Shadow Slave

Sunny was bleeding.

It was a peculiar and unpleasant thing, but he could not stem the flow of blood from his wounds.

His side was torn apart, and his forehead was cut. Blood was flowing down his face, stinging his eye. The world had turned half - red, and the shaft of his spear was slippery in his hand.

Of course, the smell of blood only made him hunger to kill his adversary more.

The only thing he regretted was that the Wolf did not shed blood, as well, despite being cut and mangled by his spear - the vile thing was a corpse, after all, and corpses rarely bled.

Sunny himself was not a corpse, but he was not in the habit of bleeding either. Today was the exception to the rule, though, because of who his adversary was. The Wolf was the epitome of a predator, and therefore, everything that it hunted was prey… was supposed to be prey.

And it was the nature of the Wolf’s prey to bleed.

To be mangled, torn, and devoured.

Sunny found himself struggling to push against the confines of being prey - of having this concept be forced upon him by the Will of the Wolf - and therefore, Blood Weave was cowering in fear of the malevolent spirit.

Of course, he was not bleeding as much as a normal person would - if he did, he would have turned into a corpse himself already. His Will was resisting the Cursed Demon viciously, and to great success. That was why Sunny was still alive, that was why the Wolf could not move freely on the slope of the volcano, and that was why the harrowing fiend had more wounds on its body than Sunny did.

And the reason why Sunny’s Will was so effective against the Will of a being that was far more ancient, far more powerful, and far more frightening than him was, in large part, because he did not wield it blindly.

He wielded it as a swordsman would a sharp blade, with finesse and precision. He had donned the essence of the Hunter, too, making that weapon uniquely suited to fight against the Wolf.

Sunny pierced the Cursed Demon with his spear, scorched him with lava, and set his Obsidian Wasps upon it like hunting dogs. He poisoned its soul with Death Will, smothered it with ash, and chained it with manifested shadows.

He broke its fangs and shattered its bones, slamming the giant Wolf into the slope of the volcano with the power of a Supreme Titan. He made sure that every step the vile fiend made inside his Domain cost more than it could afford to pay.

And pay it would…

”Argh!”

Barely blocking the swipe of an enormous paw with the shaft of his spear, Sunny was tossed back.

The Wolf moved with speed which made the concept of time meaningless. The world - those parts of it that were not pushed by Sunny’s own will - seemed still. Flakes of ash were frozen in the air, and fountains of lava had turned into glowing statues.

The sun stood motionless, half - hidden behind the horizon.

Feeling the iron taste of blood on his tongue, Sunny wanted to laugh.

He had wanted to hold out until the dawn exhausted itself, hadn’t he?

That hope seemed senseless now. At the speed with which he and the Wolf were moving, the dawn might as well have been eternal.

Landing on the jagged rocks, Sunny slid on the ash and righted himself with the butt of his spear.

The Wolf was already upon him, and there was no time to evade.

’You damn grotesque monstrosity…’

Sunny did not have time to evade, and he did not even have time to dive into the shadows. So, he did not even try. Instead, a split second - whatever that meant now - before the Wolf’s inescapable jaws snapped shut across his torso, he simply turned into a shadow himself. ℟𝓪ŊŏВËＳ

It did not matter for a Cursed Demon whether its enemy was tangible or intangible, so Sunny kept himself manifested as a clump of matter - a formless mass of darkness that was pushed by the fiend’s snout like fabric. Instead of biting him in two, the Wolf simply got entangled in him, carrying both of them hundreds of metres up the slope with its lunge.

Then, Sunny imbued his formless body with the weight of a mountain, pushing the Wolf down.

His spear was hopelessly beyond reach now… but that was alright.

Because there were a hundred perfectly fine spears sticking out of the creature’s back, their ancient flint blades still retaining their lethal edges.

A hundred hands rose from the formless mass of darkness entangling the Cursed Demon and grasped the shafts of the ancient spears, rending them out of the Wolf’s hide and then plunging them back with vicious strength.

The Wolf let out a distressing, soul - destroying howl.

And tore into Sunny’s formless body, shredding it apart with its fangs and its claws.

The pain was blinding. Everything about Sunny - his body, his soul, his spirit - was being torn apart.

But he simply laughed, continuing to stab the rabid beast with the hundred flint spears. Some of them broke, but more remained intact, piercing deeper and deeper into the fiend’s flesh… More still plunged into its shadow, rending it to shreds.

The Wolf fell and rolled, crushing Sunny under its weight.

Both of them were receiving grievous wounds, but Sunny knew that the Wolf would easily outlast him. There would be only one winner in this reckless exchange of mortal wounds, and it was not going to be the human.

The volcano shuddered once more, another section of the southern slope becoming utterly pulverized and broken.

In fact, most of the southern slope was simply gone, by now.

The eastern slope looked better, but not by much. Abundance was on the verge of collapsing there, and Kai was battering the indestructible brass giant with sonic blasts to buy the huge worm a little bit more time.

Slayer had managed to slay a few more Snow Wolves on the northern slope, but most of the Obsidian Wasps were already gone. She had to abandon her bow and unsheath her blades, slicing open the throat of a lunging Beast as she dove beneath it.

The terrain of the volcano had completely changed, the very landscape being reshaped by the frightening battle. It almost felt like the entire mountain was ready to collapse.

Drowning in pain, bloodlust, and fury, Sunny thought chillingly…

’It should be time, shouldn’t it?’

He would have smiled if he had a mouth.

The spear, after all, was not the only weapon of a hunter.

The hunter’s best tool was a trap.