Fate's Slave - Shadow Slave X Honkai Star Rail

Sunny slowly and methodically connected the five javelins in one complex and elaborate Spellweave, an act that was far more difficult than simply creating a Memory normally, using only a single object.

The enchantments he was weaving into these weapons were designed with their separate parts in mind. The Rank of the Memory would be at the Transcendent Rank.

The enchantments themselves were all based off things Sunny has already seen. Moreover, the particular enchantments were derived from those at the Ascended Rank at most.

Through trial and error, Sunny found that he could not replicate Supreme enchantments. They were far too complex, and his Essence strings would decay under the stress of holding such a system together.

That did not mean Sunny couldn’t make Supreme Memories that used Supreme enchantments.

Generally speaking, Sunny found that all enchantments had a baseline. They had to be at a certain Rank in order to work properly. The [Death Dealer] enchantment was one such enchantment.

The original version of the [Death Dealer] enchantment came from Morgan’s Warbow, a Transcendent Memory. That same enchantment was able to be placed on Ascended and Supreme Memories...

But that was it.

He couldn’t paste the enchantment on anything Awakened or lower. The power of the Memory just wasn’t great enough to support such a powerful and Destructive enchantment.

In the end, the Essence strings that Sunny Weaved with were not reliant on his own Rank as much as he had believed. They were reliant on the Soul Shards that they were anchored to. The quality of his Essence only dictated the amount of time he had to complete the Memory, before the strings fizzled out into nonexistence.

The enchantments of a Supreme Memory were meant to be powered by a Supreme Soul Shard. So, theoretically, Sunny could copy Supreme enchantments.

He just couldn’t connect those enchantments to an inferior power source.

It was a matter of complexity. The enchantments were too complex, so the Soul Shards couldn’t properly power them. There was a massive leap between the Transcendent and Supreme Rank, it seemed...

From another viewpoint, Sunny could technically do the opposite. Power weak enchantments with Soul Shards of a greater Rank.

The single enchantment of the Deal Breaker, the Memory that functioned as a failsafe to Short and Shady, the contract he had made with Fu Xuan, followed such a rule. The enchantment was drafted at the Transcendent Rank — after all, it was meant to interact with the punishment enchantment of Short and Shady.

The concept was at the Transcendent Rank, but the effectiveness was boosted to the Supreme Rank in order to get it to actually work.

But...

’It’s a bit of a waste.’

When amping the Rank of an enchantment, the excess energy provided by the Soul Shards basically meant that the enchantments could be expanded without having to actively remove anything from them.

In other words, by using materials and Soul Shards of a higher level, Sunny gained more room to alter rudimentary enchantments to become more complex than before. This expanded his options greatly.

He missed the Cruel Sight and the Broken Oath. Sure, he made an alternative to the latter for Saint...

But he thinks he could make something better. A set of weapons that combined the strong points of both Memories.

By now, Sunny didn’t need to think too much about the Weaving process. Instead, he kept wondering about how weird SoundlessHeaven was.

***

Tingyun had told him to, uh... socialize? Yeah, she told him to socialize with his sponsor. He didn’t know why, but he doubted it was anything problematic, so he just went with it. He wasn’t wasting any time by doing so, and the more he got into his sugar mommy’s good graces, the better.

Based on their texts, however, an outsider would assume that it was the same sugar mommy who suggested this arrangement, not Sunny himself.

SoundlessHeaven: ”What’s your favorite song?”

One of many seemingly meaningless questions. It had taken him a few moments of deciphering, along with Tingyun reminding him that people actually listened to music, to construct an actual reply.

Sunny’s Brilliant Emporium: ”Don’t have one.”

SoundlessHeaven: ”Oh.”

...Oh?

Oh.

That sounded oddly disappointed. Which was crazy, since he couldn’t hear texts.

SoundlessHeaven: ”What about shows?”

Sunny’s Brilliant Emporium: ”Never watched any.”

SoundlessHeaven: ”...Movies?”

Now they were getting somewhere!

Sunny’s Brilliant Emporium: ”I have a least favorite.”

After that message, she didn’t reply to him for an entire day.

Normally, he wouldn’t think much of it.

But Sunny thought that SoundlessHeaven wasn’t a particularly busy woman. She seemed to always have free time to respond to him. Perhaps he said something that bothered her.

When she replied, she asked him another question. Sunny thought she was rather nosy, but as time passed, he felt less and less annoyed by such people.

Everybody had their own reasons for doing so, and as long as they weren’t nefarious, Sunny couldn’t bring himself to care much.

Besides, when it came to poking his nose into others’ business, he could confidently say that he should be wearing the crown.

SoundlessHeaven: ”I probably should have asked, but what do you actually do?”

It wasn’t a difficult question to answer.

Sunny’s Brilliant Emporium: ”A few things. I used to do a lot of exploring, but my anchor is in a really dangerous place, so I don’t want to risk it. When I’m not running my shop, I usually take jobs from people who need me to fight for them.”

That seemed like a good summary of his current situation. The place Herta had let him anchor to was seemingly safe, but that was from a perspective that connects nonaggression to safety. Even if the Supreme creatures hiding in... whichever region of the Dream Realm Herta had brought him to were peaceful, a single misstep could cause Sunny’s death.

In short, he was paranoid.

A few moments later, SoundlessHeaven sent a response:

SoundlessHeaven: ”I meant in your free time!”

Sunny slowly blinked. Did he have any of that?

...Actually, he supposed there was something.

Sunny’s Brilliant Emporium: ”I water my tree.”

SoundlessHeaven: ”Is it fun?”

Sunny’s Brilliant Emporium: ”Not really. I just have to take care of it or else I’ll get mad.”

Sunny stared at the screen with a dull expression.

A new message appeared.

SoundlessHeaven: ”At the tree? That wouldn’t be very nice.”

He snorted at the idea.

Sunny’s Brilliant Emporium: ”No. It’s a good tree. Even if it looks like it’s constantly dying.”

Sunny had looked into it. He couldn’t stand the idea of watching that tree die. He poured hours of research into the subject of keeping it alive...

It was unsavable.

The only way to keep it alive was to get someone who could heal plants. That introduced its own problem, which was the fact that the five lines he had carved into the bark would be removed.

And yet, for some stupid reason, even though he knew he could always draw the lines back on, he refused to get any help.

Sunny had dug his own grave.

How ironic.