Shadow Slave

Putting her weight behind the Dusk Shard, Effie leaned into the shield and gritted her teeth. A moment later, a monstrous blow landed on it, strong enough to crush stone into dust.

But unlike Sunny's marvelous Echo, she was not made out of stone.

Instead, Effie was made out of something far more resilient.

"Argh!"

Pushing with all he strength, she felt the shockwave of the impact run through her entire body and then dissipate into the ground. Her bones groaned, but held together. Despite the terrible pressure, she held, too.

A moment later, Effie growled and pushed even harder, throwing the carapace centurion that had crashed into her a couple of centimeters back. Simultaneously, her spear shot from behind the shield and pierced the black chitin, sinking deep into the flesh of the monster. She twisted it and severed the creature's spine, then slammed her shoulder into the Dusk Shard, sending the massive corpse flying off the bronze blade.

Just in time. A second later, and the tall bastard would have skewered her with one of its scythes from above.

But as soon as the centurion fell to the ground, another abomination was already taking its place, with a terrible salivating maw and furious eyes that burned with madness.

'Curse it all…'

All around Effie, the bodies of humans and Nightmare Creatures were entangled into an undulating, bleeding, roaring mess. Claws and steel weapons rose and fell, sending streams of blood, splinters of bone, and chunks of flesh to the ground. Screams of fear, pain, and fury mixed with the indescribable howling of the nightmare horde into a cacophonous litany of death.

second, she noticed one of her fellow hunters throwing the body of an iron spider that had jumped onto him back with a thunderous strike of his shield; a stone golem biting into someone's head with its terrible jagged fangs; a giant centipede wrapping its long segmented body around a screaming human and sinking its hundred legs into

had no more

Hold, you misbegotten

leg of the abominable thing. The thin limb practically exploded, sending the monster crashing down — right on the blade of her spear, which flew upward and turned

blows on her heavy shield. Her spear lashed

'Blood Flower…'

breath and kicked the rotting primate in the chest, sending it flying back before too much of the damned pollen escaped the wound. The body of the Blood

[You have slain…]

But at the last moment, she pulled it back. The point of the bronze blade stopped just a few centimeters away

of the second, they stared at each other — Effie with confusion, the vaguely familiar young man with belated fear. Then, a massive shadow moved behind him, and the youth's head suddenly separated from his shoulders in a

'...D—damn!'

terrible creature. But before she had time to react, something crashed into her from the side, sending a wave of pain through her body. With a grunt, she slid on the bloodied coral and twisted her torso to put

still intact, even if just barely. The point of impact was covered with seething acid, which was biting into the metal, trying to

shifted her weight, preparing to deflect the next attack of the giant centipede. Before Effie could, though, something heavy landed on her back, trying to sink its teeth into her

escaped

its length, she stretched her freed hand back, caught the monster that was trying to bite her head off, and

with enough force to make the coral crack. Just to make sure that the bastard was dead, she stomped

more were already around her, their sharp claws and fangs lusting to taste