Shadow Slave novel Chapter 2826

Jet realized that all her plans had become meaningless the moment she felt Asterion's presence through the Night Garden. Dealing with six powerful Saints was already difficult enough. Dealing with six Saints and a damn Supreme on top of that was... well above her paygrade. Now that Asterion boarded the Night Garden, executing her escape would be all but impossible, and on top of that, his Aspect granted him frightening powers.

The second he appeared in the runic hall, he would be able to read her mind and learn how exactly she was planning to get away. Even worse, he would be able to manipulate her very thoughts, twisting them and turning her own mind against her.

Jet prided herself on being paranoid, but now, she couldn't even trust herself.

She had to improvise an entirely new plan of escape in the brief moment between the vague silhouettes of Bloodwave and Asterion appearing in the runic hall and them fully crossing the realm boundary, manifesting in the Dream Realm — not only that, but she had to make that plan impervious to the powers of the malevolent Sovereign, somehow.

So, she did just that.

By the time Asterion laid eyes on her, the new plan had already been put in place. Jet also made an effort to focus all her thoughts on the old one, forbidding herself from thinking about anything else.

It seemed to be working, for now.

She had not been certain that it would. Her new plan was quite simple, but also innately devious in its simplicity. It relied on a single proposition — that while Asterion could manipulate and deceive her own mind, even he could not manipulate the vast, slumbering mind of the Night Garden.

The Night Garden was not just any ship, after all. It was a living ship, and while it did not quite possess a consciousness in the way people understood the concept, it was not truly mindless either.

So, in that brief moment before Asterion appeared in the runic hall, Jet gave the Night Garden a simple command.

Protect its captain.

That was why the Dreamspawn and the Saints he had subjugated suddenly started to sink into the floor. The Mainmast Pagoda and the floor of the runic hall were carved from the same wood as the hull of the living ship — the Night Garden had never absorbed and digested its passengers, but not because it could not.

Rather, it was because it had been damaged in the past, and there was no reason to consume the beings it was meant to shelter and nurture anyway.

Jet doubted that Asterion and the Saints would be seriously harmed by that simple defensive measure, but they had at least been slowed down at a decisive moment. Next, the Night Garden sent her away from the runic hall, where the danger was, to its main deck. Jet suspected that it had opened a miniature portal between the two — just like it could open a vast rift in space to travel from one place to another.

‘So... something like that was possible, too.'

The sudden break of the connection between Jet and the living ship was a bit jarring, but she swiftly regained her senses. She was standing on one of the outer decks of the Night Garden now, surrounded from all sides by hostile thralls of the Dreamspawn. Asterion was already aware of her current location, no doubt. He would escape the runic hall in a matter of moments, so...

She needed to run.

There was nowhere to run in the Sky Below, really. The Night Garden was surrounded by a vast emptiness from all sides — except for one, where a sea of divine flames burned in the darkness.

However, Jet was a Saint, and Saints could always escape across the realm boundary to a different world.

It was just that pulling on one's tether required time and concentration.

Jet had little time and could not afford to focus entirely on her tether. Still, she had to manage it, somehow.

Just when a small figure exploded from the arched portals of the runic hall far above, at the top of the Mainmast Pagoda, she lunged into a run. She had to buy herself more time, and there was only one way to do it. From where she stood, only a few hundred meters separated her from the edge of the Night Garden, beyond which lay the empty dark void — a distance that a Saint could breach in the blink of an eye. When people moved to bar her way, Jet simply turned into a mist and flowed past them, rushing toward the railing.

However, bizarrely, it took her several seconds just to move a few dozen steps.

Jet cursed.

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