[...Your Desire sharpens.]
Standing above his dead foe, Juno focused on how the Spell decided to portray his kill, not the small increase in his strength.
'My desire sharpens? How… creative! My Flaw and my Aspect! Eh, better than my shadow grows stronger.'
Shaking his beautiful red hair, Juno decided to open up his Runes to confirm his suspicions. He was right.
[Soul Fragments: 2/1000]
'So, I get Soul Fragments from just killing Nightmare Creatures. 2 for this Awakened… So it's like Sunny's Shadow Fragments? No, I don't think so.'
He could feel it; his guess was wrong. It all felt somehow… incomplete. The fragments had arrived inside him at the moment of the kill; he didn't have to do anything. Regular humans got them from absorbing Soul Shards, not just killing a Nightmare Creature.
Snapping his fingers, Juno finally understood it.
'I'm not a regular human. I'm an Anunakki! I am part human, part Nephilim, and part Nightmare Creature. It's something related to that.'
Not being able to come up with anything else, Juno decided to let his intuition run, the quiet, persistent part of Piercing Mind that didn't use logic and didn't need to. It moved through the question the way water moved through cracks, finding the shape of things without forcing them.
Something about the mechanic was incomplete.
He looked down at the Scavenger. The carapace was dry and hollow; the interior was probably accessible now that Blood Fang had compromised the structural integrity. He crouched, found a section near the abdomen where two cracks converged, and pushed. The weak chitin gave way with a dry splintering sound.
Sliding his fingers inside, he was able to find the Soul Shard easily enough. It was small, dense, faintly warm, carrying that quality of difference that his touch registered immediately. But as he withdrew it, his hand brushed against something else, something deeper in the cavity, and he paused.
It was most likely the Soul Core, but why would he care about that?
Withdrawing his hand, he held up the dirty Soul Shard and got a good look at it. It was like a gemstone, crystallized and glimmering. But, at the same time, it also felt kind of wrong.
Disregarding the feeling, Juno squeezed his hand and tried to absorb the Shard. Almost immediately, the thing disappeared into sparks, and the Spell announced his victory.
[...Your Desire sharpens.]
He could feel it now, too. Since he wasn't focused on the feeling previously, it mostly eluded him. Now, however, he felt it completely. His very being was strengthened, his body grew a little bit stronger, his vision a little sharper, his skin a little smoother. The change was minimal, but apparent. Most of all, he could feel his desires also strengthen a little.
'Eh, another great part about my Flaw,' Juno thought bitterly. Seriously, it was getting out of hand fast.
Summoning his runes, Juno wanted to make sure just how much he got.
[Soul Fragments: 4/1000]
Two from the kill. Two from the Shard.
'So both systems work,' he thought. 'Partial Nightmare Creature, partial human. I get a little of each.'
He stood, brushed his hands off, and drank a little from the canteen. It was truly a blessing to get double as many Soul Fragments as almost anyone else. Building his Monster core was going to be easy-peasy.
He left the corpse where it lay and climbed down from the spine.
…
The next couple of hours passed in quiet, methodical tension, one usually associated with those trying to set up a base inside a death zone as a Sleeper. The main thing that Juno was doing was clothing himself, since he had absolutely no armor memory to cover himself with.
Walking through the inside of Bone Ridge was way better and quicker than the outside of it. His bare feet easily clung to the highway like bone beneath them, making very little noise. The inside of the spine stretched for many hundreds of meters in length, and at least a dozen meters in length. While working through the dead bones, Juno thought about the being that was Bone Ridge.
'So many questions about this thing. Honestly, I don't believe it was an inhabitant of the Dark Sea; it's just too massive! Maybe it was one of the invaders who were mentioned in the Hollow Mountains. Now that I'm here, I wish I paid attention to those small lore bits in the novel.'
At the base, the black mud closed around his ankles, cold and viscous, sucking at his steps. Ahead, where the water had recently retreated, the shoreline was littered with long, dark strands of seaweed. They swayed lazily in shallow pools, like drowned banners that hadn't realized the war was over.
Juno waded in without hesitation.
He tested each plant with quick, practiced tugs. Weak strands tore apart in his hands and were discarded without ceremony. The tougher, gristly ones he kept, looping them over his shoulder until a damp, tangled mass hung nearly to his waist. It was truly a miracle that teacher Julius had gone over how to make clothes from random items in the Dream Realm.
By the time he climbed back up to the higher reaches of the Ridge, his shoulder ached pleasantly, and the seaweed had stopped dripping. The wind off the labyrinth dried it further, carrying the ever‑present scent of salt and rusted coral. Of course, Juno didn't know what rusted coral actually smelled like, so he just attributed the weird smell to that.
The climb up the coral mound was more annoying this time with his improvised harvest, but not difficult. His feet found holds with ease, his balance adjusting instinctively when a piece of brittle coral crumbled underfoot. Soon, he was passing under the massive arch of teeth again, stepping from the grey light of the outside into the muted, filtered light of the spine.
Inside, the bone floor was broad and level. The tunnel still felt like a highway someone had built out of a monster's remains — long, straight, gently inclined. Stripes of light fell through the gaps above, painting pale bars across the smooth surface.
Moving high enough so that the water during the night did not reach him took a lot of walking, but it was fine. He was able to take the time to formulate a way to properly make his toga and loincloth, so there was that.
When he finally reached his camp, the place where he had battled the Scavenger and which was the highest point inside Bone Ridge, Juno dumped all the seaweed on the floor and got to work. It took a while to figure out how to make clothes from scratch, but if his Innate Ability was useful for anything, then this was it. After about two hours, he managed to make his clothes secure enough to leave them be.
Resummoning his Memories took a bit of essence, but it was manageable. He was planning on never dismissing them from now on anyway, so the little essence cost now didn't matter. Putting on his mask, securing his canteen on his side, and keeping his sword in his grip, Juno finally let himself relax.
With that, he quickly fell asleep.
…
Waking up the next day was a major chore.
For a while, Juno lay exactly where he was, staring up at the pale bars of light cutting through the gaps between the bones above. Bone Ridge groaned quietly around him as the ancient monster's remains settled under the slow assault of time, or whatever passed for time here.
'Who in their right mind actually wants to get up and start working?' he thought darkly. 'I should just stay here. Sleep. Wait until Sunny's cohort stumbles in all dramatic and miserable and let them do the hard part.'
The idea was genuinely tempting.
No hunting. No bleeding. No scrambling around a murderous shoreline trying not to die. Just… lying on smooth bone, occasionally adjusting his very fashionable seaweed ensemble, until the main characters arrived to drag him along.
The warmth in his chest pulsed.
Wrong.
A quiet, insistent pressure crawled through his soul, familiar now. His Flaw did not like that plan at all. His desires, already sharper than they had any right to be, twisted in protest at the thought of passively coasting on someone else's effort.
Juno grimaced.
"Yeah, yeah," he muttered. "I hear you."
'Damn Flaw, can't even be lazy in peace,' Juno thought darkly as he got up and drank from the canteen. 'Just another way this thing is a pain in the ass.'
Lazily, Juno decided to summon his runes. The same sight as yesterday flickered in front of him.
[Soul Fragments: 4/1000]
"What a mighty number," he said dryly. He paused for a moment, then scratched his chin. Slowly, he started to speak again. "Day two of this place, and I have four Soul Fragments. One Ascended-level Memory, two Awakened ones. No Echo. I need at least another 249 Awakened Beasts to get to my Monster core."
Nodding with an annoyed expression, Juno dismissed the Runes. There was a lot to do today.
Standing up, Juno started to pace around his camp. He was thinking. Thinking very hard. Truly, with his whole being, he was thinking hard.
"First task," Juno started. "Set up a fire to make food."
"Second task, get some food in me."
"Third task, start scouting the area for Nightmare Creatures."
"Fourth task, start taking out said Nightmare Creatures."
"Fifth task, get at least 100 Soul Fragments before Sunny arrives… No scratch that, I guess. At least 200 Soul Fragments!"
Clapping his hands together, Juno was very satisfied with his plans. Truly, what could be better than the simple idea of killing everything?
Juno smiled to himself, sharp and a little vicious.
"Let's see," he murmured, "how much the Forgotten Shore is willing to pay me for staying alive."