Shadow Slave

While Nephis, Slayer, and the Puppeteer engaged the Nightmare Swarm in the vast darkness of the sky, Sunny faced the Deathless Sovereign, Azarax, in the heart of Hell.

The blade of the Soul Serpent endured the devastating blow of the cursed tyrant’s fearsome glass axe, but just barely. The world itself seemed to crumble from the harrowing force of that blow, and the dunes around them collapsed, shattered by the violent shockwave.

The hurricane wind raised countless tons of sand into the air, obscuring the sky — just like the vast swarm of the Nightmare Butterflies obscured the cold, distant stars. It was as if a great sand storm had suddenly descended upon Ariel’s Hell, veiling the world.

Sunny, who had been caught in the epicenter of the cataclysmic impact, was thrown back by the ferocious blow.

‘D—damn…’

He had made himself as heavy as a mountain, but even so, his body shot through the air like a bullet. The moment he hit the sand, another impact thundered, making the desert quake.

The pauldron of his jade armor cracked, but his tenacious bones endured.

He was still rolling across the sand when Slayer clashed with the terrifying swarm of Great Monsters.

Struggling to stand up, Sunny briefly allowed himself to look up, careful not to let his gaze wander too high, where the Seventh Seed rested atop the great pyramid.

Watching the malevolent obsidian dragon slaughter the Nightmare Butterflies, he felt indignant for a moment.

‘When the hell did she manage to kill a dragon?’

Slayer’s Transformation Ability allowed her to assume the forms of all beasts she had killed, which meant that once upon a time, she had hunted down and killed a dragon. Kai had competition now…

Then again, this was Slayer he was talking about. In hindsight, it would have been stranger if she had not killed a dragon or two.

Still…

‘How come I’m the only one who has never slain a dragon? What’s up with that? That’s not…’

Before Sunny could finish the thought, he felt a cold chill on his neck. He ducked without even thinking about it, and a split second later, the blade of an axe flashed through the space where his neck had been. Azarax was already looming above him, his vague figure towering like a black cliff in the fierce sandstorm. Having failed to behead Sunny, he struck him in the chest with the butt of the great axe in the same motion. The vicious force of that blow made Sunny groan and stagger back, but a split second later, the blade of the axe was already flying at his head.

All he could do was retreat and defend himself, his bones groaning as the impenetrable carapace of the Jade Mantle cracked and slowly crumbled from the terrifying force of the impacts.

‘What the… hell.’

There was just no way… no way to defeat Azarax in combat. He was simply too strong, having been turned into a walking calamity by a profane combination of his Aspect and thousands of years spent waging war.

Even augmented by all his shadows, Sunny was weaker than the Deathless Sovereign. Even empowered by all the shades of his Domain, he could not overcome his tyrannical Will. Even while using the Shadow Dance, he could not contend against thousands of years of battle experience that Azarax had accumulated over his long life of unceasing conquest and slaughter.

And if Sunny failed to hold him back, the monstrous demigod would easily split the Chain Breaker in two with one swipe of his terrifying battle axe. No distance would stop him from delivering the blow, and the Nightmare Butterflies would not stop him either.

That was something Sunny knew in his heart without needing any proof.

Luckily… holding the Deathless Sovereign back was all Sunny had to do. Defeating him would doubtlessly feel great, but alas, there was no time or opportunity for that.

“Damn bastard…”

Sunny finally managed to evade a lethal blow swiftly enough to leap back and create a little bit of distance between himself and Azarax. The towering Deathless straightened, turning the eerie gaze of his empty eye sockets to Sunny, and took a step in his direction.

At the same time, his Will attacked the world around them with vicious intensity, mangling the space to prevent Sunny from escaping and help Azarax reach him in one step. Sunny, naturally, used his own Will to prevent that from happening, or at least slow the ancient tyrant down.

He took a step back.

Then, he took another.

Azarax was almost upon him by then, his army of undead warriors following them through the sandstorm.

Sunny gritted his teeth and took a third step.

At the same time, he began to summon one of the few shades that remained in his Soul Sea, unscathed.

A fourth step…

One of Sunny’s incarnations separated from him and disappeared into the sandstorm. The fifth step.

Azarax lunged forward, breaching the remaining distance between them with impossible speed.

The sixth step.

The fearsome battle axe soared into the air, ready to plunge down and split Sunny from head to toe.

The seventh step.

Sunny stopped.

“Hey, bastard…”

He raised his serpentine odachi, as if ready to defend himself again.

“Look behind you.”

And it was then that Azarax stumbled.

The Deathless Sovereign came to a halt, his shoulders trembling faintly. The darkness nestling in his empty eye sockets moved, and he turned to look back slowly.

As if overcome by a sudden, inescapable fear.

And there, half-obscured by the raging sandstorm…

A colossal tree towered above him, its branches stretching far and wide. Its bark was black as onyx, while its beautiful leaves were even darker than that — darker than the velvet expanse of the night sky… dark as the starless void above the Forgotten Shore.

That was the shade of the Soul Devourer, of course — the shadow of the corrupted sacred tree that Sunny had burned to ash once, and which usually remained in the peaceful darkness of his lightless soul, its branches swaying lightly above the courtyard of the Nameless Temple.

The Soul Devouring Tree had been a Fallen Terror when Sunny destroyed it. A Fallen Terror was not something that could seriously threaten a Supreme, of course — especially a Supreme like Azarax, the Plague of Steel.

But the memory of spending thousands of years nailed to a sacred tree, powerless, defeated, unable to escape?

That was enough to rattle him. That was enough to shake his uncompromising, tyrannical Will.

To put a crack into it, however briefly.

The Soul Devourer was not just any shade — it was the shadow of what Azarax dreaded most, even if he was not willing to admit it. It was his own personal nightmare.

And the Deathless Sovereign was forced to face that terrifying nightmare in the shadow of the Tomb of Ariel — the great pyramid that the Demon of Dread built in the heart of the hell he had created.

Where all Nightmares were born.

If that was not enough to give Azarax pause, Sunny did not know what was…

Giving him pause was not the extent of what Sunny wanted to do, of course. What he wanted to do was buy himself time.

So, while Azarax was briefly frozen in place by the ominous visage of the Soul Devouring Tree, Sunny stepped into the shadows and appeared near it, using all six of his remaining incarnations to wrap it into his dark embrace.

Suddenly, the Soul Devourer was empowered and augmented by six Supreme avatars of the Lord of Shadows… of the Sovereign of Death.

Its branches swayed lightly, a myriad of beautiful black leaves rustling quietly, yet drowning out the deafening howling of the wind.

And then, myriad chains forged from shadows and infused with Supreme essence shot from the colossal figure of the Soul Devouring Tree… the Death Tree… flying toward Azarax and his Deathless warriors. The ancient tyrant finally shook off his paralysis, moving to evade the chains flying at him — but it was too late.

They bound him like hungry snakes and dragged him toward the trunk of the Soul Devourer, just as his Deathless warriors were being bound and hung from its vast branches.

Soon, thousands of blackened skeletons were hanging from the branches of the Death Tree like macabre fruit, straining hopelessly to break free. Their jaws were hanging open, as if open in silent screams. The black leaves of the terrifying Death Tree swayed like an ocean of rustling darkness.