Shadow Slave

After the initial shock of a surprise attack subsided, the Deathless regained their cold composure and turned their attention to the third army that invaded the Nightmare Desert… the army of shadows.

Once that happened, the advance of the Shadow Legion swiftly slowed to a crawl and then halted altogether.

It was then that Sunny fully realized the strange nature of the enemy he was facing. The Deathless were not living beings, and they weren’t entirely sapient either. Thousands of years spent in the desolate hell of the Nightmare Desert, locked in an endless battle, had not only stripped the flesh from their bones but had also erased all traces of their personhood. The curse of Shadow God had shattered their minds a long time ago, as well.

But that did not mean that they were mindless.

In fact, the Deathless were quite intelligent. It was just that the scope of their intelligence was limited to one thing and one thing only — battle. And as beings who had spent thousands of years engaged in nothing but endless battle, they were chillingly proficient in decimating their enemies on the battlefield.

The moment they became cognizant of a new threat, the cadence of the clash between them and the Shadow Legion immediately shifted. It was as if a chain reaction spread among the Deathless, instantly changing the patterns of their behavior. The undead warriors, who had been clashing with each other, now fully shifted their attention to the silent warriors of the Lord of Shadows.

They swiftly formed loose and flexible battle formations, identified the weak points of the enemy force, and launched themselves into a meticulous counteroffensive, effortlessly exploiting those weaknesses to a devastating result.

The weaker shades melted, destroyed faster than Sunny could comprehend the reason why the formation of his legion was suddenly crumbling.

Nephis was under more scrutiny than he was, though.

That was because the Deathless had not only fathomed where the enemy’s vulnerabilities lay. They had also instantly identified their own tactical deficiencies and acted to correct them.

The most jarring of those deficiencies and the main reason why the Shadow Legion had been able to advance so swiftly up to that point was that the undead warriors were being suppressed — they were being weakened, thrown off balance, shattered, and burned by the radiant star that burned high in the sky.

So, the Deathless endeavored to destroy that star, or at least bring it low to the ground.

Neph’s radiant reign of terror came to an end when a vast mass of arrows, javelins, and makeshift projectiles rose from the dunes like a black cloud. It reached her in an instant, leaving a trail of turbulent winds in its wake.

Each projectile carried enough force and murderous will to kill a Supreme, so Nephis folded her wings and dove to the ground, weaving an erratic dance between them.

It was not that these dark missiles could truly kill her — the true extent of Neph’s vitality was yet unknown, but she was not going to be vanquished by these ancient weapons. The wounds they could deal her, no matter how dreadful, would be washed away by the white flames.

She could have endured them on the ground, but being caught by a swarm of javelins in the air would cause her to fall. And once she hit the sand, impaled by the spears of her enemies, the Deathless could surround and restrain her. Near-immortality was a sword that cut both ways. It made beings like Sunny and Nephis difficult to kill, but also raised the stakes of being defeated to terrifying heights — after all, death was far more merciful than endless suffering.

Not to mention that Nephis needed to conserve her strength for the countless nights of increasingly deadly battles yet to come. Her body was pierced, and her radiant wings were torn… but Nephis managed to escape the cloud of projectiles without losing control of her flight.

As soon as she did, she aimed her sword at the area of the battlefield where most of the javelins had come from and unleashed fiery vengeance, condensing the immolating white flames of her soul into an annihilating beam with the help of both Shaping and the Blessing.

It was as if the blade of her radiant sword had suddenly grown to several kilometers in length, falling down mercilessly to leave a charred wound on the surface of the Nightmare Desert.

But even if many of the Deathless were shattered, a second cloud of projectiles rose into the air a few moments later.

On the ground, meanwhile, the Shadow Legion was left without the protective aegis of Changing Star’s flames. That meant that the Deathless facing it were not suppressed by the obliterating pillars of heavenly fire anymore, and could thus descend upon the advancing shades with no obstacles standing in their way.

The result of their unrestrained malice could be felt immediately.

The Deathless sent their most stalwart warriors to bar the path of the strongest enemies — Sunny, his Shadows, a few of the strongest Supreme shades, and the Wolf. At the same time, groups of the most deadly undead warriors attacked the points in the formation of the Shadow Legion where the weaker shades were concentrated.

‘Damnation…’

Sunny stepped through the shadows, escaping the difficult opponent he had been fighting to attack a group of the Deathless who were just about to breach the formation of the Shadow Legion.

His arrival postponed the crisis on that section of the battlefield, but it was of little use — the same was happening in a dozen other places, and even if he separated his incarnations, their number would not be enough to contend against the insidious attacks of the ancient undead.

The offensive line of the Shadow Legion was breached in one place, then in another. Then, in a few more — by that point, Sunny had to pull his shades back in order to avoid the complete collapse of their formation. Transitioning to a defensive strategy preserved the formation and bought him time, but also made any advance impossible.

Still…

For the first clash against the Deathless, even this was not a bad result.

What was it that Nephis had said?

Being good at failing was also a skill.

As long as Sunny learned from this failure, he would be able to achieve a better result the next time.

‘Persistence truly is the greatest of virtues…’