Shadow Slave novel Chapter 2814

The reinforcements Morgan had brought helped the defenders of the Lake of Tears buy the civilians more time to flee toward Ravenheart. They might not have lasted two days, as Nightingale had hoped for, but the ferocious battle did rage on throughout the morning and well past noon, almost reaching its second sunset.

In the end, however, it was all pointless. Even while holding his best chess pieces back and spread thin across three battlefronts — Moonriver Plains, Glass Hell, and Chained Isles — Mordret still crushed them.

The Saints had exhausted their essence. The Ascended were riddled with wounds and losing all hope. The Awakened warriors suffered grievous losses, dying in scores despite the blessing of their goddess. Seishan had managed to keep herself alive, but many of her sisters would have been dead if not for Nephis. She witnessed Death Singer and Lonesome Howl receive wounds that would have been fatal if not for the miraculous white flames of their Sovereign. She saw a young Saint who had only recently conquered his Third Nightmare fall, never to rise again.

Just like that, humanity lost one of its Transcendent champions.

It was Godgrave, all over again...

No, it was much worse than that.

Her mother and the King of Swords had committed myriad sins, true, but their goals — misguided as they might have been — had always been altruistic. They wanted to preserve as many human lives as could be saved, according to their cold logic, by sacrificing everyone else. The war they waged upon each other was meant to give humanity a chance to survive.

The true cause of this ferocious slaughter, though, was Asterion — a man who wanted to devour all of mankind.

The perpetrator of the slaughter, meanwhile, was Mordret... who wanted to eradicate as many humans as possible to rob Asterion of excess power.

Neither of them was aiming to save anyone except himself, which made this battle feel far more malicious than anything that had happened in Godgrave.

In fact, what these two Supreme horrors were doing felt more malevolent than even the atrocities committed by Nightmare Creatures. Nightmare Creatures, after all, did not possess concepts of good and evil, moral and immoral. But Asterion and Mordret did, and chose to be no better than nightmare creatures anyway.

For the first time since becoming an Awakened, Seishan felt nauseated by the stench of blood.

‘I want to be a Supreme, too.’

She wanted to become as powerful as they were, so that she could bleed them and rend them apart, so that she could erase their vile presence from existence.

The battle was quickly barreling toward a breaking point. The battered formation of the defending army beneath the Weeping Goddess was about to collapse, and the warriors fighting atop the great waterfall had been pushed to the very edge of the cliffs, mere steps away from plummeting down. Only the Citadel itself still held, stubbornly refusing to be conquered by the King of Nothing.

At some point, Seishan found herself fighting side by side with Nightingale once again.

"We can't continue!"

Her voice was hoarse.

"We must abandon the remaining civilians and retreat!"

He glanced at her, his eyes betraying a sense of anguish, fear... and fury.

“Not yet."

Seishan gritted her teeth.

"If you don't command a retreat, you'll lose both the civilians and the soldiers!"

She pierced him with a scathing gaze, wondering if the man who had conquered Ravenheart without spilling a single drop of blood was truly worthy of ruling it.

"This is your burden. Carry it!"

Kai's expression tensed.

He glanced over the battlefield, his mystical eyes seeing every little detail with flawless clarity.

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