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.

gotten the chance to finish any of the enemies himself, thus

of cloth, listened to the silence for a few moments to make sure that

parts were cut, cleaned, and put into Effie's enchanted bag. Everything was done with efficient speed and

only shake his

iron spiders with such ease because of two reasons. First, as far as Nightmare Creatures went, these ones were not on the same level as, for example, carapace scavengers. They had a slight advantage in

their webs and battlefield advantage to defeat the

Sunny was sure that at least four of them could kill a Pathfinder of the Host in single combat… if not one of the

settlement could offer, after all. Effie had been right when she said that there had never been such a powerful cohort outside the walls of the Bright Castle

than equipped to handle just three awakened beasts. The Labyrinth was

Sunny chuckled.

beasts… yeah. How

yet, it

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

***

from them, colored pink by the evening sun, a magnificent arch of white marble rose high above the sea of crimson

It looked like a much larger sibling of the pristine arch that guarded the

Signs of corrosion and deep cracks covered its

the arch and looked

our stop for the

simple nod and said after

our pace. The night is close, and we might have