Shadow Slave

'Curse it...'

Sunny stared at the dark abyss of the canyon, his mind empty. A second passed in stunned silence, then another. Finally, he turned around and looked back, as though capable of gazing through the armored hull of the Rhino.

Which he was, in a way.

There, behind the heavy AFC, the other vehicles of the convoy had hit the brakes, barely avoiding slamming into each other. They were crowded on the mountain road, snow dancing in the narrow beams of the headlights.

And behind the convoy, the flood of darkness was rushing forward, stretching its tentacles in their direction.

They had maybe a minute before the mass of dark beetles reached the rear vehicle.

...This time, Sunny was not going to be able to protect it.

He might: manage to destroy hundreds, or even thousands of the ghastly insects, but: it would be like a drop in the ocean. None of his attacks would be able to deal the titanic wave of darkness any serious harm... especially because, as Sunny suspected, the beetles were not technically alive.

Not only did he not hear the Spell announcing the kills while slaying the few that had crawled into his armor, but the mere fact that the damned creatures traveled with him through the shadows meant that they were somehow akin to inanimate objects - Sunny was only able to carry those with him through Shadow Step, after all.

What good would it do to kill a bunch of bugs that were not even alive, to begin with?

"Captain! What... what do we do?! "

Sunny glanced at Luster, then said in a hoarse voice:

"What else? Run... we have to run..."

Then, he silently disappeared into the shadows. A moment later, Sunny was standing at the edge of the broken road, looking into the bottomless abyss below. The biting cold of the polar night caressed his skin, and the strong winds instantly tried to push him down.

devouring the cracked surface of the road, getting closer and closer, and the mountain continued to quake, erupting

slopes that stretched far, far down. There was no secondary road to skirt its edge or descend to its bottom, only the broken bridge and

Sunny gritted his teeth.

that came to his mind, without even stopping to consider if

he would

veins with tremendous speed, and then flowed outward. His

Two black pillars suddenly broke through the snow covering the sides of the shattered road

edge of the broken bridge and bent, freezing for a moment

to spread forward and solidify, as if forming

was no bridge for them to cross, Sunny would

'Argh...'

essence that his soul felt as if it had come under strain. However, instead of slowing down, Sunny doubled his

meter after meter to meet the first one. Long tentacles of darkness shot from the tops of the pillars, turning into unbreakable chains. From them, dozens

the structural integrity of the hurried construct, and the speed with which he would be able to connect the two parts of

not

he had spent so much time in the ruined Kingdom of Hope, traveling

and stronger for

it all, but Sunny was too preoccupied to care. With a groan, he stepped aside and

"Drive!"

eyes, then glanced at the eerie black road that

he sent the APC rolling forward. Its massive wheels soon abandoned the cracked asphalt of the broken road and touched the black

shadows shook slightly...

of the Rhino, and then that of the next vehicles that drove onto

metal handle on the hatch of the last vehicle and allowed its momentum to pull him with it, then climbed onto its roof

seconds, Sunny glanced back, at the approaching