Shadow Slave

Briefly giving Caster a few instructions, Nephis walked over to the edge of the platform and looked down. When she saw the numerous creatures climbing the stone giant, a grim expression appeared on her face.

Sunny weighed the Prowling Thorn in his hand and asked:

"So, what's the plan?"

Changing Star glanced at him and smiled darkly.

"What else? Kill as many as you can."

With that, she jumped down and landed softly on the shoulder of the colossus. With a sigh, Sunny followed.

'Figures!'

A moment later, they separated. Nephis dashed to the opposite side of the moving statue, running on the wide stone path of its collar. She was going to try and deal with those creatures that were climbing the front and the left side of the giant.

Sunny was going to have to stop those coming from the right and the back. He wasn't sure that just two of them were going to be enough to cover all that space, but they didn't have a lot of choices.

Sunny and Nephis at least had the high ground advantage against the enemy. Those fighting against the swarm of monstrous locusts, however, did not. The cohort couldn't spare anyone else for this task.

Looking down, he was finally able to discern the shape of the attacking Labyrinth dwellers. They looked like massive primates covered in dirty, grey fur. Their arms were strong and muscular, easily pulling their heavy bodies up the ancient stone surface. Each had a mouth full of sharp teeth, with two curved tusks protruding from it, as long as daggers.

The most disturbing fact about these beasts was that there were crimson flowers growing from within the bloody gaps in their flesh. Some even had pale stems slithering from one eye socket to another. With a shiver, Sunny realized that this tribe of Nightmare Creatures were simply hosts for a different, much more terrifying one.

The primates were nothing but meat puppets for those ghoulish flowers.

'Oh gods…'

The small rock plunged through the air

attention to the fact that half of its head was missing, the

his teeth and

'...Just as I thought.'

by a swarm of flying abominations. There had to be a horde of monstrous primates attacking them from the ground, too! And gods forbid those powerful beasts were

bodies are not so tough due to their partially decomposed

he could work

range of the Prowling Thorn, something thundered above Sunny, and in the next moment, he was doused from head to toe in fetid black blood. A mangled corpse of a giant

for a second, then

target now, aren't I? Well… great! Let them

***

the kunai down. He guided it by ever so slightly

spun, drawing a curved path. A few moments later, it cut across the wrist of one of the menacing primates, cleanly

beast instantly fell down. After plummeting from the deadly height, it hit the crimson corals below and

listened to the emptiness, a tense expression on his

slain an awakened monster, Blood

[Your shadow grows stronger.]

on his face.

a hand, he caught the returning

much

to slaughter as many of them as he could before they reached the battlement constructed on the giant's shoulder, or else they were

Prowling Thorn as it flew through the air, cutting through flesh and bone alike. The heavy kunai never stayed in his hand for more than a second,