Shadow Slave

Sunny had become a towering colossus, his imposing figure encased in a suit of fearsome armor. Blinding radiance shone from beneath the Jade Mantle, illuminating the shattered stones around him.

A moment later, he caught the fallen Stone Saint’s war hammer in an iron grip. Actually, Sunny first made a sidestep to avoid the blow, but immediately after, the space around him twisted, placing him square in the path of the enemy’s weapon once again. But, having expected that — counted on that, in fact — he managed to catch the war hammer just in time.

That was true mastery of combat, after all. Not only following the cadence of battle, but dictating it.

Sunny knew the Children of Nether well, so he could easily read what his opponent would do from the movements of his shadow. Right now, for example, the abomination was not at all rattled by the failure of his blow. Instead, the fallen Stone Saint immediately pressed the attack, intending to slam the rim of his shield into Sunny’s helmet.

’Steady...’

Pulling the war hammer to throw the enemy off balance, Sunny bent to avoid the devastating shield. Now that he had become a source of light, there were shadows on the fractured ground — reaching into them, he pulled a sharp sword out of the darkness.

A moment later, the blade of the black sword swelled with brilliant radiance, pushing the true darkness further away. With that, his luck had run out. The Space Saint had fathomed the unexpected transformation of his prey and changed his stance, leaving Sunny no openings. The Children of Nether were already terribly durable, their armor very tough to breach — and with the addition of a shield, getting past all their defences seemed all but impossible.

‘Will it work, I wonder?’

Instead of trying to bypass the enemy’s shield and find a crack in his armor, Sunny pushed forward, sidestepped...

And plunged his shining sword into the abomination’s shadow.

As soon as he did, the fallen Stone Saint shuddered, and a fountain of ruby dust exploded from within his helmet.

[You have slain a Great Demon...]

Saint was immune to soul attacks, and her kin were bound to be at least highly resistant to them. However, what Sunny attacked was not the creature’s soul, but its shadow — he wasn’t sure if the distinction would matter, but it did, and to calamitous result at that.

Very few beings knew how to guard their shadows.

‘Five to go.’

Sunny spun, in a rush to come to Saint’s aid. By then, the four Great Demons had reached her, unleashing a storm of devastating attacks.

Ice covered the joints of her armor, slowing her movements down. At the same time, the stones beneath her feet turned into a mire, pulling her down and trying to trap her.

A devastating flood of inky-black water crashed into her, and a moment later, a towering figure whose visor burned with infernal flames broke through it, the tip of his radiant sword a split second away from piercing Saint’s armor — or at least attempting to pierce it.

At the same time, the crushing wave twisted, turning into a second stonelike abomination. That one had already passed Saint, ready to deliver a second lethal blow from the side.

Slowed down, immobilized, Saint had little hope of evading either attack. She could try to block one with her shield and deflect the other with her sword...

Instead, she turned into a torrent of darkness and rushed past the Fire Saint, assuming her material form far behind him, near the abomination who had encased her armor in a layer of debilitating ice.

Her sword plummeted down like the blade of a guillotine, landing on the base of the fallen Stone Saint’s neck.

This time, she failed to behead the enemy, but she did breach their armor, dealing the abomination a deep wound.

By then, the miraculous flames had already mended Neph’s broken body, leaving it pristine and brimming with incinerating power. Despite being separated from the battle by the vast span of the square, she raised the Blessing and pointed its tip forward.

In the next moment, a ray of pure white light shot from the radiant sword, instantly breaching the distance between her and the enemy.

Her aim wasn’t precise enough to take out any of the fallen Children of Nether, but it did paint the square in a stark combination of white and black, allowing Sunny to step through the shadows and appear next to Saint.

Now, it was the two of them against four Great Demons.

Sunny quite liked these odds.

The ruined settlement quaked and collapsed as the battle raged on, each second summoning indescribable destruction into the world.

While battling the fallen Stone Saints, Sunny swiftly came to realize a fascinating detail about how they fought. That detail had to do with their indomitable, malevolent Will. What made these abominations so deadly was not only their fearsome power, their daunting resilience, and their sublime armaments. It was also their martial skill — and the fact that they not only possessed potent Wills, but also effortlessly expressed them as a collective instead of individuals.

As a result, the combined power of their Wills was far more formidable and oppressive than it was meant to be. Possessing a powerful Will and knowing how to express it were entirely different skills. The latter was the core of Supreme Battle Arts, which incorporated Will techniques into one’s martial style. Sunny and Nephis had been developing their own Supreme Battle Arts for quite some time now, but it was not something that could be accomplished with only training and ingenuity.

Perfecting a Supreme Battle Art demanded time and experience, and while Sunny and Nephis were powerful, they had only been Supreme for a few years. They had not reached the level of combat mastery the King of Swords and the Queen of Worms had possessed, as far as expressing their Will in refined ways was concerned. Sovereigns were solitary beings by definition, and Great Nightmare Creatures did not usually possess enough sanity to employ strategy and showcase refined skill. So, this was the first time Sunny saw a collective Will technique — and such a seamless one, at that.

This was not even a Supreme Battle Art... this was more akin to weaving the Will into a tactical formation.

Even as Sunny fought for his life against the fallen Stone Saints, he was absorbing their singular skill like a sponge.

He was thrilled to see such a profound and startling Will technique in action...

But, mostly, he was concerned with how to survive it.