The headless stone statue on which Sunless had spent his first two days in the dream realm stood in front of them a few hours later.
Reinhard noticed relief on the faces of Sunless and Cassie, heck even Nephis seemed to have gotten less tense.
But he was just disappointed.
Due to Reinhard's [Far Sight] the statue was always in his sight, so he never worried about not reaching there.
Now that they had reached the statue, they could no longer kill more carapace scavengers for the day.
To remind himself of his day's progress, Reinhard summoned his runes.
Soul Fragments: [24/1000].
The reason as to why his soul fragments had increased even without absorbing soul shards was due to the attribute [Essence stealer].
Like the name suggested, he could gain soul fragments upon killing nightmare creatures or other living beings.
The amount he gained seemed to correlate with the amount he would have gotten by absorbing the soul shards of that nightmare creature.
But the good thing was that the shards were still there to be absorbed.
So this attribute gave him double the benefits of killing a nightmare creature!
Getting stronger sure is addicting.
***
It should be illegal to be that strong as a sleeper with literally a near empty core!
Through out all their battles today, Sunny continued to observe both Nephis and Reinhard.
And he had reached a simple conclusion by the end of this small journey to the statue.
Nephis was a complete beast of a sleeper.
And by that analogy, Reinhard was a fucking titan!
Sleepers had no business dealing with awakened beasts.
Even Sunny with his shadow providing him with buffs that could make him far stronger then any other average sleeper in his place, had very little chance of winning in a direct fight against one.
And yet, Nephis could hold her own against them, that feat would have simply left him shocked in any other scenario.
But even though he hadn't seen him do it, Sunny was pretty sure in a straight fight, even with no surprise attacks involved, Reinhard could beat one with very little threat to his life.
His aspect was simply unbelievable.
Reinhard had clearly told them that past the ridiculous amount of things his aspect could do, there still were 'other things'.
But those other things were definitely not anywhere below what he could already do!
Memories can't just teleport back to their owners that quick! And what is with that speed!?
I almost thought he was even faster then Caster!
The more fights they got involved in, it seemed like Reinhard just continued to get stronger.
None of this makes sense.
***
As the night began to descend, the four Sleepers sat in the center of the circular stone platform and rested. As they did not bring any materials to make a fire and it was already too late, there was no way to cook food. They ended up chewing on the strips of dried meat, passing the bottle of limitless water around.
After some time, Nephis gave Sunless a sign to take out the spoils of today's journey. He took out the eight shimmering soul shards and put them on the ground.
It's about damn time.
Reinhard had secretly been waiting for this part since they had gotten the first two shards.
The shards obviously came from eight carapace scavengers, he himself had killed four of them, the rest four were killed by Sunless.
Off the four he killed he got slight assistance from Sunless and Nephis on two.
And off the 4 Sunless killed he got help from Nephis on all four and partial help from him on 2 and slight help in 1.
Reinhard was obviously keeping tabs on how much each person contributed on the shards, to consider how much should be shared with each.
So if I exclude the two I killed to already be mine, then we have to divide the 6. 2 makes sense but I will be happy with one.
He could consider in [Essence stealer] but that wasn't a factor Nephis and Sunless could account for, so he had no reason to.
Since they probably weren't going to get out of here anytime soon, he would get a lot of opportunity to get shards in the future, along with that due to how awkward it felt to just leave Cassie out of the rewards, even though it made sense since she didn't do anything. He was willing to share one with her.
At that moment Reinhard thought about how easy it would have been to grow stronger if he was here all alone, he wouldn't be held back by Cassie and could just easily farm shards till he got all his cores saturated.
Huh, I didn't figure out the criteria to get multiple cores yet either.
Filling the current one seems like the obvious step but that's going to take a while.
Reinhard didn't step forward to divide the spoils, so seeing that, Nephis decided to take charge instead.
Without any discussion, she divided the eight shards into groups of three.
4, 2 and 2.
Being quite generous there aren't you?
Well, good for me.
While Nephis absorbed her own shards, Reinhard took hold of his four, absorbed three and moving one to Cassie's hand spoke.
"Here."
"Uhm, thanks." She said quietly, before absorbing it.
Reinhard's eyes were focused on Sunless instead.
He hadn't made a move to pick up his shards and simply continued to stare at them.
After a few seconds, with a quick breath, he seemed to have finalized whatever decision he made. He took out another crystal out of the rucksack and moved all three to Nephis.
The silver-haired girl looked at him with surprise and confusion.
She subconsciously glanced at Reinhard for a split second before looking back.
If Sunless wanted the whole group to advance more then himself specifically, it made more sense to give the shards to Reinhard.
Or at least that was what Reinhard guessed was going through her mind.
"Don't you want... to grow stronger?" She asked.
Sunny grinned.
"Of course, I do. That's why I am not gifting you these shards. They are a trade offer."
Nephis raised an eyebrow.
"A… trade? What do you want?"
Sunny deliberated for a few seconds before answering.
"It's rather simple. I will give you these soul shards, and all other soul shards I earn on the way to that castle…"
Then, he looked her in the eyes and said:
"In return, you will teach me how to fight."
Smart, If I was in his place, I would have done the same.
It was also quite clever as to why Sunless decided to choose Nephis instead of Reinhard.
Reinhard had a similar background to Sunless, he had even mentioned earlier that one of his attributes supplemented his battle art.
All that told the story that Reinhard was better then Nephis in terms of pure combat even if physical abilities weren't taken into consideration purely because of his aspect and not understanding, learning a specific combat style or years of training.
Even if that wasn't true, Sunless had no concrete reason to believe otherwise.
Opposite to that, Nephis was a legacy, so as a teacher it was simply more safe for Sunless to go with her instead of him.
Reinhard didn't particularly care about this either. But he wouldn't have refused if Sunless asked.
He made the right choice considering the amount of information he had , but Sunless didn't know Reinhard could create an attribute that made him a highly proficient mentor.
Unluck for you, I guess.