Shadow Slave

"...My Shadow?"

Sunny unlocked his eyes wide.

'Saint!'

It seemed that Saint had finished her evolution into a Devil ahead of schedule. All things considered, her timing was nothing short of impeccable.

Even in his disoriented state, Sunny knew that he could not ignore such luck.

As the first of the Nightmare Creatures emerged from the Gate, he abandoned his attempts to crawl forward and called upon his Shadow, instead.

The coldness of the polar night seemed to grow slightly darker. Then, an intricate sabaton forged out of black, stonelike metal stepped on the ground beside him.

Sunny weakly turned his head to look up at Saint, who was as aloof as ever.

His taciturn knight... had changed.

Initially, she had been roughly the same height as him, becoming taller after evolving into a Demon. Now, Saint towered above Sunny. Obscured by the beautiful onyx armor, the lines of her stone body were still slender and graceful... but at more than two meters of height, the fearsome Shadow seemed extremely imposing.

Her oppressive presence was worthy of a Devil.

The black armor itself had not changed much - it had always been a product of magnificent craftsmanship, and seemed even more superb and menacing now. However, Saint's skin, which had been grey like stone before, then white as alabaster, was now as smooth and black as polished onyx - at least what little of it could be seen through the slits of her visor.

The ruby jewels of her eyes burned with ominous crimson flames.

studied the vast rift of the Nightmare Gate indifferently, then glanced at Sunny. It almost seemed... as though

forced out a

I'm glad

and pointed

go deal with them, if you don't mind. I'll stay

the flood of monstrous

let his hand drop back to the

to have

to send the Broken Oath to the taciturn Devil. Then, he commanded all four of his shadows to abandon him

radiance. The shadows around the demonic knight swelled, becoming deeper and darker, surrounding

hint of true, elemental

from the revolting nothingness of the Gate. A flood of them

insectine humanoids with six hands each, their inhuman faces brimming with black eyes and jagged mandibles. They wore carapace armor and wielded weapons made of sharpened chitin, moving with astonishing speed and possessing dreadful might. As Sunny watched,

embrace the broken, burning world. Darkness flowed

utterly black in appearance. A feeling of dark, nebulous power radiated from its stygian blade. On her other

the enemy, Saint raised

its blade, as if challenging the

'D-damn...'

shaken to do anything, so he just sat on the

soon as the last of the soldiers ran past her. She collided against the arachnid warriors with her shield, sending a dozen of them stumbling to the ground, and then twisted into a whirlwind of annihilating darkness, her sword slicing through carapace armor, flesh, and bone

severed limbs, and broken bodies covered the

vitality from her

was too strong, too fast, and too tyrannical. A simple evolution of one Class could not