Shadow Slave novel Chapter 2328

Chapter 2328: Crown of Horns

Sunny rushed forward as the first of the crystalline insects burst through the breach. These great glasslike horrors looked somewhat like monstrous bees, but also somewhat like abominable ants... considering their warlike behavior, however, he decided to call them the Crystal Wasps.

The Crystal Wasps were Great Beasts, while he was a Supreme Titan. By all means, he was supposed to be much more powerful as far as pure physical prowess went... but it was not that simple. After all, his was a human body, while their physique was anything but.

Both a mouse and an elephant were beasts, but were they equal in strength? No. Similarly, humans were often physically inferior to Nightmare Creatures, even if their Rank was the same.

Sunny was still a Titan, though, so even his modest human body was stronger, faster, and more resilient than each of the monstrous abominations. And, of course, nothing really prevented him from assuming a different form.

As Sunny dashed forward, his body turned into a surging wave of unfathomable darkness and then solidified into the fearsome shape of a four-armed fiend. This time, he wasn’t creating a Shell from the surrounding shadows — instead, he simply turned himself into a Shadowspawn.

After all, Sunny was himself a shadow now. His human appearance was merely a form he assumed, so if he was familiar with a different one well enough, he could just as easily become something else.

His Shadowspawn form looked pretty much exactly as the Devil he had been in the Second Nightmare — towering at three meters in height, encased in the fearsome black carapace of the Jade Mantle, and with four hands ready to tear and rend the flesh of his enemies. If there was one difference, though, it was that seven horns were crowning his head now instead of four.

Suddenly, the Crystal Wasps did not dwarf him anymore. Neither were they as threatening anymore...

But they were still Great Beasts. Even if Sunny was stronger than them, he was still vulnerable to their malice. And... there were a lot of them. Many more than he would have chosen to face, if there was a choice.

No being of the Great Rank could be taken lightly.

He poured more shadows into his odachi, increasing its length to nearly three meters. Almost at the same time, the Crystal Wasps ignited with blinding radiance, chasing the darkness away — as if sunlight had been stored in their glasslike bodies.

A wave of scorching heat washed over him, making him frown.

’Curious...’

That ability of theirs... was that how they built their hives? By melting tunnels in the ice?

There was no time to ponder.

The first of the abominations was already upon Sunny — or rather, he was upon it. Slicing off its crystalline leg, which was poised to pierce his chest, Sunny rammed the creature with his shoulder and at the same time grabbed its terrifying, razor-sharp mandibles with two of his four hands, pushing its head to the side and preventing it from biting a huge chunk of his flesh off.

A split second later, he spun his odachi and slashed downward. The nimble abomination easily dodged his strike even while reeling from being slammed into...

However, it still convulsed and toppled, its lifeless body suddenly growing brittle and shattering into countless shards with a melodious ringing.

That was because Sunny had never aimed for the Crystal Wasp, to begin with — instead, his black odachi had severed its shadow from its glasslike body, thus destroying its soul.

It wasn’t easy to destroy the soul of a Great Beast in one strike, even when striking its shadow. However, Sunny’s killing intent was especially fatal, because his will to kill was especially firm — the touch of his black blade carried uncompromising lethality, as if imbued with an echo of death itself.

The Crystal Wasp died instantly, unable to offer much resistance. That said... Sunny had not expected its body to crumble into countless shards. He had been planning to toss the corpse of the Great Beast at the other abominations rushing at him, thus slowing them down.

Instead, another insect-like Nightmare Creature was already lunging at him through the cloud of falling shards, a split second away from biting into his neck.

He slammed one of the Crystal Wasps into the floor, causing the entire Ash Castle to tremble and for a web of cracks to appear on its transparent carapace.

The second abomination was impaled on his great odachi, but that did not seem to slow it down much — its scythe-like legs scraped against the surface of the Jade Mantle, and the creature pushed itself lower across the length of the black sword, aiming to shred Sunny to pieces.

The weight of its body was immense enough to make him stagger.

His armored foot descended upon the Crystal Wasp on the floor, shattering its already cracked head, and at the same time, his tail wrapped itself around the second abomination’s thin neck.

[You have slain an enemy.]

Falling on all fours — on all six, to be precise — Sunny used his tail to send the Great Beast flying back. As if shot from a sling, the abomination flew through the air and crashed into its advancing kin.

’That’s four.’

In the time it took Sunny to kill four Crystal Wasps...

Eight more had breached the barricade. The wall of shadows was collapsing faster than he could repair it, and the breach was growing wider with each second.

Sunny looked at the mass of crystalline abominations somberly.

’...Damnation.’