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.

tide of black beetles was devouring the cracked surface of the road, getting closer and closer, and the mountain continued to quake, erupting with a flood of

canyon was somewhere between one and two hundred meters wide, with steep vertical 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 the vast

Sunny gritted his teeth.

that came to his mind, without even stopping to consider if it was possible

he would just have to change

and then flowed outward. His face paled as his eyes turned into two pools

upward. Two black pillars suddenly broke through the snow covering the sides of the shattered road and rose into the sky, growing

tide of shadows rushing from below reached the edge of the broken bridge and bent, freezing for a moment above the bottomless canyon like a wave that was about to

instead of breaking, the shadows continued to spread forward and solidify, as if forming

to cross, Sunny

'Argh...'

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

first one. Long tentacles of darkness shot from the tops of the pillars, turning into unbreakable chains. From them, dozens of smaller chains fell, fusing

about the structural integrity of the hurried construct, and the

not much

there were very few people in the world who knew more about forming connections out of chains. After all, he had spent so much time in the ruined Kingdom of Hope, traveling from one island to another across the heavenly chains that

and stronger

was too preoccupied to care. With a groan, he stepped aside and waved to Luster, who was staring at him

"Drive!"

him with wide eyes, then glanced at the eerie black road that hung above the abyss, connected to nothing and

wheels soon abandoned the cracked asphalt of the broken

shadows shook slightly... but

the full weight of the Rhino, and then that of the next vehicles that drove onto it. And then, the

handle on the hatch of the last vehicle

seconds, Sunny glanced back, at the approaching wave of