Shadow Slave novel Chapter 21

Chapter 21 First Performance

His words hung in silence. The Sleepers looked at Sunny with a hilarious assortment of emotions, ranging from bewilderment to shock. The young man with humorous eyes just smiled politely.

To be honest, getting an Ascended Aspect during the First Nightmare was extremely rare. He was certainly someone special, maybe even outstanding. Actually, despite their apparent differences, the young man somehow reminded Sunny of Hero… Auro of the Nine.

There was a special type of calculating coldness hidden deep inside their eyes. He had encountered such people before, mostly among the veterans of various street gangs in the outskirts.

They simply called this type of coldness "murder math". Basically, it was a habit experienced fighters developed — no matter where they were and what mood they were in, there was always a sober part of their minds constantly calculating the most efficient way of killing the person in front of them, just in case such need arises.

'Ugh. Why do I have to antagonize someone like that, of all people?'

But Sunny really had no grounds to complain. After all, he brought this on himself.

After a few seconds, one of the young man's companions finally blinked and said:

"Uh… friend, you must not know a lot about the Spell. Caster's results are truly remarkable."

Then, with a furtive glance at the remarkable Caster, he added:

"He is a Legacy, after all."

An actual, living and breathing descendent of an Awakened clan? Sunny reevaluated his opinion of the humorous young man. Legacies were known to be trained for their eventual entrance into the Spell from the moment they could walk. For them, being infected was a certainty instead of a possibility.

They were extremely formidable people.

'Just great!' he thought bitterly and made his frown deepen.

"Are you trying to pull a prank on me? You call this remarkable?!"

The bewilderment in the eyes of these Sleepers was slowly being replaced by hostility.

"Listen, friend. If you don't think that an Ascended Aspect is remarkable, then please share with us your own amazing results! What, pray tell, was your Appraisal?"

Caster himself was still keeping quiet and smiling. However, his defenders were growing restless.

This was exactly what Sunny wanted to happen. He smiled with utter contempt.

"I would let you know… my Appraisal was, uh, it was "glorious"! Yes, glorious. And the Aspect I acquired was of the Divine rank."

After that, he received a number of strange looks. No one had ever received a Divine Aspect before; so, of course, they were starting to think that he was a lunatic. But there was still a sliver of doubt… maybe that strange guy was a descendant of a powerful clan? A peerless prodigy? Maybe his Appraisal was, indeed, glorious…

Sunny had to dispel that tiny bit of doubt.

"Mind you, I'm not some lofty Legacy. Pfft! I'm from the outskirts. I've never even received combat training. All that training and he only got an "excellent"? What did he do during the Nightmare, pick his nose the whole time?"

The expressions of all the Sleepers that were listening to his bragging instantly changed. An outskirt rat with no training… yeah, sure. Who was he trying to fool?

Finally, with the same polite smile, Caster spoke:

"Glorious? That is interesting. Would you mind telling us what were your achievements in the Nightmare?"

Sunny grinned.

"Sure, no problem! First of all, I killed an… uh… an awakened tyrant."

Every "uh" cost him a couple of moments of intense pain, but he didn't let it show on his face. His expression was nothing but smug and confrontational.

The mere mention of a tyrant, let alone an awakened one, made a couple of Sleepers smile with ridicule.

"Oh, really? How did you kill it?"

An arrogant look appeared on Sunny's face.

"How? Let me tell you, I didn't even have to lift a finger. I just spat, and it was torn to pieces!"

Which was true. Sunny had spat a mouthful of blood on the altar, and as the result, Mountain King was ruthlessly dismembered by Shadow God.

Someone openly laughed.

"This guy is either insane or purposefully messing with us. Listen here, shorty. Have some decency, okay? Who would believe such a lie?"

Sunny was genuinely angry. He wanted to retort, saying that he wasn't short. But he couldn't.

Because that would be a lie, damn it!

So, instead, he just gritted his teeth and said with a voice full of outrage:

"I can't answer that, because it's not a lie!"

"Are you really insisting that you had killed an awakened tyrant — a tyrant! — and with a bit of spit no less?"

Sunny knitted his brows.