Shadow Slave

The spiders were about the size of a human, incredibly fast, and had plates of something that resembled iron covering parts of their repulsive bodies. They looked like armored battle machines created for the sole purpose of slaughtering living things.

They also looked strangely familiar. With a little effort, Sunny realized that these abominations looked a lot like lesser, much smaller versions of the giant Fallen Beasts that had destroyed the original Stone Saint and her kin.

It's just that their size and armor weren't nearly as formidable.

If so…

'I have bad news for you, fools.'

As soon as the spiders attacked, the members of the cohort reacted with the deadly calmness of experienced Dark City hunters. Weapons flashed in the air, severing limbs and piercing through iron as though it was paper. Effie straight up flattened one of the creatures with a devastating strike of her battered shield. The poor beast didn't even have time to understand what a huge mistake it had made.

The others were no less efficient. Sunny himself threw the Prowling Thorn and pulled on the invisible string as soon as it sunk into the flesh of one of the spiders, bringing its jump to an abrupt end and sending it crashing to the ground. Before the beast could stand up, Quiet Dancer streaked through the air and pierced its head clean through.

Just a few short seconds after the spiders had tried to ambush the group of humans, the battle was over. Three dead Nightmare Creatures were sprawled in the mud, while the fourth one ended up pinned to a coral wall with several arrows.

They could have even shaved a second or two if it weren't for the need to look out for the spiderwebs.

Sunny shook his head.

'Disappointing.'

Wait.. why was he disappointed? Great! This was great! Not every victory had to almost cost him his life.

that this one was so swift that he had not even gotten the chance to finish any of the enemies himself, thus not receiving any rewards from

the silence for a few moments to make sure that nothing else was going to attack them, and then gave the cohort a go-ahead to start

cleaned, and put into Effie's enchanted bag. Everything was done

shake his head

reasons. First, as far as Nightmare Creatures went, these ones were not on the same

that the iron spiders relied heavily on their webs and battlefield advantage to defeat the prey. Because the cohort had destroyed the webs in advance, their main advantage

were some of the deadliest humans on the Forgotten Shore. Sunny was sure that at least four of them could kill a Pathfinder of the Host in single combat… if not

offer, after all. Effie had been right when she said that there had never been such a powerful cohort

six of them were more than equipped to handle just three awakened beasts. The Labyrinth

Sunny chuckled.

beasts… yeah.

it was

dead spiders, the cohort indifferently left their eviscerated bodies behind and continued on their

***

their destination. Not too far away from them, colored pink by the evening sun, a magnificent arch of white marble rose

built the Bright Castle, and made from the same stone. It looked like a much larger sibling of the pristine arch that guarded the entrance to the white road which climbed all the way to

bleak, and damaged. Signs of corrosion and deep cracks

arch and looked

stop for the

gave him a simple nod

our pace. The night is close, and we might have to fight to clear the top of