Shadow Slave

"The Nightmare Gate leading to the area of the Black Skull Citadel was located within the hunting grounds of a Corrupted Titan... Sunny knew that.

The titan itself was a mysterious creature. The Evacuation Army did not possess a lot of information about it, simply because it was too dangerous of a task to observe the abomination - after losing several teams while trying to investigate the creature, even the elite scouts of the Special Reconnaissance Unit did not dare stalk it.

All they knew about the Corrupted Titan was that its movement patterns were erratic, that approaching it was suicidal, and that its powers had something to do with reanimating the dead. As long as the creature showed no sign of setting its sights on one of the siege capitals, the army simply monitored its general area of activity and kept away.

Army Command had also taken steps to ensure that the corpses of the Nightmare Creatures slain around the siege capitals were promptly disposed of, to ensure that the titan wouldn't be able to make use of them.

...However, the forces of the warring clans had brazenly invaded its territory, and now, they were about to pay the price. Sunny was sure of it.

'Damnation...'

Staring at the worm crawling across his palm, he felt time slow down. Instantly, Sunny was overwhelmed by an animalistic, panicked desire to sever his hand before it was too late - he did not know what would happen if he didn't, and was terrified to find out.

He was... scared.

There had been a time when Sunny felt fear often. At some point, however, he had developed a pretty high tolerance to terror, maybe because he had been exposed to it too much. These days, he sometimes felt disturbed, apprehensive, and wary - but very rarely truly afraid.

He couldn't help but be afraid now, though. Looking at the grey worm, it was as though Sunny had been transported to a snowy field in the Antarctic Center. The feeling of absolute, overwhelming powerlessness he had experienced there... it chilled him to the bone.

'Curse it!'

With a snarl, Sunny dissolved into the shadows, allowing the worm to fall to the ground. A split second later, he reappeared a few meters away, holding his sword in a defensive stance.

All around, the battlefield was changing. The worms were crawling from the ground and... and burrowing into the corpses of the fallen Awakened and slain Nightmare Creatures.

convulse. Some were even rising, moving like broken

'What.. what is this?'

to a perverted semblance of life. All kinds of wild thoughts flashed through his mind, from the instinctual desire to flee to the wild idea that it was Ki Song, the Queen of Worms, had personally descending into the

no, it couldn't

battled the Winter Beast for weeks... months, even. If there had been six more Saints supporting her,

Wake of Ruin. There were

below it - the head of a revolting, giant worm. It crawled from the soil as if escaping hell, its long body not really a single whole, but instead a shape created by numerous slithering grey worms

there were things only Sunny

not an actual creature, but instead an amalgamation of countless smaller worms, he could see its soul cores. A scattering of radiant embers that continued to reveal themselves as the abominations crawled from underground. Three were already in view, and four

in his chest, and allowed himself to be paralyzed

only for

'Embers... embers... seven embers...'

widened. Sunny was frozen for a moment, and

there is to war is power... and application of power... one has to

them exactly where

what Morgan

He shivered.

'Of course...'

cores. Its soul would have been permeated with

Transcendent Titan, if such a thing existed, would have had seven radiant

nor radiant cores. Instead, it had seven

a Transcendent

had summoned twenty of