightmare he would instantly become a devil and even go a little under halfway to becoming a tyrant if he hunted the same
But he was not going to hunt the same, nor was he just limited to needing to kill
Now that he could harvest shards and use them and also had a means of storing them, he could use the shards once he enters the nightmare
Awakened shards by then would only increase his count by just 1 point
But what if he killed for example 1998 carapace scavengers to reach the count mentioned before and kept all the shards away
Well, that meant that he would have 1998 shards which would increase his shard count by 1998, and better still he was not limited to that
If he gets help for example hunting with a cohort he could aid in the kill without actually killing, then he would get more and more shards
If he played all his cards perfectly
Sunny would reach the class of a tyrant in the second nightmare rather than within the third nightmare!
Sunny allowed a crazed smile to grace his face
All the scavengers were dead.
"Okay, let's get to harvesting the shards."
He placed the pot on the ground and looked at the serpent, who understood his message and moved onto his body, taking the form of the black odachi—shadow knight. He also understood what he was trying to say, so he already began harvesting shards
Before the sun set and the sea returned Sunny had already reached the top of the knight statue
He analyzed his runes and suddenly paused
There was something odd with them
Rank: Dreamer.
Shadow Core: Dormant.
Shadow Fragments: 142/1000
"Shouldn't it be 205/1000? 63 scavengers were killed, so it was supposed to go up by 126..."
Sunny sat there for a few seconds trying to think of what the cause was
Then it clicked
He summoned the Knights' runes and began to analyze them
It was supposed to read 2415/4000, but now that count has increased by 63 fragments. The reason was simple—the Knight was going to steal half of the fragments that Sunny gained
'...This actually might be a good thing.'
If the knight were the one to kill the nightmare creatures, he would take half the fragments, which would allow Sunny to kill more—then the shards he got could be stored for the future
Inside the storage pot he had 126 awakened soul shards sitting inside and he was waiting to increase that amount
Tomorrow he would be meeting up with Nephis and Cassie and also, he would get the Azure Blade—once that happened, he would be hunting as well, though he would be sharing kills with Nephis
'No matter, now i can give her the skills and keep the shards—more for the future.'
He smiled thinking about how much better the future was going to become.