Shadow Slave

'What the hell am I doing...'

Indeed. The wall of the city was breached, a menacing Nightmare Gate was towering above him, and not too far away, a furious conflict was raging in the rabble of the staging area. And yet, Sunny was staring at the runes that shimmered brightly in the air in front of him.

His vision was a little blurry, but the runes were clear and perfectly legible, as if existing outside of reality. Which they probably did.

'Oh, well...'

Sunny needed a couple of minutes to recover, anyway.

He looked at the field of runes, searching for the names of his Shadows. A new string of them replaced the old one:[Onyx Saint]

'Onyx, huh...'That had a nice ring to it.

Marble Saint had turned into Onyx Saint. Was his Marble Shell going to evolve into the Onyx Shell, as well, once he Transcended?

Sunny would have loved to pursue that train of thought, but unfortunately, he couldn't. His thoughts were slow and erratic, refusing to consider anything too complicated.

Giving up, he concentrated on the runes of Saint's name and started to read the descriptions.

Shadow: Onyx Saint.Shadow Rank: Ascended.Shadow Class: Devil.Shadow Attributes: [Battle Master], [Stalwart], [Ember of Divinity], [Heart of Darkness].

'Heart of Darkness... that's new.'

Sunny glanced at the mass of attacking arachnid warriors, catching a glimpse of Saint decapitating an especially menacing abomination with a swift slash of her black sword, then sending its body flying into the mob with a strike of her shield. Even before the rim of the shield connected with the creature's chest, the blade of the stone sword was already moving to deflect an incoming blow.

'...She's not dead yet.'

He looked back to the runes.

ancient darkness dwells in

Saint had not just destroyed the sphere of black stone in the tunnel... she had

coexisted within Saint, somehow...

grew louder, and a little closer, forcing him to look past the runes nervously and then hurry up. The Gate

Sunny lowered his gaze.

[Weapon Sage], [Underworld Armament], [Mantle of Darkness],

'Two new ones.'

was a bit

surrounded by darkness, and true darkness more so, her swiftness and

a couple of

explains how she is so powerful

staging area was usually well

physical augmentation of the [Mantle of Darkness] seemed to be a formidable one, and combined with the embrace of his four shadows, it produced a truly

able to heal herself from now on, at least when surrounded by darkness. That

her heart, but the rune could also mean soul. Sunny suspected that it alluded to both the true darkness dwelling in Saint's heart, and her essence... or whatever it was that the Shadow used instead of essence. The point was that its replenishment rate would be

the Black Knight

shadows and to the elemental darkness. Those were supposed to be mutually exclusive, but were not, in

mundane and true darkness. Recalling how harrowing his journey through

'Interesting...'

gaze to the second of the two

[Blade of Darkness].

use of that weapon. The Blade of Darkness can slay

Sunny smiled.

her sword herself, in

indeed. Since Saint was a Battle Master and a Weapon Sage, she could wield any weapon with superb proficiency... which meant that the true darkness

weapon would be as strong as Saint was herself, growing stronger if Saint evolved again in the future. It was capable of killing both corporeal and incorporeal creatures.

of it was

when Sunny gathered enough