Kaelen lay on his bed staring at the roof.
His mind had a thousand thoughts flying around frantically trying to search for an answer to what was happening .
'Why?'
He had kept asking himself.
Why was he sent to a time before Sunny and the rest of the main characters, why did he even think that he would be sent to that time.
He had been thinking about this for hours now and still could not get an answer.
Groaning he sat up on the bed and folded his legs
'...Lets try to focus...'
If he was here a year after Rock Awakened then what exactly was the timeline now. How many years was till Sunny awakened
Where was Sunny
Well, that one had an answer. He was in the outskirts right now
He clicked his tongue
'No answers... just more thoughts and questions.'
He had no way of knowing what year this was since Rock was not someone who's life was know, and as a result there was no reference point to work around.
Still remaining in the lotus position he began to focus on something other than the timeline dilemma.
His soul sea.
"Still looks as amazing as it did previously." He said feeling a lot of negative emotions wash away
He felt the tension melt away slowly as he walked on the soft grass amongst the trees
'...Can I go play in the water...?' He thought
It seemed that he was actually moving in the soul sea and it was not just for scenic purposes meaning that the items here were real, to an extent at least.
As he walked around he had eventually found a neat tree that rested on a hill casting shade in a small area around it.
Moving towards it he sat down and from orbiting the soul core, the sea farers satchel was brought down and formed in his hands.
'To become a monster in such a beautiful place...' He chuckled
Poetic
That was what it was.
Before he began to pull out the soul shards to crush and raise his counter, he summoned the runes to determine how many he was going to have left over after reaching monster-hood
The runes regarding the soul shard count read
Soul Shards: 886/1000
'Huh...'
He looked at the rune intently trying to discern the way in which he gained shards.
Divine Aspect holders had a unique way of increasing their could, this was not always something that helped though since out of the three cases of divine aspects that he knew of, two had the ability to gain large amounts of shards quickly and one seemed to have been hindered by his aspect.
That was to say Nephis and Mordret gained more shards than Sunny gained fragments from an equivalent kill
For example
Nephis, if using her flame to kill a dormant human with a fully saturated soul core would get a tenth of what was in that core like humans in general, meaning she would gain one hundred shards - but the difference between her and regular humans is her nature as a Half-Breed allowed her to reap similar benefits from nightmare creatures too
He was not sure of how Mordret gained shards but it had to have been fast, dreadfully so.
But Sunny?
Sunny gained shadow fragments directly from kills so unlike the other two he had also lost the way to crush shards, and on top of that the amount he gained directly from kills were lower than them too
For Sunny, killing a dormant human as a Sleeper would only give him a single fragment, if he killed a shadow creature of the dormant rank and beast class he too would get a hundred fragments, but this was unique to shadows and not nightmare creatures in general - the only problem with that being the rarity of shadow creatures, and also the fact that once Sunny surpassed a creature in rank there was nothing gained regardless
Kaelen's unique ability seemed to be closer to Sunny's but operated with shards rather than fragments and also that he still maintained the ability to reap the benefits of crushing shards
'So from 878 to 886 is an increase of 8 shards.' He thought starting to think of its mechanics
'2 from each core of the Awakened Devil - like how Sunny gets fragments, but I can also use the shards to double that.'
He was satisfied
Sure, it was not as incredible as Nephis or Mordret but it was not as growth speed hindering as Sunny's, in fact it was exactly double what he had.
'I also doubt I will get more shards from killing a human like regular awakened.' He guessed
His Aspect Description referred to him as the 'First Breath' not a human, or a shadow or Nephilim but an entirely different being
Content with his discovery he started to pull out the dormant soul shards in his bag and then started to crush them one by one watching the count move up, starting with the dormant shards.
Eventually after a long while of crushing he had reached the moment before pain
Soul Shards: 999/1000
He let out a deep breath and crushed it.
'Agh...!'
He ground his teeth as the pain of his soul being split apart and coalescing in on itself
The pain was agonizing but it was not as painful as having the seed of corruption bloom in his soul and then the greater pain of the [Flames of Profanity] cleansing him of it.
After a short while of trying not to scream he fell back on the tree.
'...Gods...'
He had hoped since he was not really a human anymore that the pain of forming a new core would be replaced by something, kinder, hopefully euphoric
But nope.
It appeared that the pain was something he was going to have to experience
Raising his gaze to the sky he saw his soul core floating there, then he saw another one besides it.
He smiled and looked at the runes once more.
Primordial Cores: [2/7]
Soul Shards: 0/2000
'Nice.'
He smiled calculating how much more he needed to become a demon.
Right now he had enough to raise the count by around 700 or a little less than that, meaning he needed a thousand three hundred more.
As he was thinking there was a sudden sound that came from the forest which caused him to wake up with a startle
"What the..."
His eyes widened as he saw a tree shake as if something was thrown into it.