Shadow Slave

Several weeks later, the battered Night Garden flew across the waves as the sea foamed and boiled around it.

Space was unpredictable in the Stormsea, and time was unpredictable as well—day was sometimes so short that it could be missed in the blink of an eye, while night often overstated its welcome. Most of the time, however, the vast expanse of undulating water was shrouded in twilight, with pale stars shimmering in the distant sky.

At the moment, though, the Stormsea was bathed in sunlight, with not a cloud in sight. There was no wind, no storm was coming to unleash its fury on the Night Garden... despite that, the sea was turbulent and eerie, the water foaming as it seethed and roiled all around the living ship, as far as the eye could see.

There were terrifying scars marring the hull of the Night Garden, slow to heal despite the ancient vessel’s startling ability to mend itself. The civilians were safely sheltered below the main deck and remained in the sprawling vertical city hidden there while martial law was in effect, so only Awakened soldiers and Ascended officers were in sight.

That had become the norm over the last few weeks, as the Night Garden had engaged in countless battles and clashes with the Nightmare Creatures rushing to reach the Eternal City. All of Stormsea seemed to have gone mad once the celestial map was revealed—but now that they were getting closer to the goal, only the most dreadful contenders remained in the race.

”Captain! It’s... it’s surfacing!”

In the runic hall of the main pagoda, Jet gave one of her subordinates an amused look. “Captain, huh? If memory serves, I was a Lieutenant General last time somebody bothered to formally promote me. Shouldn’t you fools call me an Admiral, at least?”

The man blushed, embarrassed by her calm tone.

“S—sorry, uh... m‘am? But that thing, i-”

He did not get to finish the sentence, though, because at that moment, the foaming sea seemed to move.

At first, it seemed as if two towering waves swelled on both sides of the ship. Then, however, the water continued to rise, as if the sea was pregnant with two towering mountains—a few heartbeats later, the surface tension broke, and two gargantuan tentacles burst from the depths into the vast expanse of the sky.

Each was at least half a dozen kilometers long... and that was only what was visible of them above the surface. Who knew how deep they stretched into the abyssal depths of the bottomless sea?

And who would want to know what was hidden there, in the depths?

The colossal tentacles rose from the sea like two black cliffs, casting their shadows on the Night Garden...

”Port and starboard, fire!”

Jet did not raise her voice, but somehow, it could be clearly heard despite the roaring of water and the howling of the wind.

A signal was given, and a few seconds later, the cannons stationed along the sides of the titanic ship thundered.

There were twenty-four of these cannons in total—twelve per side—and each of them was a colossal beast. The cannons were twelve meters in length and more than two meters in diameter, firing iron balls that were almost as tall as a person and weighed so much that only Ascended could load them into the barrels.

The cannons were not cast from metal, but rather carved from seemingly indestructible black stone, their surface engraved with intricate carvings. When Jet asked where that material came from, Sunny simply said that he borrowed some obsidian from the Shadow Realm... she was still not sure whether he was joking or not. 𝙍𝐚ŊỐ𝐛Еŝ

And when she asked what function the engravings served, he gave her a peculiar look and told her that they were there to make the cannons look pretty.

That, he seemed to have been deadly serious about.

‘That man...’

In any case, the cannons were enchanted with simple, but ingenious magic. They were able to absorb soul essence and then convert it into kinetic energy to propel the cannonballs with devastating force. The projectiles themselves were charged with essence, as well—that way, they were able to wound even Nightmare Creatures of high Ranks.

Of course, while only the quantity of essence mattered when charging the cannons—which meant that they could be operated by crews of Awakened—it was the quality of essence that mattered when infusing the cannonballs. So, if the Night Garden faced abominations of the Corrupted Rank or higher, a Master had to be in charge of the artillery crew to make the shots count.

Or better yet, a Saint...

Sadly, the Transcendent defenders of the Night Garden had better things to do than run around fueling cannons with their essence, and the nightmare creatures they faced on this particular expedition were often of the Great Rank, instead.

However, the Lord of Shadows had thought of a solution for that, as well.

To solve the problem, he designed the cannons in a way that allowed them to consume essence not only from Awakened, but also from soul shards. And, luckily enough, he seemed to possess literal thousands of Transcendent soul shards, at the moment—the spoils from the conquest of the Burden Forest, no doubt.

These soul shards had been distributed among the government soldiers aboard the Night Garden, resulting in a significant increase in their overall power. These days, there was hardly any Awakened or Ascended here without a fully saturated core. The remaining shards were assigned to the cannon crews, and were being used to feed powerful essence into the cannonballs.

As the cannons thundered, colossal orbs of shining metal streaked through the air and tore into the colossal tentacles. Enormous chunks of flesh and torrents of oily black liquid filled the air, and one of the tentacles folded under its own weight, falling back into the waves.

The aim of the starboard cannoneers fell short of the mark, though, and the second tentacle continued to rise above the Night Garden.

When its colossal shadow fell upon the living ship, Jet glanced up with a concerned expression.

”Brace.”

As the enormous tentacle fell, wrapping itself around the Night Garden, four more rose from the foaming sea.