Shadow Slave

Sunny played hide and search with the Snow Worm by jumping between shadows while the mountain was falling apart around them. The creature’s huge size made it difficult for him to destroy its body, but it also made it difficult for the creature to destroy him.

The pale, segmented coils of the Snow Worm were wrapped around the entire mountain countless times over, expanding and constricting as they moved at great speed and slowly ground the mountain to dust. Because of their sheer mass and number, the Cursed Beast was its own obstacle when hunting down an foe as mobile as Sunny.

The Snow Worm twisted its coils unpredictably to catch and crush Sunny between them. When two walls of pale flesh collided, violent shockwaves sent ripples across the sea of clouds, and the entire world seemed to shake. At the same time, its maw was pursuing Sunny, easily digging tunnels through the mountain or soaring into the sky to plummet down seconds later like a ghastly meteor.

These impacts were even more earth-shattering.

Sunny was being attacked from all sides, from below, from above… and yet, despite the unfathomable might of the Cursed Beast, he remained mostly unscathed. He was simply too quick and elusive to be caught, moving from one spot to another almost instantly to evade the frightening blows.

That was why pure might was useless unless it was supported by a keen mind, skill, or at least agility. The Snow Worm was undoubtedly a creature of distressing power, but without proper means to channel that power, all it could achieve was thrash wildly and slowly take the mountain apart in its furious, fruitless pursuit of the nimble adversary.

Then again, as the battle continued, Sunny got the impression that pure, focused lethality was not exactly the Snow Worm’s strong suit. Rather, it seemed like a creature who subjugated its prey through its sheer… abundance.

The Snow Worm was too enormous, too voluminous, too inexhaustible. Its infinite body allowed it to weather an infinite number of attacks, only for more pale flesh to burst forward, burying the adversary under its endless mass. So, it could simply endure endlessly, until the adversary was exhausted, tired, and spent.

In this case, the Snow Worm simply needed to endure until nightfall.

It was a single-minded and patient creature. And yet, it was exactly its single-mindedness that made the Snow Worm so frightening… its extreme mastery of a single power, of a single concept - used both for attack and defense - made it almost inevitable.

…As the Sovereign of Death, Sunny took offense to that.

After all, nothing was supposed to be more inevitable than death.

’If only my legion was here…’

Growling, he fled from the Snow Worm while shredding its flesh with his great blade. Sunny did not discriminate between attacking the body of the Cursed Beast and its shadow, dealing both physical and soul damage to it.

The soul of the Snow Worm was as vast and seemingly endless as its flesh, hiding an infinite amount of vile darkness. When souls received a certain amount of damage, they collapsed and crumbled - except for Sunny’s own tenacious soul, which was reinforced by Soul Weave and therefore had no such threshold.

And yet, he felt that the soul of the Snow Worm was too enormous, too ancient, and too deep to be destroyed that way - at least while he was devoid of his shadows and weakened by the Snow Domain.

Perhaps that was what the souls of all deities were like, or perhaps the soul of this corrupted deity in particular was especially abundant. In any case, destroying it was not something that could be accomplished easily.

Fortunately, Sunny was nothing if not resourceful. Even if dealing a sufficient amount of soul damage was not feasible, he had other means of destroying a soul.

After all, he wielded the power of shadows… the power of death. Just as Nephis had mentioned, each Will was unique, and his was all about killing intent. It was the will to see living beings die. That was both his natural affinity and a skill he had developed by wielding Serpent, the Slaying Blade.

In other words, his Will was more effective and efficient than it was supposed to be when implemented for the purpose of killing. And while the Snow Worm was a being of a higher Rank than Sunny, its Will was not as sophisticated as his.

Sunny understood it as he was desperately fighting the detestable creature. Yes, the Snow Worm was more powerful than him, and its Will was far more harrowing. However, just like a mindless beast could not fathom a combat technique, the colossal Nightmare Creature could not wield its Will with focused intent either.

The Will of the Snow Worm was not much different from the elemental and largely directionless Will of the millipede swarm. And so, Sunny actually had a clear advantage over the profane deity.

Therefore, he could infuse each of his soul attacks with the power of Death - with the focused will to see the adversary die - and that will slowly accumulated, poisoning the soul of the Snow Worm. The quantity of damage he dealt to the adversary’s soul might not have been sufficient, but its insidious quality was a completely separate issue. 𝙍ÅƝ𝘖βΕꞩ

Even if each cut dealt to the shadow of the Cursed Beast was insignificant due to how vast it was, all of that vastness was poisoned by the Death Will regardless of its nearly endless nature. As soon as Sunny expressed enough will to kill the Snow Worm to overcome its will to live, the creature was going to die.

Which was not to say that he would be able to achieve that before the sun disappeared beyond the horizon.

However, that was only half of Sunny’s strategy.

The other half was far simpler - he simply wanted to rip, shred, and devastate the Snow Worm’s huge body.

That, too, was a way to kill the enormous Cursed Beast.