Shadow Slave

The Chalice Knight resembled a human wearing a tattered suit of ancient armor that had turned green from rust. He towered at around two and a half meters of height, but seemed even taller because of the deer antlers attached to his closed helmet. The rusty helmet itself was fashioned to resemble the snout of a snarling beast, with deep darkness nestling in the crack of its visor.

There was moss growing here and there on the battered armor, and a ragged cloak, too weathered to retain any color, hanging from his shoulders like a torn banner.

The creature was holding a frightening battleaxe in his hand, its blade large and heavy enough to easily split a human in two.

The Huntsman... was like a dead knight that had crawled from under the roots of the forest that had claimed an ancient battlefield, ghastly and imposing enough to make Rain shudder.

Worse than that, the dark crack of his visor was already staring directly at her.

Her souls seemed to squirm under that gaze.

'Crap.'

Rain nocked another arrow on the string and prepared to draw her bow...

But before she could, the Huntsman had already reached the base of the tree that served as her sniper nest.

His dreadful battleaxe rose and fell. That dreadful strike was enough to make the mighty trunk of the ancient tree explode into a hurricane of splinters, obliterating a whole swath of it.

But, a moment later...

A sharp arrow fell from above and lodged itself into his knee. It struck precisely at the narrow gap between the bottom of the abominations's cuisse and the top of his poleyn — which were the armor elements responsible for protecting one's thigh and knee, respectively.

A pretty decent shot, considering the situation.

But Rain did not have any time to celebrate, because the tree was already toppling... and she was falling with it.

After a moment of weightlessness, the rope tied around her chest drew taut, and she found herself flying through the air.

a path of retreat. Rain had never considered that climbing a tree would protect her from an Awakened Demon,

between the trunks of terribly tall trees at

wind whistled in her ears,

is going

she spun at the last moment and used her legs to dissipate the shock of colliding with another tree at great speed. The other end of the rope was

not break her neck or crack her skull, which was a relief, but her feet were in agony. Ignoring it, Rain immediately cut the rope

leaning against the trunk of the tree, two things were waiting for her: her

one smooth motion, Rain grabbed the arrow

barreling toward her, so fast that it was hard to

wasn't faster than

the movements of her enemy. So, she did not aim at where the abomination was, but

pierced the air, striking at

the edge of the Huntsman's cuisse and shattered, only managing to slice some moss off the rusty green

Demon, while the arrowheads of Rain's arrows

same Rank... but she herself was not.

Rain wasn't entirely clear on the details, but what it meant in practice was that she had to strike at the cracks of the abomination's armor... which she had failed to do,

waste time

javelin, Rain... spun,

ran as fast as she

such thing on

lodged in one of his knees. It didn't matter that such a small wound was not at all dangerous for a creature of his Rank and Class — a joint was a joint, and if there was something disrupting the joint's

arrowheads in a way that would make removing them nearly impossible, unless the victim wanted to take a sizable chunk of

would have been much better if both

Because, now...

really did not know if she would be able to escape his axe long

'Run... run!'

— not because he was afraid to lose it, but because the quiver of arrows she had hidden up ahead would be useless without it. But she had to sacrifice something, and her javelin seemed