"Samantha... you can see ?" Gwendolyn asked as she floated deliberately to the left side of the room.
The shadow familiar's eyes tracked her movent perfectly, following her ghostly form with clear awareness.
While in this world, Azel was the only living person that could see her anymore. rek was already dead, and they weren't in the Underworld anymore where the rules were different so the fact that Samantha could actually perceive her brought Gwendolyn intense, unexpected joy.
The shadow pup barked once, the sound more like an echo than actual noise then she leapt gracefully into the air, settling comfortably in Gwendolyn's arms instead of passing straight through her incorporeal form like most physical objects did.
"So you can touch it too, huh?" Azel smiled warmly at Gwendolyn as she began rocking Samantha slowly like a baby. "I'm guessing it was yours when you were alive."
"Yes, a present from my mother when I was quite young..." Gwendolyn said, her voice thick with nostalgia and emotion. "I left Samantha here to guard my research just in case sothing happened to , and I planned to take her with when he and I eventually got to a safe location far from the conflict... but she definitely wasn't made of shadow before. She was a normal Silverhain familiar."
Azel looked around the laboratory more carefully and spotted sothing underneath the main work table.
There were bones scattered there and they looked old and yellowed with age.
"I think Samantha died while you were gone..." Azel said carefully as he crouched down and reached under to touch the bones.
The mont his finger made contact with them even softly, they burst apart like fine powder, disintegrating completely into dust that scattered across the floor.
"And sohow her soul remained here, transforming into a shadow creature." He finished, standing back up and brushing the bone dust from his hands.
It was almost exactly the sa process that Gwendolyn herself had undergone after her death, actually. But how had a familiar managed to accomplish sothing so complex without guidance?
"I'm so sorry for abandoning you here all alone." Gwendolyn hugged the shadow familiar tighter against her chest, and Samantha made a small sound of contentnt and joy. "But how exactly did you manage to turn yourself into a shadow being...?"
Samantha suddenly jumped off Gwendolyn's arms and landed silently on the stone floor. She ran quickly to one specific part of the large underground room where a pedestal stood.
On top of it sat an orb of what appeared to be pure condensed shadow, darker than anything natural.
Azel focused his attention on the mysterious item and a System tab automatically popped up in his vision.
[Item Na: True Shadow Orb]
[Item Rank: S]
[Item Description: An orb made of true shadow magic compressed and aged for centuries... the older the concentrated shadows beco, the more powerful and potent they grow]
"Ah..." Gwendolyn's eyes widened dramatically as she stared at the orb in recognition. "It's beco that incredibly dark already?"
"You were actively experinting on creating shadow orbs?" Azel looked at her as his eye twitched slightly.
There seed to be a lot of extrely valuable magical items just casually lying around this hidden room.
"Ah yes, that was one of my research projects." Gwendolyn confird, gesturing toward the desk where the pedestal stood.
There were several other pedestals arranged in a row, each with empty holders that had clearly once contained sothing. Only this one pedestal still held its orb.
"I had successfully compressed pure shadow magic into four different experintal orbs... however it seems this particular orb sohow consud and absorbed all of the others over ti." Gwendolyn explained, studying the artifact with professional interest.
She leaned closer to examine the orb more carefully. The shadows swirling around and within it seed to be constantly fluctuating. After a mont, she pulled herself back cautiously.
"Then the concentrated shadows matured and evolved by themselves over the years, eventually reaching this extraordinary level of power and purity. Am I correct about what happened, Samantha?"
Samantha nodded her shadowy head enthusiastically, her poodle-like ears flapping with the motion. Gwendolyn gave her a warm smile before patting her head affectionately.
"Good girl, you protected my research well." Gwendolyn said with genuine pride in her familiar.
Then she turned to Azel with a calculating expression. "Alright Az, you're up. You can create new elental cores in your body by absorbing enough concentrated essence of that elent... right?"
"It's not actually that straightforward or easy." Azel said hesitantly.
But then again, he wouldn't really know from personal experience. The only cores he currently possessed were because the goddesses were deeply in love with him and he had absorbed an excess of their power just from being in their presence constantly.
The Destruction core he had was a special reward for killing rek, so he couldn't exactly say with certainty that he could simply obtain a core just by absorbing enough of an elent.
"Well, you can definitely try it out with this orb though..." Gwendolyn encouraged. "In the worst case scenario, if you die from the process then you can simply reverse the death imdiately, or just make Elarielle bring you back to life."
Azel thought about her logic for a mont before nodding in agreent. "You're right about that."
He approached the pedestal cautiously and raised his hand, placing his palm directly on the surface of the shadow orb.
There was an imdiate sharp prick of pain that went through his hand like a needle then the concentrated shadows began crawling up his hand like living things before disappearing into his skin, absorbed into his body.
[Shadow Core formation process has been initiated...]
"Oh?" Azel raised an eyebrow in pleasant surprise.
He didn't need to get romantically involved with the Goddess of Shadows to obtain a Shadow Affinity? So if he simply absorbed a sufficient concentration of any elent, he could potentially build a core for that particular elent on his own.
'I'll definitely need to experint more with this discovery though...' He thought.
The shadows contained within the orb began visibly diminishing as they were drained into Azel's body. He felt a completely new and strange sensation forming in his chest, like a second heart made of darkness.
[Rank 5 Shadow Core has been successfully ford...]
A sharp, stabbing pain suddenly followed that notification. Azel fell to his knees with a grunt of agony, sohow the orb remained stuck to his hand as blood began dripping steadily from his nose.
"Azel!" Gwendolyn's voice was filled with alarm.
He raised his free hand toward her in a gesture ant to be reassuring. "I'm fine, just... let finish the process."
He forced himself to sit down properly despite the pain as more of the concentrated shadows continued being drained from the orb into his developing core.
Usually when he ford cores through the goddesses, the process was completely painless and pleasant. But it seed that without a divine being smoothing the way, absorbing raw elental power was actually quite agonizing.
[The Shadow Core has advanced two complete ranks!]
[Rank 5 -> Rank 4 -> Rank 3]
The trendous energy that had been contained inside the orb finally vanished completely, fully absorbed into Azel's new core.
All that remained in his hand was the empty glass-like sphere that had held it. That fragile shell shattered imdiately afterward, breaking into countless tiny fragnts that fell to the floor.
"I told you it would work..." Gwendolyn said with a satisfied smile, her earlier worry fading. "You can use shadow magic freely now. Try performing a basic spell with shadow elent, like subrging yourself into the ground."
Azel slowly focused his will on the shadows pooling at his feet and commanded them to part and accept him.
They responded imdiately to his intent and the darkness opened up like a trapdoor. He sank down into the world below, drowning in shadow.
He opened his eyes and discovered that all he could see was a dinsion made entirely of shadow, an endless dark expanse.
However, he could clearly discern the floating figure of Gwendolyn as well as Samantha, both of them visible as brighter shapes against the darkness.
"You weren't able to perceive it during the battle with rek because soone without the shadow affinity itself cannot see this place at all, but this is the Shadow Realm." Gwendolyn explained, gesturing around them. "And yes, I was the one that originally coined that na for it."
"No wonder the na isn't popular..." Azel quipped with a slight smirk.
Gwendolyn felt like hitting him across the face for that comnt. However, she simply cleared her throat and sighed instead, choosing to ignore his teasing.
"Whatever, moving on..." She said with forced patience.
Then she looked upward and Azel followed her gaze. There were several holes visible in the shadowy "sky" above them, like windows to other places.
"These holes lead to different shadows existing in the surrounding area, and I call them Shadow Holes." Gwendolyn explained in her teaching voice. "An experienced shadow magic user should be able to hide and protect their personal shadow easily from intrusion. However, mages of other affinities cannot do this, so it becos quite easy to assassinate soone weaker than you by attacking and killing their shadow directly from within the Shadow Realm. But attempting to do that with soone significantly stronger than you… like soone on the level of a Great Mage or soone like rek would be extrely difficult and dangerous."
She cleared her throat again, organizing her thoughts.
"Still, this is the very first ti you're experiencing the Shadow Realm directly, so just pick any hole to jump through and will yourself to move toward it." Gwendolyn said while shrugging her shoulders casually. "What's the worst that could actually happen?"
Azel selected a random hole that was positioned a bit away from the one he had originally entered through. He focused his will on moving toward it.
Suddenly he found himself barreling toward the opening like a bullet fired from a gun, completely unable to control his speed or trajectory then he shot through the hole.
He could feel his physical human body materializing again. His right hand was pressing firmly against sothing soft.
He squeezed it once experintally without opening his eyes first. It was definitely soft like human flesh, but it had that specific fuller texture that Edna's breasts had developed after she'd given birth and started nursing.
Also, there was water actively showering down on him from directly above, soaking his clothes.
He opened his eyes and blinked several tis to clear the water from them.
First of all, he could imdiately recognize that he was standing in a bathroom and he was currently groping a woman's bare breast. The woman in question was Stella, who had soap suds covering her naked body and was staring at him with a rapidly reddening face.
In that split second before his brain fully processed what was happening, Azel's eyes automatically took in all of her curves with perfect clarity.
She really did have an objectively excellent body with amazing wide hips. He couldn't see her ass properly since he was standing directly in front of her, but if her waist had anything to say about it, that would be nice too.
"Wha—"
Before Stella could even finish forming whatever word she was trying to say, Azel had already vanished back into the shadows, leaving her standing there staring at empty air and then down at the breast he had just been touching.
"What... what a vulgar man." Stella muttered to herself, though there was more amusent than actual offense in her tone.
She continued with her shower as if nothing had happened.
...
Azel materialized back in the Shadow Realm and imdiately gave Gwendolyn an accusing glare. Gwendolyn was trying as hard as physically possible not to burst out laughing at his expression, her hand covering her mouth.
"Next ti, don't jinx things by asking 'what's the worst that could happen.'" Azel said with exasperation.
He looked up at the multiple holes scattered across the shadowy sky above them. "Which one leads back to the basent laboratory?"
"Hehe... you'll have to find it yourself through trial and error..." Gwendolyn giggled, seemingly thoroughly enjoying the fact that he was experiencing a crisis.
It took Azel approximately five minutes of concentrated effort to figure out which hole led back to his intended destination.
That was only after accidentally shadow-jumping to several completely wrong locations throughout the mansion. However, at least all the places he accidentally appeared were rooms belonging to won he actually knew, so it could have been worse but why did he have to appear in vulnerable positions?
He finally stood in front of the pedestal again and released a long sigh of relief.
"Shadows really are quite a hassle to work with..." he muttered under his breath then he focused and transford his entire arm into living shadow, watching it shift and flow. "But I absolutely can't lie, it's incredibly cool."
"Alright, let's look around at my other research." Gwendolyn said, her playful mood settling into sothing more serious.
She floated over to one of the many work tables. There was a leather-bound book resting on its surface. "Oh, I wrote an entire instructional book on several interdiate shadow spells... you can have it to practice with."
Azel walked over to examine the book more closely. It was a bit over fifty pages in length and had a dark leather cover with rough, hurried handwriting scrawled across the front.
"It would have been much nicer if this book was similar to my Holy Grimoire." Azel comnted.
Gwendolyn playfully bonked his head with her fist in response.
"Give my book back imdiately... it's completely clear that you're not in the least bit grateful for this generous gift." Gwendolyn said with mock offense.
Azel smiled genuinely at her teasing. Maybe he could actually calm down and relax like this, just spending ti with her in this quiet space.
He reached out intending to pat her head affectionately however Gwendolyn had gone up so his hand instead made contact with her breasts, his palm rounding over one and squeezing instinctively.
"Mmmh~" Gwendolyn let out an involuntary moan, her face imdiately turning pink. "Why are you suddenly touching my breasts, you per... pervert."
"Eh? Why are you acting all innocent and shy all of a sudden?" Azel asked as he squeezed harder, making her moan again. "If I rember correctly, you're literally the biggest pervert in this entire hous—"
BOOM!
The whole mansion suddenly shook violently as sothing massive crashed outside with trendous force.
"What the fuck was that...?" Azel blinked in surprise.
Reviews
All reviews (0)