Shadow Slave

Time was moving very slowly…

No, it was Sunny who was moving too fast. It almost felt as if the world had frozen.

The rain was suspended in the air, the fountains of mud had grown still, the distant figures of dying Awakened were like grotesque statues.

In this nearly static world, only two things seemed unbound by paralysis — the monstrous Saint in front of him, who was no slower than Sunny himself, and a bolt of lightning that was crawling across the sky, extending toward the ground as it forked and illuminated the bloody battlefield.

'Faster!'

Suddenly, a deafening roar exploded from Dire Fang's mouth, strangely distorted and haunting. It would have hit Sunny like a wall…

But he was prepared.

The [Silenced] enchantment of the emerald bone flute activated, creating a dome of absolute silence around him. Sunny passed through the sorcerous roar without being struck by its crushing power… however, behind him, Nephis had to endure its full weight without the protection of her flames.

Stripped of their augmentation, she couldn't resist it like she had before.

Erasing the image of her falling figure from his mind, Sunny concentrated on the task.

If anything, the importance of success had only become more stark now that his partner was debilitated. If he failed, both of them were going to die.

But he had already rejected the possibility of failure.

He was going to win. He was going to do what he promised to do. He was going to kill a damned Saint!

At that moment, Dire Fang was more than a chance adversary to Sunny. He was the embodiment of everything Sunny wanted to destroy — the rotten authority of the great clans, the vile curse of the Chain of Nightmares, the torturous brand of powerlessness that he bore on his soul ever since Falcon Scott.

inescapable shackles of

enemy. A terrifying enemy, an overwhelmingly powerful enemy,

But…

did manage to defeat

maybe he would be able to overcome the other impossible obstacles that

was on the verge of losing here in East Antarctica, as

strike — not only because Nephis was weakened and vulnerable right now, but also because

him a serious wound but failed to make it fatal, then that augmentation would only explode further, turning his enemy

only had one

He had learned the secrets of Dire Fang's Aspect, deciphered the battle style of the

that it would

his fangs were ready to sink into Sunny's flesh. Even though the gap of power between them had narrowed tremendously, Dire Fang still had an edge in terms of

But that was alright.

of the Forgotten Shore, Sunny was a master

essence of Dire Fang's battle style into Shadow Dance, the Saint had not gotten

when Sunny's technique was

try and predict how his enemy would act based on his

was because the Saint had never fought a shadow spawn before. He was

considered himself a human, he was also

a Shadow Dance practitioner to bend his body in an extreme and almost unnatural way. At the same time, he used the physical characteristics of his fiendish shell to switch from running on two feet to

the raindrops

and let out a bestial growl as he used all his prodigious strength to push himself

was too fast and skilled to allow

could bring his sword down on the

clawed hand pushed forward,