Shadow Slave novel Chapter 2723

The words hung in the air, enveloped by a terrifying silence.

Cassie remained motionless, as well, doing her best to suppress her body from trembling.

'Asterion.'

It would be a lie to say that, for a moment, she did not feel fear. Her thoughts spun, and she sent a stream of mental messages to those caught in the web of her Aspect.

The man sitting next to her at the bar... was a herald of the Dreamspawn, an agent of the insidious foe threatening the very foundations of the Human Domain.

But he wasn't Asterion himself, so she was not in mortal peril yet.

Cassie lingered for a few moments, assessing the danger, and came to the conclusion that she had to buy some time above all else. So, instead of reacting strongly, she simply reached for her drink and took a leisurely sip.

“Oh, my. You are a new type."

The man smiled.

"You should have foreseen that people like this one would emerge, no?"

He was not wrong.

Cassie, Nephis, and Sunny were still determining the full extent of Asterion's powers. There were few reliable sources of information about him, sadly — the previous Sovereigns had been too thorough in erasing all notable mentions of his existence from history.

Asterion's Aspect was one of mental and spiritual manipulation. He could sense and influence the thoughts and emotions of others, as well as feed on them to grow stronger... and that was only as far as his Dormant, Awakened, and Ascended Abilities went, according to Nightwalker.

No one — not even Jest, the exiled patriarch of Clan Dagonet — knew what his Transcendent form was, let alone what his Domain's nature and Supreme Ability were. They could infer quite a lot, though.

Asterion seemed to possess an ability to spread his influence akin to a memetic virus. Everyone who was exposed to his name was infected by his power, and after that... well, different people were affected differently. Some did not show any symptoms at all, some would begin uttering his name randomly from time to time without even noticing it, helping the virus spread. Then, there were those whose thoughts and actions changed entirely under the influence of the Dreamspawn — those were his agents in the human world. They were the ones Cassie had been hunting for the last few months.

But the man in front of her seemed to represent a new breed. He was not merely under the influence of Asterion's powers... he seemed to be consumed by them completely, falling under complete control of the eerie Sovereign. Cassie was not even sure if he could still be considered an actual individual, as opposed to a mere extension of the Dreamspawn.

An avatar, perhaps.

She nodded.

"I did. Even if my powers of foresight are not what they used to be, I can still make deductions."

Asterion was not that different from Cassie, in a sense. If she wanted to, she could burn every single memory from a person's mind, turning it into a blank slate. Then, she could fill that canvas with whatever false memories she wanted to invent, turning them into a marionette... not that she had done something like that yet.

He could most likely do the same with a person's feelings and thoughts, just on an entirely different level due to being a Supreme.

The question was, why had he sent this brainwashed Ascended to find her? There were plenty of reasons to eliminate Cassie, naturally — her powers could counter Asterion's influence, for one, albeit on a limited scale. But how would a lone Master eliminate a Saint?

"Who says that I am alone?"

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