“My baby hates me.” Shao sniffled.

“She doesn’t hate you.” I chuckled.

“Then why does she cry whenever I hold her?”

As soon as I took our baby, she immediately quieted down. After just a bit of bobbing up and down, she slipped off to sleep and was now happily unconscious. Her mother, who was at her wit’s end, was now sobbing hysterically.

“You’ll get the hang of this. You know you can call on the other girls. Raissa, Miki, Eliana, and Carmine have all been through this. Carmine had twins! You can do this.”

“I-it’s the blood on my hands, isn’t it?” She asked. “She can smell the evil on me.”

Perhaps I had been a bit too busy. After she had the baby, Shao had moved out to a little cottage to raise it. She said something about wanting to become the greatest mother ever. However, it took a community to raise a baby, and Shao now looked ready to break. She was suffering from postpartum depression.

“The party is coming in a little bit. How about I take the baby with me, and you get a bit of rest, hmm?”

“M-maybe…” She responded uncertainly.

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I took the sleeping baby, and then gently put her down in her crib. She coed slightly, but remained asleep. As I looked down at my sleeping baby girl, Shao put her arms around me, hugging me softly. She breathed as if getting strength from my presence. I didn’t mind this. My only regret was that there wasn’t more of me.

“You didn’t come here just to see how I was doing with the baby, did you?” She asked.

“Um… no… actually, I have a soul dungeon that went missing. Miki seems to believe you can help me summon it?”

“Ahh… I see… it has to do with my shadow magic. Do you know how shadow magic works, Master?”

“Not exactly. I know that there is miasmic, shadow, and darkness magic. Each one, while similar, is also different.”

She nodded. “It’s true… I use shadow magic, where someone like Salicia uses darkness magic, and Astria is miasmic. Miasmic magic involves controlling miasma and corrupting mana. It’s like an infection that tries to eat mana and create miasma. Darkness is a direct inverse to light. It attempts to counter mana by destroying it. It’s the absence of mana. Shadow magic is different though. Without light, there are no shadows. Without a soul, there is nobody. Shadow magic is about blocking mana and using the product of the hindrance to producing an illusion of darkness. It uses mana against itself. Does Master understand?”

“I think so.” I frowned. “But what does this have to do with summoning my soul?”

“One of the main tenants of shadow magic is the separation of the body and the soul. The way I can slip into shadows and disappear is because my body and my soul aren’t necessarily in the same place at the same time. My soul becomes a conduit for my body, and my body becomes a conduit for my soul.”

“And you’re saying I could master shadow magic?”

“I’m saying if Master this aspect of shadow magic, you’d be able to use your soul in ways you never dreamed!”