Shadow Slave

The sky parted, sliced through by a narrow vertical rift. Behind it, the fabric of reality made way for a dark, harrowing abyss of nothingness — both light and darkness seemed to be twisted and changed near the Gate, breaking as they were destroyed.

The rift dwarfed the entire battlefield, stretching for hundreds and hundreds of meters into the shattered sky. The abandoned outpost, and the black fissure of the Nightmare Gate that led to the vicinity of the Black Skull, looked tiny and insignificant in front of it.

An invisible shockwave rolled outward from the point where the gargantuan rift touched the ground, exerting an almost irresistible force. Sunny braced himself, but still staggered as the wave passed through him, barely managing to stay on his feet.

His mind was drowned by the deafening, cacophonous howling of the Call — it was many times louder, more unbearable, and maddeningly demanding than it had ever been before.

Sunny desperately resisted the overwhelming desire to submit.

All around them, the Awakened warriors screamed as they grabbed their heads and fell to their knees. Their eyes were wide open, but unseeing. Some were bleeding, and some seemed to be crawling toward the Gate. Some were thrown to the ground by the shockwave.

The invisible force made no distinction between those serving Valor and those serving Song — they were all the same in the face of the harrowing rift.

Mundane humans, if any had come to witness this battle, would have been outright killed by the pressure of the Gate.

Sunny staggered back and looked up at it in terror.

His lips moved.

"Four… it's a Category Four Nightmare Gate…"

And, just as he said those words…

The world shook again, and another rift tore through the sky.

The world convulsed, and one more sliced the fabric of reality apart.

Like three dark pillars holding up the heavens— or three vile spears cruelly thrust into the flesh of the world — three colossal Nightmare Gates surrounded the battlefield, cutting out all paths of retreat.

a way

the fearless soldiers of Clan Song, and those Awakened of the Evacuation Army that had come as escorts of Saint Cor —were trapped between

the abyssal darkness

pushed from it into the waking world, each as large as

the edges of the vertical rift and strained, as if

horrifying part of it

That they succeeded.

to spread through the sky. Then, the gaping wound of the Nightmare Gate was torn open, and a seething mass

into gargantuan black tentacles, which

took a step back.

the battlefield, the towering tortoise Echo was ripped apart with a single swing of a black tentacle. The Awakened sheltered in the stone fort on its carapace were thrown into the air, and the Transcendent creature instantly exploded into a

massive figure of the titanic worm. The titan rose its repulsive body into the air to meet them… but a

then raced away. A split second later, the Reflection of Silent Stalker

Most shocking of all…

from the vague figure outlined in front

bloomed where the

they splattered

the Whispering Blade, brother of the King of Swords

He was dead.

Sunny and Nephis watched the

Great Terror? A Great

hypnotized by the terrible sight of a Great Nightmare

front of it. The mere

within the other two

abominations that would enter

Were zero.

obliterated in seconds, a Master like