Shadow Slave novel Chapter 2896

Luckily, the Wolf was a lethal and ferocious being even without Sunny's direct control. In fact, if Sunny attempted to issue the Sacred shade commands to tell it how to fight, he would only be getting in the way. The Wolf had more battle experience than he did, was a better hunter than he was, and understood its own capabilities better than Sunny could ever hope to understand them.

The Archon was too fast, too strong, and too beyond the scope of normal understanding for Sunny to be in his element while fighting it, anyway. The laws of existence were bending and twisting around the Deathless Spirit, rejecting the very notion of common logic — time, space, and even causality had become unreliable at best, making the Archon immensely deadly and unpredictable.

One moment, he was taking an unhurried step. A split second later, he was already upon the Wolf, raising his terrifying staff to crush the Sacred beast beneath it. At times, his blows arrived before they were delivered. Time itself hastened or slowed down, or even seemed to flow in reverse on occasion.

Sunny was rattled.

Luckily, the Wolf was not. It did not try to understand or predict the Archon and the results of his actions — instead, it acted on pure instinct, reacting faster than Sunny could even realize what was happening. At the same time, the Wolf was calculating and cunning, steadily evading the Deathless Spirit while never letting him get distracted and turn his attention to the distant Shadow Legion.

With Sunny's augmentation and assistance, the shadow of the Wolf was putting up an admirable fight against the Archon. It was so fearless and ferocious, in fact, that Sunny imagined that if it had been any other Cursed or Sacred Beast, they would have stood a good chance of defeating it. The Wolf would have long torn the creature's throat open and feasted on its flesh. However, the Sacred being they faced today was Deathless, and so, no matter how ferocious and fearsome the Wolf was, all it could do was endure as its body was slowly being broken and mutilated.

And Sunny, meanwhile, endured his soul being torn to shreds.

"Argh!"

The Weaver's Needle trembled in his fingers.

He... was not in good shape. None of his cores had crumbled yet, but they were all full of cracks, almost on the verge of being broken. The silent waters of his Soul Sea were undulating restlessly, while the replicas of the two Citadels he controlled were quaking, fissures slowly climbing up their walls.

It hurt like hell, of course.

‘| just need to hold on... a little more...’

The Shadow Legion was far in the distance by then, almost gone behind the horizon. Neph's fierce flames, which had illuminated the entire desert, were now a distant halo. The dawn was not yet near, but... Sunny figured that he was perhaps halfway there. He had really managed to buy a lot of time — but sadly, not enough of it.

And he did not think that he could endure ten more minutes, let alone a few more hours.

Not without losing a few of his cores, at least, and therefore a few of his shadows. Who would it be? The youngest of the seven, Lazy? Or maybe their eldest, gloomy sibling? Or perhaps both, and more?

Sunny gritted his teeth.

‘Like hell...'

The weave was slowly taking shape beneath his needle... torturously slowly, compared to how familiar it was.

It was funny, really. Usually, Sunny did not even pay attention to this part of the weaving process. He wove the rudimentary patterns almost unconsciously, relying on experience and muscle memory. But now, this simple weave seemed as difficult and impossible to master as it had once, a long time ago, when he attempted sorcery for the first time.

Back then, he was in a cage in the Red Colosseum, waiting for an overwhelmingly, terrifyingly powerful adversary — an Ascended zealot — to come and kill him. Now, he was in literal Hell, fighting a fallen god.

Sunny wasn't sure if one could call that a successful career...

‘Get in shape, damn it!’

The Wolf — and Sunny's soul — endured another blow. The giant beast fell to the sand, grey smoker pouring like a waterfall from its maw, while Sunny's hand trembled. As a result, the pattern he had almost completed came close to coming undone. Snarling, he ducked to let a piece of shrapnel moving at supersonic speed flash just above his head and grabbed the unraveling threads with one of his hands. If not for the Flesh Weave, he would have lost his fingers right there and then. But, luckily, his body had been altered to excel at weaving — as were his spirit, mind, and soul, for that matter.

So, Sunny managed to keep the pattern together.

It was almost finished by then, requiring only the smallest touches. Catching Weaver's Needle with his teeth, Sunny used all six of his hands to finish the pattern — and even though his very being was swaying and reeling from the pressure of having to battle a Sacred being's Will, he finally managed to complete the familiar spellweave.

Sunny let out a tired sigh, holding the radiant soul shard in his fist.

Then, he turned to look at the towering figure of the Archon.

‘Great. Now, the worst part...’ 𝙧𝙚𝙚𝔀𝒆𝓫𝓷𝙤𝓿𝒆𝙡.𝒄𝙤𝓶

He had to embed the soul shard and the spellweave anchored to it into the Deathless Spirit.

How was he supposed to do that?

The Wolf had barely managed to rise when another devastating blow threw it to the ground once more. Sunny felt his vision darkening and swayed, failing to suppress a tortured groan from escaping his lips.

‘Damn it, crap, curse it all...'

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