Shadow Slave

Sunny clashed with the Jade Titan, feeling an ocean of malevolent Will bearing down on him like a crushing tide. Both of them were truly titanic in size, standing as tall as the great statues of the Forgotten Shore — nevertheless, they moved with speed and agility that beings of that size were not meant to possess, making the island-sized stalagmite beneath them quake and crumble.

The Jade Titan was a Nightmare Creature, but he seemed to possess a chilling, lethal battle skill — that was no surprise. If the armor he wore was indeed the same as the Jade Mantle, then he would have had to defeat thousands upon thousands of enemies to bond with it.

Their swords clashed, and before Sunny knew it, his odachi was caught in a bind and pushed down, the tip of the enemy’s terrifying greatsword sliding across its spine toward his faceplate.

He turned his torso and slammed his palm into both blades, throwing the greatsword off course.

‘Crazy...’

Sunny had fought powerful Nightmare Creatures before, and he had also fought Nightmare Creatures that retained their sinister cunning and combat skill. However, abominations of higher Classes were usually too vast and inhuman to fight as a person would.

The Jade Titan, however, was both colossal and possessed the skill of a sword saint. That was a terrifying combination Sunny had not expected to witness, let alone be subjected to.

Worse than that, the shadow of the abominable colossus was hidden in the deep darkness. Sunny could not attack it, could not sense it, and therefore could not predict the enemy’s next move.

With both swords temporarily out of the way, Sunny continued the motion and slammed his shoulder into the breastplate of the fearsome colossus, hoping to throw him off balance. There was a deafening thunderclap, and a devastating shockwave radiated outwards... however, the Jade Titan did not even flinch. Instead, it was Sunny who was thrown back.

It felt like he had slammed into something utterly, fundamentally immovable — as if his shoulder had struck the indomitable core of the Hollow Mountains.

His pauldron cracked, and his shoulder joint pulsed with sharp pain.

As Sunny staggered back, darkness surrounded him like a cold whirlpool, effortlessly suppressing the blinding radiance that spilled from the slit of his visor and from the seams of his armor. His light dimmed... but it wasn’t extinguished. His Will wasn’t shattered, either.

He was still ready to fight.

Somewhere far ahead, a bright flash tore apart the darkness for a fleeting moment, succumbing to the tide of lightlessness with unnatural swiftness. That was Nephis confronting the abyssal horror — Sunny could not discern what was happening there, but he doubted that things were going smoothly.

Far behind, Saint and her soldiers were besieging the soaring fangs of the ancient city.

Despite the superior numbers of the enemy, they were advancing. Saint had shattered the defensive formation on one of the aerial bridges, leading her centuria to slaughter the abominations. The Stone Saints were not ordinary soldiers, though.

In human battles, victory was achieved when the enemy’s morale was broken, and the hostile soldiers turned to flee. It was during the disastrous rout that most casualties happened — the breaking point itself, meanwhile, happened after a relatively minor number of soldiers perished. Losing one in ten soldiers was often enough to make the rest surrender to panic and come undone.

Even Nightmare Creatures knew fear, and while they rarely retreated, overwhelming losses made most of them surrender to frenzy.

The Tainted Saints, however, did not break. They did not flinch or stagger, either. Instead, they continued to fight with the same disciplined, composed determination even when the casualties among them mounted — they continued to fight until every last one of them was wiped out.

Total annihilation... that seemed to be the only way to defeat the Stone Saints.

That was why even when Saint breached their formation, the battle on the aerial bridge did not end swiftly. It continued, with the warriors of the abominable legion stubbornly holding their ground as they were cut down one by one.

However, Saint herself did not stay to oversee their fall. Responding to her silent desire, Sunny pulled her into the shadows and brought her to a different bridge, where another centuria of her army was straining to push back the enemy. There, the Fire Saint was entangled in a devastating duel against two Great Demons of the enemy legion, dark flames boiling and spreading like waves.

Saint’s arrival immediately shifted the balance, causing the abominable defenders to lose their advantage.

With two of the aerial bridges breached, the tide of the battle was turning. Soon enough, the centuriae that had conquered them would be able to attack other forces of the enemy from the rear, causing their defenses to collapse.

The battle above, meanwhile, was progressing slowly. The shadow of Absence led a smaller contingent of soldiers to conquer the stalactites, accompanied by two of the strongest Supreme lieutenants under Saint’s control. Shattered corpses plummeted from great heights, disappearing in the billowing mist below, and fewer and fewer arrows struck the shields of the attacking shades.

There was progress... but it wasn’t without cost.

At this point in the battle, Saint and her soldiers were still fighting at a great disadvantage. They slayed countless abominations, but their losses weren’t insignificant either. For now, she was barely managing to keep the number of warriors under her command even — many of them were vanquished, while new shades took their place.

That was why Saint moved from one centuria to another, engaging the strongest champions of the enemy legion in fierce duels. She could not eradicate thousands of foes in an instant, but if she cut down their Great commanders, her own lieutenants would be able to turn the situation around. And those slain champions were becoming her lieutenants, too...

Pushed back by the Jade Titan and struggling to resist the suffocating tides of true darkness, Sunny could not help but feel a jolt of dark glee.

‘Look well, bastard... that is what a real champion looks like.’

As if to respond, the gargantuan greatsword shattered his defenses and left a deep dent on his breastplate.

At that moment, rattled and blinded by pain, Sunny learned what it felt like... to be hit by a mountain.