Nero awakened on something... fluffy.
His eyes were immediately blasted by a white light, that made him jolt himself awake. Temporarily stunned, he first tried to remember what happened before he lost consciousness.
'I was fighting those Nightmare creatures.. and then..'
He sent his griffin to go get help, which seemed to have worked. Taking a look around his surroundings, he was surprised to see he was in a hospital room. It was small, and had no windows.
He was in a bed, and there was an IV tube attached to arm, which looked to pump a strange liquid into his body.
There was a wooden cabinet next to his bed, with a vase that housed a dying purple flower. Next to it was a bowl with some fruit.
Nero's mouth instantly began to water. He had never eaten fruits before, and it looked like they were left here just for him. He quickly grabbed one that seemed to resemble a banana, and took a massive bite out of it without peeling the skin.
He had never gotten to eat fruits, nor was he very knowledgeable about them. As a result, he didn't know that there were some you couldn't eat as is.
Suffice to say, it did not taste good. He thought he was trying to chew through rubber and wood, only for it to squish as a yellow mush seeped through the seams.
"Ugh."
Looking around, he noticed that there were a pair of two chairs right next to the exit door, as well as a bin. In one of those chairs, was Cyrus who was sleeping unsurprisingly, with a sack that seemed filled with something on his lap.
The first thing he did was shout his name, and of course that didn't work. Nero wanted to get out of bed to throw the banana in the bin, but when he tried to move, he felt a terrible pain in his left leg. It was the one that had been mangled by the Feral Beast cub and adult.
Removing the blanket, he saw that it was completely covered in a cast.
'..'
He tried his luck with his aim. He threw it with surprisingly decent form, but somehow it missed its mark by a little, and ended up spattering on top of Cyrus's head.
Nero froze.
'He won't wake up, right? His flaw makes him stupidly sleepy, so there's no chance.'
Yet the world was somehow against him, and so Cyrus woke up regardless. He looked at Nero, glad to see he was okay, but then he felt something wet at the top of his head.
"..."
"...Sorry?"
**
After cleaning himself quickly, Cyrus moved his chair a little closer to Nero's bed.
"Nero, how much time do you have left exactly?"
He almost forgot! He had no clue how long he had been out for. If he didn't wake up for a whole day, his flaw would've killed him in his sleep.
Duration: 20:35:23
It was a 2 hour trip to get to the outside, so it should've been another two hours back. All in all, he had been passed out for about 10 hours. He now had less then a day on the clock.
"What happened to my kills?!", he asked in a panic.
Cyrus chuckled, before throwing the filled ruck sack onto the bed. Nero greedily opened it up, and his jaw dropped at how many soul shards fell out. The 6 glimmering crystals collapsed, with 2 being dimmer than the rest.
2 dormant, and 4 awakened soul shards.
"Nero, why didn't you wake me up when Nightmare creatures appeared? I had to call in a favour to get your leg healed ya know??"
Nero was too engrossed in his treasures to even hear Cyrus talk. A pile of money was right in front of a poor kid like him after all. Too bad that he was going to use it all. Where would he even sell it?
Cyrus just sighed.
"Anyhow, lets deal with your flaw first. Do you know how to satiate it?"
Nero had a theory for this that he wanted to test. If it was true, then it seems like it was connected to his innate ability, [Abyssal Being].
He picked up the Dormant Soul shard, and commanded his innate ability to activate. From the palm of his hand, a small swath of darkness emerged, and enshrouded the object before shrinking down into nothing.
Cyrus flinched a little, before quickly falling into a daze from his flaw.
Nero then closed his eyes and focused on trying to enter his soul sea... soul space? When he opened them next, he was back in the infinite void of darkness, with the only source of light being his Soul core that struggled to illuminate this abyssal world.
At least it should've. His Soul space looked very different compared to the last time he visited it.
It seemed split in half, with one side being the never ending darkness that he had seen before, but the other... was completely white. It looked to be just as infinite and inexhaustible as his own darkness, but the similarities didn't end there.
Shinning in what Nero assumed to be the sky, was another Soul core. It even had the spark of what looked to be a memory flying around it. It was glowing so brightly, that Nero almost mistook it to be an Echo.
"What?"
Nero was perplexed at the humongous change, but he couldn't think of anything to warrant this happening. Yet he had a deep feeling that [Bond] was perhaps involved.
'Is he finally awake?'
Setting his sights back on task, he turned around to the dark side of the Soul space, and there he saw, shining in the distance, the dormant soul shard he just absorbed.
"So my innate ability doesn't just send things into an ordinary sub space, but directly to my Soul space(damn tongue twister)? Then if my Flaw is tied to my Aspect, then everything sent here, my flaw should eat on its own?"
This seemed most probable. Flaws were either tied to ones power, their personality, or sometimes even both. With the way the Nightmare Spell described Nero's flaw, it wouldn't be wrong to say it leaned closer to his Aspect.
Although he still wasn't fully sure. He could try absorbing some soul shards, and then leaving some on hand to be extra safe. He only had one life to try this after all.
With a hint of relief, he closed his eyes as he returned back to the living world.
**
Of course, Cyrus quickly fell asleep in the time Nero wasn't talking to him. Grunting, Nero just picked up one of the awakened soul shards, and smashed it easily in his grip. With a hint of satisfaction, he picked up another and smashed that one too, then continued to smashing the rest of them.
Soul Fragments: [8/1000]
He could feel his body grow stronger just a little bit. Nowhere near to being super human yet, but the improvement was still there. He left the last dormant shard to test whether his flaw would take that one instead.
'Should I prepare some for Epsilon too?'
Hopefully his Flaw wouldn't be as bad.
Nero then threw an apple at Cyrus, waking him up as it hit him on the head.
"There's only so much abuse I can take..."
Nero just chuckled.
"There was something else I was meant to tell you too. While you were passed out, your brother woke up.. he is your brother right? The other kid who looks like you with the white hair."