Shadow Slave novel Chapter 2378

Chapter 2378: Eerie Clues

The only witness — Slayer — was not talking, but Sunny had some other clues, as well.

His own state, for example.

Quite a lot of his essence was gone. Not only that, but he could not summon any of his shades, which meant that they all had been destroyed in the battle and were currently repairing themselves.

The Shadow Wolf and its pack, the Obsidian Wasps, and Abundance.

’Had I actually implemented the shade augmentation strategy?’

It was possible.

But had he implemented it against the enemy... or against one of his companions?

There was no answer to that, although Sunny doubted that either Slayer or Kai could have survived his assault.

The three Snow figures were dead, and he was missing an arm. So... unless it was Kai who had bitten it off in his dragon form, Sunny was inclined to believe that he had clashed with the Cursed Demon and the two Monsters, instead.

He looked at Kai strangely. Kai noticed it and forced out a smile.

"What?"

Sunny lingered for a while, then shook his head.

"Nothing. Just wondering how sharp your teeth are..."

Kai touched his lips, then blinked a couple of times and looked away.

The problem was that the shades of the three Snow abominations were not in Sunny’s soul. Which meant that, although they were dead, he had not killed them — and neither had Slayer.

So how the hell had they died?!

Sunny folded the wings he had manifested and landed on a rock outcropping at the edges of the lake of lava — too close to the misty shore of the sea of clouds to feel comfortable. Kai landed nearby, and the two of them stared at the enormous corpse in front of them.

Or rather, a half of it.

The Cursed Monster was unmistakably dead. It was an indescribable monstrosity that was vaguely humanoid in shape, with countless eyes littering the malformed dome of its hideous head. It had a gaunt, pale torso and too many arms, each ending in a set of terrifying claws... as for the lower part of his body, there was no saying how it looked. It was missing.

Sunny could swear that the appalling face of the fallen deity had frozen in a grimace of horror.

He glanced at Kai and shivered.

"Any idea how it died?"

Kai remained silent for a moment, then said stiffly:

"Well, I am pretty sure that it died from being torn in half."

That was pretty indisputable logic.

...Well, actually, it wasn’t. A Cursed Monster would not have been killed by something as mundane as being torn in half. Neither would it have been terrified in its last moments.

Feeling a cold shiver run down his spine, Sunny forced out a pale smile.

"Are there soul shards inside?"

Kai nodded slowly.

"I see one. But, if you don’t mind... I’d prefer it if we don’t try to dig it out just yet."

Sunny scoffed, then grimaced and pressed a hand against his wounds.

"Yeah. Let’s not... just yet."

There was another corpse they had to take a look at, almost exactly on the other side of the shattered volcano.

Flying there took them a little bit of time, and when they reached the massive remains, Sunny just stared at them with a strange expression.

The second corpse... had turned out to not be the second corpse. Instead, it was the lower half of the Cursed Monster they had already investigated.

There was no explanation as to how it ended up all the way on the opposite side of the lake of lava, and no additional clues as to how the creature had died.

Neither was there any trace left of the second Cursed Monster. It had simply vanished, as if it had never existed at all... just like the Snow Demon had.

Perhaps their bodies had drowned in the lava, perhaps they had fallen into the sea of clouds.

Perhaps they had simply ceased to exist for some unknown reason.

Anything could have happened, really.

Sunny took a shaky breath.

"Let’s... let’s explore more. We might find something else."

And so they did.

In truth, he did not really hope to find more clues. He simply wanted to get away from the mangled remains of the Cursed Monster and do something to occupy his rattled mind.

Sunny and Kai spent some time exploring the lake of lava. They studied the eerie, half-formed sculptures of volcanic rock protruding from it here and there. Being close to them gave both an eerie and unpleasant feeling, so they proceded to investigate the shores of the lake instead.

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