Shadow Slave

The Spell kept whispering, the rich tapestry of its voice creating a strange harmony with itself. The result was almost distracting. Sunny instantly lost count of how many creatures he had killed with that single arrow, but it seemed to be... seemed to be close to a hundred, at least.

The swarm was nothing short of decimated. Half of the Black Tongues were dead, and the remaining half were fried and damaged to different degrees. The water of the mountain lake, which had been freezing cold just a few seconds ago, seemed to be boiling.

He had also been lucky enough to receive a bunch of Memories. Even if most of them came from Awakened abominations... Saint was definitely going to eat well tonight.

If she survived, that is.

...Before Sunny could come back to his senses, the familiar electric whine reached his ears. Samara was already aiming her heavy rifle. Its muzzle flashed, and in the next moment, the head of a wounded Fallen abomination that was trying to climb onto a large piece of ice exploded into bloody chunks. A split second later, Kim's carbine was firing, too.

'Right...'

Any other Master could have probably spared a few moments to appreciate the unbelievable feat of slaying a hundred powerful Nightmare Creatures in less than a second, but Sunny did not have such luck. He was still racing against time, and there was still an entirely different swarm of abominations for him to fight.

The pristine white expanse of the mountain valley was gone. Instead, all he could see was black water with charred corpses floating in it, and scores of viciously burned Nightmare Creatures feverishly trying to get to the shore.

Abandoning their attempts to climb onto the ice, they were diving down into the lake instead, to travel across its bottom. Since electricity only spread over the surface of water, summoning the Strike of Thunder for the second time was not going to do him any good.

Glancing at the macabre scene, Sunny turned his head and spoke:

"Dorn, I'll leave you in charge. The bastards sustained a lot of damage, and will be vulnerable while trying to break through the ice. Have Samara take out the strongest ones, and finish off the rest as they come up with Belle and Luster."

nodded, staring at

But, Captain...

was already jumping off the

with the second

Dorn blinked.

a

shadow, he flew through the darkness as fast as he could, rushing to the spot where he had sent

hold just a little bit more,

crested the sheer wall of the mountain slope and froze

below, in a narrow ravine, a furious fight was taking

Creatures resembled grotesquely tall humans with inky black skin, sunken eyes, and motionless faces. They're wearing strange armors forged out of dark metal, and wielded no weapons. However, Sunny had a strong feeling that being

mouths... were also

there were no

type, and

blow after another. The taciturn demon had abandoned her usual grounded style, and was not fighting with composed, but desperate urgency. Looking at it, Sunny could not help but be reminded of the first time he met the living

slain several creatures of a higher Rank, at the cost

fourth Corrupted was wandering aimlessly, straining to rip the black threads piercing its lips open. Inky blood was smeared all over its eerily still face. The creature's mind seemed to be gone, shattered by the cursed blade... however, Saint was also wounded,

was slowly

midsts, using its iron hooves, bestial strength, and wolfish fangs to tear them apart. His body was wreathed in shadows, with two crimson flames glowing furiously through the haze of darkness. The black steed looked like an

enemy due to his overwhelming speed, but he could not allow the abominations to swarm Saint from the