Shadow Slave: Monochrome

Nero wasn't good at keeping track of the time. So without the sun, he had no way of measuring how much time had passed since this trial started, but if he had to guess, then maybe around 2-3 days.

In that time, he had learnt a few things. For starters, the routine of this place was coherent and a little bit mundane.

During whatever he considered to be the morning here, they would be served breakfast. That delicious, fluffy bread and sweet succulent water. Then what felt like 2 or so hours later, the knights would come back and take all the children to those strange rooms filled with that black water. Nero recognised the children, as the ones that were with him when he first came here.

They would be left there for an unknown amount of time. Whenever Nero was in there, he felt his ability to keep track of the time grow even worse. And it wasn't just that too. when he came here initially, one of the children appeared to have died in those rooms.

Now that he's been here for 2 days, Nero understood that this water appeared to be eroding not just their bodies, but their souls.

The rate of erosion depended on the person, but since he's come here, only him and one other boy now remained. But even he seemed to be slowly dying.

Nero however, was perfectly fine.

'Did I get lucky I was placed in this vessel? Or is it because of [Yin]?'

It was an attribute which gave him an affinity for darkness, which is what this water seemed to be made from. The other kids must've had some kind of affinity for it too, but it looks like his was much stronger than the rest. Even then, it was best not to stay in this water for too long.

Once they were let out, they would be sent back to the exact same rooms they were kept in before. Except, Nero could feel how many children didn't return to theirs. While in day one, he felt around a thousand or so kids, 2 days later he could only feel 300.

If a week were to pass, he may be the last one left, and he did not want to stick around to find out what would happen to him then.

They would be served bread and water again, but Nero never received a letter from Sir Rodenaus. He hadn't figured out what he looked like either, so he was unsure of how they would contact again.

He wasn't completely bored though, as he was able to experiment a lot with his [Bond] attribute.

For starters, he could manipulate and feel the string to some extent. He was able to tell what directions it turned, how long it was, and how many objects it had passed through as well as their thickness. And with that, he was even able to manipulate the string a little, by making it show him the most efficient path possible to Epsilon, or just going in a perfectly straight line.

Nero could feel that Epsilon was around 600-700 metres away from him in a perfectly straight line. However..

'Why is he down??'

He wasn't in any of the cells like Nero or the other kids. He was down, somewhere in the darkness, somewhere right below the white marble pillar that the griffin lay on. He didn't even know how deep underground they were, but just knowing Epsilon was all the way down there was rather daunting.

Speaking of Epsilon, his attributes were interesting.

[Bond] was identical to Nero's own. It had already been 2 days, so he was sure that Epsilon had figured out that they were in the same nightmare too. Either he had already figured out the conditions for this nightmare, or he was trying to get to him too.

[Yang] was an interesting one too. It seemed to be a mirrored version of Nero's [Yin], with it letting him sense the presence of those in the light, rather than in darkness.

"Tch."

They were so similar, yet Nero felt cheated somehow.

And then there was [Judgement]. Nero was jealous as hell. His own third attribute was seemingly useless, but this was too ridiculous, even for ordinary attributes. It was more like an Aspect in of itself.

[Judgement] Attribute Description: "In a world of direction, choice was abundant. Yet fate seems to speak to you the path it deems favourable."

Just from that description alone, Nero could tell how powerful it was. It simply let Epsilon make decisions that would be favourable for him. That meant no matter what situation he was in, regardless if he was lacking in knowledge, he would be able to discern which choice would suit him out of pure instinct.

In a world of nightmares where the wrong choice could easily get you killed, this attribute was like a get out of jail free card.

Well, there were still some weaknesses. For example, if he was walking down a path, and it split into Route A and Route B. Route A may lead him to a corrupted titan, but Route B may lead him to a Fallen Terror. Although [Judgment] may tell him Route B was the better choice, he wouldn't know of the danger that was waiting down it.

In that case, it would've been better to just not go down any route at all.

With an ability like that, why hadn't Epsilon come to him yet?

'Or maybe he can't.'

It was possible that he was under just as much security as him, perhaps even more. Nero's detection range with [Yin] was only about, 50 metres. Nowhere near wherever Epsilon was, so he could not tell how many people were guarding him.

Whenever it was time to go to the dark water room though, he could feel Epsilon moving too.

'If he's being put in a dark water room too.. no that's not possible. Otherwise he would've been dead by now.'

He didn't know how long these children had been soaked in dark water before he stole one of their bodies, but he was sure that a normal person would die just from dipping in here for a minute or two. Epsilon must be going through something else.

Either way, Nero was pressed for time. The knights seemed to be alright in the beginning, but just after 2 days, they looked like they would kill themselves at any minute.

If the King Of The Dark didn't come for him, then he was sure the knights would instead.