Shadow Slave

Briefly giving Caster a few instructions, Nephis walked over to the edge of the platform and looked down. When she saw the numerous creatures climbing the stone giant, a grim expression appeared on her face.

Sunny weighed the Prowling Thorn in his hand and asked:

"So, what's the plan?"

Changing Star glanced at him and smiled darkly.

"What else? Kill as many as you can."

With that, she jumped down and landed softly on the shoulder of the colossus. With a sigh, Sunny followed.

'Figures!'

A moment later, they separated. Nephis dashed to the opposite side of the moving statue, running on the wide stone path of its collar. She was going to try and deal with those creatures that were climbing the front and the left side of the giant.

Sunny was going to have to stop those coming from the right and the back. He wasn't sure that just two of them were going to be enough to cover all that space, but they didn't have a lot of choices.

Sunny and Nephis at least had the high ground advantage against the enemy. Those fighting against the swarm of monstrous locusts, however, did not. The cohort couldn't spare anyone else for this task.

Looking down, he was finally able to discern the shape of the attacking Labyrinth dwellers. They looked like massive primates covered in dirty, grey fur. Their arms were strong and muscular, easily pulling their heavy bodies up the ancient stone surface. Each had a mouth full of sharp teeth, with two curved tusks protruding from it, as long as daggers.

The most disturbing fact about these beasts was that there were crimson flowers growing from within the bloody gaps in their flesh. Some even had pale stems slithering from one eye socket to another. With a shiver, Sunny realized that this tribe of Nightmare Creatures were simply hosts for a different, much more terrifying one.

The primates were nothing but meat puppets for those ghoulish flowers.

'Oh gods…'

Summoning the Ordinary Rock, Sunny wrapped his body in the shadow, strained his muscles, and threw it down as hard as he could. The small rock plunged through the air and collided with one of the creatures far below, hitting it right in the forehead and splitting its rotten skull apart.

Not paying any attention to the fact that half of its head was missing, the primate continued climbing up.

Sunny gritted his teeth and dismissed the rock.

'...Just as I thought.'

Nothing could ever be simple on the Forgotten Shore. The cohort would never be just attacked by a swarm of flying abominations. There had to be a horde of monstrous primates attacking them from the ground, too! And gods forbid those powerful beasts were not parasitized by even more ghastly horrors.

'At least their bodies are not so tough due to their partially decomposed state.'

That was something he could work with…

Just as the first primate climbed into the range of the Prowling Thorn, something thundered above Sunny, and in the next moment, he was doused from head to toe in fetid black blood. A mangled corpse of a giant locust flew past him and fell down.

Sunny frozen for a second, then growled.

'I am a walking target now, aren't I? Well… great! Let them come! The more, the merrier!'

***

Extending the invisible string to its maximum length, Sunny aimed and hurled the kunai down. He guided it by ever so slightly pulling on the string.

The dagger flashed through the air and spun, drawing a curved path. A few moments later, it cut across the wrist of one of the menacing primates, cleanly severing its hand.

Suddenly losing purchase, the beast instantly fell down. After plummeting from the deadly height, it hit the crimson corals below and practically exploded into bloody chunks.

Sunny listened to the emptiness, a tense expression on his face.

[You have slain an awakened monster, Blood Flower.]

[Your shadow grows stronger.]

A relieved expression appeared on his face. At least these things weren't indestructible…

Raising a hand, he caught the returning kunai and instantly threw it again.

There wasn't much time left.

Countless beasts were climbing up the stone body of the ancient colossus, covering a frightening amount of distance with each second. He had to slaughter as many of them as he could before they reached the battlement constructed on the giant's shoulder, or else they were going to rip him apart.

In the next few minutes, Sunny did nothing but control the Prowling Thorn as it flew through the air, cutting through flesh and bone alike. The heavy kunai never stayed in his hand for more than a second, reaping a bountiful harvest of lives.

More than a dozen beasts — those who were ahead of the approaching horde — were thrown off the statue and fell to their deaths, rewarding Sunny with an enviable amount of shadow fragments.

However, he was still too slow. Sunny had to be both swift and precise when throwing the dagger, lest he wanted to be pulled off the giant's swaying shoulder himself. What's worse, he had to constantly pay attention to the sky and dodge the attacking locusts when they dove from above to devour him.

The horde of terrible beasts was getting closer and closer, their arrival as inevitable as it would be fatal.

The situation got even worse when another group of them reached the gargantuan statue's back. Now, Sunny not only had to deal with the monsters climbing its side, but also rush from his perch on the shoulder of the steadily moving colossus to the treacherous path of his collar to prevent the fastest climbers from reaching too high.

'Bad, bad, this is bad…'

Covered in blood and with his muscles burning, Sunny continued to slaughter the ghastly beasts as fast as he could.

But he wasn't fast enough.

At some point, Sunny realized that the climbing monstrosities were now mere meters away from him. He could see every disturbing detail of their rotting bodies, with strangely graceful flowers growing from the bloody gaps. Their crimson petals trembled as they smelled prey.

Suddenly, one of the primates strained its powerful legs and jumped into the air, instantly covering the remaining distance to Sunny's position. Before it could land, however, the Midnight Shard slashed the creature across its massive body, cutting it apart.

…What flowed out of the terrible wound, however, was not blood, but a vast cloud of red pollen.

Before Sunny could register the fact, he had already breathed in a whole lungful of it.

His eyes widened.

'Oh... oh no! This is not good!'