Shadow Slave novel Chapter 3065

Saint landed lightly and gracefully, like a leaf carried by the wind. Neph's landing, however, had been quite violent, sending a net of fractures radiating outward through the weathered, dark stones beneath them. Once the dust settled, the world was enveloped by silence. The boundless darkness surrounded them from all sides, and even if Sunny could sense its currents and peer into its depths through Saint's, he still could not determine how vast the space around them was.

There was a stone surface under their feet, rough and uneven. Some distance away, jagged rocks protruded from it, basking in the endless darkness — beyond the rocks, something resembling a ruin loomed at the edge of Saint's perception, barely visible in the dark.

The sphere of light emanated by Nephis was still under assault, the crushing weight of elemental darkness bearing down on it with unrelenting force, but it did not shrink anymore. In fact, when Nephis focused and defied the pressure exerted upon her by the Underworld, the darkness retreated a bit, chased a hundred more meters away.

A radiant light illuminated the dark expanse of the Underworld for the first time in thousands of years — or simply for the first time, possibly — revealing a desolate vista. The three of them observed their surroundings, wary and on edge.

A minute passed in tense silence, then a few minutes more.

Finally, Sunny exhaled slowly.

“I don't think that the Dark One is going to attack immediately."

The Creature of Darkness seemed to have retreated, even if Sunny still felt like he was being observed. That feeling had grown weaker and was now barely perceptible — but it was still unnerving.

Nephis nodded slowly.

"Seems so."

She lingered for a few seconds and then added:

"If it is going to attack at all.”

Sunny was surprised to hear that.

“When has there ever been an instance when a detestable horror failed to try and attack us?"

But then, he caught himself.

"Oh. Right."

Sunny was used to dealing with Nightmare Creatures, who were all vessels of Corruption. As such, they were in a state of inherent conflict with the world around them, suffering a constant agony and driven mad by the desire to destroy and consume the Flame. That was why abominations were unfailingly aggressive and uncontrollably hostile toward humans.

However, what they were dealing with here was a Creature of Darkness. True darkness might have been born from the blood of a Void Being, but it was not a force of Corruption in and of itself — instead, it was uniquely unaligned, belonging neither to the Void nor to the Flame. Therefore, preconceived notions built upon his experience with Nightmare Creatures could not be applied to it.

‘How peculiar.'

Although the Creature of Darkness had attacked them, it was not inherently a hostile force. The reality of facing an abomination that was not hellbent on killing him for no reason whatsoever was a new and deeply strange experience.

It was an unfamiliar feeling.

Sunny scoffed quietly.

"So why did it attack us in the first place?"

He wasn't accustomed to asking such questions, so even speaking those words aloud felt weird.

Nephis lingered for a moment, then shrugged.

"The Creatures of Darkness you encountered before were feeding on shadows... so it might have attacked us because she sensed a Supreme shadow among us — a tasty snack, so to say..."

A mischievous smile found its way onto Sunny's face.

"Oh, so you think that I'm tasty, huh?"

Nephis glanced at him silently for a few seconds, then continued in the same even tone:

"Alternatively, it might have been hostile because of me. The Underworld is a land of darkness — the being hiding in it might have been provoked by the invasion of light into this dark realm."

Finally, she shook her head.

"There is no way to tell until we learn more about that thing... and about this place, as well."

She had been to the Underworld before, but only to its lowest, desolate reaches. The Underworld she knew was from thousands of years ago, too — who knew how it had changed in the wake of the world-ending war between its ruler and the gods?

Nephis did know a few things about it, though.

Looking around, she spoke quietly:

“We are currently at the base of the hollow mountain, on the boundary between the upper and middle strata of the Underworld. This cavern is technically already a part of the core expanse of Nether's realm... however, the Underworld is not one gigantic subterranean space. It is composed of countless interconnected caverns, some relatively small, some as large as underground continents."

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