16 Chapter Sixteen: Soul Slots.
Jack had his hand stuck in a chitinous chest, trying to take out a Soul Shard.
"God! Dammit! Let - Go - Of - The - Shard!" He punctuated each word with a pull and, after a decisive yank, he took his armored arm out of the Beast's chest, swathed in viscera but with his prize in his grip.
"I should have made a bigger hole," Jack grumbled under his breath.
'So this is what it looks like...' The crystal-like structure was a physical amalgamation of the Energies that composed the cores of Nightmare Creatures and resembled a precious jewel.
Although he had killed plenty of Nightmare Creatures on his First Nightmare, he had not even bothered to peek at their cores, knowing he wouldn't be able to take them with him.
'It's useless to me at the moment...'
As soon as both Beasts had died, Jack had felt a slight change. His body grew a little stronger, his vision a little sharper, his skin a little smoother. The change was minimal but apparent.
Jack summoned the runes.
[Darkness Fragments: 117/1000].
This was a number of Fragments he had obtained without absorbing a single soul shard. There was nothing different from Sunny's method in the original story: dormant cores gave him one fragment, while awakened ones gave two. And if that enemy had more than one core, that number was multiplied accordingly.
The process was quite similar to how normal Awakened increased their power, with the only difference being that the steps of extracting and consuming the corresponding material, soul shards, were skipped in favor of instant absorption. That meant Darkness Fragments could not be stored, and subsequently could not be bought or traded.
If Jack wanted to grow stronger, his only option was to fight and kill.
'Not like I know how to do much else.' He thought with a shrug.
'Besides, there are plenty of advantages, monetary and strategic. I can trade them for Memories and even strengthen trusted allies. In the end, even though I can't directly use them, Soul Shards are still an important asset.'
Thinking so, Jack approached the second Carapace Scavenger and made a slightly bigger hole in its chest. What he didn't notice, was that on one of the pillars of coral, a slightly deeper shadow watched him in silence.
-x-
Finished with the collection of both Soul Shards and a reasonable amount of meat from the Scavengers, Jack went on his way toward the giant carcass.
Slightly more experienced in his navigation of the labyrinthian spires, the young man swiftly crossed its meandering paths.
What alerted him were the sounds. The previously quiet Labyrinth was suddenly full of chittering and squelching noises - exactly what one would expect from a macabre banquet.
Slowing down his footsteps to not alert the Scavengers of their unwanted visitor, Jack approached his marks. He carefully positioned his feet on the drier parts of the soft mud.
Finally, he found it. Laying in the destroyed remnants of a large forest of spire corals was the immense corpse of his previous pursuer. More precisely, half of it was there, with grotesque innards spilling out of the terrible wound and stretching far away into the distance. The other half was gone, as though it had never exited.
Around the corpse, hundreds of smaller monsters were scurrying, tearing away, and devouring its flesh bit by bit. Each of them was a Carapace Scavenger.
Jack stood on the edge of the artificial clearing in the corals, analyzing the disposition of the Beasts.
'Most of them are around its midsection, probably attracted to the Transcendent Soul Shards. Other than that, there are small groups around some superficial injuries, with large empty spaces between them.' Jack's eyes lit upon seeing their arrangement.
'They are likely unable to break the corpse's skin, so have to make use of the previously inflicted wounds...'
After moving about the border of the clearing, Jack finally found the perfect target for his experiment. A small group of four Carapace Scavengers scrambled for preference on a diminutive flesh wound, isolated from other gatherings by a respectable distance.
'Let's begin.'
Jack uncovered a recession on one of the coral pillars, which he promptly entered and sat crosslegged. Confirming his reserves of Essence were full, he slowly began the complex process of reaching for a soul slot. Drawing runes with True Darkness, he assembled the frame of a metaphysical tunnel, one that connected his soul to reality.
The soul slots were something he had sculpted in his spirit through painstaking effort more than four hundred years ago. Then, he had been on a continent fully controlled by druids and had learned much from them… Before he eloped with the daughter of an influential tribal chief and became persona non grata, that is.
But even though that love was short-lived, his soul slots were not. The druids employed them to arrest the spirits of animals, which in turn were used for the most varied of purposes. Their most common use, though, was to be messengers... Messengers that sometimes carried lethal missives.
Stabilizing the connection between his soul and the physical world, Jack's mind's eye entered his core. Carved into it by an Animal God through a series of sacrifices, his four soul slots were small craters in a peripheric area of his spirit. And in them, he had stowed what he would use for this task: in each of the spaces was the diminutive soul of a mammal. Rodents.
Seizing one of these souls, Jack unhurriedly began to craft a vessel of True Darkness for it - one that would become both its body and its prison.
It couldn't be too different from its original body, or the rodent's soul wouldn't be able to control it. So Jack made some slight, but noteworthy, alterations.
A longer snout, with three rows of jagged teeth and three pairs of dark red eyes. Its gangly arms ended in four sharp claws and a single sickle-shaped talon. The tail, despite being smaller than common rodents, was prehensile, permitting maneuvers that would otherwise be impossible.
All in all, it looked like something you might find in a sewer. If you were in Hell.
'I'll call you Jerry.'
The newly manufactured creature soon received its soul and sprang into movement, swiftly darting through the meandering curves of the Labyrinth, with a clear objective in mind.
Jack sighed in relief. The process of creating one of these Vessels was both complex and extenuating. He had to maintain two convoluted structures - the tunnel and the form -while simultaneously imparting the Vessel with a soul. Not to mention the drain on his already insufficient Essence reserves.
'But it's well worth it.' He thought with a smile.
Feeling his connection to the Darkness Vessel, Jack knew it was already approaching its mark.
With dexterous movements, the summoned creature clambered the leg of most peripheric of the Carapace Scavengers.
Jumping between the jagged spikes of its back, the Vessel used its prehensile tail to catapult itself toward the Beast's head. And there, after a swift strike of its talon, penetrated its vulnerable eye socket.
In a chittering screech, the Carapace Scavenger tried to thrash its assailer off, but it was already too late. Dissolving into a cloud of Darkness, the Vessel entered the wound, and the Beast's destiny was sealed.
It stopped for a moment, and let out a horrified shriek of pain. Erratically swinging its pincers, as if fighting an invisible enemy, the Carapace Scavenger soon took the head of its brethren between its claws and clenched with all of its desperate might. It popped like a balloon.
A frantic and destructive melee began amongst the previously allied Beasts. Whole arms and legs were torn and crushed in the disoriented struggle, leaving the victor tired and battered. Before it could even understand the scrabble was over, a small cloud of Darkness formed over its head. In it, smallish red eyes could be seen.
The final Carapace Scavenger met its end amidst horrifying voices and in terrible despair.
-x-
[You have slain an awakened beast, Carapace Scavenger.]
...
[You have slain an awakened beast, Carapace Scavenger.]
[The Darkness in your soul grows deeper.]
'A resounding success.' Jack smirked. He couldn't be happier with the result of his creation.
One of the disadvantages of his True Darkness manipulation at the moment was the slowness with which it could be summoned and spread. To counter that nuisance, Jack had started to develop some solutions.
The first and most obvious was: if it was unfeasible for his darkness to reach his enemies on its own, then he himself would take it to them.
Wrapping his fists and legs in True Darkness, always careful not to touch directly, his already powerful attacks had added elemental damage, and he could use them as a carrier for vicious ailments - of both the insidious or violently fast sorts.
The second was more convoluted but had the added benefit of covertness. By using Vessels made completely of True Darkness, the energy could be controlled to attack his foes. But most importantly: it didn't need his direct input. The souls thralled to him would make the heavy lifting.
In time, as he could produce enough True Darkness for it, he could create bigger Vessels to accommodate larger animal souls. Maybe even smaller Nightmare Creatures.
'Your shadows got nothing on me, Sunny!'
Such an achievement could bring him endless benefits. But there was one pressing issue…
'It consumes too much Essence.' He grimaced while sensing his more than half-depleted reserves.
'Not only does it require Essence to create it -a large amount by Sleeper standards-, but to maintain it as well.'
From the Darkness Vessel, Jack could feel a slight drain on his core that -although didn't reduce his remaining Essence- slowed his recovery down to a crawl.
'I can at maximum create and maintain one of these… I can't risk Essence-depletion in the Labyrinth.'
Ignoring his Essence woes for the moment, Jack once more examined the gatherings of Carapace Scavengers as Jerry returned to his side.
But no matter how he looked at them... All he could see were credit signs.
