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.

shackles of

an overwhelmingly powerful enemy, an enemy that

But…

somehow did manage

other impossible obstacles that pressed him into the

Antarctic Center, and now, because of Mordret and his cursed schemes, he was on the verge of losing here

finish it all with one strike — not only because Nephis was weakened and vulnerable right now, but also because of the nature of the

Saint's already terrifying physical might was augmented by rage and pain. If Sunny delivered him a serious wound but failed to make it fatal, then that augmentation would only explode further,

only had

earn that single chance. He had learned the secrets of Dire Fang's Aspect, deciphered the battle style of the Transcendent monster, and found a

that it

exceeded all reason. His claws were ready to tear Sunny apart, and his fangs were ready to sink into Sunny's flesh. Even though the gap of power between them

But that was alright.

was a master of killing

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

could he, when Sunny's technique was as formless and shapeless as

predict how his enemy would act based on his formidable experience of participating

never fought a shadow spawn before. He was still judging Sunny as if Sunny

still considered himself a human,

prepared to strike, Sunny used the inherent flexibility of a Shadow Dance practitioner to bend his body in an extreme and almost unnatural way. At the same time, he used the physical characteristics

result, the Saint's claws tore through the raindrops above his head, while his momentum remained

teeth and let out a bestial growl as he used all his prodigious strength to push himself off the ground and leap

fast and skilled to allow the unexpected attack to

bring his

clawed hand pushed forward, catching him in