Shadow Slave

[Nephis... something is wrong with this Titan.]

Sunny did not have to speak aloud, because the two of them were mentally connected by Cassie’s Aspect. Cassie herself could hear them too, as well as perceive the world through them.

So, she must have sensed the eerie discrepancy between what the Jade Titan was supposed to be, and what it actually was.

Neph’s voice resounded in his mind a moment later, sounding wary.

[I can sense it, too.]

The two of them were already quite close to the ruined amphitheater, moving at breathtaking speed. They would reach the ancient arena in mere seconds, which meant that they did not have a lot of time to understand what was wrong about their terrifying enemy.

[Cassie?]

There was a moment of silence, and then her voice resounded quietly, as if coming from a great distance. Sunny could barely hear her.

[The Titan... elemental darkness... what you see is merely... shell... his consciousness... across the entire city. He controls all the Tainted Saints...]

There was a pause, and then Cassie spoke again, this time clearly:

[But something is controlling the Titan. I cannot see what.]

Sunny frowned.

If even Cassie could not sense what was truly going on, then things were dire. Knowing your enemy meant that you were halfway to achieving victory, after all. Not knowing your enemy? That meant being halfway to defeat.

She did tell them a few important pieces of information, though. The Jade Titan was not merely the towering colossus in front of them — in fact, the stone giant was merely his physical shell. The Nightmare Creature’s titanic consciousness, meanwhile, spread across the entire city, controlling all its defenders. That was why their movements were so precise and strategic, resembling that of a disciplined army, not of a horde of frenzied abominations. If the Titan was destroyed, the cohesion of the tainted army would be greatly diminished.

But more importantly...

Sunny’s vague suspicion had been proven true. The fallen colossus was indeed being controlled by something.

What kind of creature was capable of subjugating a Great Titan?

Sunny was not sure, but even if he desperately didn’t want to find out, he was going to learn the answer shortly.

He cast his shadow sense outward, trying to sense a second presence. But there was nothing — he did not sense any movement around or behind the Jade Titan, and neither did he sense another living shadow hiding in the darkness.

By then, the two of them had already passed the last of the gargantuan stalagmites, escaping into the vast expanse of empty air surrounding the ruins of the great amphitheater. They were seconds away from clashing with the Jade Titan, and Neph’s radiance already fell on his dark armor, making it glisten in the darkness.

‘There’s nothing...’

Feeling a cold chill run down his spine, Sunny focused his senses on the area immediately behind the towering colossus. Neph’s radiance, as well as ambient lights emanating from the magnificent city, were the reason why Sunny could encompass it with his shadow sense. Still, there were countless places here where elemental darkness still pooled, cold and deep like an ocean, blocking his senses. Those places were like blind spots for Sunny, since he could not perceive anything hidden in the darkness. But the shape of those blind spots was telling in and of itself.

He did not need to perceive something to know that it was there. At the moment, the absence of shadows was informative, as well. The negative space created by elemental darkness was what Sunny tried to discern.

And when he concentrated on the absence of shapes...

His breath caught for a moment.

Sunny’s eyes widened, and his skin crawled.

’What the... hell... is this?’

Despite having experienced all kinds of horrifying encounters, for a split second, Sunny felt taken aback.

Because there, indistinguishable from the surrounding darkness, something was extending from the Great Titan’s back.

It was a gargantuan tendril of elemental darkness.

The Jade Titan was at least two hundred meters tall, and the tendril was easily supporting the weight of his titanic body... it was like a stone flower blooming at the end of a long, black stem.

What truly terrified Sunny, however, was that he could not sense the source of the tendril. It stretched across a dozen kilometers, gradually growing thicker, and disappeared into the boundless darkness of the great chasm behind the city. There was no light in the chasm, and therefore no shadows — so, Sunny did not know how far down the tendril extended.

Perhaps it rose from the Abyss itself.

‘D—damn it all...’

They entered the city expecting to fight a Great Titan, but what they truly faced was a Creature of Darkness — a Creature of Darkness that could control a Great Titan like a puppet. Beings of darkness did not conform to the familiar framework of Ranks and Classes, but it had to be as powerful as a Nightmare Creature of a high Class, at least... or perhaps even something more terrifying.

Most of all, this scene looked familiar.

Even though the scale and scope were entirely different, it looked eerily similar to the first battle they had fought in the Underworld — the battle against an eerie creature that used the corpses of fallen Stone Saints as its shells.

Was that the same being?

If so... its tendrils extended across the entire Underworld, stretching for thousands of kilometers.

And it had been watching them all along. Finally, Sunny realized why the mysterious creature had never attacked them for the second time.

Why would it attack if, all this time, they had been moving toward its maw?

‘That... that...’

Sunny felt like they were woefully outclassed. A being who could envelop all of the Underworld with its tendrils was too terrifying to imagine — they were powerful, but they were not powerful enough to fight something like this.

However, now that they had come to the edge of the Abyss, they had no choice but to fight it.

And if that didn’t work... then, they could only attempt to flee.

Sunny pushed the terror out of his mind, composing himself.

‘It’s... it’s just an eldritch horror that lives in the Abyss.’

What... what was the big deal?

If the creature could easily kill them, it would have done so months ago, at the entrance to the Underworld.

If it wasn’t afraid of Neph’s light, it would not have used stone shells to hide from it. Yes, it was terrifying and powerful... but it wasn’t all-powerful.

Which meant that they could still defeat it. Or, at least...

They could resist it.

Gritting his teeth, Sunny relayed his discovery to Nephis.

In the next moment, they reached the ancient arena and attacked.