F-Rank Soul Eater-Chapter 207: Los Favorecidos

...The train carriage hummed, a low-frequency vibration that rattled the bones more than the floorboards.

"Appologies...seniór Whities." The conductor gave a low bow. His accent was light, but inevitable. The first Soren had expressed from the part of the world they were heading to.

"The ride is not so smooth. See, these tracks experienced an accident only a few months ago, and the worker drones have not been able to fully clean the tracks because of the snow.

Please bare with us." He bowed again.

Soren and the others simply nodded his way.

Outside, the blurred white landscape of the territories streaked by in shades of bruised green and metallic grey—the telltale staining of high-density ectoplasm in the atmosphere.

Soren was probably one of the few people that would see such a sight—though grim— still appreciated the freedom it represented.

​Soren leaned back, the leather of the seat cracking under his weight.

Bloodshine sat next to him, her arm under his own as if to declare her ownership of him.

Opposite him, Sophia remained a statue of blond hair and black tunic, her gaze fixed on the passing wasteland.

The red ribbon was gone, tucked away under her tunic, but the weight of it still seemed to anchor her to the seat.

​He looked back down at the book— The Unnatural Nature of Shades.

The next section was heavily annotated with frantic, handwritten scrawls in the margins.

​PREDICTIVE WEAKNESSES OF SHADES BASED ON NATURE WITH ELEMENTS

​While the raw power of a Shade is dictated by its Soulbound synchronization, its physical manifestation remains bound by the laws of elemental entropy.

To defeat a Shade, one must not strike the shadow, but the logic upon which it is built.

​Fire / Plasma Nature: Vulnerable to Endothermic Draw. Shades of this class rely on rapid molecular agitation. Introducing a Liquid-Nature catalyst or a vacuum-seal Air-Nature strike can trigger a "Cold Snap" collapse, shattering the Shade’s form.

​Earth Nature: Susceptible to High-Frequency Resonance. Though physically daunting, Earth-types possess a rigid lattice structure. A Space-Nature distortion or a sustained sonic vibration can induce "Dust Fatigue," causing the Soulbound warrior to lose cohesion.

​Liquid Nature: Weak against Electrolytic Dissociation. By introducing a high-voltage Air-Nature (Plasma) strike, the liquid medium is forcibly separated into gases, rendered thin and harmless.

​Note from Dr. Kaya: The true anomaly lies in the higher dimensions. How does one provide a ’weakness’ for a concept?

​Space & Time Natures: Theoretical data suggests these Natures do not have elemental counters. Instead, they suffer from Paradox Erosion. A Space-type Shade cannot manifest if the local gravity is too volatile. A Time-type... well, a Time-type simply requires the user to survive long enough for the Shade to consume itself.

​Soren’s finger traced the words Paradox Erosion.

​He thought of Chronovore. The way the air seemed to fold in on itself whenever he was waking to a new loop. 𝑓𝘳𝘦𝑒𝑤𝑒𝘣𝘯ℴ𝘷𝘦𝓁.𝑐𝑜𝑚

While other Shades associating with space and time might have this paradoxical Erosion, would Chronovore have it if it could literally always start again?

In the the last few days, Soren had visited the library, hoping to find something on Chronovore or the first Soul Mecha pilot.

The search had been a fruitless one. Which was strange.

After all, shouldn’t the adventures of the man that made the usage of soul mechas a possibility be General knowledge and inspiration to the younger generations?

This was the closest he had ever gotten to the origins of his Shade.

Space and Time.

Soren sighed. Just then,

​He looked up.

Sophia was watching him now, her blue eyes reflecting the dim emergency lights of the cabin.

​"The conductor," she whispered, her voice barely audible over the screech of the wheels. "You stared because you’ve never seen a ’Turned’ before, haven’t you?"

​Soren closed the book slowly. "I’ve seen death. I thought that was the end of the line for ectoplasm poisoning."

​"For some, death is the mercy," she said, turning back to the window. "In the South, the air is thicker. You’ll see more than just faces in the wrong place. You’ll see things that make that conductor look like a model."

Aside reading and the occasional Bloodshine trying to get his attention, nothing much happened in the two days of the train ride.

...The hiss of the pneumatic brakes signaled the end of their two-day ride.

As the doors slid open, Soren braced himself for the biting chill of the winter air, but instead, a wave of thick, humid air rolled into the carriage.

Stepping onto the platform, he squinted against a brightness he hadn’t realized he’d been missing.

"It’s... actually warmer here," Soren remarked, wiping a thin sheen of sweat from his forehead.

"The further south one travels, the more the sun still deigns to visit the sky," a voice piped up from behind. Polystar stepped forward, his fingers deftly adjusting the bridge of his glasses.

Soren blinked, looking at the noble boy. Usually, Polystar possessed a complexion that could be described as ’parchment-white,’ but now, his skin had taken on a distinct, sickly olive hue.

"Are you alright, Polystar? You’re looking a bit... green," Soren noted, a hint of concern breaking through his fatigue.

Polystar took a deep, rattling breath of the humid air and offered a faint, uncharacteristic smirk. "Green? My dear Soren, I haven’t felt this good in a long time. The weather in the capital is annoyingly stifling. Here, it’s... liberating."

Soren remembered the first time he had met Polystar basking under the sun in the train that originally brought them to the academy.

For a person whose ability was heavily depended on how much he could photosynthesise, winter must be hell.

Vass stepped onto the platform next, his heavy boots thudding against the stone. He scanned the dilapidated station. "So, is this it? Is this where the training takes place, turdface?"

He turned towards Soren, as if to say, bring it on.

Sophia, who had been staring toward the horizon with a grim set to her jaw, shook her head. "No. Now, we take a ride to my hometown."

"A ride?" Bloodshine asked, looking around the empty, rusted tracks. "On what? Another train?"

Sophia simply pointed a gloved finger toward the distance, past the station’s edge. There, lined up in a row, were several wooden carriages. They were archaic, tethered to donkeys that looked as if they were made more of scar tissue and bone than actual muscle.

As they approached, one of the carriages creaked forward to meet them. Soren’s breath hitched in his throat as the driver leaned out of the coach box.

The man was a walking nightmare of ectoplasmic biology. Two eyes sat in their natural sockets, but a third—milky and lidless—stared out from the center of his throat.

Even worse, while his central mouth offered a toothless grin, two smaller, vertical mouths located on his temples whispered in a low, rhythmic hum, as if chanting to themselves.

"Buenas tardes, jóvenes," the driver said, his primary mouth moving in sync with the whispering ones.

Despite his horrific appearance, his tone was impeccably polite.

Sophia stepped forward, her posture shifting into something more commanding, and in Soren’s eyes—more native.

"Hola. Por favor, llévenos al pueblo de Los Favorecidos," she said, her Spanish fluid and sharp. "Tenemos prisa."

The driver nodded, the eye in his throat blinking slowly. "Como desee, señorita."

They piled into the cramped, musty interior of the carriage.

As the donkeys began their slow, rhythmic trot, the scenery changed from the industrial rot of the station to the raw horror of the Southern wastes.

Soren leaned against the window, his eyes wide. He was used to the green, misty haze of ectoplasm back at the league of towns—a sign of controlled, filtered energy. But here, the mist was a bruised, oily purple.

It hung over the land like a suffocating shroud.

Furthermore, the road was a graveyard.

The massive, rotting corpses of Eldritch creatures—things with too many limbs and iridescent scales—littered the ditches.

Scavengers, some human and some... difficult to classify, crawled over the carcasses.

They used rusted saws and jagged stones to hack away at the grey, rubbery meat, fighting off crows that had grown three times their natural size.

Sophia saw the look of pure revulsion on the faces of the cadets.

"This far from the Empire’s capital, the suffering is worse," she said, her voice hollow. "The Empire sends us weapons and soulbound knights, but they don’t send food.

Many here have been forced to find edibles within the dead bodies of the Eldritch monsters that ravage the land."

She looked out at a group of children by the roadside; one boy had fingers that had fused into a single, sharp talon, while another had patches of purple scales creeping up his neck.

"That is why a lot of people here are so mutated," she finished quietly. "You eat the monster to survive, and eventually... the monster starts to eat you from the inside out."

Soren watched a woman by a campfire look up as they passed. Where her nose should have been, there was only a pulsating, purple gill. He turned away from the window, the "warmth" of the South suddenly feeling much more like a fever.

(Author’s note; Look at me going all out for you guys. Yes. I googled the Spanish. I hope i got it right. I am too African. Please let me know in the comments. Thanks.

Also,.

Paradoxical Erosion regarding a space or time Shade describes a state where an entity’s existence, movement, or activity inherently causes its own destruction, leading to a profound contradiction between the need to act and the consequences of acting.)