Shadow Slave novel Chapter 185

Chapter 185 Battle Master

The Shadow attacked with the vicious strength of a true monster. Knowing perfectly well that his strength was not enough to block her sword, Sunny desperately moved the Midnight Shard to deflect the strike to the side.

The countless hours of practice and hundreds of thousands of times he had repeated his katas had not been in vain: his body moved with lightning speed, placing the blade in the path of the Stone Saint's weapon at just the right angle. Feeling the impact reverberate in his bones, Sunny gasped from the pain and stood his ground.

Guided by the Midnight Shard, the Shadow's sword glided to the side and missed his body by a wide margin. However, before Sunny had time to congratulate himself, the Saint simply continued moving forward and slammed into him.

Being hit by her shield felt like crashing into a stone wall at high speed.

Flying back, Sunny impacted against an actual wall and rolled to the floor. A small yelp escaped from his lips.

Getting distracted from her food for a moment, Effie glanced at him and called:

"Sunny? You're alive?"

He weakly raised a hand and brought his thumb and index finger together in the shape of a circle.

"...Yeah."

The huntress smiled.

"Good! Don't die yet, alright? It's going to be really inconvenient for me to get out of here without your help."

Sunny gritted his teeth.

'...Is that all you care about?'

"I'll try."

Slowly rising to his feet, he staggered and had to lean on the wall for balance.

The Stone Saint returned to her spot and stood there indifferently, not paying any attention to his furious glare.

With a heavy sigh, Sunny walked back to stand in front of her, raised the Midnight Shard, and spat:

"Again."

***

Over the course of the next few days, Sunny often wondered if he had really gone mad. Otherwise, why would he willingly subject himself to this torture? Pa nda

No vel His life now consisted of only three things: spending time with Effie, practicing with the Stone Saint, and exploring the cursed ruins.

Out of the three, the time he was spending in the deadly maze of the Dark City was by far the least dreadful. He even found himself enjoying it a great deal.

Once you begin thinking about a cursed ancient ruin teeming with abominable creatures as a comforting place, you should really start thinking about your life choices...

And yet, Sunny knew that he was on the right track.

At first, fighting against the menacing Shadow appeared to be almost impossible. Every time he gave her the command to attack, he would inevitably end up on the floor in mere moments, groaning and consumed with pain. His whole body was bruised black and hurting terribly. If not for the tenacious enhancement of the Blood Weave, Sunny did not know if he would have been able to continue.

Or at least continue at an acceptable rate. With its help, however, the speed of his recovery was considerably faster. It was almost inhuman. Because of that, he was able to train more intensely and for longer periods of time.

Just as he had expected, every defeat taught him something new. Losing to a superior opponent was the best way to improve, indeed. Back in the real world, many people were foolishly obsessed with their pride and lived for nothing but to achieve victories against others.

Not Sunny, though. He was perfectly content with losing time after time, as long as he continued to become stronger with each loss. The only person he wanted to defeat was the version of himself from the last fight, over and over again.

Just like that, he had slowly begun to put up at least some resistance to the Stone Saint. At first, he was happy with being able to deflect one attack. Then, two. Then, several.

Before too long, he stopped counting the number of attacks and started counting the number of seconds he remained on his feet. It was just a couple at first, then four or five, then a dozen. Finally, he was able to fight with the menacing stone knight for vast amounts of time, sometimes even up to a minute.

Even Effie seemed to be impressed. She usually paid little attention to his training, but after some time, Sunny noticed her glancing in his direction more and more. At first, he thought that the unruly huntress simply enjoyed watching him suffer in his suffering, but then he realized that she was actually trying to learn from his mistakes, too.

Sunny didn't mind.

His movements slowly became more confident, purposeful, and precise. His body, while damaged and bruised, was brimming with strength and agility.

He was maturing.

It was then, when his spars with the Shadow turned less one-sided, that Sunny noticed something strange.

And when he did, everything changed.