Shadow Slave

1522 Break of Dawn

Driven to madness by wrath, Sunny was forcing his mangled body to move. His mind was muddled by fury and pain, and no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't stand up, for some reason.

An inferno of dark, malignant rage was consuming his aching heart.

'No, no, no!'

The dragon… the hateful worm… was laying dead on the wet stones, stolen from him. Silver blood was pouring from his opened maw and obliterated eye, slowly spreading across the ruined courtyard. If only there had been more time... if only no one had interfered in their fight... Sunny would have been able to slay the Dread Lord himself. He knew he would.

But the dragon was gone.

And now that he was gone, Sunny's suffocating fury needed a new target.

'Kill, kill them… kill them all… I'll kill them…'

He could sense several shapes through the shadows. The loathsome fly that had stolen his prey, the crippled fiend who had come from the water, and a macabre abomination that had been spawned by a tainted shard of the fiend's soul.

And the most odious of them all… a pale young man wearing a nebulous black mantle, who was looking at him mockingly with a derisive smile.

"Look at you, fool. Mad as a hatter. How pathetic… how familiar… how distasteful..."

Sunny growled.

The abomination was staggering toward him, piercing him with the demented gaze of its rotten eyes. Glass claws were growing from its stump, and twisted fangs were growing from its bloodied maw.

He grinned.

'Good, good…'

He couldn't stand up, for the moment, so the creature was graciously delivering itself to him. Sunny was going to enjoy tearing it apart.

But before he could, a slender rapier pierced the abomination's chest, and a radiant hand grasped its head. The creature glowed with incandescent light, being incinerated from within, and then shattered like a broken mirror.

He howled, his hoarse voice full of indescribable rage.

'No, no!'

another from him!

them, rip them,

mangled body up, someone approached and halted a mere step away. He looked up and saw a breathtaking young woman looking at him silently from above, her beautiful face devoid of emotion. Her silver hair was moving slightly in the

"I'll… destroy you…"

rip the young woman's body apart, but his muddled mind failed to contain the intricate patterns of the manifested forms. The

studied him for a few moments, then kneeled and put a

touch made

to… kill

the smoke streaming from the abomination's burned eyes flashed in his mind and disappeared, drowning in the sea of

Sunny wanted nothing more than to see the young woman die, he

her voice

"Sunny…"

strength, preparing to

"Dismiss your crown."

thought that a more profound rage existed, but when he heard those words, his entire being ignited with a harrowing

was far more scorching than the rage he had felt toward the odious dragon,

However…

in the voice of

the dragon, which had been oppressive and domineering to the point of being irresistible…

boundless abyss between nearly

woman's order, following it obediently, as if he had no will of his own. He felt broken and violated, which only made his bloodlust and desire to

he still could

'She… she ordered me.'

Twilight dissolved into a whirlwind

with it, Sunny's frenzied wrath

Leaving behind only horror.

Confusion, too… and pain.

the pain he had been ignoring caught up with

was consumed by

the hand resting on his head ignited with a soft glow, and its comforting warmth chased the pain away. A wave of cleansing white flame

sense of relief it brought

added to

was left laying on the ground, disoriented and feeling lost. Everything that had happened since he activated the [King's Resentment] enchantment of the Crown of Twilight was like a blur, but the memory of it remained, etched

'...What happened?'

he forced

was kneeling in front of him… wearing the Starlight Legion Armor, for some reason. Her