Shadow Slave

The massive pillar plummeted down and fell right on the Black Knight. The devil turned slightly at the last moment, lowering his sword to the ground. His crimson eyes flashed with unassailable menace.

As a thunderous crash resounded in the dark hall of the ruined cathedral, pieces of stone and clouds of dust flew into the air.

‘Got you!’

A feeling of savage joy ignited in Sunny’s heart. Without slowing down, he dove into the dust.

Of course, he didn’t think the fiend would be destroyed by his trap. But it had to do some damage to the fearsome black armor, at least.

Nearing the place where he had last seen the tall dark figure, Sunny witnessed an incredible sight. The pillar… was floating high above the ground, its crushing weight resting on the shoulder of the steel giant. In the place of the impact, its surface had cracked and shattered.

The Black Knight, however, had not escaped unscathed as well.

His heavy breastplate fractured, revealing nothing but a mass of impenetrable, living darkness within. The pauldron on the shoulder that had received the blow was practically destroyed, leaving that whole arm hanging listlessly, twisted at a strange angle.

The helmet of the devil was dented and covered by a net of small cracks, each seeping with ghostly crimson light.

The Black Knight did not look good, if utterly terrifying.

What was even better, though, was the fact that he was currently stuck under the pillar, unable to move.

Sunny had to make us of that situation…

But before he could, the devil raised his broken arm and placed it on the column. Then, he lowered his head, as though gathering his strength… and effortlessly threw the monumental stone pillar into the air.

Sunny’s eyes widened.

Diving down, he barely avoided the flying wall of granite. The pillar flew above his head and crashed down onto the marble floor, then rolled several times and came to a rest in a deafening rumble of shattering stone. The length of it blocked the grand hall, cutting the way for the rest of the cohort.

And also Sunny’s path of retreat.

…Not that he had any plans of retreating.

Regaining his balance, Sunny brandished the Midnight Shard and dashed toward the wounded Black Knight for a vicious attack.

Both he and the Stone Saint arrived at the same time.

However, the Fallen Devil was still a force to be reckoned with. Despite the fact that his armor was cracked and his speed was somewhat diminished, there was still enough power in his body to obliterate all of them.

Holding the greatsword with one hand, he suddenly pulled it into a fearsome slash. The black blade whistled through the air, cutting a chaotic arc around the fiend.

Sunny was forced to jump back, but the Shadow managed to deflect the blow with her shield and redirect its power, slowing down only a little.

In the next moment, she closed the distance to the Black Knight and delivered a terrible strike of her own, aiming at the base of his sword’s blade.

The Knight simply moved the sword away, then violently bashed her in the head with the pommel, casing bits of the stonelike metal to fly into the air.

The Saint staggered back, the visor of her helmet shattered.

…Unlike the mass of darkness hiding in the black suit of steel armor, there was an actual face beneath hers.

Sunny allowed himself to stare for a fraction of a second. This was his first time seeing the face of his Shadow, after all.

The Stone Saint looked just how he had imagined. Her skin was grey like granite, and the features of her face were almost like that of a human — with the exception that they were just too flawless. It was as though she had not been born, but actually cut from stone by a mad sculptor, one obsessed with absolute perfection.

As the result, what should have been beautiful looked eerie and hideous instead. In fact, glancing at the inhumanly perfect face of his Shadow, Sunny felt nothing but a cold sense of revulsion.

…Fright, even.

The fact that her haunting face was utterly devoid of any hint of human emotion only made it even more disturbing.

The Shadow caught herself from falling and dashed to the side, avoiding another strike from the terrifying giant, which was effortlessly chained after the first one. The greatsword fell down once more, shattering the marble plates of the floor in the spot she had been just a moment ago.

It was then that Nephis rejoined the fight.

The three of them attacked the Black Knight simultaneously, perfectly coordinating their assault. Changing Star threw her longsword forward, aiming to sever the broken arm of the devil entirely.

The Stone Saint went after the greatsword again.

And Sunny did something crazy.

Dashing to the enormous black blade, he… stepped on its surface and ran up, using it as a ladder. He had a solid second of stability before the greatsword was pulled into another attack. Feeling it moving beneath his feet, Sunny used the momentum to jump up and grab onto the helmet of the terrifying fiend.

Mounting the devil, he hung from the Black Knight’s neck and delivered a savage stab at his shoulder. His aim was just a centimeter away from the edge of the pauldron.

Sunny’s hand was empty when he started the strike, but by the time it reached its mark, the Moon Shard was already grasped in it.

During their journey back to the Dark City, he had noticed that Ascended Memories received a less dramatic enhancement from the Crown of Dawn. Unlike the Awakened ones, they weren’t elevated by almost an entire rank in terms of power. The augmentation, however, was still significant.

Enough to breach the gap between the ghostly stiletto and the armor of the Fallen Devil, at least.

The needle-sharp point of the Moon Shard broke through the impenetrable steel and sunk deep into the shoulder joint of the indestructible black armor.

Obviously, Sunny knew that this strike would not do a lot of damage to the fiend. But dealing damage was not his goal.

Devil or not, Fallen or not, the Black Knight still had to obey the laws of physics. In particular, having several inches of steel… glass?… stuck in the joint of his armor was inevitably going to reduce the mobility of his arm.

Indeed, with both of his arms damaged, the speed with which the fiend was able to move his greatsword around considerably diminished. It was still utterly terrifying, nevertheless.

But not insurmountable anymore.

Just a moment faster than the Black Knight, the Stone Saint stepped over the black blade and pinned it to the floor with one of her grieves. Using all of her weight to keep it down, she threw her sword aside and raised her shield high above her head with both hands.

pᴀɴda nᴏvel For a moment, time slowed down.

And then the Shadow brought the shield down, delivering a devastating blow to the weakest point of the greatsword.

The rim of the stone shield hit against the black steel…

And with a deafening ringing, the greatsword shattered.