Upon waking up in the shadow realm, Kael was still feeling dizzy.
His whole body was aching, but the pain had reduced, and bleeding had subsided.
"Urgh, where is this?"
He stumbled to his feet and then took note of his surroundings.
It took him a while to notice something—he was wrapped in strange black clothing.
It looked more like a robe than a cloth.
"Oh, you're awake.
I was starting to think that you wouldn't wake up again."
The sudden voice surprised him a bit; he quickly stabilized his emotions with a few breaths.
Since the voice didn't seem threatening, he took an extra second while turning around.
Standing in front of Kael was a creature that looked more human than monster, wearing a flowing black cloak that flowed down to its feet and covered the simple grey tunic it wore underneath.
The face sitting on the almost two-meter-tall frame was half-covered with a black mask.
The claw-like hands were just hands with claws; its overall beast-like appearance and malice had almost completely disappeared.
Even the husky and broken voice was no more.
It took him a few seconds to recognize who the creature was; It was the defiled horror he had formed a contract with earlier.
His body still felt numb because of the bleeding, but then he noticed that all his wounds had been covered with black bandage-like material.
'Right, one of the conditions was that he had to make sure I lived.'
"You can speak? That's good, because we'll need to be talking a lot."
There were a few seconds of silence, after which a response came.
"No, I can't talk, but it seems you can still hear what I'm trying to say."
"Oh"
'Of course I can; I have the [Linguist] ability—so of course I can hear you.'
"It's because of an ability of mine.
I can hear what any creature said.
I even heard you when you are still rogue.
'Wait a minute, how come it's no longer corrupted?'
He took a look at the system screen; what he saw took him by surprise.
Name: Nyxara
Level: Awakened
Rank: Tyrant
Abilities: [Shadow Cloak], [Echo veil], [Gloom step], [Soul Bound] [Soul summon] [Child of shadows]
[Soulbound: This creature's soul is soulbound by contract to you.
Soul core potential has been raised to sovereign.
[Soul summon: This creature exists due to its bond by contract; it can be summoned from your core.]
[Child of shadows: All abilities increase by 30% when within the embrace of shadows.]
'Not as much essence as mine, but strength; it's three times more.
Not bad.
Not even my agility is anywhere close.'
He then checked his own window.
He noticed the increase in his stats
"What is it?"
Nyaxara walked closer and looked at his wounds.
Kael sighed before responding.
"Nothing my dear partner, just thinking about a few things
There was quite a bit to think about, but he resolved to solve his most urgent issue: where they were currently.
"Hey, for starters you can call me Kael; that's my name, and I'll call you Nyx.
That should keep things friendly, and also I can't really pronounce your name too well."
Nyaxara stared at him for a bit.
The stare made Kael chuckle.
"Not too good with small jokes?"
Her expression remained unchanged, at least that's what it seemed like since her face was covered by the mask.
"The second thing is, where exactly are we?"
He looked around, trying to piece together the information he had.
The surroundings seemed rather dark at first, but he realized that it wasn't dark.
The place actually seemed to lack a bit of color.
"We're inside the shadow realm."
The response seemed to shake him a bit as he almost fell back to his knees.
"The shadow realm?"
He then remembered getting pulled by an unseen force into a gate.
The main problem was that it wasn't just any gate; the shadow realm was an unexplored realm since no gate had been discovered that led to it yet.
Maybe there were, but they just weren't known to them.
Just then a realization hit him; he stared at Nyx for a few seconds before speaking.
"So you're a being from the shadow realm?"
She nodded in response.
"Okay, let's start from the top. How did that gate open and close with just the two of you coming through it."
It didn't make any sense to him; he then remembered lily saying something about spatial tears.
"Because it wasn't a normal gate, it was a spatial tear."
Kael leaned closer as he grew a bit curious.
"What's the difference though?"
"A spatial tear doesn't have a gatekeeper. I don't exactly know why it opened; the creature took the chance to flee to escape through it."
"Hold on, how do you know about the tears? And why are you two fighting in the first place?"
Nyx looked down.
"I don't know; I'm not sure why. My brain is a bit clustered, so I can't quite remember much.
In fact, my last memory was making a contract with you."
He nodded. "Alright… I get it. You're loyal, and that's enough for now."
Kael thought deeply.
The last part of her statement was something he heard from the system and had noticed while checking her details.
The system said, "Corruption had been reversed," meaning Nyx was no longer corrupted.
Her display also presented "awakened" rather than "blighted," since it seemed she had fallen a level and risen to tyrant rank.
It explained how his contract count increased to 9; 3 soul cores were multiplied by the level of the creature.
Individuals above the rank of monster seemed to have certain additional abilities that varied by the rank.
Tyrants possessed the ability to control substances they had affinity with, which was why the sea creature had the [tidal grip] ability and Nyx now had the [Child of shadows] ability.
Terrors could exert influence over a group of creatures of the same species but lesser in rank.
He wasn't yet sure of what titans and sovereigns could do.
The world had just expanded again.
And he was nowhere near ready.
He was still thinking when Nyx startled him.
"Kael, something dangerous is approaching."
"What?"
Just as he was about to summon his dagger, something came out of the shadows and bit his arm.