Shadow Slave

Without wasting any time, Sunny stepped through the shadow and found himself in a spacious corridor under the arena of the Hippodrome. Jet must have been correct in her assumption that mythical beasts had participated in the chariot races held in the Eternal City - the corridor was wide, with high ceilings, and the gates leading to various halls were quite large as well.

Sunny could easily imagine a lumbering creature, like the abominable silver tiger he had fought recently, walking on this path on its way to the arena.

For a moment, his spirit of exploration flared up, making him space out while imagining the exciting games that had happened in the Hippodrome... but Sunny was too preoccupied by something else to let himself go on a mental tangent, not to mention the fact that he was simultaneously controlling countless shades engaged in a furious battle.

Walking over to a particular gate, he pushed it open.

Inside was a vast hall that must have served as a storage warehouse. The wares stored here were not of a mundane kind, though...

Instead, hundreds of suits of intricate armor were displayed on wooden mannequins. The walls were lined with stands that bristled with all kinds of fearsome weapons - spears, swords, axes, mauls, tridents, bows and arrows, javelins, glaives, halberds... anything he could imagine.

What was more, those were not ordinary suits of armor or ordinary weapons. Sunny had forged enough of them to know quality when he saw it — each was worthy of being wom or wielded by a Transcendent being, at least. A few, those that were displayed on ornate pedestals, were even fit for a Supreme.

Both the armor and the weapons were enchanted, as well. Sunny could see a flowing weave of runes etched into the glistening steel, and although he could not tell what enchantments the runes created, he sensed dire power emanating from the ancient blades.

Everything here had been preserved in pristine condition, just like everything else in the Eternal City. At least a thousand sets of armor and twice as many weapons were stored in this hall alone... it was an arsenal that put the armories of Great Clans to shame.

Sunny was suddenly regretful that there were so few human shades in the Shadow Legion.

Should he have killed more people, maybe?

’No... probably not...”

But even if he could not bestow these armaments on most of his shades, there were plenty of warriors in the Human Domain who could benefit greatly from receiving such potent tools.

Sunny hesitated for a few moments, then walked over to a pedestal that stood in the very center of the armory, illuminated by an enchanted lantern. There, an imposing suit of lamellar armor that seemed to have been forged from beautiful nacre scales was resting on a mannequin, its head crowned by a laurel wreath. A fearsome spear rested nearby.

This set especially radiated a feeling of history and dire power. It had probably belonged to an immortal champion of the eternal arena... Sunny could not help but think that it would suit the shadow of Daeron quite well, at least during this expedition.

’It’s a pity, though...”

Most of the shades Sunny commanded belonged to Nightmare Creatures, so these beautiful weapons and suits of armor were useless to them.

He still sent the entire arsenal into his Soul Sea, though. From there, the best equipment could be summoned to the human shades Slayer, meanwhile, would receive full quivers of deadly enchanted arrows.

Sunny could not help but think that there had to be a similar arsenal meant for great beasts somewhere in the Hippodrome, too. He searched it with his shadow sense, but did not discover anything that resembled gargantuan suits of armor. There was a different point of interest, though.

Stepping through the shadows, Sunny found himself in a different vast hall. There, enormous pools of something that looked like mercury were cut into the stone floor, surrounded by runic circles. Sunny studied the pools for a while, wondering what purpose they served.

He looked around the hall, then considered the layout of the underground complex hidden under the arena. Then, he walked over to one of the runic circles and stared at the runes.

”Form? Shape? Boundary? Hell, I can’t make sense of it...”

He did have a odd suspicion, though, one that he felt had a good chance of reflecting the truth.

Eventually, Sunny stepped back and summoned one of the shades that were guarding the battlements into the underground hall. Soon, an enormous leopard appeared in front of him, towering at least a dozen metres above the floor. Unlike some of the shades, this one was not clad in armor forged by the shadow of the King of Swords, so it was a perfect choice to conduct an experiment. Sunny hesitated for a moment, then commanded the leopard to enter one of the pools.

The mercury rippled as the massive beast submerged itself into the pool. Shades did not need to breathe, of course, and the liquid metal did not seem dangerous... still, Sunny called the leopard back before too long.

As the giant shade rose from the mercury, torrents of liquid metal flowed down its black fur. However, not all of that metal returned into the pool - instead, a layer of it solidified around the body of the leopard.

Sunny’s eyes trembled a little.

By the time the giant beast stepped back onto the cold stones, it was encased in polished armor. The mercury did not just solidify around it—instead, it was shaped and guided to tum into an actual suit of armor that was perfectly suited for the body of the bestial shade, protecting all its vital spots while leaving enough open areas not to compromise its mobility.

It was incredibly resilient, too— capable of withstanding most of Transcendent blades, at least... or Corrupted claws. Great Nightmare Creatures would not find it easy to break this armor, either.

As Sunny looked at the heavily armored black leopard, his eyes glistened. ”That’s what I’m talking about!”