Shadow Slave

Sunny was still reeling from having his soul torn apart, then sewn back together. However, the battle was raging, so he had no time to recover in peace... that was fine. He was long used to fighting in the most dire conditions, anyway.

It took him only a moment to assess the situation. It seemed that he had been out of it for quite some time. The battlefield was ravaged and upturned, with the river itself slightly changing course. Its water, which had been clear once, now seemed muddy and noxious. Effie and Kai were still fighting the ghastly centipede in the shallows, with Saint supporting them from the darkness. The three seemed to be doing fine.

The soldiers, however, were straining to hold their ground. The slope of the river shore was littered with shattered bones, and hundreds of the Tyrant's abominable minions had already been destroyed. But there were hundreds more, and now that Saint was busy turning the Skull Centipede into a pincushion and weighing it down with the help of the [Burden of Peace] enchantment of Morgan's Warbow, there was no one to serve as the wave breaker against their tide.

There was only Jet. Soul Reaper moved like the beautiful visage of death among the bone fiends, erasing one after another from existence, but she was just one woman. No matter how fast and lethal, she couldn't be in several places at the same time.

Sunny hesitated, trying to make a decision. His instinct was to go for the biggest threat, personally removing it from the equation. However, the Tyrant was still strong and ferocious. Even without most of its powers, the centipede was putting up a dreadful fight. It was hard to say how long it would take to bring it down. The soldiers, meanwhile, would continue to suffer under the onslaught of the bone fiends until it did.

So what was he supposed to do? Follow his habits and race to kill the Tyrant, or act against instinct and put his trust in Effie and Kai, concentrating on reinforcing the ordinary soldiers instead?

Sunny sighed. 'Instincts are great. But humans rose above beasts for a and thanks to reason."

In the end, no matter how unnatural it felt, he could do no better than to follow the plan. The role he had been assigned was to lure the Tyrant to the ambush, and then put obstacles in the path of the bone army to make it easier on the Awakened and the mundane soldiers.

Sunny was going to put himself between the

They had already done their job by

four were his old companions - the gloomy, happy, creepy,

naive and good-natured. Even though it was not as boisterous, the guy resembled the happy shadow... a little bit too much. So much, in fact, that Sunny couldn't help but feel

front, he could sense a hint of boundless deviousness. The shadow

sighed. "...You're a naughty one,

Eventually, the shadow shook its head with utter sincerity.

the shadow was saying: "Who? Me? Oh no,

go then. I don't know if you've noticed, but we're in the middle of

of its head and glanced at its siblings, as if unsure what to do. When the other four shadows moved forward to wrap themselves around his body, though, it

then caught sight of Effie breaking a dozen of the Tyrant's legs with

time, he used the [Blessing of

her right. Soul Reaper was going to be responsible for the western half of the defensive line,

the next moment, the sound of

and slowed it down with

would have never killed a Corrupted Tyrant. However, it did give Kai a chance to deal a fatal strike to