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.

any of the enemies himself, thus not receiving any rewards

few moments to make sure that nothing else was going to attack them, and then

cut, cleaned, and put into Effie's enchanted bag. Everything was done with efficient speed and professionalism that could only come from

shake

ones were not on the same level as, for example, carapace scavengers. They had a slight advantage in speed, but were

could guess, he would say that the iron spiders relied heavily on their webs and battlefield advantage to defeat the prey. Because the

some of the deadliest humans on the Forgotten Shore. Sunny was sure that at least four of

the best and the brightest the outer settlement could offer, after all. Effie had been right when she said that there had never been such a powerful cohort

to handle just three awakened beasts. The Labyrinth was going to really try harder if it wished to see

Sunny chuckled.

beasts… yeah. How crazy did

it

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

***

Not too far away from them, colored pink by the evening sun, a magnificent arch of white

built the Bright Castle, and made from the same stone. It looked like a much larger sibling of the pristine arch that guarded the

and deep cracks covered its surface, with one

studied the arch and looked at

stop

gave him a simple nod and said after a short

close, and we