Shadow Slave: The Prince of Death

Heartbroken had killed around 40 scavengers and injured over double that. Serpent had followed with another three to four dozen kills of it's own.

There should have been around 200 scavengers left alive, scurrying away in fear and then coming back hesitantly after some hours.

That was how it should have been— at least in Sunny's head.

But what his shadow saw was completely different. Instead of running away in fear and chaos, the scavengers were all looking in the direction from where serpent had lashed out.

In perfect unity.

As they stared, they were on guard yes, but there was no fear in their eyes.

There was an eerie cohesion to their movements, as if commanded by a devil.

'No is no devil amongst them, there's only scavengers and centurions left. That means...

... That the crimson terror has either evolved to be so powerful that it can command hordes from this huge distance, or it has produced tyrants.'

Sunny took a deep breathe in, letting the thought settle.

'But the tyrant's definitely far away, it's not around here. I must clean up quickly, I can't stall here for long.'

Originally, sunny had planned to wait long enough until another charge of heartbroken was complete, and then continue firing at the horde, but now he knew that wasn't possible for him.

If whatever was exerting command on the stray horde from far away grew aware of sunny and sent reinforcements...

'Well, it's better not to finish that thought!'

With that, sunny summoned the iron quiver— a memory conveniently similar to the ascended full quiver he had used after awakening in his previous life.

'Its like the spell just watered down the full quiver to Awakened level while making this memory, honestly if this wasn't real life and was instead a story written by someone?

People would have dropped it and called the writer a lazy bum leaching off their precious time.'

Sunny loaded three arrows in his ice wooden bow and aimed at the sky at an angle, if he started firing from here— then by the time the horde arrived, he would have killed most of them.

The three arrows were fired, and before even a second fully passed, another three were right behind them...and then another three and then another.

Soon enough, the rain of arrows reached the scavengers— and the slaughter was initiated.

The moment the first scavenger died, the horde ran towards the knight's statue, but they were far away and denied a direct path due to the cliff in between.

So they had to go around that cliff, even as awakened beasts they were going to take at least five minutes to reach the statue.

Every arrow sunny launched found itself lodged in the beasts, some in their brain— some in their carapace, every second his bow found itself firing another arrow.

At one point sunny had to reduce the three shots into a single arrow being fired per shot for accuracy, and soon his speed also slowed to account for the reduced horde size.

But the spell never stopped ringing in his head.

Informing him of his kills, with memories every once in a while.

By the time the horde reached the statue's base, sunny heard a satisfying notification.

[You have slain an awakened beast, Carapace Scavenger.]

[Your shadow grows stronger.]

[You have recieved an echo.]

The original scavenger echo. The first echo sunny ever had. The first loss sunny ever had when it came to memories or echoes too.

It was back at home, and this time...

...this time sunny had enough shadow fragments.

As the horde stopped at the base for a moment, it's size had been reduced to around fifty. All of them were injured too.

There was a single centurion alive among them.

The horde then launched itself upwards with a guttural cry, not willing to be subject to the rain of death without being able to strike back.

Liam had already summoned his weapon too, a great Macuahuitl. It's obsidian blades shone darkly, reflecting the light of the sun in a chaotic distorted way.

Sunny dove into his soul sea for a split second and turned the new echo into a Shadow, he made sure to pick the original scavenger's shadow for that too.

Then, he raised his bow again, hoping to cull their numbers even more. But before that-

"Hey, why aren't you using your bow?"

Sunny was confused as to why liam was weilding a melee weapon already instead of using the bow he always used in the academy.

"Oh you see, my bow doesn't come with arrows so..."

Sunny stared at him. "You don't have any arrows for that bow of yours? Then why were you practicing with your bow all the time?"

"Because I'm more comfortable with a bow I guess, I can make some arrows once I get to harvest the carcasses you have so generously obtained."

Liam was still trying to keep up with the fact that hundreds of Awakened beasts had been killed by mere sleeper right in front of him.

But the approaching horde forced him to concentrate.

As sunny fired some more arrows at the scavengers, he summoned serpent and his scavenger shadow too.

Then, unsummoning the ranged memories, he summoned defiance.

The brilliant sword manifested in his hands and then immediately turned invisible.

The horde was finally at the surface. Ready to meet Sunny's blade.

---

A small memory flashed past sunny, back when sunny and nephis had fought off hundreds of Awakened monsters from catching upto the moving statue's surface.

Granted, they had to fight off a few at a time, but the enemies were monsters back then, and sunny atleast was still a beast.

Now there was an awakened demon and a beast helping a demon sunny— against injured beasts.

It was an easy win, but sunny needed something else that was going to take some more effort.

"Stay behind Serpent," Sunny ordered Liam, ensuring he wouldn't die—or worse, steal a kill.

Then, he and his scavenger Shadow moved to intercept the first climbers.

Three of them appeared at the surface, only for an invisible blade to cut through them without making any sounds.

Another came from Sunny's side, and he cleaved it in half with a zornhau slash.

And then he performed a zwerchau to behead another one that was about to bite his echo.

He himself was enhanced by a single shadow, while his echo had two.

Serpent on the other hand was going raw at the beasts...

...and liam had gotten a few strikes in, mostly bashes, not too harmful but they were disorienting.

Eventually a beast managed to crawl up close to sunny, so close that he couldn't really cut it properly.

And proper technique was necessary to kill beasts physically stronger than him. He couldn't just brute force it.

So he spun his sword in his hand, and struck the scavenger on its head with a mordschlag.

The beast's head caved in a bit, but it didn't die, instead it grabbed sunny in its arms, trying to squeeze him in half.

But sunny was faster, primarily due to the brain damage he had just given it, he turned his sword again, and thrust straight at the mouth.

The spell rang again, and sunny quickly freed himself.

His echo ripped one of it's past brother's hands off and threw it stumbling down to it's death.

By now, the centurion had arrived to deliver itself to the maw of the steed of death.

The centurion had lost four of it's eight legs and one of it's scythes already— Courtesy of Sunny's arrows.

As sunny commanded his shadow to surround the scavenger, he jumped back himself— allowing his shadow to earn it's evolution...or fail.

Ofcourse, if it did fail, then sunny would intervene and help it survive, he had big plans for his echo this time afterall.

Getting it wasn't just for sentimental reasons.

The one armed centurion lunged at the scavenger, only for it to miss as the augmented beast sidestepped and grabbed it's still functioning arm with it's pincer, then the shadow spun around in the opposite direction, causing the scythe arm to strain and stretch out.

The centurion tried to break free by ramming sideways into the smaller creature...and succeeded.

But not without both of them toppling. The scavenger then raised it's pincers and rammed at the centurion.

It struck at it's head, it's torso, it's scythe.

Anywhere it could attack.

Again and again and again and again.

Already injured, the now beaten and bruised centurion scurried to get up— as it did, the scavenger rose too and shot it's pincer at the centurion's heart with rapid speed.

The other pincer shot at the scythe to block it from moving.

For a couple of moments, the two were interlocked together, struggling.

The centurion trying to free itself and the scavenger trying to kill it.

But the centurion was already too far gone.

The scavenger's pincer struck true.

Sunny and serpent were getting rid of everything else alive...with the exception of liam ofcourse.

Soon, sunny heard the golden words again.

[You have slain an Awakened monster: Carapace Centurion.]

[Your Shadow is evolving.]

Sunny turned around to find scavenger having eaten the centurion's heart, and now unsummoned it was back in his soul sea.

'I should give that one a nickname...hmm scavvy sounds good? Yeah that will do.'

***

Sometime after the slaughter had ended, and sunny had killed 322 cursed soldiers of the starlight legion, it was time to clean up.

They had rested for some minutes, primarily to let liam catch a breathe, the poor kid was just a random sleeper afterall, no matter how talented — watching a carnage of such scale wasn't something he was ready for.

He adapted pretty soon however, as sunny was taking out the soul shards of the beasts with serpent and scavvy...and even his other echo scavenger— liam jumped in to help.

At first, sunny was annoyed that he would have to stop him from taking any shards, buisness always ruined relations afterall, and while sunny wasn't too keen on friendship with him, having a conflict wasn't nice either.

Luckily, liam had more sense than to ask for any, he simply wanted to make some arrows out of the dead creatures.

As sunny completed most of the creatures around, he decided to go and take the transcendent soul shards too.

Before he left, liam turned to ask him something.

"Hey, shouldn't we take some of the meat for food? How much do you think would be good enough?"

Sunny thought for a moment and replied.

"Just get the meat from two centurions, it will feed us for weeks easily, I'll go get the rest of the shards in the mean while."

Liam frowned slightly. "That will be too much, where will we store all that?"

Sunny smirked. "Don't worry about storage, I have a memory for that."

With that, he left liam with scavvy for protection and left.

After arriving at the shark's carcass, he commanded serpent to start cutting open the scavengers around it for their shards, and he himself plunged his hands into the two shimmering half exposed Transcendent soul shards.

After absorbing all the shards into the storage memory Frozen— he summoned defiance and cut out some huge chunks of the shark's meat for storing, luckily the memory had a function where it formed compartments for different types of things to store so the meat and soul shards wouldn't make each other dirty.

He then proceeded to break off a few sharp bone protrusions too.

When all was said and done, he went back to the statue.

Liam had masterfully butchered up two centurions and cut out their meat perfectly, storing them in frozen, sunny summoned four soul shards.

Liam looked at him with surprise. "What are these for?"

"Payment, for your work." Sunny replied nonchalantly.

"Four of them just for something this simple!?" Liam blurted out in surprise.

"Well I can keep them if you don't want them." Sunny exhaled. "Look, I'm gonna need you to be stronger too if we are to get out of this mess of a world so, eat up."

Sunny made a thumps up sign as he finished speaking.

Liam looked at him in silence for a bit, and then took the shards. "Thank you. I won't be baggage, I promise you that."

***

Sunny didn't try leaving the statue that day so when the next night came, they were again huddled on the beheaded neck of the knight.

There hadn't been enough time to move around after the fight, and it was nice to sit down and check on his gains peacefully too.

There was also the fact that moving after seeing neph's flames would make more sense than to explain to liam how sunny somehow found them even though his shadows couldn't go that far.

Liam didn't know of Sunny's capabilities yet, but if he became his ally later, he would.

As the dark sea rose again, sunny looked at his runes for a bit.

Shadow fragments: [1569/3000]

'Halfway there...' sunny had killed 316 scavengers and 6 centurions in the last fight, bringing his 913 fragments to over 1500 now.

His strength had grown even higher.

He looked around him for a while, scavvy was devouring the corpse of the centurion that had claimed up the statue. It seemed that it had developed it's old habit again...or was it it's new habit again?

Pressing his fingers against his forehead sunny sighed slightly. Regression was annoying and confusing yes, and there was alot of fun and peace to it too.

But most of all, it was exhausting. Sunny was reliving a time period that he had lived decades ago in his last life, his body was that of a kid now, and his hormones were proof of that.

Even his mind was that of a kid in fact, it was just that he had the memories of a distant future. A different future.

He wasn't even sure if that future was actually true or just a bad dream.

Trying to ignore the burden of truth, he summoned his runes again and checked his memories.

Memories: .... [Azure Blade] [Azure Spear] [Azure Mace] [Scarlet Scythe]...

...

There were almost ten new memories

There were a bunch of variations of the azure Blade, even doubles. It seemed like the typical weapons of the starlight legion were being gifted by the spell.

One of them however, were different.

It was the scarlet scythe, obtained by killing a centurion, it was nothing more than weapon similar to the centurion's own scythe hand.

It was likely an upgraded version of the azure weaponry. Not quite useful for sunny other than for its reach— but when he got saint, it would be a different thing.

Infact, not just saint now. There was another...

Sunny eyes lit up as he saw scavvy finish up eating the centurion's corpse.

He could just feed them to scavvy now to make it slightly stronger but that wouldn't be the correct choice in the long run.

Turning saint into an Ascended was a much bigger priority for him, afterall saint was the key to destroying forgotten shore in record time.

Thinking that, sunny closed his eyes for a moment, taking in a deep breathe.

The cold air was running across his face, making him feel sleepy.

Then suddenly, his shadow interrupted him. Instead of feeling annoyed however, he opened his eyes with perfectly concealed excitement...

...and laid eyes on bright flames burning in the distance. They weren't orange this time however, no— they were white.

Pure incandescent white flames.

It was her.

Nephis

They were being produced by the last daughter of the immortal flame clan.

Sunny gazed at the fire for a moment. 'Its bigger than before, are there more people with her now?'

Before sunny could think too much, liam interrupted him.

"What do you think that fire is?

This time, sunny didn't even try to manipulate his words.

"Nephis, it's nephis of immortal flame. She is here too."

Liam's eyes opened wide. "Immortal flame? As in she is the daughter of-"

Sunny cut him off with a smirk. "Saint broken sword and lady smile of heaven, yes."

After a moment he continued:

"And before you ask, I know that's her because she's a friend of mine."

Liam's gaze flickered between Sunny and the distant flames before he finally spoke again.

"So tomorrow we should go find her right, and anyone else there?"

Sunny smiled slightly and closed his eyes, going for a nap finally.

"Yes, let's go meet them tomorrow."