Shadow Slave

Pierced by the talons of the Vile Thieving Bird and yet saved from annihilation by the Curse, Sunny plunged his sword into the Cursed Terror’s neck.

A wound like that was not going to kill a being that had outlived the gods… but then again, Serpent possessed the [Slaying Blade] Ability.

[Slaying Blade] Ability Description:

“When in its Soul Weapon form, Soul Serpent embodies the Death aspect of Shadow God. As such, it ignores the will of greater beings.”

In other words, it breached the gap between the potency of Sunny’s Will and that of the Vile Thieving Bird. So, even if he was of a lesser Rank than his adversary, they were close to being equals — when murder was concerned, at least.

Sunny still did not expect the Thieving Bird to die from being stabbed in the neck. Even he could easily survive such a wound, so what was there to say about a Cursed Terror?

The deep wound, the sharp blade of Serpent… even its [Slaying Blade] Ability — those were merely tools. They were instruments with which Sunny expressed his killing intent.

It was Sunny himself who had to become a weapon that would slay the loathsome Thieving Bird.

So, using the blade of his sword as a conduit, Sunny steeled his mind and poured all of the Death Will he possessed through it. He willed death and destruction upon the Thieving Bird with more determination, fatal resolve, and uncompromising malice than he had even been able to embody before.

It wasn’t that hard, really… after all, there was hardly a being in the world who had harmed Sunny more than this odious creature. All the anguish he had endured, all the things he had missed, all the time he had lost — it was all because of the Vile Thieving Bird. So, Sunny wanted to kill it more than anyone in the world, as well. Perhaps more than he had ever wanted to kill anyone.

And if there was someone who could kill a Cursed Terror out of sheer spite, it was Sunny. He never forgot a grudge, and his grudge against the Thieving Bird was nothing short of singular.

So, it was easy to channel his Death Will into the damn bird. It was almost pouring out of his spiteful heart all on its own. Sunny just hoped that it would be enough to kill the Thieving Bird…

He was almost praying that it would. He had sacrificed his mind, body, and soul to make this attack possible, after all, using himself as bait to create an opportunity to deal the Cursed Terror a grievous wound.

‘Die, die!’

But the Vile Thieving Bird did not die.

Even as Sunny was pouring all of his Will into the awful wound, he could feel that it was like trying to drain an ocean with a teaspoon. And despite the [Slaying Blade] quality of his sword, the spirit of the loathsome thing was simply too vast and elemental to be rendered powerless in the face of his murderous resolve.

‘It’s… not nearly enough.’

The thought made his blood run cold.

In the next moment, the Thieving Bird’s beak fell down like the blade of a blood-soaked guillotine, destroying his face and pulverizing his skull.

Blood, bone fragments, and brain matter splattered in all directions.

Sunny activated [The Chain] once more.

His shattered skull was restored, his liquified brain matter was returned to where it belonged, and his mutilated face became whole once more.

He twisted Serpent in Thieving Bird’s neck, continuing to pour his Death Will into the abominable Terror.

A sobering thought surfaced in the sea of his murderous fury.

‘This won’t last.’

The [Chain] enchantment of the Curse could save him from being destroyed, but it was not a panacea — mostly because it had never been designed for enduring the fury of a being as ancient and powerful as the Vile Thieving Bird.

Restoring Sunny’s broken body and soul was not even its true purpose. It had been primarily designed for keeping him from losing himself in the formlessness of shadows — to anchor his sense of self in the present and prevent it from dissolving in the harrowing expanse of the future.

Such an implementation was ambitious, but would not drain Sunny’s reserves of essence. That was because there would be no opposing Will acting against the [Chain] — or rather, it would only have to overcome his own Will, not that of a superior adversary. Things were entirely different now, though. Now, the [Chain] was not simply restoring his mind, body, and soul — it was repairing what the Vile Thieving Bird had destroyed. And so, it was fighting against the consequences of a Cursed Terror reshaping the world according to its Will, which consumed a truly terrifying amount of Sunny’s essence.

He had rarely been forced to think about running out of essence after becoming a Supreme, but he could not ignore the expenditure now. Using the [Chain] twice already cost him an ocean of essence, and the situation was only aggravated by the fact that he had already lost a vast amount of it to the despicable thievery of the Vile Spawn.

The Shadow Legion had lost a great number of shades, as well, which meant that there was less spirit essence flowing into his soul now.

In short…

The [Chain] gave Sunny a fighting chance against the Thieving Bird, but it was not going to win this battle.

“Nephis!”

Great tendrils of shadows appeared behind Sunny and wrapped themselves around his limbs, pulling him off the talons of the enormous, monstrous avian horror and dragging him away.

For a moment, he beheld the Vile Thieving Bird in all its profane glory…

Even hunched, it was as tall as a hill, hideous and terrifying, with a disheveled mantle of messy black feathers and a pair of round, dark eyes that boiled with an unspeakable madness.

Its fearsome talons looked deadly enough to rend Titans apart, and its long beak looked sharp enough to piece the heavens.

Most of all…

Looking at the Thieving Bird, Sunny suddenly realized that when a bird of prey reached that size, it looked very similar to a dragon. In fact, the Thieving Bird looked far more terrifying than any dragon he had seen, tainted by the Corruption or not. There was something about the form of its body and the messy mantle of its feathers that made it more frightening than any reptilian Nightmare Creature. And then there were its eyes, as well — the eyes of a creature who witnessed a reflection of the Forgotten God… the God of Corruption.

Which had been forever frozen in the depths of Weaver’s gorgeous eye.

Sunny was pulled back by the shadow tendrils he had manifested, and a split second later, a torrent of fierce white flames swallowed the towering figure of the Vile Thieving Bird, obscuring it from sight. He landed on the cracked surface of obsidian he had covered the lake with, grasping his mutilated chest. The stonelike metal of the Jade Mantle was slowly repairing itself, and beneath it, the wounds left in his flesh by the talons of the Cursed Terror were beginning to heal, as well.

But it was still gruesomely painful.

In front of him, a colossal pyre burned ferociously in the space where the Thieving Bird had been.

‘Burn. Burn, you hateful bird!’

He did not know if he was cursing it or praying for it to burn.

Very few things could withstand the immolating heat of Neph’s flames…

And yet, Sunny suddenly shivered, feeling a dreadful gaze land on him from the depths of flame.

Then, two enormous wings rose and fell, raising a hurricane. The white flames were suffocated and extinguished, revealing the giant figure of the Thieving Bird — entirely unscathed, as if it was impervious to fire. The Thieving Bird jumped back, landing with a thunderclap above the place where its vile spawn was laying sprawled on the ground. The Vile Spawn threw an angry glare at Sunny, then made a tearful face and dissolved into the Cursed Terror’s shadow, finding safety beneath its wing.

The shades it had stolen from Sunny faced the shades that were still loyal to him.

And the Vile Thieving Bird faced the three Supremes who had come to kill it — the Lord of Shadows, Changing Star, and Ananke of Weave.

“What do we do? Do we attack at the same time?”

Ananke’s melodious voice was low and concerned.

Sunny hesitated for a moment,

‘What to do, what to do… indeed…’

Then, he shook his head.

“No… we need to get back, right now. Quickly!”

Nephis and Ananke followed his urgent call immediately, leaving all questions for later. And as the three of them dashed back, creating distance between them and the Vile Thieving Bird, who seemed ready to lunge at them…

Something moved in the shadows in front of it.

Then, a giant skeletal hand rose from the darkness, its black bones encased in bands of polished gold.