Shadow Slave

It happened faster than Sunny could perceive — which should not have surprised him, considering that his perception was crippled and limited to what Nephis and Saint saw.

What was surprising, however, was that Saint had not sensed the danger either, despite being attuned to elemental darkness.

One moment, she was standing at the border between light and darkness.

The next moment, the darkness moved, pushing the radiance back and enveloping the taciturn Shadow.

And a split second later, something moved in the darkness, lunging at Saint with impossible speed.

It moved faster than the speed of sound... But not faster than Saint’s hand.

Before Sunny could even react, Saint had already raised it and manifested her dark sword, coldly skewering whatever it was that had lunged at her on its tenebrous blade.

She tilted her head faintly, looking at the attacker.

Sunny saw it at the same moment, too. There, impaled by the Blade of Darkness, stood another stone knight wearing fearsome black armor... only there was nothing graceful about this one. Instead, his figure was crude and misshapen, assembled from innumerable jagged pieces of rock that did not quite fit with each other.

It was a patchwork monster formed from the remnants of dozens of slain Stone Saints.

Sunny was a little disturbed, though, when he tried to peer into the depths of the creature’s being to determine its Class and Rank. There were no radiant soul cores of vile tumors of Corruption inside its soul... in fact, there was no soul at all.

There was only darkness.

‘A Dark One?’

Sunny was momentarily taken aback.

He had encountered the Creatures of Darkness once, in the lightless expanse of the Shadow Realm. There, the eerie entities he called the Dark Drifters had tried to consume the Shadow of Condemnation, showing no fear or trepidation in front of the dead Cursed Tyrant.

The Dark Drifters were vast and formless, resembling billowing swathes of tattered black cloth. They could take various shapes, each towering hundreds of meters in height, and seemed to be capable of feeding on shadows.

Those immensely powerful beings seemed to exist beyond the familiar definition of Rank and Class, too, as if alien to the fundamental laws of existence established by the gods.

Sunny had allowed the possibility of encountering similar creatures in the Underworld, but he had not expected to see one using the remains of Stone Saints as a shell.

Why would it?

There was no answer... but even if Sunny felt wary of the Creatures of Darkness, he was reasonably confident that Nephis and Saint would not be helpless in a fight against one — especially not when he was augmenting them with his powers. Both possessed means of dealing with true darkness, after all.

Nephis could dispel elemental darkness, while Saint could control it. So...

In the next moment, his confidence was shaken.

That was because the peculiar patchwork monster did not die or crumble when Saint’s sword pierced it.

Her sword crumbled instead.

Its dark blade rippled and grew unstable, the darkness it was forged from flowing forward like black tar... being absorbed into the mangled mess of the creature’s shattered body.

Not only that, but Saints gauntlet... her entire armor... was losing solidity and flowing down as well.

Her helmet melted like a candle, revealing the alabaster perfection of her inhumanly gorgeous face.

All of it happened in less than a heartbeat. Then, Sunny felt Saint’s face contorting subtly, full of wrath.

In the blink of an eye, her other hand shot forward with impossible speed, shattering the creature’s breastplate and plunging into its chest. The jigsaw monster collapsed into rubble, and she pulled... something out, grasping it tightly in her fist.

It was a squirming, shapeless mass of darkness that wrapped its tendrils around her forearm, straining to break free.

Or possibly to slither under her vambrace and seep through her jade skin.

Still overcome by an uncharacteristically intense anger, Saint gritted her teeth and crushed the dark being in her fist. It convulsed and lost cohesion, dissolving into a stream of darkness that flowed lifelessly to the floor and dissolved in the surrounding lightlessness.

A moment later, there was no trace of it left.

Sunny did not know how Saint had done it, but he was pretty sure that the creature was dead.

Or at least... gone.

The Spell did not announce the kill, and a new shade did not enter his soul. But that did not mean that the thing had not been destroyed — it simply meant the Creatures of Darkness were not alive, to begin with. Or, rather, they existed outside the concept of life.

True darkness was antithetical to shadows, after all. So, the Creatures of Darkness did not possess shadows, and therefore, were not followed by death.

And since they were alien to death, they were alien to life, as well.

Saint’s sword reformed, and her armor mended itself, a current of darkness flowing upward to hide her flawless face. A moment later, only two fierce crimson flames glowed behind the visor.

”Nephis, get ready.”

Sunny’s whisper came just in time — not that she needed a reminder.

A chilling rustle spread throughout the colossal chamber.

It was the sound of innumerable shards of stone moving... of all of them moving.

As Nephis glanced down, her expression solemn, the carpet of jagged rocks covering the floor of the underground hall seemed to vibrate, and then receded.

The shattered corpses of the Stone Saints were being pulled by some invisible force, disappearing into the flowing depths of impenetrable darkness. And there, innumerable shapes were assembling from the shards — Nephis could not see it, but Saint could. Her graceful figure expanded, growing to ten meters in height, and a round shield appeared on her right arm.

Out there in the darkness, some shapes were no taller than an average human. Some were great and imposing, standing at equal height with her.

Some were even taller, lumbering above the cracked floor like broken giants.

Saint regarded them with murderous fury. Then, she raised her sword, and brought its edge down on the rim of her shield.

Once, twice...

The deep ringing resounded in the echoing silence, announcing the start of the battle.