Shadow Slave-Chapter 2385 Untainted Spirit
Sunny concluded that the Rat King couldn't simply be a mob of brainless pests — he had fought swarms of monsters before, and they bore no resemblance to the foe he confronted now. The creature he was battling was truly a horde, but one directed by a singular Will.
This suggested there existed a lone source of that Will — the root of the countless army of twisted rats that craved to consume Slayer in wild hunger. Even if there hadn't been, the Snow Tyrant would have imposed it upon the Rat King...
After all, it required some means to command the Snow Beast figure, and Sunny doubted his opponent could freely generate an infinite number of invisible threads to dominate each separate rat.
Therefore, he had theorized that a single thread would exist, linked to one specific rat. That rat was the leader of the Rat Legion, concealed somewhere in the terrible ocean of crawling vermin — the conduit through which the Snow Tyrant commanded the Cursed Beast, as well as its origin.
Locating one rat among millions seemed like an impossible challenge... it was far more difficult than finding a needle in a haystack, to put it mildly. After all, neither the needle nor the haystack was meant to shift, much less writhe and churn in insane bloodthirst on the shaking slopes of a collapsing mountain.
But if anyone could achieve that goal, it was Kai.
He had been the first among them to detect the presence of the invisible threads, after all. Sunny himself wasn't even certain he was able to perceive them — but Kai could.
And while he wasn't able to distinguish the original rat from its countless siblings, he could spot a glimpse of the Snow Tyrant's thread again. And then... he could trace it to the target.
That was how Sunny planned to turn his enemy's own strength against them.
The issue, naturally...
Was that he and Slayer needed to survive long enough for Kai to accomplish his task.
And that wasn't merely challenging, but also grew increasingly harder with every passing second.
Slayer was like a black tempest, racing across the mountain in a whirlwind of gore and shredded meat. She had always been a formidable presence in the past — a wicked, menacing force — but now that she was enhanced by shadows and ash, brandishing enchanted blades crafted by the Sovereign of Death himself, her freezing malevolence was simply magnificent to witness.
The mountain was completely blanketed by the swarming rats, so Slayer could only exist in the aftermath of incredible carnage. She had to cut a route for herself with her severing weapon, and when that wasn't sufficient, she had to flee into the small pockets of temporary safety created by Kai's devastating bombardment. Sunny directed her through the shadows, matching the frantic rhythm of the horrifying battle.
The slaughter was beyond imagination. The vision of it all — the scarlet glow of the sunset, the dark writhing barriers of vermin closing around them like landslides, the clouds of fine red mist floating on the breeze — was unbelievable.
The sound, however, was the most terrible — the ear-splitting, thunderous symphony of noises produced by the multitude of maddened rats was revolting, shocking, and completely beyond description... especially since Slayer's hearing was extraordinarily acute, able to detect the sound of a needle falling many kilometers distant.
It reached the point where Sunny believed he was experiencing delusions, hearing a buzz of insane voices emerging from the rustle of countless vermin rushing to tear his Shadow to pieces. Those voices weren't voices, and the words they uttered weren't words... and yet, somehow, he could still dimly comprehend them, at least occasionally.
"Starving... starving... we are starving... we are... starvation..."
That was what he imagined he heard, echoed countless times by the countless frenzied voices, until it became meaningless.
Slayer moved without pause, weaving through the spaces between the tendrils of the swarm that sought to devour her. Her movements were quick and elegant, but the destruction she unleashed was completely savage, gradually staining the entire mountain red. Sunny was horrified by the ghastly extent of the violence she was committing... but simultaneously, he found himself being fascinated by it.
It was truly a pleasure, to observe a master performing what they excelled at — to experience it all as they were experiencing it, feeling each stride, muscle tension, and vibration of the blade.
He was quite accustomed to Slayer's combat style by now, and yet, he had never felt her exerting herself like this before. Now that Sunny had the front row to the dark performance of it all, he could detect more subtle details about how his Shadow wielded her weapon.
There was a certain... honesty to how Slayer fought. He had observed how pure her emotion appeared, and that purity translated to her every action. There was no deception, no hesitation to her grim dance — just honest, pure, and unwavering determination to wound, mutilate, and destroy.
This wasn't to say that Slayer's combat style was crude or simple — quite the opposite. It was nothing less than beautiful.
She was just committed completely to her every gesture without reserving anything.
Her purpose and her deeds were perfectly aligned.
It was an unusual state of existence, one that was foreign to Sunny... and would be to most humans, as well. After all, humans possessed countless thoughts and countless experiences. Such a level of focused certainty was impossible for most, if not all, and would only be damaging otherwise.
But Slayer made it function. In fact, she made it function magnificently.
The honesty of her determination influenced how effectively she could employ the Will, as well. Since no obstacle existed between her purpose and her actions, nothing was lost in translation — as a consequence, she could accomplish far more with far less, displaying a level of efficiency and effectiveness that Sunny found remarkable.
She employed the Will with incredible skill.
That was why Slayer and Sunny were still breathing, and relatively unharmed.
Nevertheless...
With every second that elapsed, the swarm expanded.
The routes Slayer carved in the mass of squirming rats grew thinner, the time the openings existed grew briefer, and the barriers of vermin surrounding them grew higher.
Sunny wasn't certain how much longer they would be able to endure before the Rat King buried them under its disgusting mass.
'Come on, Kai...'
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