Shadow Slave

Sunny looked at the wounded demon, a grim look of resolve on his face.

At this point, there was no reason to argue. They had no other choice but to face the guardian of the island themselves. Sunny's bag of tricks was all empty anyway — in the end, their fates were still going to be decided by sharp blades.

Someone was going to get killed, and someone was going to be the killer.

"How are we going to deal with his armor?"

Nephis weighed the sword in her hand and glanced down.

"I will break through the armor. Can you create an opening?"

Sunny nodded, not wasting time on unnecessary questions. If Changing Star was certain of her ability to cut through the demon's carapace, he had no reason to doubt it.

Creating an opening… that was not going to be easy. Even though the monster had suffered terrible injuries, he was still a force to be reckoned with. His size alone was going to pose difficulties. They would have to bring the behemoth down to his knees before even thinking of carrying out any sort of an effective attack.

And he was not just going to stand still under their assault, either.

But what else was there to do?

While Nephis was tying the golden rope to the branch, Sunny walked over to Cassie and lightly squeezed her shoulder.

She tried to force a smile.

"I take it that the Carapace Demon is still alive?"

Despite the heavy, cold, dark feeling gripping his heart, Sunny tried to make his voice sound relaxed and carefree.

"Yeah, but just barely. Don't worry too much. This whole thing will be over in no time."

'One way or another,' he added inwardly.

Cassie's smile weakened. She was clearly not convinced by his clumsy attempt to reassure her.

Sunny hesitated.

"Hey. Have you ever eaten demon meat?"

clearly surprised

"What? No."

Sunny grinned.

think. Neph had sort of monopolized the preparation of food, so I had no chance to put all the knowledge from

inedible things, as well as meats of all sorts of Nightmare Creatures, in preparation for his journey into the Dream Realm. Here, hunger was as much of an enemy as the

demon meat, I'll make you a steak. It'll

real smile appeared on Cassie's face.

a

threw it down without hesitation and

"Are you ready?"

his eyes for a second, feeling the strength of his body being enhanced by the

"Yes. Let's do this."

***

Glancing up, he saw the crippled

other one was gone, leaving only

azure blood... sadly, none of the cracks were

his torso to stem the heavy

more so than before. Because, despite the horrible

on Sunny and Nephis — the architects of his sorry

rising sun shone on the spikes covering

summoned the Azure Blade

careful. He's lightning

seen the terrible creature in action. As such, only he knew how dangerous the

taking her eyes off the enemy, and

the waiting Carapace Demon. Sunny was slightly ahead and aiming to circle the behemoth from the right — the side where the

from the left — the side where his pincer arm was slowly rising into

battle, Sunny's role was to take the brunt of the enemy's attacks, letting his partner deal the lethal blow when the time was right. Through the tacit understanding that they had developed through surviving dozens of life or death situations, the two of them were able to cooperate without speaking a single word, fighting almost

was their main

in the demon's

Nephis about the speed of their enemy, but he also had to deal with it himself. Sunny knew that he was much slower than the giant creature, but he

possessed an Aspect Ability that made him ten times faster than the silver-haired girl — at least. However, in the end, he only

with that big of a difference between their speeds, no amount of reaction could have helped her. Instead, she was able to predict and manipulate the opponent's attacks, starting the strike even before Caster himself knew that he was going to end up

control of the

had to repeat that feat against the ancient demon of the Forgotten Shore. Luckily, his speed advantage