Shadow Slave

Glistening in the dim twilight of the underground chamber, an enormous leech was attached to his forearm. The creature was about a meter long, its slimy skin slightly translucent and red as dried blood.

It was indescribably repulsive.

…What's worse, though, was that its sucker had effortlessly broken through the leather vambrace of the Puppeteer's Shroud and sunk deep into Sunny's arm, splitting open his skin and muscles.

Currently, the leech was gorging on his blood, its belly slowly ballooning as crimson fluid rushed into it with frightening speed.

'Ah… ah… aaaah!'

With a sense of disgust and horror, Sunny slammed his fist into the spongy flesh of the revolting monster. Augmented with the power of shadows, his punch was powerful enough to easily break a human skull.

The abhorrent slug, however, did not even react to it. It just continued sucking out his blood. All Sunny achieved was sending a wave of pain rolling through his body.

'Not good…'

Instantly summoning the Midnight Shard, he enhanced its edge with the help of the shadow and hacked at the leech, putting all his strength behind the strike. The blade of the tachi was as sharp as a razor, and with the augmentation provided by shadow, it…

…Slid helplessly off the leech's skin, not leaving even a scratch on it. The slug wasn't affected at all. It was still drinking his blood, consuming a dangerous amount of it with each second.

Sunny stared at the disgusting creature, dumbfounded. His body was already starting to suffer from blood loss, a sickening weakness slowly spreading through it. There wasn't much time left until it would cause him to lose consciousness.

And then, inevitably, die.

'Think, think…'

The leech had broken through his tier-five awakened armor without any effort. It was immune to the damage done by the Midnight Shard, which had never failed to cut down any monster he faced before. This could only mean one thing.

The damn slug was a Fallen Beast.

Sunny blinked in disbelief.

'That thing is a Fallen One? Are you kidding me?'

if he was at the very peak of his rank, there would be a chance. But with his core mostly

gap between their ranks was just too

wound it. But it would take several seconds for the taciturn monster to appear and take action. Seconds that Sunny didn't have. By the time she was able to do

with only one option. If he couldn't get

to have to

would be able to grow

any case, he had to do it

teeth and hesitated for a moment. Despite understanding that

want to

resolve, he forcefully brought the Midnight Shard down… but then stopped it at the last second. The sharp blade hovered mere centimeters away from his

due to the lack of determination, but because

belly, which had been expanding rapidly as his blood filled it, stopped ballooning at some point. Now,

'What the…'

vile creature suddenly convulsed. Letting go of his arm, it dropped to the ground and writhed in agony. Through the translucent film of its skin,

being killed by his

was far more odd and tenacious of an Attribute than he

the Fallen Beast simply ruptured, spilling blood everywhere. Sunny

the daze, the voice of the Spell

have slain a Fallen

[Your shadow grows stronger.]

'Huh.'

received a

shook off his astonishment and lunged forward. He still had to escape

of the abominable leech, he turned around

to pursue him, Sunny rolled on the ground,

began contracting, bringing him out of the underground

deafening roar thundered from below, washing

of the Dead was

too late.

***

and then tiredly lowered himself to the

so weak. And