Shadow Slave

There was a lesson Sunny had learned from Nephis many years ago, on the Forgotten Shore. It was that the fittest survived.

Being the fittest did not mean being the strongest, though — it meant being the most adaptable.

Adaptability reigned in the terrifying world of the Nightmare Spell, and versatility was what made one able to adapt to any situation — or at least as many of them as possible.

It was no different in the Underworld, either.

Sunny was all but powerless in this vast, subterranean realm of elemental darkness. However, elemental darkness was powerless against nothingness, and it was especially powerless when exposed to the cleansing light of Neph's soul — a soul that had inherited the Fire of Sun God, and was fueled by the Flame of Divinity.

The being hiding in the darkness could hide inside an impenetrable shell of stone to protect itself from her light. But stone did not protect it against the Shield of Nothing wielded by Saint — that was why, during the battle above, Sunny and Nephis had chosen to augment the taciturn Shadow instead of facing the jigsaw abominations directly. Now, the three of them were being attacked by the eerily colossal torrents of the darkness. The gargantuan tendrils that the darkness extended to crush Saint were too immense and powerful to be erased from existence by nothingness contained within her... but they weren't protected by great shells of stone.

Which meant that they were vulnerable to light.

So, when Nephis escaped from Saint's graceful figure and assumed her own radiant form, the tendrils were destroyed. That was why Sunny had always valued versatility over raw power. There were countless deadly challenges waiting for them out there in the vast, terrifying world, and while power helped overcome them, no amount of power had any meaning if one could not express it in a variety of ways.

‘It's like a nightmare version of rock, paper, scissors...'

A brilliant light ignited in the heart of the great dark abyss, illuminating its vast expanse. The radiance emanated by the beautiful winged figure was blinding, but it was still dwarfed by the sheer size of the mountain's interior. In that endless reservoir of elemental darkness, Nephis was like a firefly shining in the boundless immensity of the night sky.

She plummeted through the darkness like a falling star, her pure white light surrounded by the oppressive, abyssal ocean of lightlessness.

And even if there was no surface around her for a shadow to be cast upon, Sunny could still summon the Shadow Lantern and call upon the ancient shadows of the Shadow Realm.

As Saint fell, hundreds of meters above Nephis, two enormous black wings sprouted from her back, opening to control her fall. They plummeted into the depths of darkness. From below, colossal torrents assaulted them, being destroyed by light; from above, the immense mass of stone of the collapsing peak moved and coalesced into terrifying shapes, reaching down with a thousand limbs — those shapes, in turn, crumbled under a tide of annulment. Observing the nightmarish descent through Saint's eyes, Sunny could not help but feel rattled.

‘Is this what they call being stuck between a rock and a hard place, I wonder?'

Although it was more like being stuck between a falling mountain and an eldritch horror born from an abyssal ocean of elemental darkness. Either way, the situation seemed like a lot to handle. However, it was not as bad as he had expected. Usually, when Sunny encountered something terrifying, things inevitably escalated, proving that there were deeper levels of terror without fail. This time, however, the confrontation between the three invaders of the Underworld and the elemental darkness populating it seemingly reached a fragile state of balance. Eventually, whatever it was that attacked them seemed to learn its lesson and retracted its colossal tendrils. At the same time, the stones falling from above stopped moving in unnatural ways, turning back to a mundane avalanche of debris.

Sunny should have been relieved, but he was not.

If anything, it was actually the opposite.

No matter how awful a foe, it was far better to see it and know what it was doing, even if that meant enduring deadly attacks. Now that the mysterious Creature of Darkness had taken a step back and hidden itself, leaving them alone, there was no telling what it was planning.

The boundless expanse of true darkness was silent and calm, but that only made Sunny feel more wary — especially with his senses suppressed.

However, there was nothing he could do except keep his guard up and wait.

Nephis descended into the depths of the Underworld, illuminating its cavernous dark expanse. Now that the danger seemed to disappear, Saint dispelled her field of annulment and followed her, the wings of shadows Sunny had summoned folding to hasten her fall.

They plummeted lower and lower, crossing the middle point of the hollow mountain and swiftly approaching its roots.

And as they delved deeper into the true darkness, piercing its boundless mass... Sunny felt a shiver when he noticed that Neph's brilliant light was faltering.

At first, it chased the darkness away, liberating a vast sphere from its cold clutches. But as they were surrounded by a greater and greater expanse of it, the cold pressure of darkness seemed to become more unbearable, slowly causing the sphere of light to shrink.

Sunny was not unfamiliar with the process... back in Antarctica, in the endless tunnel where the Heart of Darkness had dwelled, light also seemed feeble and weak, barely able to push it back. But those were mundane lights — those produced by human technology.

He had never seen Neph's radiance falter, and he had definitely never seen it retreat in the face of darkness.

She must have felt that pressure of the vast dark depths, as well, pouring more of her essence into producing light. When even that did not seem to help, Nephis pursed her lips with a grim expression and then invoked the Name of Light, empowering her radiance with the help of sorcery.

That seemed to work... for a while.

But as they crossed the boundary of the mountain's roots and entered the middle strata of the Underworld, the weight of darkness began to overwhelm her light once more.

The sphere of radiance became smaller and smaller until it barely illuminated the path ahead. The rays of light stretched no more than a hundred meters in every direction, which was nothing in a battle of Supreme beings.

Sunny was afraid that it would shrink even more, but just then, he suddenly felt deep shadows beneath them.

Nephis opened her wings, straining to arrest her fall as fast as possible...

But in the end, she still struck the ground with a deafening thunderclap.

By the time she regained her balance, Saint had already landed near her. Sunny regained his human form and looked around, a guarded expression on his face.

‘Well... that's something, at least...’

They had made it to the heart layer of the Underworld alive.