Shadow Slave

Surrounded by devastation, Sunny, Kai, and Effie stared at each other with confused expressions on their faces. Their weapons were still raised, ready to strike at the enemies… however, there were no enemies around.

Just dead silence.

Sunny tensely studied the devastated hall, then slowly pulled out the emerald amulet and looked at the little girl with a silent question written on his face.

"Effie… tell me… is there, perhaps, a slumbering Saint somewhere in the temple?"

She frowned, then shook her head.

Sunny was genuinely perplexed.

"Uh… maybe there is an indescribable horror that had been contained by the chalice? And we have set it free? Or an ancient curse? "

The little girl wiped the sweat off her bruised face, then said in her soft, childish voice:

"Not that I know of. Uh… no, there are no horrors. Or curses."

Sunny blinked a couple of times.

"So, what… we really won? Just like that?"

Effie stared at him for a bit, and then yelped in outrage:

"What the hell do you mean by just like that?! We just wiped out half a hundred vicious Awakened battle zealots, and you yourself killed three Ascended champions! Not to mention destroying the chalice… which was supposed to be indestructible, by the way… was that not hard enough for you, you crazy demon?!"

He tilted his head a little and thought about it.

you put it like that… I guess it

had indeed achieved something remarkable just now. But it still felt weird…

of a horn. That had to count

it had been the opposite of that. However, it had not been as costly as he would have expected it to

faced him after being mangled by the Strike of Thunder and the consequent explosion of the chalice. And he had only been able to damage the chalice, thus allowing the divine flame contained within to destroy it, because of his insight into how true sorcery

in the Red Colosseum, as well as his trials

more than a bit of

then asked

We can just…

of the white-haired Maiden for a few seconds. Her little face

get roasted even more by the

well. His gaze, however, seemed to be aimed at something beyond the walls of the devastated hall. Then, he lowered his

young man lingered for a few moments, and

that were being trained in the sect? Do we need to take them with

the back of

yes. I, uh… did not think about that. The War Maidens were known to take in orphaned girls, right? Where

he had just slaughtered their previous caretakers. But the idea of leaving them here did not sit right with Sunny,

would end up having to deal with settling

down, in the direction where Kai had been looking a few moments ago. She turned away and said in a strangely

were a few other girls with me before, indeed. But they… well, they

the Dusk Shard, then bent down to pick up one of the swords laying

at the start of it all. But somewhere along the way, the sect changed. By the time the girl whose body I took

at it with strange darkness

training, anyway — had grown vicious, cruel, and inhumanly hard. Of all the girls subjected to it, only a handful survived. In this batch, ah… I was the only

again at the body of the white-haired War Maiden with a complicated