Shadow Slave

The eerie creatures built from the corpses of fallen Underworld warriors surrounded Nephis and Saint in a wide half circle, hidden in the darkness. Nephis could not see them, but Saint could... if vision was the right word to describe it.

Rather, it was a special sense that allowed her to perceive the movement of elemental darkness, as well as discern the shapes of objects hidden in its cold depths.

There were countless jigsaw creatures around them, varying in size, all poised to attack.

When the attack came, it all happened in a split second, making the ancient chamber quake and groan, slabs of rough stone falling from its ceiling.

The Dark Ones lunged forward, the brunt of them facing Saint. She dashed ahead to meet their tide, as well, diving into the darkness — despite her towering size, the taciturn Shadow moved fast enough to leave afterimages in her wake, a thunderous clap resounding in the underground hall as the crushing weight of her stonelike body sent devastating shockwaves spreading through the air.

Those shockwaves alone would have been enough to obliterate lesser opponents. Her enemy, however, possessed the same tremendous mass and moved with the same lightning-fast speed — so, when the two shockwaves collided, a roaring disturbance shook the mountain, heralding the terrifying fury of their clash.

Sunny, who shared Saint’s senses, could not help but feel the devastating momentum of their motion deeply — at that moment, he himself was like a mountain... or a cataclysmic rockfall, perhaps, his indescribable weight bearing down on the enemy as if nature itself chose to erase their blasphemous existence.

The first creature to reach Saint was a lumbering monstrosity that towered above her, reaching forward with an enormous hand, its jagged fingers ending with sharp stone spikes. Despite being almost two times smaller than the abomination, Saint used her shield to push the giant arm just a little to the side, causing it to miss her completely.

A fraction of a second later, carried by her terrifying momentum, she reached the creature’s body and slammed the rim of her shield into its abdomen. The entire middle section of the macabre colossus exploded, the mystical stone pulverized into a billowing cloud of dust, and its upper body crumbled.

The jagged pieces of stone were only beginning to fall when a flowing dark mass tried to escape from the collapsing shell — only to be pierced by Saint’s lightning-fast sword and dissolve into the surrounding darkness.

Continuing to move forward, barely slowed down, Saint spun to receive a devastating blow on her shield and, at the same time, beheaded another abomination with a swift and calculated slash of her sword. A moment later, her foot descended on a smaller creature rushing past her to lunge at Nephis, crushing it entirely under her armored boot.

At the moment, Saint was augmented by the [Evening Star], which was in turn empowered by her [Underworld Armament] Ability — and since she had abandoned the circle of light emanated by Nephis and dove into true darkness, the enchantment of her charm had reached its maximum potency. Saint was also strengthened by her [Mantle of Darkness] Ability, the two augmentations fusing to produce a chillingly devastating synergy. And, of course, she was empowered by Sunny himself — the scope of his augmentation increased by the Curse.

All together, this combination of sorceries and Abilities produced a devastating result. Nothing was as annihilating as Saint herself, though.

The power of a Supreme Devil augmented by the Lord of Shadows was daunting, but it was the battle skill of the last of the Stone Saints — honed by eons of war, bloodshed, and combat — that was truly terrifying. Even if the enemies were equal in strength or more powerful than Saint, their might seemed useless in front of her measured, murderous battle skill.

Their numbers, though...

Sunny felt a bit of unease.

Saint was strong, yes, and her cold wrath had made her even more fearsome than usual. But there were simply too many enemies around, all of them immensely powerful — easily equal to the pinnacle of the Great Rank. Additionally, their authority over true darkness seemed to be innately profound, which had rendered Saint’s sword and armor unstable.

Even now, they were rippling and shifting, the true darkness composing them flowing in an eerie flux.

‘Quite troublesome...’

Far behind Saint, Nephis was faring a little bit better.

Fewer jigsaw monstrosities had attacked her, and even if their speed and might were daunting, Nephis herself was more powerful than Saint — she was a Titan, after all, and due to the unique synergy between her own fiery augmentation and Sunny’s empowerment, her power had only grown. More than that, once the Dark Ones were bathed in the stark brilliance emanating from her radiant figure, they seemed to exhibit sighs of discomfort. That did not make them weaker, but Sunny could sense that this battlefield belonged to Nephis — they were invading her territory, not the other way around.

Still, Neph’s advantage over Saint was not straightforward. Even if she possessed more power as a Titan, in terms of pure physicality, the towering stone knight was still more imposing — Nephis was not a stone colossus that weighed countless tons, after all.

Saint’s sheer mass made her a devastating presence on the battlefield, causing the entire chamber to tremble under her feet. Neph’s power was expressed through the potency of her Aspect Abilities and the uncompromising tyranny of her Will, and since they knew very little about the Dark Ones at the moment, it was difficult to predict how effective the Will would be in suppressing them.

For now, she simply pushed herself off the ground and leapt toward the swiftest of the abominations, plunging the Blessing into its chest.

The blade of her radiant sword sliced through the mystical stones as if piercing butter, melting it and causing the edges of the wound to glow with incandescent light. In the next moment, the creature shuddered and opened its mouth, blinding light spilling from within it, from its eyes, from the countless cracks between the jagged pieces comprising its body.

Then, it simply crumbled into a pile of rubble, seemingly destroyed.

’The light.’

Sunny regarded the rubble for a moment, a seed of understanding taking root in his mind.

He felt like he had understood why these lesser Creatures of Darkness had chosen to piece together stone carapaces around themselves instead of attacking Nephis and Saint directly — it was because of Neph’s light.

True darkness could not swallow it and was chased away instead. So, to destroy the radiant adversary, the Creatures of Darkness had hidden themselves in impenetrable stone shells, using them to invade the radiance and crush their enemy. Sunny was quite disturbed by the fact that these alien beings were displaying such inventiveness.

At the same time...

He did not want to imagine what would have happened if Nephis were not here, and the Dark Ones had no need to wrap themselves in these easily noticeable, heavy bodies.

‘Let there be light...’

Where there was light, there were shadows, after all.