Shadow Slave

The bodies fell onto the wet asphalt.

In the wake of the deafening gunshots, the world was filled with a ringing silence. The rustling of rain drowned out all other sounds and obscured the

surrounding buildings, making the whole scene seem a little surreal.

Six of the eight assailants were dead. One was trying to crawl away weakly, bleeding heavily and not long for this world. The eighth seemed to have lost consciousness.

Sunny blinked a few times, then exhaled slowly.

He was startled, relieved… and a little disappointed.

The battle had only just started, and now, it was suddenly over. As a result, his boiling emotions had nowhere to escape, churning and simmering inside his soul — he took a deep breath, swallowed them, and then exhaled again, trying to purge them.

In life, there were worse things to feel disappointed about.

’Well, that…’

Has been quite unexpected.

Now that the danger seemed to have passed, he allowed the pain to wash over him, swayed, and let out a quiet groan.

”I’ll be damned.”

Effie’s voice was full of stunned disbelief. She looked at Sunny and raised her eyebrows, at a loss for words.

He stared back at her for a while, then shrugged while raising both hands.

Yes, that had happened.

Turning away from Effie, Sunny circled the car and approached Saint, who was still standing there with a revolver in her hand, no expression written on her face. Sunny studied her for a few moments, then raised a hand and gently pushed the revolver down.

It was only then that she stirred and looked at him, her face still frozen.

”Detective Sunless…”

Saint’s voice sounded a bit hollow.

”I am out of bullets.”

He offered her a reassuring smile.

”That’s alright. You don’t need more bullets.”

She looked around, studying the scene of carnage she had perpetrated, and then nodded thoughtfully.

After a few seconds of silence, Saint spoke again, sounding uncharacteristically unsure of herself:

”Detective, I… I feel strange.”

Sunny sighed.

’What a mess.’

Saint had yet to remember herself, so she still considered herself to be a law-abiding citizen who was far removed from strife and violence of any kind, let alone cold-blooded killing — like any normal person was. More than that, she was a doctor, someone whose life’s work it was to help people, not kill them. Р𝘼ƝổΒÊs

But at a decisive moment, her true instincts — the instincts of Onyx Saint, the taciturn Shadow born on the streets of the Dark City — must have taken

over.

Naturally, she was in shock.She was probably horrified, failing to process her thoughts and emotions.

Or… maybe not.

Perhaps there was a different reason why Saint was feeling strange.

”Sunny!”

Hearing Effie’s yell, Sunny turned around and frowned. It took him a few seconds to realize that there was something deeply wrong with what he was seeing.

”What the…”

The six corpses seemed to be melting.

They were turning into wisps of ghostly white mist, and that mist was stretching its tendrils toward Saint.

She looked at the mist with a dazed expression.

Suddenly panicked, Sunny moved to shield her with his body, but the ghostly mist simply passed through him, as if meeting no resistance at all. All that was left behind was the sense of an eerie, otherworldly chill.

”Damn it!”

Spinning around, Sunny frenetically tried to come up with a countermeasure…

But there was no need.

The mist did not harm Saint. Instead, it was being absorbed into her body, disappearing with a trace.

It would have looked concerning if it did not look so… familiar.

’Huh?’

Sunny had seen something similar once before.

Rather, he had not seen it, blinded by true darkness — but he had sensed it.

It had happened in the great Hollows of Godgrave, during the battle of Vanishing Lake. Back then, Saint shattered one of Mordret’s Reflections, which had been mirroring Revel.

Saint had absorbed the mirrored darkness then. But she also absorbed the wisps of eerie, chilling mist that had appeared after the Reflection was destroyed.

Now that Sunny knew how Others had been created, he could confirm his suspicions that they contained nothingness within them. When the Reflection was destroyed, that nothingness was released — and Saint took it for herself, which granted her an ability to manipulate her weight, reducing it at will.

And now, she was absorbing more nothingness.

’How does it even work?’

Nothing of the sort had happened when Sunny killed the three thugs near the hospital last night. So, this process had to be unique to Saint, because she already had a minor affinity to Nothing, and wanted more.

The long tendrils of white mist flowed faster and faster, being absorbed into Saint’s body. The mist was ethereal and ghostly, but nevertheless, a powerful wind rose as a white vortex surrounded Saint. Her raven-black hair fluttered like a stream of pure darkness, and her eyes seemed to blaze with a cold crimson light for a moment.

The torrent of rain seemed to freeze,numerous droplets of water suspended in the air.

Then, it all ended abruptly.

The wind died down, and the rain resumed, splashing heavily against the asphalt.

The six corpses were nowhere to be seen.

Saint flinched, then rubbed her eyes in confusion.

”Oh…”

She blinked a few times.

”Sorry. I seem to have gotten dazed for a few moments.”

She smiled tentatively, then offered the revolver to Sunny.

”I think it will be… it will be better if you take this, Detective.”

Sunny looked at the archaic gun, which Saint was gripping a little bit too tightly.

The solid metal was bending like wax in her grip, and by now, the entire thing looked like a shapeless lump of metal.

Naturally, that was not a strength that a mundane person could possess.

To bend metal like clay, one had to possess the power of at least an Awakened.

Sunny looked at Saint with a stunned expression.

’I’ll be damned, indeed.’

It seemed that she had somehow regained at least a part of her power.