Shadow Slave

Azarax had looked a little pathetic, hanging there on the tree. His personality, too, seemed overly domineering for someone who possessed a true kind of strength— those who were truly strong did not usually feel the need to constantly assert their dominance, after all.

But once the ancient tyrant regained his freedom, Sunny swiftly realized that he was truly a force to be reckoned with. He was an incredible ally to have… to the point that it was a little chilling.

There were three things that made Azarax so fearsome.

First and foremost was his skill as a warrior. Both Sunny and Nephis were astonishing combatants in their own right, but even they had to admit that Azarax was a daunting opponent.

He was ferocious, vicious, and devastating, moving across the desert like a raging storm — but, at the same time, he was deeply cunning and eerily astute, guiding the annihilating power of his wrath with surgical precision and cynical malice.

Most of all, he was experienced. A storied conqueror and a veteran of the Doom War, Azarax possessed a wealth of combat experience that they could not hope to match — could not even fathom, perhaps, considering how young they were in relation to the ancient tyrant.

The second quality that made Azarax a terrifying existence was the refined skill with which he wielded his Will. That, too, was something that neither Sunny nor Nephis could replicate because of the sheer difference in age between them.

If what Azarax had told them about his empire being the forerunner of the War Empire was true, then he had been Supreme since the latter part of the Age of Heroes — a good thousand years before the Age of Daemons, which saw the world be destroyed by the Doom War.

That meant that he had been learning how to wield his Will for thousands of years, while they were barely a couple of years into being Supreme. As a result, the degree to which Azarax could bend the world to his will was far greater than what they were capable of, and the ways he could express his Will were similarly far more varied and refined.

Take the glass armor and the great axe he was wielding, for example. Those weren’t Memories, and neither were they spoils he had scavenged from other Deathless. Instead, he simply willed the sand to be pressured into an brilliant liquid, which solidified into nearly indestructible shards of glass — those shards then formed into an armour around him all on their own, while at the same time coalescing into a heavy axe.

And that one was merely a visible application of Will Sunny and Nephis had witnessed. There was no telling how else Azarax was reshaping the world, his tyranny unseen. Neither of them could match that skill.

The third quality that made the ancient tyrant so menacing was his Aspect.

Azarax was keeping the details of his Aspect close to his chest, only letting a few details slip. But Sunny had been able to surmise the rest by observing him in battle.

From what the ancient tyrant had told them, his Dormant Ability was the foundation of his conquest… and it was a frightening Ability, indeed. It made it so that every time Azarax killed a living being, he grew stronger.

And over thousands of years of bloodshed, he had killed an incalculable number of living things.

The Deathless Sovereign’s strength was indeed terrifying — the stuff of legends, really. People sometimes talked about how one could bring down a mountain with a blow, but it was usually a hyperbole. In the case of Azalax, however, it was quite a literal description… and that augmentation did not only affect his might, either. It also made his body — or his bones, now — more durable. So, he was almost indestructible as well.

It was his Awakened Ability that had made Azarax known as the Plague of Steel, though, and it was far more insidious. That Ability made it so that every living being he defeated in single combat became his thrall.

Sunny was not sure if the beings the ancient tyrant subjugated were made unquestioningly loyal to him, or if they maintained their original beliefs and aspirations while not being able to refuse his commands. What he did know, however, was that Azarax had begun to assemble his great army that way thousands of years ago. It was that ever-growing army that earned him the title Plague of Steel.

He also knew that Azarax had been making a very cynical choice every time he used that Ability. He weighed the usefulness of a being and decided whether it would be more beneficial to make them his servant, or simply to kill them in order to grow stronger.

In any case, that was how Azarax was slowly assembling an army of Deathless in the Nightmare Desert. After the first night, there were only a few undead warriors who had begun to follow his commands. After the second, there were twice as many… and by now, a whole army of skeletal horrors were following him into battle, threatening to outgrow the battered Shadow Legion. That was what made Sunny think that perhaps Azarax had not been bluffing when he proclaimed his desire to conquer the Nightmare Desert.

The ancient tyrant’s Ascended Ability was a curious one. It allowed him to amplify his presence and use it as a weapon against his enemies. The suffocating, oppressive power of his presence instilled dread and trepidation into the hearts of everyone around him, making them weaker. It could also turn into a quite physical manner of pressure, crushing his enemies into dust. The curious thing about it was that Azarax seemed to have possessed a powerful presence even as an Ascended.

His Transcendent Ability… actually, Sunny was not sure. The ancient tyrant seemed to be capable of changing his size at will, at times becoming a towering colossus, but there was no telling if that was his Transformation or if that was just another application of his Will.

As for his Supreme Ability — that ability granted the boons of his Aspect to his vassal warriors. It made them grow stronger the more living beings they killed, and allowed them to emanate an aura of dread and oppression that weakened their enemies. And since these warriors belonged to his Domain, their strength made Azarax more powerful, as well.

Some of his powers were of no use here in the Nightmare Desert, but Sunny could see how Azarax and his horde had been able to wash over the mortal realms like a steel flood, almost managing to conquer them all. Needless to say, it was reassuring to have this existential menace of the ancient past fight by their side in Ariel’s Hell.

So, at first, Sunny had been really happy. That was before he noticed that the ancient tyrant’s bones were slowly changing color, making him look more and more like the mindless Deathless they were fighting, and that Azarax seemed to be regressing little by little, losing bits of awareness after every night.

Once Sunny noticed that, the ancient tyrant’s terrifying might and his growing army of Deathless vassals did not make him happy anymore.

They started to make him tense and wary, instead.