The rain had stopped, but the neon-lit streets of Sector 4 still felt drowningly heavy.
Arthur walked past flickering storefronts and drunken scavengers. No one looked at him. The [Mantle of the Fallen Lord] hid his presence perfectly from the world.
But it couldn't hide him from himself.
Step.
Arthur paused.
He looked down at the wet asphalt. His boot was still raised mid-air, but his shadow... had already taken the step forward.
It wasn't lag. It wasn't a trick of the light.
His shadow was simply... ahead of him.
Arthur didn't move. He watched the silhouette on the ground.
For a second time, the shadow didn't just move ahead. It turned its head. Half a second too early.
It was out of sync. Acting with a microscopic, terrifying independence.
Arthur gritted his teeth, forcing a breath into his lungs. The air felt like shattered glass.
[Warning: Host's Soul Capacity at 99%.]
The red text didn't fade. It hung in the corner of his vision, a constant, glowing executioner's axe.
The [Abyssal Heart] powering the Null Executioner was too dense. The concept of 'Nothingness' was actively trying to rewrite Arthur's soul to match its emptiness. If he didn't stabilize soon, the glitch in his shadow would spread to his physical body.
He would simply fade out of existence.
I can't hold it all, Arthur analyzed. His mind was unnaturally cold and detached, the toll exacted by the Void stripping away his panic. A single cup cannot contain an ocean.
He leaned against a damp brick wall in a dark alleyway, his eyes narrowing.
If I can't contain it... I'll distribute it.
The logic was flawless. He was the Sovereign of the Calamity Faction. A sovereign didn't carry the weight of a kingdom alone. He needed pillars. He needed extensions of his own soul to anchor him to reality.
He needed a vessel. A living one.
Arthur pushed himself off the wall and walked deeper into the slums.
He didn't need a powerful Awakener. A strong, established soul would resist the dark energy and explode.
He needed someone broken. Someone empty enough to be filled with his power, but driven enough to survive it.
...
Ten minutes later, the stench of cheap blood and rusted iron filled the air.
The Underground Arena.
A place where desperate, unawakened humans and crippled Hunters fought mutated beasts for the amusement of low-tier Guilds.
Arthur slipped past the heavy-set bouncers like a phantom.
Inside, the crowd was screaming, throwing betting tickets into the smoky air.
In the center of the blood-stained steel cage, a fight had just ended.
No. It wasn't a fight. It was a massacre.
A massive, Level 8 Iron-Tusk Boar was pacing around the cage, snorting hot vapor.
On the ground lay a boy, no older than Arthur. His left arm was completely crushed. His right leg was bent at an unnatural, sickening angle. He had no aura. No magic. Just a broken iron dagger clutched desperately in his remaining, trembling hand.
"Finish him!" the crowd roared from the stands. "Kill the trash!"
The boy didn't scream for help. He didn't cry.
He just stared at the boar. His eyes were terrifyingly hollow, stripped of all hope, yet they burned with a dark, stubborn fire. They were the eyes of someone who had nothing left to lose, but violently refused to die.
"I'm not done yet," the boy whispered to himself, his bloody fingers tightening around the useless hilt of his dagger.
Arthur stopped walking.
He studied the boy for a long second.
Not his crushed limbs. Not his bleeding body.
His will.
He recognized that look. He had seen it in the mirror every day for eighteen years.
The boar scraped its hooves, lowering its massive tusks, ready to gore the boy.
Tap.
A single, quiet footstep echoed in the chaotic arena.
The noise didn't fade. It was aggressively removed.
The roaring of hundreds of spectators was swallowed instantly, leaving behind a profound, terrifying vacuum of sound.
The Iron-Tusk Boar froze mid-charge. Its massive body trembled violently as its beady eyes locked onto the dark corner of the cage.
Arthur stood there. The shadows didn't just wrap around him; they bled from him like a king's robes.
He ignored the trembling beast. He looked down at the broken boy.
"You're not empty," Arthur said quietly, his voice cutting through the unnatural silence like a blade of ice. "You're unfinished."
The boy coughed up blood. He didn't look at Arthur with fear, nor with gratitude.
He looked at him with a strange, dark recognition.
"...Took you long enough," the boy whispered, his grip tightening on the broken dagger until his knuckles turned white.
Arthur's eyes glowed with a faint, pitch-black authority. "Do you want to be saved?"
"No," the boy rasped.
"Good," Arthur said. "Because I don't save people."
Arthur took a step forward. The heavy, crushing, world-ending weight of the [Calamity Seed] flooded the cage.
The Level 8 Boar whimpered. It didn't collapse from a heart attack.
It simply stopped.
Its frantic squeals didn't fade; they were abruptly muted, erased from the air.
Then, the shadow cast by its massive body flickered—and vanished entirely.
A second later, the beast slumped to the ground. Not killed. Just... turned off. Its very existence deleted by the sheer, oppressive gravity of the anomaly standing before it.
The crowd in the stands went dead silent. The oppressive aura leaked through the iron bars. Men opened their mouths to scream, but no sound came out. Some looked down in absolute horror to see their own shadows flickering, lagging a full second behind their panicked movements.
Arthur crouched down next to the boy.
"Do you want power?" Arthur asked quietly. "Or do you want to stop being weak?"
The boy stared at the dead boar, then at the monstrous, cold entity crouching before him.
"I want..." the boy coughed, his eyes burning with a desperate, dark fire. "...to tear them all down."
Arthur smiled. A cold, predatory smile.
"Then you will be my first shadow."
Arthur placed his bare hand directly over the boy's heart.
He didn't use Absolute Synthesis. He didn't fuse him with a monster.
He simply opened a microscopic channel to his own soul.
He allowed a single drop of the [Abyssal Heart's] overflowing energy to drip into the boy's broken mana veins.
It wasn't energy.
It was absence given shape. A fragment of something that should not exist inside a human body.
For a moment—nothing happened. The drop vanished into the boy's chest.
Then, the world actively rejected the silence.
The boy's eyes went wide. Pitch-black veins instantly spread across his neck and face like shattered glass.
He screamed—but no sound came out. Even his voice was being devoured by the void.
His back arched violently as the dark absence forcefully unmade his shattered bones and aggressively re-wrote his human limits, binding his existence to the abyss.
[Ding!]
[Subordinate Contract Established.]
The boy collapsed, panting heavily. His crushed arm and leg were completely healed, now pulsing with a faint, dark, unstable aura.
His eyes slowly opened.
They were not human anymore.
Something darker... quieter... was watching from behind his pupils.
He looked down at his trembling, healed hands. He opened his mouth to speak, to ask what had happened.
"What..."
He stopped. His voice was fractured, hollow, carrying a faint, static echo. The void hadn't just healed his bones; it had devoured a piece of his humanity.
"What did you do to me?" the boy whispered, staring at Arthur.
"I gave you a choice you already made," Arthur replied coldly.
[Host's Soul Capacity decreased to 92%.]
[Soul Stability temporarily restored.]
Arthur exhaled. The crushing, splitting pressure inside his skull eased. It wasn't gone, but it was no longer tearing him apart at the seams.
He glanced down at the wet concrete once more.
This time... the shadow didn't move at all.
It lay completely, unnaturally dead.
For a brief second...
Arthur felt nothing beneath his feet.
As if he, too, had lost his shadow.
This is inefficient, Arthur muttered to himself, stepping away from the sensation. A temporary solution for a permanent problem.
It worked for now. Distributing the emptiness stabilized his existence.
The boy was unstable. A project. A flaw that needed refining. But he was alive, and his soul now belonged entirely to the Calamity.
Arthur stood up, looking at the silent, paralyzed crowd in the arena.
"I need a core," Arthur murmured, pulling up the local map interface provided by the System. "A foundation that stabilizes the flow of massive, irregular mana."
His dark eyes scanned the glowing map, stopping on a massive, brilliant golden icon in Sector 2.
[Major Mana Node - Controlled by: Silver-Blood Guild]
It was the main power source for the entire district. The very foundation of the Guild's wealth, defensive barriers, and influence in the lower sectors.
Arthur's lips curved into a faint, dangerous smile.
He looked down at his new, panting subordinate.
"Stand up," Arthur commanded, his voice echoing with absolute sovereignty.
The boy struggled, but pushed himself to his feet, standing behind Arthur like a newborn phantom. The dark fire in his eyes hadn't faded; it had concentrated.
"Just point," the boy whispered, his fractured voice laced with newfound, dangerous malice. "I'll tear it down."
"They think they own power," Arthur said calmly, turning his back on the arena and walking into the dark streets.
His pitch-black eyes flickered with a hollow, inhuman stillness. The neon lights of the city seemed to bend slightly around him as he moved.
"Because the System gave it to them."
Arthur paused, looking toward the distant, glowing golden icon on his interface.
"Let's see what happens..."
A cold, breathless pause.
"...when the System forgets who they are."