Shadow Slave

The [Underworld Armament] allowed the Mantle to accommodate and augment a charm Memory, channeling its enchantment as if it was inherent to the armor itself. That alone made the Mantle of the Underworld incredibly flexible.

What was more, this quality truly shined when wielded by Sunny. He could have augmented the Broken Oath with his four shadows, but chose to wrap them around his armor instead… achieving an even better result. Not only was the effect of the augmentation shared and enhanced, but all the other enchantments of the Mantle of the Underworld were augmented as well.

Among them was [Stalwart], which granted him extremely high protection against physical attacks, high protection against elemental attacks, and — most importantly — a moderate amount of protection against mind and soul attacks.

Currently, the Mantle was simultaneously radiating a tremendously damaging soul-annihilation aura and providing him with vastly increased resistance to soul damage.

Even then, when five of these auras clashed and combined together, he let out a scream and collapsed to the ground, consumed by harrowing agony. His already wounded soul was being frayed and eroded at a terrible rate, and all he could do was wreathe on the ground, barely clinging to any resemblance of consciousness.

The five Reflections were not doing much better.

Even though their Ascended souls, or whatever it was they had instead of souls, possessed a far better quality due to a superior Rank, they had fewer cores. While that was not enough to make them succumb to soul annihilation faster than Sunny by itself, that also meant that they had fewer shadows, and therefore their reflected versions of the Mantle enjoyed less augmentation, providing them with less resistance to soul damage.

What it all meant… Sunny had no idea. He could not guess who was going to be destroyed first — the Reflections or him. As far as he could tell, their chances were about equal.

However…

Things were very different when it came to Mordret.

Unlike Sunny and the Reflections, he did not enjoy the protection of the Mantle of the Underworld. He was also only able to steal the Aspect of the body he possessed, while his own strange and terrible ability to mirror someone's powers only worked inside the victim's soul. He could not simply copy the onyx armor onto himself, nor could he augment it.

moment… Mordret was

Sunny. A stifled howl escaped from his lips, and his eyes opened wide, full of shock and terrible pain.

around his body, heralding the appearance

were capable of manifesting themselves instantly. Most took several precious seconds to appear, and usually, the more powerful ones took the longest. By the time the sparks of light turned into tangible objects, he could have been either already dead or too severely damaged to

at the old man and gritted his teeth so hard that his fangs pierced his lip, sending drops

Just

soul annihilation filled his hearts, despite the fact that Sunny did not really think that getting rid of the prince would be so easy. He seriously doubted that Mordret would allow himself to

and spirit bodies had been destroyed in the past, but that did not stop Mordret from continuing to exist, somehow. The great clan Valor certainly did not lack means of dealing soul

don't care!

have been satisfied with just destroying Mordret's mortal shell, anyway. His true task was to buy Kai enough

Mordret had

could have turned differently, but the Prince of Nothing was nothing if not coolheaded and calculating. Despite the terrible suffering of having his soul slowly torn to pieces, he

Reflections. The shadowspawn was on his knees, his bestial face contorted by a grimace of agony.

the kneeling devil rippled and shattered like a piece of glass. Something swift and intangible moved through the air and

and then another. In an instant, four of the five — both Beasts and both Monsters — were gone, leaving

they disappeared, the components of the soul-annihilating field disappeared as well. Only Sunny's own augmented

out a trembling sigh of relief, and then dismissed the

scepter appeared on Mordret's body and in his hand. Each of the Memories, without a doubt, provided him with a degree of soul protection…

keeping itself together, Sunny remained laying on the ground. He groaned, and then threw a tired glance at his enemy. The flood of soul essence he was sending into the