Shadow Slave

Nothing was worse than a cursed army of Corrupted rats… except a cursed army of Corrupted rats that expanded endlessly the more you slaughtered them.

“S-sickening…”

Sunny held no particular hatred toward rats. Actually, he considered them quite remarkable creatures… fellow survivors, in a way. Twisted rats whose bodies and spirits were warped by Corruption’s vile darkness, however, presented a completely different problem.

At this moment, a torrent of these revolting pests was ready to consume him and Saint, and worst of all, no clear method existed to overcome them.

Fortunately, Sunny always prepared backup plans, and this day proved no different.

Strategy A involved simply destroying the rat horde through combat.

Strategy B, though, had been crafted specifically for situations where the rat horde proved too massive to eliminate through raw force alone.

“I trust Kai will succeed…”

The flood of Cursed rats nearly reached them when Slayer swung her blade once more, carving a broad corridor through their midst. She sprinted ahead, advancing through the bloody mist, while rats poured around them on either side.

The lethal Shadow stayed composed—excited, even—but Sunny felt an overwhelming urge to tremble.

Too many rats cascaded down the mountainside for each creature to scurry along the ground, so they simply scaled over one another in mad chaos. Their bulk created massive barriers on both sides of Slayer, surging past her like an actual landslide of squirming gray forms, wild eyes, and razor-sharp fangs.

The most horrifying aspect was how quickly the gap Slayer’s attack had torn in the rat mass sealed itself as existing rats mindlessly pressed forward and fresh rats materialized, threatening to engulf her beneath their writhing bodies.

Since the entire mountain crawled with the infinite swarm, no escape route existed for her.

Then an arrow struck the mountain further up the incline, immediately triggering a massive blast. A devastating blend of brightness, flame, and noise obliterated innumerable rats, exposing a wide circle of naked stone.

As enormous amounts of snow were scattered by the blast and a genuine avalanche tumbled down, Sunny created a passage through the shadows for Slayer. Before the rat wall towering overhead could collapse and crush her, she moved through the shadows and fled into the safe zone Kai’s arrow had formed.

The shallow pit left by the explosion was also encircled by walls of maddened rats, and would only last a few seconds.

Before it vanished beneath the carpet of gray bodies, Slayer carved another route through the rats. And before that route was consumed by the swarm, a second arrow landed some distance away, creating another explosion and clearing another section of empty ground.

The chaos persisted. The writhing mass of gray forms flowed like a deluge, consuming the whole mountain, while Slayer navigated through it wielding her weapon. Arrows descended upon the trembling peak like heavy cannon fire, pulverizing countless rats. Slayer’s blade destroyed even more, and the reek of blood filled the atmosphere.

The mountain would have resembled a horrible, nightmarish butcher shop if not for the fact that mangled, bleeding corpses of countless rats were instantly consumed by their many siblings… who only multiplied further as time passed, maddened and empowered by the hellish massacre.

Sunny was, frankly… confused.

He had seldom faced an opponent who became exponentially more powerful the more it was butchered, torn apart, and destroyed. Slayer and Kai were inflicting terrible damage to the swarm, but the more damage they caused, the more enormous the swarm grew.

“What a cruel little pest…”

He wasn’t certain what part he should play in this fight, besides creating shadow passages for Slayer.

Abundance had maintained a single form, at least. Sunny hadn’t been able to overwhelm its Will, but he’d managed to gradually corrupt it with his own. Furthermore, he’d prepared weapons to neutralize the giant worm beforehand.

The rats, though, were infinite. No single form existed for him to focus on, and thus, he wasn’t sure how to counter the concept of endless reproduction that the swarm represented. He also didn’t know what opposing concept he could have wielded if not for his duty of empowering Slayer. 𝖗Á𐌽𝘖₿Ê𝐒

And he lacked much time to consider… time wasn’t his ally, after all.

Not only would Sunny need to withdraw once the sun vanished below the horizon, but the swarm would simply grow so immense as to become unavoidable long before that.

He even contemplated using the Rat King’s own ability against it. What if he expanded the rat population on the mountain to such extremes that the entire peak crumbled under their mass? There was definitely a poetic justice in that strategy, and it might have succeeded under different conditions…

But not today.

After all, Sunny required the mountain to stay intact, because he couldn’t claim it if the mountain was destroyed.

And if he failed to claim the mountain, two Cursed Devils would attack him at dawn.

That was a confrontation he desperately wanted to prevent.

So, lacking a clear method to defeat the vile horde of Cursed rats…

Sunny could only trust in Kai.

“Go ahead, friend. You’ve got this.”

He had positioned Kai atop the Shrine of Truth deliberately. Sunny had guessed that the Cursed Beast would wield a power that defied logic, and he’d also suspected that its power would involve numbers somehow. Such things weren’t hard to predict, after all, because the most terrible thing about a mob of enemies… was that they formed a mob.

And the world rarely failed to fulfill its darkest promises.

Therefore, Sunny had assigned Kai a specific mission. He wanted to turn the Snow Tyrant’s power against its own servant…

Kai needed to locate the hidden thread through which the Tyrant commanded its Beast.