Shadow Slave

The ground split open, and the head of a massive insect appeared from beneath. Sunny was thrown off balance, and much worse, there was no time for him to dodge the sudden attack. He could not even use Shadow Step.

'Crap!'

Before he could do anything, the maw of the Fallen Devil closed around one of his legs. Sharp mandibles scraped against his greave, smearing revolting mucus all over the bleak steel of the Undying Chain.

The good news was that his Transcendent armor turned out to be too tough to be bitten through by the damned abomination. No matter how hard the creature pressed with its jaws, the armored greave refused to bend or be pierced. It also withstood the corrosive effect of the liquid oozing from the insect's maw.

Perhaps things would have been different if Sunny did not possess such a high divine affinity, but with the [Brilliant Will] enchantment reinforcing his armor, it reached a stupendous level of durability.

The bad news, however... was that Sunny was completely immobilized. Even if the Fallen Devil could not bite off his leg, there were countless other abominations that were already dashing forward to press the attack and rip him apart. Every armor had its cracks, and the Undying Chain was no different.

"Let go, you filthy bug!"

Sunny reversed his grip on the Cruel Sight and thrust it down. His strike was so powerful that the incandescent blade pierced all the way through the impregnable chitin of the insect, cracking the thick plate protecting its forehead and melting parts of it away.

Despite the terrible wound, the Devil refused to die. Even with its listless black eyes turning into liquid and evaporating, it rose from the ground and then viciously jerked the upper part of his torso, swinging Sunny into the ground.

No matter how tough his armor was, at this point, human bones would have shaped and shattered.

However, [Bone Weave] stubbornly held his femur and tibia together.

It hurt like hell, though.

"Argh!"

Slamming into the rocks, Sunny stubbornly thrust his spear deeper into the Devil's head and then briefly glanced at the approaching soldiers of the stone hive. Following his command, the shadow tentacles shot forward and crushed a few closest ones.

appeared from his lower torso and grabbed

The

possessed

to damage the thorny opponent, it decided to change tactics. Instead of trying to savage the enemy, the glant insect simply clenched

parted around them

'Not good...'

exactly what was happening... pulled dozens of meters into the solid stone,

exactly

Sight even deeper, pushing it into the body of the Devil as far as he could. At the same time, he commanded the spear to assume its

escaped from the cracks of its carapace, and then, the Devil contorted in a terrible convulsion. Just a few seconds later, it was immolated from within, turning into nothing but an empty,

slain a Fallen Devil,

[Your shadow grows stronger...]

his heart

'That's great, but...'

and so, its unnatural power dissipated. The stone surrounding them turned back into its solid state, encasing Sunny

no light, no room to move, no air to breathe. Even with a Master's prodigious might, digging himself out

he was not just any

simply used Shadow Step and emerged from a stretch

Antarctica had never felt so sweet. The inhospitable, dim sky had never looked so

his knees and take a gasping breath, Sunny

absent from the battlefield for a dozen heartbeats... but in a clash like this one, just a

the rear of the human formation wide open, and a tide of stone hive soldiers was already flowing up the slope, approaching it. Most were already well outside the range of effect of

Sunny's eyes widened.

to come up with

think, only a single idea came to mind. It could lead to a lot of unforeseen circumstances, but forced to act