Shadow Slave

Sunny fell silent again, finally able to think straight.

There was a lot to think about... albeit not much time to do so.

They had escaped the danger momentarily, but he did not feel safe. In fact, Sunny felt more vulnerable than ever, here in the lifeless realm that was supposed to be his natural environment.

Strangely enough, his soul was not being eroded by the Shadow Realm nearly as much as it had been before. That was probably because, this time, he had not come here as a masterless shadow — his connection to Nephis was protecting him to a large degree.

Nephis herself was not affected too much, either. It was unclear whether staying in the Shadow Realm for long would still destroy her, but for now, she seemed fine. In fact, it was as if her entire figure was emanating a subtle, beautiful radiance, illuminating the dark sands around them.

Nevertheless, Sunny was anxious.

The Shadow Realm was connected to the Underworld, after all... it was connected to it by the Abyss. So, the prisoner of the Abyss was not that far, hidden somewhere in the darkness above them.

That thing was not the only danger they could face, either.

There were the Dark Drifters and other Creatures of Darkness that came to the Realm of Death to hunt the shadows. There were far more terrifying creatures here, as well.

Sunny had not forgotten the warning Eurys had given him once — the warning about harrowing beings that dwelled in the heart of the Shadow Realm. However, he understood that warning better now.

The last and most dreadful battle of the Doom War had happened right here, in this desolate land. The Void Gate had been opened here, as well, at its very center. What did it mean?

It meant that the strongest beings of both the Demon Legion and the Divine Host had been here when Corruption invaded the world. It spread from here across all of existence... which meant that the soldiers who had fought in that calamitous final battle were the first ones to be swallowed by Corruption.

The strongest champions of the Doom War and Corruption... were not a good mix. Sunny was suddenly very glad that he had listened to Eurys and abandoned his ambitions of exploring the depths of the Shadow Realm.

‘That bastard is not entirely useless, after all...’

And speaking of Eurys. Had he not mentioned reaching the Shadow Realm by traversing the Abyss?

Now that Sunny knew what dwelled in that bottomless well of elemental darkness, he could not help but feel a sense of grim astonishment.

‘How the hell did he get past both the abyssal horror and that ghastly thing?’

No wonder Eurys had been in such a pathetic state when Sunny stumbled on him, with many of his bones shattered, barely able to move.

The fact that there was anything left of him at all was already startling.

Sunny inhaled deeply, thinking back to the terrifying visage of the giant skeleton hidden in the Abyss.

What was that thing?

Was it a nephilim who had succumbed to Corruption? That was not supposed to be possible.

Or was it the corpse of one, reanimated by an endless mass of Corruption that used its bones as a shell?

Or was it the remains of an actual angel? What about the abyssal horror, then? What was it and why would it keep the Unholy One bound? Was it feeding on it, somehow? Had it been created by Nether instead, tasked with restraining a test subject? Had it been born before or after the Doom War? Sunny was not sure. What he was certain about, however, was that the metaphor that had come to his mind when he first beheld the prisoner of the Abyss was not entirely figurative. He could only describe the terrifying rot nestling within the ancient bones as a universe of appalling darkness... and he did not know if that was an exaggeration.

Sunny knew that the souls of Divine beings were vast. The entire Shadow Realm had been hidden inside Shadow God once... had been Shadow God. So, how vast was the rotten expanse of an Unholy abomination’s soul?

The world inside Ariel’s Tomb was fashioned from the soul of an Unholy Titan, whom the Demon of Dread had slain. If anything, Sunny now suspected that Ariel had only used a fraction of it to create his masterpiece.

He could not help but shiver.

When he read the story of how Ariel had slain the Stone Titan for the first time, it sounded quite epic. But now, having met an actual Unholy being, Sunny could only think of it as utterly terrifying.

‘Damn daemons...’

He inhaled deeply, trying to calm himself, and thought back to the moment of his death.

Only now that some time had passed did Sunny begin to realize how close to complete destruction he had come. It was as he told Nephis — all the prisoner of the Abyss had to do was point at his incarnation to destroy it.

Actually, that might have been a mercy.

Although that thing probably did not know it, it had done Sunny a favor. If the Unholy horror had not destroyed his incarnation, all of Sunny would have become a Nightmare Creature by now, all seven of his Shadow Cores consumed by Corruption.

‘I should count my blessings, I guess?’

Sunny smiled weakly.

The most terrifying part, however... was that they had gotten impossibly lucky. Sunny was a unique being because he was divided into seven incarnations, so he only lost one of them. If anyone else had happened to be in his place, however, they would have simply been killed in the blink of an eye.

Nephis, Mordret... Cassie, Ananke...

None of them would have survived that blow. The moment the prisoner of the Abyss pointed at them, they would have been erased from existence once and for all.

That, too, put the power of the Unholy Ones into perspective.

And that perspective was so stark that it was difficult not to fall to the ground in utter despair.

Sunny remained motionless for a long while, then grimaced.

‘That’s nothing new.’

He had felt the same way when facing the Mountain King for the first time, watching the Spire Messenger fly above the Forgotten Shore, when Solvane tore the heart out of his chest in the Kingdom of Hope, when the Winter Beast wiped out the remains of the First Evacuation Army in the Antarctic Center, when he first witnessed a storm made of rustling swords obscure the sky...

All those threats, and countless others like them, had seemed insurmountable once — and yet, to the Sunny of today, they were nothing but trivial obstacles.

With enough time and effort, the prisoner of the Abyss and other Unholy horrors would be the same.

So, there was no point in wasting time on despair.

...That was what Sunny forced himself to believe, at least.

For now, he had more practical matters to attend to.