Shadow Slave

The snowstorm manifested by the Winter Beast was like a rolling cataclysm, with devastating winds carrying a seething mass of swirling snow and tiny ice particles. Close to its heart, the ice particles were like a myriad of razor-sharp blades, shredding anything that had not been frozen by the unholy cold already.

Each of the countless shards of ice had been a part of someone slain by the blizzard once, perhaps.

And yet, absolute peace reigned in the heart of the storm. A vast area beyond the invisible fortress wall of suffocating cold was entirely devoid of wind, snow, and ice... everything was flawlessly still, as if nothing could move in this frigid kingdom, not even the winds of the blizzard itself.

With the sky above shrouded by ash, it was dark here, with frozen rivers of lava glowing dimly as they turned to glass. The heat of the underground rivers of molten rock was powerless against the profane power of the Corrupted Titan... and yet, it was enough to buy Sunny a second or two more.

The Winter Beast itself was floating above the ground in the middle of its frozen kingdom.

When Sunny first saw it, he was taken aback.

The creature... was eerie and grotesque, unlike anything he had ever seen. Just witnessing it made him feel appalled, as if his senses were trying to reject the existence of such a being.

The Winter Beast could not be called a beast, at all. Instead, it was an expansive, ethereal structure made of ice, as if countless torrents of water had frozen when they exploded outward from a hidden source. It would have been beautiful if it wasn't so... organic.

Although the titan's body was made of ice, it also looked like a living creature. The twisting pillars of ice vaguely resembled parts of a mangled body... limbs, organs, torn intestines, broken bones, and desiccated flesh. It was as though a giant being had been meticulously disassembled into countless parts, and then violently fused together in macabre disorder.

There were dark shapes of other Nightmare Creatures fused into the ice here and there, as well, still and lifeless.

The ice was pale and bleak, but the Winter Beast itself was nevertheless full of color.

That was because numerous flowers bloomed on the ice, their petals an intense azure color. The contrast between their vibrant beauty and the appalling body of the creature beneath was hideously striking.

snow drifted from the flowers like pollen, shrouding the

was both beautiful and harrowing...

shadow was encased in it. Sunny thought that it resembled the remains of a human

momentarily lost as to what to do.

hesitation only lasted

his shoulder. The ground quaked from the terrible force of the impact, and the thin layer of volcanic glass cracked under his weight, a fountain of molten lava shooting into

the same time, the frozen pauldron of the Onyx Mantle shattered into countless pieces of black ice, and the giant's

ice, and were now fracturing under the strain of his movements. It seemed as though

It did not matter.

roll, propelling himself forward into a powerful leap. The Winter Beast moved slightly, the azure mountain of its body hovering above the snow. Some of the twisting, vaguely organic pillars of ice moved, as well..., unfurling slowly, as if preparing to explode forward and receive the shadow

hell toward the harrowing creature. But it was too late for regret. Now that he had jumped, there was no turning back, and no choosing a different

'Die!'

roar escaped through the dark giant's bared

from the creature's body and tore through his armor, impaling the damaged Shell. Not paying it any attention, he immediately grabbed the thickest of the ice spears and pulled himself lower across its length, leaving a trail of dissipating

gauntlet of the Onyx Mantle disintegrated into a haze

forward to encompass him. The unbearable cold permeated the entire mass

surged with

slid low enough to reach the actual body of the abominable titan. His feet

onto the grotesque shape

And then...

pulled the Winter