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...’
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...'
He straightened with another groan and turned to look in the direction of the Tomb of Ariel.
The Shadow Legion had finally disappeared behind the horizon, and Neph's radiance was like a distant, pale line above it.
Sunny was surrounded by darkness.
He inhaled deeply.
"Fine then. Let's do it. No point in dilly-dallying.”
With that, he looked at the Archon once more and stepped into the shadows.
When Sunny emerged from them, he was standing directly on the shoulder of the Deathless Spirit.
He was quite high above the desert, and the howling winds immediately crashed into him, straining to throw him down. The ivory fabric of the Archon's tattered robe was like a soft carpet beneath his feet. The ancient horror's skull was like a hill in front of him, and the golden crown set into the black bone was like a tall ridge.
Naturally, only a complete fool would climb the body of a malevolent god. Standing on the shoulder of the Archon, Sunny was more or less surrendering himself to death... he could be squashed into a bloody puddle in an instant, or killed in a million other ways.
The black skull turned slowly, two huge disks of gold staring at him like eyes. From that distance, Sunny could vaguely see the images etched into them... but because of the eerie radiance spilling from within the Archon's skull, he couldn't quite make out what those images showed.
He wasn't sure that it would be wise to see them.
The Archon's terrifying gaze descended upon him like an avalanche, making every wound on his body scream in pain, and every crack on his battered soul widened a little.
Sunny forced out a smile.
"Hey, bastard. What gave you the courage to bully my wolf?"
The Archon stared at him silently, his dislocated jaw hanging in a twisted grin.
Then, he slowly raised a hand, as if intending to squish Sunny like an annoying fly.
Sunny lunged forward, rushing toward the base of the Deathless Spirit's spine. Far below, the Wolf growled and leaped into the air, abandoning caution to weigh the fallen deity's arm down. It was sent crashing into the ground by an inexplicable blow that came before the Archon moved his skeleton hand to deliver it, slowly crumbling into a torrent of shadows — but that bought Sunny time.
As his six shadows appeared on the white sand, having been robbed of the shade they had been augmenting, he reached the spine of the Deathless Spirit and thrust the soul shard at it... through it.
And then, he did what he usually did when turning objects into Memories — using Weaver's Needle, he attached the pattern to the unseen layer of the Archon's being, therefore connecting the two together.
Bonding them.
‘Did... did it work?"
The skeletal hand was already barreling toward him, obscuring the sky.
At that moment, Sunny heard a voice...
His own voice.
It was the Handy Bracelet speaking.
[You have received a Memory.]
Sunny was at best a heartbeat away from being destroyed.
"Dismiss!"
He was so panicked that he shouted the mental command out loud.
In the next second...
Sunny fell into a hurricane of white sparks, plummeting toward the white dunes.
The shoulder of the Deathless Spirit, which had supported his weight, was not there anymore.
Instead, a vast storm of essence sparks was pouring into his mangled soul
Sunny stumbled on that particular idea while lamenting how unreasonable the situation he had found himself in was.
No, really... it wasn't enough that he had to fight a minor god. That malevolent deity just had to be an undying one on top of that — a Sacred foe who literally could not be killed, because he was not a living thing to begin with.
Shadow God had taken his death, and therefore, stole away his life as well.
The concept of a living being was a complicated one in the world of the Nightmare Spell. Take Sunny, for example... technically, he was dead. But in the broader sense, he was still a living being. So was Jet, who could be considered one despite being physically and functionally a magically reanimated corpse.
There were all manner of Nightmare Creatures out there, as well — wraiths, ghosts, and specters of all kinds; golems and automatons, walking suits of malevolent armor... and things that could not even be described, let alone understood.
But all of them would still count as living beings, and for one simple reason — because they could be killed. They had shadows, and they had souls.
The Deathless were neither dead nor alive, though. They had lost their shadows, and no matter how Sunny looked, he could not determine if they had souls either. So, by all accounts, those cursed by Shadow God were not living beings.
They weren't ideas or concepts, either, because what constituted them was solid matter.
What were they, then?
Well, by method of elimination, the answer was simple...
They were things.
There were all kinds of ways to challenge that statement, but for Sunny, it sounded good enough. The Deathless were things — they were no different from items. Cursed things that were controlled by malevolent wills, but items nevertheless.
So, then, what kind of Memory could help Sunny deal with a Sacred thing that had been cursed by Shadow God?
He had been considering that question feverishly while at the same time wielding his Will to push back the oppressive authority of the Sacred thing in question. He even asked himself what kind of Memory he could have created to get himself out of this situation, if he was good enough at weaving to create Memories on the fly.
And then, it suddenly hit him...
If the Deathless were things, if they were no different from items... Then did he really need to make a Memory to survive the battle against the Wandering Archon?
...What if he made the Archon into a Memory, instead?
The question was so preposterous that Sunny instantly threw it out of his head, concentrating on finding an actual solution. However, once the idea rooted itself in his mind, it refused to go, and a few moments later, he found himself coming back to the same question.
‘I have finally lost it... I have. Haven't I?'
But what if he hadn't?
Technically... nothing was stopping Sunny from turning a Deathless into a Memory. A Memory was simply an item enchanted with the rudimentary spellweave, after all, which allowed it to be disassembled into soul essence and stored in its master's soul, as well as summoned back to be reconstituted as matter.
The Deathless had neither a shadow nor a soul — they weren't living beings and were things instead. So if Sunny could just create a rudimentary spellweave, anchor it in a sufficiently pure soul shard, and attach it to the black bones of one of them...
Then, theoretically, he could dismiss the Deathless as he would a Memory, and keep it stored in his soul in a disassembled state. It was just that attaching a spellweave to a moving, sinister, murderous skeleton was not exactly something that could be accomplished easily. And normally, there would be no reason to — after all, it was not like turning one of the Deathless into a Memory would give Sunny control over it. It would only allow him to dismiss and summon the skeleton like he would a Memory, and nothing more.
Once the Deathless was summoned back, it would immediately attack Sunny once again. It would probably destroy the spellweave rooted inside of its bones, as well.
But...
‘Ah, to hell with it! I am going to try!’
Sunny was already in quite a desperate situation, and he neither wanted nor planned to control the Archon. All he wanted to do was get rid of him so that the Shadow Legion could escape, and Sunny himself could survive.
He was sure... almost sure that if he did manage to dismantle the Deathless Spirit and draw him into his Soul Sea, the thing was not going to destroy his soul from within. That was because, unlike shades and Shadows, a Memory was not an actual thing when dismissed — not the items it became when summoned.
Rather, it was an idea of that thing... a blueprint used to reassemble it from essence. So, the Archon would cease to exist as a thing within Sunny's Soul Sea. Most likely.
‘I guess we'll see!’
Steeling himself, Sunny sent one of his incarnations away from the Wolf and summoned two things. One was Weaver's Needle, and the other was a Sacred soul shard stored in the replica of the Nameless Temple.
Sacred Shards were not at all simple to come by. Sunny had procured a few in Ariel's Game, and a few more were unearthed by the forces of the Human Domain here and there in the Dream Realm. However, most of them were gone now — he had used some to survive the Death Game, while the rest became anchors for the defensive arrays he and Cassie created to protect key Citadels of humanity.
The one Sunny summoned was the last in his possession.
‘Now, how the hell do I even do it?'
As six incarnations of Sunny were empowering the Wolf in its battle against the Archon, his battered soul drowning in agony, he tried to calm himself down and think things through clearly.
‘Come on, come on...'
The Deathless Spirit's staff brushed across a tall white dune no more than a few hundred meters away from him, erasing it from existence and making Ariel's Hell shudder. Sunny crouched low to maintain his balance and gritted his teeth.
In theory, it was simple.
Weaving took a lot of time and concentration, so it was not something that could be done in the midst of a battle — at least not by him, and he was the best and only weaver in existence. Memories could not be woven or unraveled on the fly...
But that only held true for proper Memories.
A rudimentary one, no different from the very first one Sunny had ever created, could be created quite easily. All he had to do was weave the fundamental enchantments that the Nightmare Spell used as the basis of all Memories, and then connect them to the item that was supposed to become a Memory.
No, not even all of the rudimentary enchantments. Sunny did not care if the Archon could passively mend himself while stored in his soul — in fact, he would very much prefer if the damn Deathless couldn't. He did not need the Memory of the Wandering Archon to possess a title and a description, either.
All he needed was to imbue that thing with the quality that allowed it to be dismissed or summoned, as well as make himself the being in control of when that happened. So...
First of all, he needed to weave strings out of shadow essence.
He needed to anchor them in the Sacred Shard and create the rudimentary enchantment of summoning.
Then... he somehow needed to embed the shard and the weave into the Archon. While staying alive, no less.
Well, as alive as someone who was technically dead could be.
‘..Nothing to it.'
Smiling weakly, Sunny began weaving ethereal black strings out of his essence. Usually, he would weave a considerable length of the shadow string before beginning to weave it into a sorcerous pattern. But right now, there was no time for that — so, Sunny wove faster than he had ever before, his six hands moving in rapid harmony.
As soon as there was any length of the string at all, he immediately threaded it through Weaver's Needle and anchored it in the soul shard, then continued to create more while beginning to shape the familiar pattern of the summoning enchantment. Sunny had created this particular pattern so many times that he could weave it with his eyes closed...
Weaving it while simultaneously battling a deity, though, was proving to be a challenge.
Most of Sunny's mind was preoccupied with the battle. He assisted the Wolf while at the same time straining all of his being to resist the boundless Will of the Archon — that was already almost beyond his limit, so he hardly had mental capacity for weaving, as well.
Suddenly, the darkness retreated, and a titanic, billowing pillar of roaring white flame escaped into the vastness of the sky, washing over it like an immolating flood. The fire churned, and if one glanced closely, they could glimpse a vague, flowing silhouette of something colossal being drawn by the moving flames, appearing and disappearing in the dance of fire — before they were blinded by its pure radiance, of course.
As if the flame was a living thing that moved with purpose and otherworldly intent... Right now, its intent was to devour the Deathless.
The boundless ocean of flame descended upon Ariel's Hell like a white inferno, swallowing a vast swath of the undead horde in front of the advancing army. The desert was drowned by the sea of fire, which stretched all the way to the horizon.
Countless Deathless were trapped in the inferno, burning in it... being gnawed on and shattered by it.
Their figures were like black candlesticks melting in the light.
The visage of Changing Star, unleashed, was both radiant and terrifying,
Sadly, even her true shape was not powerful and devastating enough to wipe out the prisoners of Hell, especially now that her Domain had been broken, and her Will had lost the weight of billions of souls that used to empower it.
The weaker of the Deathless were destroyed, and those of them on whom Nephis focused her incinerating will were being slowly turned to ash. But most of them, while damaged and burned by the flame, continued to move.
Some, those who were powerful enough, fought against the living flame, dealing it invisible wounds — Nephis healed those wounds and endured the agony, scorching them in turn.
The rest waded through the ocean of flame, blinded, still overcome by the desire to obliterate the invaders who had dared to enter Ariel's Hell.
Their black bones slowly ignited like embers and then turned incandescent, shining with an angry red glow in the sea of fire.
It was then that Saint, whose fearsome armor and jade body were all but impervious to elemental attacks, emerged from the flame and slashed the nearest Deathless with her black blade.
The adamantine bones, which had been nearly indestructible before, parted in front of the dark sword like butter. That was because even if they were not destroyed by the soul flame, they were rendered softer and far more fragile in their incandescent state.
Saint did not stop even for a split second, instantly dismantling the Deathless warrior before moving on to the next one with measured, indomitable steps.
Behind her, the figure of Azarax emerged from the flame, as well. The ancient tyrant laughed, his glass armor shining like a terrifying beacon, His axe fell, splitting a Deathless beast in half, and his boots stomped the fallen creature into dust, a swarm of red embers shooting to swirl in the overheated air.
Luckily, neither the undead vassals of the ancient conqueror nor the shades needed to breathe. Otherwise, their lungs would have turned to ash already.
The rest of the invading army moved behind its champions. The white flames flowed, opening a path to them — a few seconds later, the two forces clashed, and this time, the Deathless fell far more easily under the blades, claws, and fangs of the invaders.
The Shadow Legion marched on through the white flame, which parted in front of it like an immolating sea.
It seemed to be working, for now..
But even in the depths of her agony, Nephis knew that she would not be able to maintain that fearsome assault for long. That was because she had lost most of her Domain, and therefore, the vast torrent of spirit essence that used to flow into her soul was replaced by a thin stream. She was burning more essence than she was receiving, and even with the [Fire] empowering her soul, she would exhaust her reserves of it soon.
Before that happened...
They needed to leave the Deathless Spirit and the vast expanse of his insurmountable Will behind.
Far away, engaged in a ferocious battle with the Deathless Spirit, Sunny could only vaguely see Nephis and the Shadow Legion advancing in the distance. The Nightmare Desert was illuminated by her radiant flames, and dark figures clashed in the sea of white radiance, indistinguishable from each other.
His shadow sense was going haywire from all the chaos and mayhem of the cataclysmic battle, so he was having trouble determining which figures were friends, and which ones were foes. Their army was advancing at a good rate, though, so it seemed that Nephis and Azarax had a handle on the situation for now, at least.
At first, the Shadow Legion was behind him. Then, it was far to the side, circling around the area where Sunny and the Archon fought. And then, it was finally ahead of them, slowly making its way closer to the looming shape of the Tomb of Ariel.
There was not enough distance between the Shadow Legion and the Deathless Spirit yet, though, and there wouldn't be for a long time. So, Sunny had to continue fighting.
It was tough.
The Archon was a terrifying enemy — an enemy that Sunny had no business fighting, really — and even if the Wolf was cunning and elusive, attacking from the darkness only to retreat moments later, aided in its predatory dance by Sunny carrying its weight through the shadows, the damage they had received was slowly accumulating.
The giant figure of the Wolf was frayed now, surrounded by a billowing cloud of grey smoke. Sunny, meanwhile, was in the throes of agony, several of his soul cores already covered in cracks.
Every time the Wolf was a little bit too slow to evade the Archon’s attack, his entire being shook and quaked, barely surviving the terrifying tyranny of the fallen deity's unfathomable killing intent.
Sunny could endure a lot of punishment, but there was a limit even to his endurance. For now, Soul Weave was preventing his wounded soul from collapsing and his cores from crumbling, but if the battle continued in the same manner, he would suffer a loss or even be outright destroyed. Unfortunately...
The battle had to go on.
He had occupied the Deathless Spirit for some time now — minutes, perhaps even dozens of minutes — but dawn was still hours away. Which meant that Sunny had to continue fighting against an undying god of Hell for hours more... and he was not sure that he could manage that.
'Think, think, think...'
The Wolf clawed at the looming figure of the Archon, adding more rifts to his tattered robe. It bit onto the white staff of the Deathless Spirit, leaving deep grooves in it and ripping one of the golden ornaments free. It leaped into the air and sank its fangs into the giant skeletons jaw, dislodging it from the joints.
Now, the Archon’s jaw hung crookedly, which only made him look more terrifying. The eerie glow emanating from behind the golden coins covering his eyes grew more intense, and Sunny felt something cold grasp his heart.
The Archon twisted space and time, answering to the ferocious attack. Sunny felt a ghastly pain first, and only then felt the Deathless Spirit's bony fingers rending through the Wolve's hide, leaving a ghastly wound on its side..
And on Sunny’s soul, as well.
‘I... don't think I am going to survive until dawn.'
Even if he used the [Chain] enchantment of the Curse, it would only buy him a little bit more time.
His mind spun furiously, trying to come up with something — some trick, some devious scheme, or even some bold gamble — to turn the tide of this brutal battle. Was there some application of his Aspect Abilities that he could use, some revelation he was failing to grasp, some Memory he could summon to turn the tables?
‘Memories...’
He remembered every Memory in his soul arsenal, and every enchantment those Memories possessed. He also remembered every instance of using those enchantments and what the results were.
Sunny had created most of those Memories himself, so he knew what they were capable of very well.
That was why he knew that there was no Memory that could truly help him defeat a Sacred being — not really.
That was because Memories did not usually possess a Will of their own, and were therefore only as powerful as the Will of their masters. In the battles between beings of lesser Ranks, that did not matter that much... but when one fought against a deity, any Memory could be easily rendered ineffectual simply by being denied the power to reshape the world in accordance with its design.
So, even if Sunny had forged a Sacred Memory for himself, it would still be fueled by his Supreme Will. Unless there was an adversarial Will opposing him, it could still work just fine — if it was designed well enough to push against the universal laws of existence — but if Sunny had to fight someone like the Wandering Archon, even his most powerful Memories would probably prove to be unreliable.
‘Forged myself... a Sacred memory...'
The Wolf received another blow and was thrown into the air, collapsing on the sand with a terrifying impact moments later. Sunny let out an anguished groan and focused on the Deathless Spirit.
Suddenly...
A completely mad idea found its way into his mind.
Sunny had been known to entertain an outlandish idea or two, but this one was really, truly mad — even by his standards.
‘But is there a reason why it shouldn't work?’
Actually, there were a million reasons, but Sunny did not need those. He only needed one reason why it could work — his Will would do the rest and make the remotely possible become inevitable.
Hopefully.
In any case, he knew that he was not going to last long against the Archon, and this was the only plausible — albeit deeply mad — idea he had been able to come up with.
‘Let's try it, then. What's the worst... no, I'm not finishing that sentence...’
As the Wolf staggered to its feet and glared at the Deathless Spirit, baring its fangs, Sunny secretly allowed one of his incarnations to separate itself from the Sacred shade.
He hid in the darkness, watching intently, and when the Wolf lunged forward to attack the Archon again, quietly assumed a human form once more.
Looking around in hesitation, Sunny took a deep breath and reached into his Soul Sea. He needed to retrieve something from there, as well as summon a particular Memory.
The shadows flowed up his body and extended from his torso, turning into two additional pairs of hands.
The Deathless Spirit towered above the shadow of the Wolf, and in the darkness of the night, he seemed like a black mountain that obscured the distant, radiant ocean of stars. He might not have been stronger than the Sacred shade, but his Will was far superior...
Sunny was not even sure that calling it superior would be the right word. The difference between his own Will and that of the Archon was like the difference between a clear brook and a vast sea. Like the difference between a stone fortress and the boundless expanse of the wide world that surrounded it.
The Archon did not possess a weakness that Sunny could easily exploit, either.
In the battle against Abundance, Sunny had been able to lock it in space and slowly poison the enormous godworm with his Death Will — but the Archon was Deathless.
In the battle against the Rat King, Sunny had been able to destroy the single rat that was the source of the terrifying swarm, thus cutting its connection to the Puppeteer, and watched the rats devour each other to satiate their maddening hunger. But there was no single weak spot that could be used to destroy the Archon, and no one was in control of him.
In the battle against the Wolf, Sunny had been able to grasp the concept wielded by the enemy and personify its opposite. That allowed him to hold out long enough to use the Cursed Demon's own terrifying power to fuel the grand spell he had woven in advance, thus destroying it. But there was no spell that could help Sunny against the Archon...
And the Archon did not seem to wield any concept, either.
Or rather, it did, but it was of no help to Sunny.
After exchanging the first blows with the Deathless Spirit, Sunny had gotten a better taste of his Will. And what he found was that the ancient horror seemed similar to Azarax, the Plague of Steel, in some regard. There was almost nothing common between them, except for one thing that mattered most.
Azarax was Supreme, and therefore, his Will had an innate affinity — just like Sunny's Will was innately tied to death, while Neph's was connected to desire and longing. What of the Plague of Steel, then? What affinity did his Will possess? What concept did he personify, or at least would grow to personify if he ever underwent Apotheosis?
Sunny had racked his brain about it for a while, observing the ancient tyrant closely in the ferocious battles they fought. The answer he eventually arrived at was, needless to say, quite surprising.
The Deathless Sovereign's Will expressed only one concept, and that concept was... himself. The natural affinity of Azarax, the Plague of Steel, was to nothing more and nothing less than Azarax himself.
Perhaps he was too arrogant and full of deadly ambition to tie the concept of himself to any greater force — after all, as far as Azarax was concerned, there was no force and no element that was greater than him. In the end, all of existence, including all the elements and forces contained within it, was meant to submit and bow down before him.
The Archon was very similar, albeit for a different reason. The Deathless Spirit was not overcome by an insatiable lust for conquest, but whatever it had been, whatever concept he had personified, whatever kind of Apotheosis he had undergone was washed away by the curse of Shadow God and the merciless passage of years.
Now, he was an empty, fallen deity that personified nothing but himself. Whatever made him the Wandering Archon had been erased and swallowed by oblivion, and so, he wielded no power but the power of godhood itself — the power to reshape the world according to his Will.
On one hand, it was a great relief. After all, Sunny still remembered his terrifying experiences in Ariel's Game, especially the days that were mysteriously missing from his memory — the days of the battle against the eerie Snow Demon that had infected their minds. He also remembered the Cursed Demon Abjuration, which had come close to wiping out all of humanity during its battle against Nephis.
So, it was a boon that the Archon did not remember how to wield his powers, whatever those powers might have been. At the same time, it put Sunny at a disadvantage, because there was no concept for him to counteract or channel the opposite of. There was nothing for him to exploit, and so, all he could do was try to match the Deathless Spirit in a contest of brute force.
Luckily, the Wolf was not helpless in the fight against an overwhelmingly strong enemy. Yes, the Archon was far greater than it, towering above the giant beast like a dark mountain... but the Archon had been a human once, or at least a creature that resembled humans.
And there were very few things humans feared more than a predator stalking them in the night.
After that first clash, where the Wolf received a devastating blow, it changed tactics, channeling all the cunning and ferociousness of a primeval beast. At the same time, having become one with the Wolf, Sunny reshaped himself in the image of a wolf and sharpened his Will for a focused, singular purpose.
That purpose was to force a concept upon the hollow deity of Ariel's Hell, on the Spirit who had been the Wandering Archon once. The concept of prey.
When the Deathless Spirit and the Wolf clashed for the second time, the world rippled and twisted like a piece of crumpled paper. The Nightmare Desert shook.
The Wolf did not manage to bring down the Archon... but this time, it managed to escape unscathed, if only just barely. A split second later, it was already moving through the shadows, ready to attack the enemy again.
Time was flowing, and the Deathless Spirit was focusing on the Wolf instead of turning his attention to the Shadow Legion...
So, even if Sunny was in pain after enduring a heavy blow to his soul, he was accomplishing his mission.
Out there on the battlefield, the Shadow Legion and the undead warriors serving Azarax were making their way forward. However, their pace had slowed down to a crawl, and they were suffering casualties at a far greater rate than before.
After all, Sunny’s absence could not be ignored. Not only had he acted as not one, but seven deadliest champions of the invading army, splitting the tide of the Deathless before they could reach the battle formation, but he was also the commander of the Shadow Legion. Now that he had to pour all of his attention into the battle against the Archon, his shades could only follow Saint.
And Saint, despite her [War Master] Attribute, was yet incomplete. She was a mere Devil, after all — so, her ability to lead armies was going to remain rudimentary for as long as she did not rise to the Class of Tyrant.
Added to that was the fact that the Deathless Spirit's Will was still fueling the undead prisoners of the Nightmare Desert with indomitable resolve. The world itself was playing favorites, assisting the Deathless while obstructing their enemies. Nephis was not there to heal and mend the wounded shades anymore, either, since she was fighting on the frontline.
So, the invading army was suffering. The shades were being slowly whittled down and vanquished. Even the undead warriors of Azarax were starting to be destroyed — just like Sunny and Nephis had dismantled and obliterated the Deathless before, the Deathless were not dismantling the turncoats.
The curse of Shadow God would probably restore them, eventually — but not nearly fast enough to be of use for the expedition to the Tomb of Ariel.
Azarax seemed to have pushed himself even further than before, rampaging among the enemy like a spirit of inevitability and destruction. However, even his terrifying strength was not enough to turn the tide of this losing battle...
Nephis had to get involved and fill the great chasm left by Sunny’s absence, somehow — even if she possessed only one body, not seven, and could not control the Shadow Legion at all.
So, that was what she did.
At first, she simply summoned the Blessing and entered the melee, serving as the spearhead of the slowly advancing formation. Her sublime swordsmanship revealed itself in all its glory, and as flashes of brilliant white light illuminated the dark mass of the charging Deathless, her lithe figure could be seen moving between them, cutting one after another down.
But, of course, that was not enough.
Even channeling her flames through the Blessing to unleash incinerating rays of pure light was not enough, since the Deathless were too numerous and too powerful, resisting the devastating power of her burning soul with daunting efficiency.
Having dismantled another skeleton and crushed its skull under her foot, Nephis stopped for a moment and looked over the endless horde of the Deathless, her gaze turning cold.
She closed her eyes for a heartbeat and exhaled slowly.
When she opened her eyes again, they were full of immolating white flame.
A soft white radiance ignited under her skin. Then, it grew brilliant and blinding, until there was nothing soft about it, and as Neph's tunic collapsed into a whirlwind of white sparks, she assumed the form of the Spirit of Light — of a being whose body was woven out of pure radiance and flame, not mortal flesh.
When she did, the night of Ariel's Hell did not seem so dark anymore.
That radiant form, however, was not Neph's true and full Transformation.
It was merely a shell that contained the boundless ocean of her soul flame in a radiant vessel.
And now, Nephis chose to open that vessel, unleashing herself upon the world.
Of course, it was to be Sacred yourself. Sadly, Sunny was not a Spirit yet. However, he did command four Sacred shades: Puppeteer, Abundance, the Rat King, and the Wolf.
The Puppeteer Moth was technically the most powerful of them, being a Tyrant. However, its powers did not lend themselves well to direct confrontation — or rather, not as well as those of the other Sacred shades. That was the very reason why Sunny had managed to defeat the Spirit of Doubt and was alive today. Abundance and the Rat King each excelled at many things, but facing a single overwhelmingly powerful adversary was not one of them.
The Wolf, however... the Wolf had been a
Spirit of primal fury, cunning, and hunting. It personified the concept of the Wolf, and wolves were exceptional hunters. They were known to bring down prey much larger than themselves, as well.
Apart from that, the Wolf had been a Cursed Demon — a being of a higher Class than both Abundance and the Rat King.
So, it was Sunny's best choice to battle the Wandering Archon.
The problem, of course, was that despite being Sacred, the Wolf was a Sacred shade. And shades did not quite possess a Will of their own — and even if Sacred shades were somewhat different, they still could not compare to real Spirits. The shadow of the Will they could exert was far less potent than that of living beings, Sacred or Cursed. There was a cure for that, though — a partial cure, but a cure nonetheless.
As the Wolf launched itself into the horde of the Deathless, barreling toward the distant figure of the Wandering Archon, it
was surrounded by all seven of Sunny's incarnations.
And then, all seven avatars turned into shadows, wrapping themselves around the shadow of the primeval predator.
One, two, three, four... seven.
With each shadow, the power of the Wolf increased. More than that, it became a direct conduit of Sunny's own Will.
That Will was Supreme, not Sacred... but it was the Will of a Titan. It was empowered by Spirit Weave, as well. And when it was being channeled by a Sacred shade, the result was truly fearsome — not quite as fearsome as having a true Sacred being attack the enemy, but still terrifying nonetheless.
As Sunny wrapped himself around the Wolf, he fused with it on a deep level. As always, he was instantly overwhelmed by the vastness and unfathomable depth of a Sacred being's consciousness. It was so overwhelming, in fact, that Sunny could not
contend with all of it. Instead, he had to limit his perception to a narrow band, only focusing on what was important.
All around him, the Will of the Wandering Archon churned and flowed, drowning the world.
If there was one silver lining in all of it, though, it was that even if expressing their Will seemed as natural as breathing for the Spirits, the Deathless did not possess enough of themselves to wield it with a fine level of precision. Sunny, however, knew how to wield his.
Even if the natural affinity of his Will — death — was meaningless in a battle against the Deathless, the fact that he was adept at wielding his Will like he would a weapon gave him an advantage.
The Wolf flew through the horde of undead warriors, followed by his pack. Some of the Shadow Wolves were brought down and vanquished in that mad dash, but most made it through the mass of Deathless by
following the leader of their pack.
The Wandering Archon was already near. ‘It's good to learn...’
The Deathless Spirit raised his staff and brought it down. It seemed to fall slowly, and looked too far away to hit Sunny... but the space itself was torn apart and twisted by that unhurried blow, and a split second later, the Wolf was only a single moment away from being erased from existence, as if it had never existed at all.
‘..that not knowing death means not knowing salvation:
Sunny pulled the Sacred shade into the shadows, stepping through them to appear behind the Deathless Spirit.
Ignoring the laws of space? Two could play that game.
‘Not knowing death means that one's suffering will never end. I would have loved to teach this bastard a harsh lesson about unending agony...
The wolf lunged into the air, aiming to sink its fangs into the enemy's throat. Sadly, the Archon was suddenly facing them, the horrifying gaze of his empty eye sockets pressing Sunny into the ground.
But no, they weren't empty... two golden disks were set into the eye socket, like enormous gold coins.
An eerie radiance was spilling from behind those disks.
‘But something tells me that the Deathless know that better than I ever would: Instead of the towering skeleton's spine, the Wolf could only bite into his arm. The shadow of the primordial beast pressed down onto the sleeve of the ivory robe, aiming to crush the black bone beneath. It pulled the Archon down, jerking its head sideways with terrible force to tear the entire forearm off.
At the same time, two Wills — the elemental Will of the Deathless Spirit and Sunny's sharp, deadly one — clashed with each
other, sending an invisible, imperceptible, inconceivable shockwave spreading through the fabric of the world.
They were competing to see which one of them would get to lure the universal laws of existence to their side.
‘Come on... come on!’
In the end, the bones of the Wandering Archon did not shatter.
The obsidian fangs of the Wolf cracked, instead.
In the next moment, the Deathless Spirit calmly brought his staff down on the enormous beast's back. The blow fell on the spine of the wolf with the weight of an entire realm, almost managing to snap it in half.
The Wolf survived the attack by releasing the enemy and allowing the force of the impact to throw it down, rolling over the dunes in a whirlwind of white sand.
A few moments later, it was already on its
feet.
The Wolf was ready to continue the fight, a terrifying growl escaping from its maw. Sunny, however...
Sunny was in a sea of pain.
Because the moment the Archon struck his shade with the staff, a net of cracks spread across one of his cores, as well.
ch 2991 A giant slowly rose from beneath the dunes, erasing them. As rivers of white sand flowed down from his rising figure, his shape and appearance were slowly revealed.
The being who had changed the underlying currents of the world with his mere presence resembled a human — a skeleton of a human, at least. He towered above the desert like a terrifying monument, a tattered robe of fluttering ivory fabric obscuring his ancient bones. Those of the bones that were in sight were black, like the bones of other Deathless, but also different.
That was because they were inlaid with strips of pure gold, which framed his cheekbones, empty eye sockets, and rose above his skull like a crown.
In his hand, the giant was holding a white staff — one that might have been carved from the trunk of a sacred tree, or perhaps fashioned out of the spine of an enormous serpent. At the top of the staff, a clear crystal was emanating pure white light, set in gold.
The moment the heavy gaze of the giant skeleton fell on Sunny and the Shadow Legion, he felt as if something pressed him into the ground. A few of the severely damaged shades simply collapsed, vanquished by the mere weight of that gaze.
‘D—damnation...'
Sunny stared at the Deathless Spirit, momentarily frozen by the oppressive power of the fallen deity's presence.
Azarax was staring at the enormous skeleton, as well, his jaw set grimly.
A moment later, he opened it and said:
"It's... it's him. The Wandering Archon."
Sunny finally composed himself.
“What are his powers? What concept does he command?"
Azarax remained silent.
“Answer me, damn it!"
Finally, the ancient tyrant turned to look at one of Sunny's incarnations. Strangely enough, it seemed like his usual confidence was gone.
He spoke in a distant tone:
"I... I don't remember. Why don't I remember?"
Then, his empty eye sockets were suddenly full of anger.
"Who cares what powers he wields?! It's a damn Spirit, Shadow! Even if he lost his Aspect, his Will alone is enough to be a problem!"
Sunny winced and studied the battlefield.
‘That's true.'
With the arrival of the Wandering Archon, the fragile balance on the battlefield was broken. His tidal Will was like a guiding force that subjugated the collective Will of the Deathless — not intentionally, but simply by virtue of being so overpowering. It was a single source of intent that gave shape to the tumultuous vastness of their murderous determination.
As a result, the cracks Sunny and Nephis used to resist the Deathless horde were gone. Their Will could not overcome the enemy's anymore, and so, the world was being bent and twisted against them.
The Deathless grew stronger, faster, and more durable. The silent warriors of the Shadow Legion and the undead warriors following Azarax, meanwhile, grew slower and weaker. Their weapons missed more often, the sands shifted beneath their feet, and the blows raining down at them found their marks with greater ease.
Sunny's expression turned grim.
They had to deal with that Sacred skeleton...
But that was easier said than done.
Sunny was wary of Cursed beings, but he was not particularly wary of the Wandering Archon. That was because it was the unnatural powers that made Nightmare Creatures of the Cursed Rank — the dark gods of the Dream Realm — so dangerous. The Deathless only had a tenuous grasp on their powers, at best, so a Deathless champion of the Sacred Rank was not as frightening.
All he possessed was raw power and the terrifying immensity of his Will. However, Sunny and Nephis were both Supreme Titans, and had Azarax as an ally as well. By all accounts, the three of them should have been enough to slay a Cursed One or two, especially if those Cursed Ones were mere Beasts.
However, the Deathless could not be killed, and therein lay the problem.
They could not slay the Wandering Archon, so they had to dismantle him bone by bone. And completely obliterating a Sacred being was far more difficult than simply killing them.
Looking at the towering figure of the Deathless Spirit, Sunny made a tentative prediction that if the three of them — Nephis, Azarax, and himself — joined forces and poured everything they had into the battle, they would be able to destroy the terrifying creature before it destroyed them.
The problem, though, was that the Wandering Archon was not alone. There was still a great horde of Deathless warriors around them, and these undead horrors would not stay still while the champions of the invading army assaulted their god.
If all three of them focused on battling the Sacred prisoner of Ariel's Hell, the Deathless would swiftly overwhelm their army and attack them from the rear, making an already deadly clash simply impossible to win.
So, that meant...
That instead of destroying the Wandering Archon, someone would have to stall it until dawn.
"I'll take him on, Shadow."
Azarax seemed to have regained his previously indomitable confidence and was now looking at the Deathless Spirit with a dark anticipation.
In truth, he had probably never been rattled by the appearance of this powerful foe. Rather, what had robbed the undead tyrant of his confidence was the fact that he could not quite remember who the Wandering Archon was — that was perhaps the first time he realized that there was something wrong going on with his mind.
Something wrong with it apart from the damage caused by spending thousands of years nailed to a tree, that was.
Sunny gave him a dark look.
“You will do no such thing."
Azarax was powerful — powerful beyond compare, even, having been made so by countless years of bloodshed. However, that power of his would be of little use against an enemy that could not be destroyed and could only be contained for a time. His Aspect was that of a conquering warlord, not a brawler.
Apart from that... if Sunny was honest with himself, he would have had to admit that he was alarmed by the implausible notion that Azarax could actually win that fight. In the unlikely event that he did, there would possibly be a Sacred vassal following him around. And that was not something Sunny wanted to see, tempting as it was.
That only left him and Nephis, then.
"Sunny..."
She was already near them, having advanced from the rear of the battle formation. Sunny turned to her, and for a brief moment, they looked into each other's eyes. That brief moment was enough for them to have an entire mental conversation without saying a word, though.
Nephis was willing to take on the Wandering Archon. She was eager, even, wanting to prove to the world — and perhaps to herself, as well — that she was still Nephis of the Immortal Flame clan, that she was Changing Star — with or without her Longing Domain.
However, Sunny did not think that she was the right choice for this particular trial, either.
Both of them were badly matched against the Deathless Spirit, and against the Deathless in general. Neph's powers lay in controlling flames and summoning destruction upon her enemies, but the undead warriors did not burn easily. So, destroying them took her a lot more effort than usual.
Nephis had incredible staying power due to her ability to heal herself, true, which meant that out of the three of them, she could last the longest. And yet, the number of tools she could use against the Wandering Archon was quite limited.
Sunny, on the other hand... he was nothing if not versatile. Nephis excelled in healing and destruction, but he had all kinds of tricks up his sleeve. So, for a task that involved containing a powerful enemy without being able to obliterate him, he was the best choice.
His Domain was just as robust as it had been before, too, so he would not have to fight a Sacred being in a weakened state, like Nephis would.
Letting out a sigh, Sunny looked away.
“I'll stall the Archon. I'm the best equipped to handle a battle like that, and possess the strongest Domain among us three at the moment. You two continue pushing forward — Nephis, take my place in the formation. My Shadows will support you, so clear a path forward. Azarax... you do what you do. Get as far away from that thing as possible, as fast as you can. I'll buy you some time and rejoin you before dawn."
If he survived.
The undead tyrant stared at him solemnly. It seemed like he was regarding Sunny with something that resembled emotion for the first time...
Eventually, he looked away and said:
"...And what are we supposed to do if a second Spirit rises from the sand?"
Sunny blinked a couple of times.
‘Did he just...'
He clenched his fists.
“Hey, fossil. I am going to tear your damn jaw off. Can you stop running your mouth, fool?!"
Shaking his head, Sunny headed in the direction where the Wandering Archon was already taking heavy steps, walking towards them.
“If a second Spirit shows up, deal with it! Smack it with your damn axe, why don't you?! Better yet, smash him with your skull! There doesn't seem to be anything inside it, anyway!"
Azarax laughed.
“Look! Now, you are finally starting to resemble a real Supreme!"
Sunny cursed at him.
"That damn bastard... I am going to come back and kill him right after I kill Eurys..."
He gave Saint an order to assume command of the Shadow Legion, and commanded his shades to follow Saint. By then, Nephis was already descending upon the Deathless in a whirlwind of white flame; Azarax dashed forward to rejoin the fight, his heavy axe crushing bones with each blow.
Now, it was up to Sunny to make sure that they would not have to deal with the Deathless Spirit.
ch 2890 The speed of their advance did not diminish. That was because today, Sunny employed a much more aggressive approach.
His shades were not cautious anymore, and neither were they trying to preserve themselves at all. Instead, they intentionally ignored the blows that rained down upon them in order to deliver the adversary as much harm as possible, as quickly as possible. This complete lack of self-preservation went against most underlying rules of combat and gave them a fearsome advantage against the Deathless... Of course, it came at a cost. The price of this speed was destruction.
And yet, they were not being destroyed. Once a shade received enough damage, the formation of the Shadow Legion would instantly shift, allowing it to fall back and for another shade to take its place. The wounded one, meanwhile, would reach the rear of the formation, where Nephis moved among the shades waiting for their turn to advance.
She would lay her radiant hands on the torn and tattered surface of the returning shade and heal it, allowing the silent warrior to rotate back to the line of battle contact soon.
In that way, the formation of the Shadow Legion continued to revolve, with fresh and nearly uninjured shades constantly attacking the adversary.
‘Look at me, playing the general...'
Who could have thought that he would command an entire army one day, back when he was crawling through the mud with the rest of the grunts in Antarctica? Sunny was glad to see his latest strategy work. However, he knew that it was unlikely to last long.
That was because while Nephis healed the shades, she wasn't bringing fire and destruction upon the Deathless from the sky. Their focus wasn't split, and the undead warriors further behind the contact line were not being torn apart and damaged by her flames.
The pressure was going to mount the longer the battle continued, and his best hope was that the increased power of the Shadow Legion would balance out the absence of Neph's incinerating flames.
But if it did not...
That was alright, as well.
After all, Nephis could always join the battle again. With the Longing Domain in shambles, her power was diminished, not gone. She was still a Supreme Titan and a wielder of a Divine Aspect... she was still a descendant of Sun God. So even in this weakened state, she was a terror to behold. It was just that they needed to find a way to use her powers in the most effective and efficient way. Nephis had almost always fought on the front line — not the most common role for a healer, but also not something that was unheard of. Tonight, they were going to see if she could do just as much damage, or perhaps even more of it, by staying back.
She was in a unique position to do so, after all. Usually, those who would be fighting on the frontline in her place were people — and unlike her, people could not heal their own wounds. So, they died.
Neither the Deathless thralls of Azarax nor Sunny's shades could die, though. Therefore, Neph could allow herself to stay back without paying a bloody price for it. So far, it was working really well. It was working splendidly, even — so much so that Sunny could not help but wonder just how much more fearsome the Shadow Legion would have been if he were still bonded to Nephis, and could therefore share in the power of her soul flames.
Perhaps he would find out, one day soon. Their small army advanced forward in a devastating storm of violence. Just like during every previous night, the Nightmare Desert was being ravaged by that storm, silently enduring the deafening mayhem of the battle and the inconceivable fury of forces unleashed by each clash.
Saint fought on the left flank of the battle formation, while Slayer fought on the right. The former was just as methodical and indomitable as always, while the latter was just as malevolent and vicious.
No, if anything... Slayer had become even more ruthless than usual.
She had come around a lot ever since Sunny first became her master, but during these weeks in the Nightmare Desert, she slowly returned to her former feral self.
Perhaps the Hell of Ariel reminded her of her days in the Shadow Realm. One was a desolate wasteland of obsidian dunes, while the other was an endless desert of white sand. One was populated by the shadows of the dead, while the other was populated by undying skeletons. It wasn't difficult to imagine that Slayer felt right at home here in Hell.
The difference, of course, was that now she was of a higher Rank and had regained her Aspect. So, instead of stalking and hunting her prey, Slayer was simply tearing it apart. When needed, she used her bow and arrows. Most of the time, though, she fought by assuming the shapes of the beasts she had once slain — and there seemed to be a myriad of forms she could take, choosing the most lethal one depending on the situation she was in and the enemies she faced.
Sunny, who was notoriously bad at recognizing extinct animals, saw all kinds of harrowing beasts in these last few weeks. Most of them were powerful, mythical creatures of the distant past, of course, but still...
He was almost glad to have been born in the time when most of the planet was a lifeless desert. He couldn't wrap his head around the fact that humans had survived when all these strange, terrifying creatures were just walking around as if it was no big deal.
Take a mongoose, for example...
“Hey, Shadow."
Azarax had just finished stomping a skeletal Deathless beast into dust after shattering its skull with his axe, and was now looking ahead with a grim expression.
"I think we are about to feel some agony."
Sunny did not need to be warned, because he had felt it himself.
Out there in front of them, the dunes were moving as something rose from beneath them, sending rivers of sand flowing down from its enormous form.
But that was not what made him tense. Instead, it was the fact that the world itself was changing. The currents of Will were twisting, as if a vast whirlpool was forming in its boundless, oppressive ocean.
"You just had to open your jaws and say it, didn't you..."
Sunny's voice was full of resentment.
The ancient tyrant's warning was coming true.
It seemed that they had stumbled upon a Sacred foe, after all
ch 2889 The Deathless were growing stronger the deeper into Ariel's Hell they went, yes — but Sunny and Nephis were learning how to fight them better, as well.
There were the mundane lessons of how to dismantle the undead warriors faster and more effectively. There were the broader lessons of developing better strategies and implementing better tactics, as well. Most importantly, Sunny and Nephis were learning about the nature of the Deathless, and therefore about their weaknesses.
One of those weaknesses, for example, was the tenuous grasp the undead warriors had on their Aspects and powers. Most Deathless had either lost them entirely or could only use them on a shallow level, as if using muscle memory to do something that they did not understand or remember anymore.
As a result, fighting the undead horrors was an exhausting, but mostly straightforward affair. It was combat in the purest of forms, a clash that relied solely on physical prowess and martial skill — even if the physical power involved in that clash was obliterating and terrifying enough to destroy lesser realms and reshape the very landscape of Hell.
It was a physical clash shaped by the underlying battle of warring Wills, of course.
Even then, Sunny and Nephis had found ways to overcome the tyrannical vastness of the enemy's Will.
The secret to doing so lay in the fact that it was not just two Wills that clashed with each other — their Will against the Will of the Deathless. Instead, it was actually three Wills struggling to subjugate one another. That was because the Deathless were not a monolithic force.
Even if they were united in their determination to obliterate the invaders, the undead warriors who had once belonged to the Demonic Legion were still opposed to the undead warriors who had once belonged to the Divine Host, and vice versa. Even consumed by the curse of Shadow God, the two great armies still struggled against each other.
Their resentment ran so deep that even after forgetting themselves, the Deathless still carried an overwhelming hostility toward the enemy. The thousands of years that had passed since the Doom War did not diminish their animosity toward each other one bit — if anything, it only made that animosity far greater.
The Deathless seemed to forget their strife when faced with a new enemy, but that was only an illusion. In truth, both sides still harbored a deep resentment for the other army, even while they were trying to eradicate the invaders. That division was not noticeable in their movements and seamless tactics, but betrayed itself in the turbulent expanse of their Will.
In other words, there were powerful undercurrents in the vast ocean of crushing Will the Deathless wielded, and those undercurrents clashed and collided with each other, creating a state of chaos and discord.
If one knew how to make use of that discord, how to slip through the cracks in the insurmountable mountain of the enemy's Will, they could overpower it with far less effort than would have been needed to summit the mountain through brute force.
So, that was how Sunny and Nephis managed to make it halfway to the Tomb of Ariel despite facing a seemingly endless horde of ancient, undying, immensely powerful foes.
Tonight, however, it all felt different.
The power of the Deathless they faced had taken a qualitative leap. The billowing ocean of murderous Will they possessed felt deeper than ever before. Their presence, too, felt different from before — it was colder, crueler, and far more focused.
‘Let's think positively...'
The seven incarnations of Sunny were the vanguard of the battle formation, serving to break the momentum of the advancing Deathless and soften them up for the marching army behind him. He moved like water, being elusive at times and exploding with crushing power at others.
His mind had entered the state of battle clarity and turned into a diamond under the pressure of controlling seven Supreme bodies in a ferocious, deadly battle. Every second, he unleashed a hurricane of attacks and withstood a storm of blows, breaking and weakening the Deathless while attempting to remain whole.
His Shells were damaged and torn, but at a slower rate than his ability to repair them. So, he could continue to fight.
Some distance ahead, Azarax was rampaging among the undead warriors. He had grown to tower over the dunes, clashing with the most powerful of the enemies as the desert quaked and groaned around them.
Unlike Sunny, there was nothing elusive or flowing about how the ancient tyrant fought. His battle style was all about dominance and oppression, explosive force and relentless aggression — which was not to say that it was brutish or lacked sophistication.
On the contrary, Azarax channelled his merciless, cruel fury in a chillingly calculated manner. As Sunny watched, he lunged forward to clash with a towering black skeleton clad in the rusty remains of bronze armor. The ancient tyrant created a false opening by lowering his enormous axe, then ducked under the enemy's rusty greatsword.
At the same time, he hooked his opponent's leg with the beard of the axe and pulled it back, sending the black skeleton falling to the ground in a cloud of white sand. In the blink of an eye, Azarax was upon his fallen enemy, bringing his foot down on the undead warrior's chest.
He pressed the Deathless champion into the sand and brought his axe down on his skull. As a shockwave rolled from the point of impact, and the skull of his adversary cracked... however, it did not shatter. Azarax had left it in one piece on purpose. Because a second later, when the ancient tyrant removed his foot from the enemy's ribcage and dashed forward to meet the next opponent, the Deathless warrior slowly rose from the ground and joined the formation of the undead warriors who followed the Deathless Sovereign's commands.
Sunny was trying to keep up.
‘How do we think positively? Well, let's think about it as training. Training to finally kill Eurys, that vile bastard...'
Unlike Azarax, who could subjugate the Deathless by defeating them, Sunny could only dismantle them completely — or at least severely damage them and leave the rest to his soldiers. So, every clash took him much longer.
‘But hey... there's seven of me. So who's to say which one of us is accomplishing more?’
While Sunny and Azarax fought in the front, their armies followed behind, soaking the brunt of the undead horde's assault.
The Deathless following Azarax were in the first row of the formation, assembled loosely, while the soldiers of the Shadow Legion were positioned behind them. The skeletal warriors were the first line of defense, and the shades were the sharp blades that lashed out from behind them to bring the enemies down...
Well, most of them, at least. The Wolf was not someone who respected or had a need for a defensive formation, so it ravaged the enemies wherever there was an opening, crushing their black bones between his mighty teeth.
From a distance, the battle formation of the invading army looked odd — almost comical, even. It was as if an army of living beings divided itself in two, with the blackened skeletons of the soldiers moving forward while their inky souls fell back.
The enemy was much stronger tonight than it had been before...
But the speed with which the invading army advanced was not at all slower.
since that nigger syn___23 kept complaining I'm going to upload all the chapters here until this Dumb sight fixed their skill issue ch2888
The Deathless were already rising from beneath the dunes, ready to descend upon those who had invaded Ariel's Hell in all their unending fury. Sunny and Azarax took their places at the head of the battle formation, while Nephis remained at the back, standing among the shades like a flash of pure white flame in the sea of darkness.
Just before the battle began, Sunny glanced at the distant — but not as distant as before — silhouette of the Tomb of Ariel.
At that moment, he thought he heard something...
An echo of a distant, indiscernible whisper that crawled into his ears and disappeared, as if it had burrowed into his brain.
He stumbled slightly.
Azarax gave him a contemptuous glance.
"What, Shadow? Are you afraid?"
Sunny remained motionless for a moment, then shook his head — the incarnation who was closest to Azarax did, at least.
“No. I just... I thought I heard something. Didn't you hear it, too?"
The black skull of the ancient tyrant just stared at him with its empty eye sockets, then turned away with a snarl.
“Get your head into the game.’
Sunny smiled darkly.
‘What the hell was that?’
Of course, he knew what it was even while asking the question.
It was the Call of Nightmare.
The great pyramid was built from numerous enormous blocks of black stone, and each of those blocks was a Seed of Nightmare — just like the one that had been knocked free and sent flying by some titanic blow eons ago, ending up far away in the desert. The block of stone Sunny and his cohort had used to enter the Nightmare about the last days of the River People.
All Seeds emanated the Call, and all Awakened were susceptible to the Call. In fact, the more powerful you were, the more maddening the Call of Nightmare became, drawing you forth to challenge the Seed... Actually, Sunny had never known if the Call of Nightmare was simply something innate to the Seeds or if it was a function of the Spell meant to push Awakened to grow stronger.
Now that he was not a carrier of the Spell but still suffered from the maddening melody of the Call, though, he knew that it was the former.
Which was an interesting philosophical question to ponder, if one had free time. Why were all Awakened drawn to the Nightmare Seeds? After all, it was only the carriers of the Nightmare Spell who could destroy them by challenging the Nightmares. For everyone else, touching a Seed simply meant surrendering themselves to Corruption.
Perhaps that was why the Seeds emanated the Call — maybe they were meant to lure living beings into becoming twisted by Corruption... like enormous flytraps emanating a sweet scent.
Or maybe it was the reverse side of what the Puppeteer had once told Sunny. According to the giant moth, all Nightmare Creatures were drawn to the Flame because of a maddening contradiction within them. They longed for the Flame and wanted to either possess or destroy it, because only then would they know peace.
Perhaps the Awakened were drawn to the Void for the same reason, as well.
And the Call they heard was simply an expression of that innate, primordial longing.
That was the philosophical question... Sunny, however, did not have the luxury of free time to ponder it. Instead, he had to contemplate a far more practical matter. With so many Seeds of Nightmare constituting the Tomb of Ariel — millions of them, quite likely — just how deafening the Call of Nightmare would become by the time Sunny and Nephis reached it?
Would they even be able to withstand it without going mad?
‘I guess we'll cross that bridge when we get there.'
Sunny shook his head, as if trying to shake the whisper out of his ear.
“I have seven heads, and they are all in the game. Worry about your own head, fossil.”
Azarax laughed.
“I've never beheaded someone seven times. I have something to look forward to now... thank you, Shadow."
In front of them, the endless horde of Deathless was already advancing to descend upon the invading army like a flood. Sunny exhaled slowly and sent all seven of his avatars forward.
‘One step at a time...’
The battle washed over him, drowning out all unnecessary thoughts.
Azarax had been right — tonight, the oppressive force of the Deathless felt much heavier.
Sunny and Nephis had already been fighting in the Nightmare Desert for weeks. Not a single night had been easy, and their fatigue accumulated — their enemies, on the contrary, only kept growing stronger and stronger the deeper into Ariel's Hell they went.
The Deathless were, naturally, a terrifying foe to face... after all, it was in their name. Fighting creatures who could not be killed was something that only a madman would do, and yet Sunny and Nephis did just that, night after night.
The undead warriors couldn't be destroyed, but they could be rendered harmless. To achieve that, each had to be dismantled bone by bone — and even then, the black bones tended to assemble back together after some time. So, they had to crush the bones into dust, even if each of those bones was as tough and durable as a steel weapon of a high Rank would have been.
Added to that was the chilling skill and cunning of the Deathless warriors, as well as their eerie ability to cooperate with each other and instinctual understanding of military tactics.
The most deadly thing about the Deathless, however, was their Will.
To most people, the undead prisoners of Ariel's Hell and Sunny's shades would seem quite similar. But actually, they were the opposite of each other — the shades were shadows cleansed of their mortal vessels and their sense of self, while the Deathless were mortal vessels who had been denied their shadows, and therefore their deaths. As a result, they were just as void of personhood, but at the same time far more aware of their own selves, and therefore in possession of a quiet, but powerful Will. More than that, their Will was vast like an ocean.
Sunny had already encountered that phenomenon while fighting the Black Millipede Tribe. Back then, none of the millipedes had possessed a Will powerful enough to threaten him — not even the Queens, since he outclassed them. However, there were simply too many nightmare creatures in the great swarm of their ghastly tribe. Their weak Wills fused together, forming a vast and alarming force that could crush and wash away anything, least of all a lone enemy.
Sunny had withstood the harrowing immensity of the Black Millipede's collective Will — the spirit of their species — because he was a Supreme Titan, and because he was cunning and cautious, eroding it away bit by bit before finally forcing a decisive battle.
However, the Deathless were far more powerful than the Black Millipedes had been, and he was pressed for time on top of that. So, even with three Sovereigns — Sunny, Nephis, and Azarax — fighting side by side and supported by three Supreme Shadows, waging a war on the Deathless was a daunting affair.
They had made it this far into the desert due to their strength, determination, and skill... but most of all, due to their ability to adapt.
fucking traitor, don't read there read here, do you understand that, if you want to read them copy them and upload them here don't be a traitor you traitor!!!!!?
Imagine SOS would come back cuz of some bs, Sunny could then gain thousands of years of experience and maybe become sacred. Maybe since hes supreme now and has 6 waves he can maybe not become corrupted.
London bridge is falling down falling down London bridge is falling down my fair lady London bridge is falling down falling down falling down my fair lady
i dont even think the vile bird is a thing right now like one clone defeated a cursed tyrant can you imagine 7 with 6 six weave and the curse and serpant
The comment section is much bigger than the entire chapter lmao 🤣
ch 2896 , now quiet whining you syn___23
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...’
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...'
He straightened with another groan and turned to look in the direction of the Tomb of Ariel.
The Shadow Legion had finally disappeared behind the horizon, and Neph's radiance was like a distant, pale line above it.
Sunny was surrounded by darkness.
He inhaled deeply.
"Fine then. Let's do it. No point in dilly-dallying.”
With that, he looked at the Archon once more and stepped into the shadows.
When Sunny emerged from them, he was standing directly on the shoulder of the Deathless Spirit.
He was quite high above the desert, and the howling winds immediately crashed into him, straining to throw him down. The ivory fabric of the Archon's tattered robe was like a soft carpet beneath his feet. The ancient horror's skull was like a hill in front of him, and the golden crown set into the black bone was like a tall ridge.
Naturally, only a complete fool would climb the body of a malevolent god. Standing on the shoulder of the Archon, Sunny was more or less surrendering himself to death... he could be squashed into a bloody puddle in an instant, or killed in a million other ways.
The black skull turned slowly, two huge disks of gold staring at him like eyes. From that distance, Sunny could vaguely see the images etched into them... but because of the eerie radiance spilling from within the Archon's skull, he couldn't quite make out what those images showed.
He wasn't sure that it would be wise to see them.
The Archon's terrifying gaze descended upon him like an avalanche, making every wound on his body scream in pain, and every crack on his battered soul widened a little.
Sunny forced out a smile.
"Hey, bastard. What gave you the courage to bully my wolf?"
The Archon stared at him silently, his dislocated jaw hanging in a twisted grin.
Then, he slowly raised a hand, as if intending to squish Sunny like an annoying fly.
Sunny lunged forward, rushing toward the base of the Deathless Spirit's spine. Far below, the Wolf growled and leaped into the air, abandoning caution to weigh the fallen deity's arm down. It was sent crashing into the ground by an inexplicable blow that came before the Archon moved his skeleton hand to deliver it, slowly crumbling into a torrent of shadows — but that bought Sunny time.
As his six shadows appeared on the white sand, having been robbed of the shade they had been augmenting, he reached the spine of the Deathless Spirit and thrust the soul shard at it... through it.
And then, he did what he usually did when turning objects into Memories — using Weaver's Needle, he attached the pattern to the unseen layer of the Archon's being, therefore connecting the two together.
Bonding them.
‘Did... did it work?"
The skeletal hand was already barreling toward him, obscuring the sky.
At that moment, Sunny heard a voice...
His own voice.
It was the Handy Bracelet speaking.
[You have received a Memory.]
Sunny was at best a heartbeat away from being destroyed.
"Dismiss!"
He was so panicked that he shouted the mental command out loud.
In the next second...
Sunny fell into a hurricane of white sparks, plummeting toward the white dunes.
The shoulder of the Deathless Spirit, which had supported his weight, was not there anymore.
Instead, a vast storm of essence sparks was pouring into his mangled soul
ch2895 enjoy you lazy FELLLAs
Sunny stumbled on that particular idea while lamenting how unreasonable the situation he had found himself in was.
No, really... it wasn't enough that he had to fight a minor god. That malevolent deity just had to be an undying one on top of that — a Sacred foe who literally could not be killed, because he was not a living thing to begin with.
Shadow God had taken his death, and therefore, stole away his life as well.
The concept of a living being was a complicated one in the world of the Nightmare Spell. Take Sunny, for example... technically, he was dead. But in the broader sense, he was still a living being. So was Jet, who could be considered one despite being physically and functionally a magically reanimated corpse.
There were all manner of Nightmare Creatures out there, as well — wraiths, ghosts, and specters of all kinds; golems and automatons, walking suits of malevolent armor... and things that could not even be described, let alone understood.
But all of them would still count as living beings, and for one simple reason — because they could be killed. They had shadows, and they had souls.
The Deathless were neither dead nor alive, though. They had lost their shadows, and no matter how Sunny looked, he could not determine if they had souls either. So, by all accounts, those cursed by Shadow God were not living beings.
They weren't ideas or concepts, either, because what constituted them was solid matter.
What were they, then?
Well, by method of elimination, the answer was simple...
They were things.
There were all kinds of ways to challenge that statement, but for Sunny, it sounded good enough. The Deathless were things — they were no different from items. Cursed things that were controlled by malevolent wills, but items nevertheless.
So, then, what kind of Memory could help Sunny deal with a Sacred thing that had been cursed by Shadow God?
He had been considering that question feverishly while at the same time wielding his Will to push back the oppressive authority of the Sacred thing in question. He even asked himself what kind of Memory he could have created to get himself out of this situation, if he was good enough at weaving to create Memories on the fly.
And then, it suddenly hit him...
If the Deathless were things, if they were no different from items... Then did he really need to make a Memory to survive the battle against the Wandering Archon?
...What if he made the Archon into a Memory, instead?
The question was so preposterous that Sunny instantly threw it out of his head, concentrating on finding an actual solution. However, once the idea rooted itself in his mind, it refused to go, and a few moments later, he found himself coming back to the same question.
‘I have finally lost it... I have. Haven't I?'
But what if he hadn't?
Technically... nothing was stopping Sunny from turning a Deathless into a Memory. A Memory was simply an item enchanted with the rudimentary spellweave, after all, which allowed it to be disassembled into soul essence and stored in its master's soul, as well as summoned back to be reconstituted as matter.
The Deathless had neither a shadow nor a soul — they weren't living beings and were things instead. So if Sunny could just create a rudimentary spellweave, anchor it in a sufficiently pure soul shard, and attach it to the black bones of one of them...
Then, theoretically, he could dismiss the Deathless as he would a Memory, and keep it stored in his soul in a disassembled state. It was just that attaching a spellweave to a moving, sinister, murderous skeleton was not exactly something that could be accomplished easily. And normally, there would be no reason to — after all, it was not like turning one of the Deathless into a Memory would give Sunny control over it. It would only allow him to dismiss and summon the skeleton like he would a Memory, and nothing more.
Once the Deathless was summoned back, it would immediately attack Sunny once again. It would probably destroy the spellweave rooted inside of its bones, as well.
But...
‘Ah, to hell with it! I am going to try!’
Sunny was already in quite a desperate situation, and he neither wanted nor planned to control the Archon. All he wanted to do was get rid of him so that the Shadow Legion could escape, and Sunny himself could survive.
He was sure... almost sure that if he did manage to dismantle the Deathless Spirit and draw him into his Soul Sea, the thing was not going to destroy his soul from within. That was because, unlike shades and Shadows, a Memory was not an actual thing when dismissed — not the items it became when summoned.
Rather, it was an idea of that thing... a blueprint used to reassemble it from essence. So, the Archon would cease to exist as a thing within Sunny's Soul Sea. Most likely.
‘I guess we'll see!’
Steeling himself, Sunny sent one of his incarnations away from the Wolf and summoned two things. One was Weaver's Needle, and the other was a Sacred soul shard stored in the replica of the Nameless Temple.
Sacred Shards were not at all simple to come by. Sunny had procured a few in Ariel's Game, and a few more were unearthed by the forces of the Human Domain here and there in the Dream Realm. However, most of them were gone now — he had used some to survive the Death Game, while the rest became anchors for the defensive arrays he and Cassie created to protect key Citadels of humanity.
The one Sunny summoned was the last in his possession.
‘Now, how the hell do I even do it?'
As six incarnations of Sunny were empowering the Wolf in its battle against the Archon, his battered soul drowning in agony, he tried to calm himself down and think things through clearly.
‘Come on, come on...'
The Deathless Spirit's staff brushed across a tall white dune no more than a few hundred meters away from him, erasing it from existence and making Ariel's Hell shudder. Sunny crouched low to maintain his balance and gritted his teeth.
In theory, it was simple.
Weaving took a lot of time and concentration, so it was not something that could be done in the midst of a battle — at least not by him, and he was the best and only weaver in existence. Memories could not be woven or unraveled on the fly...
But that only held true for proper Memories.
A rudimentary one, no different from the very first one Sunny had ever created, could be created quite easily. All he had to do was weave the fundamental enchantments that the Nightmare Spell used as the basis of all Memories, and then connect them to the item that was supposed to become a Memory.
No, not even all of the rudimentary enchantments. Sunny did not care if the Archon could passively mend himself while stored in his soul — in fact, he would very much prefer if the damn Deathless couldn't. He did not need the Memory of the Wandering Archon to possess a title and a description, either.
All he needed was to imbue that thing with the quality that allowed it to be dismissed or summoned, as well as make himself the being in control of when that happened. So...
First of all, he needed to weave strings out of shadow essence.
He needed to anchor them in the Sacred Shard and create the rudimentary enchantment of summoning.
Then... he somehow needed to embed the shard and the weave into the Archon. While staying alive, no less.
Well, as alive as someone who was technically dead could be.
‘..Nothing to it.'
Smiling weakly, Sunny began weaving ethereal black strings out of his essence. Usually, he would weave a considerable length of the shadow string before beginning to weave it into a sorcerous pattern. But right now, there was no time for that — so, Sunny wove faster than he had ever before, his six hands moving in rapid harmony.
As soon as there was any length of the string at all, he immediately threaded it through Weaver's Needle and anchored it in the soul shard, then continued to create more while beginning to shape the familiar pattern of the summoning enchantment. Sunny had created this particular pattern so many times that he could weave it with his eyes closed...
Weaving it while simultaneously battling a deity, though, was proving to be a challenge.
Most of Sunny's mind was preoccupied with the battle. He assisted the Wolf while at the same time straining all of his being to resist the boundless Will of the Archon — that was already almost beyond his limit, so he hardly had mental capacity for weaving, as well.
And yet, he had to manage somehow.
So, he did.
2894
Suddenly, the darkness retreated, and a titanic, billowing pillar of roaring white flame escaped into the vastness of the sky, washing over it like an immolating flood. The fire churned, and if one glanced closely, they could glimpse a vague, flowing silhouette of something colossal being drawn by the moving flames, appearing and disappearing in the dance of fire — before they were blinded by its pure radiance, of course.
As if the flame was a living thing that moved with purpose and otherworldly intent... Right now, its intent was to devour the Deathless.
The boundless ocean of flame descended upon Ariel's Hell like a white inferno, swallowing a vast swath of the undead horde in front of the advancing army. The desert was drowned by the sea of fire, which stretched all the way to the horizon.
Countless Deathless were trapped in the inferno, burning in it... being gnawed on and shattered by it.
Their figures were like black candlesticks melting in the light.
The visage of Changing Star, unleashed, was both radiant and terrifying,
Sadly, even her true shape was not powerful and devastating enough to wipe out the prisoners of Hell, especially now that her Domain had been broken, and her Will had lost the weight of billions of souls that used to empower it.
The weaker of the Deathless were destroyed, and those of them on whom Nephis focused her incinerating will were being slowly turned to ash. But most of them, while damaged and burned by the flame, continued to move.
Some, those who were powerful enough, fought against the living flame, dealing it invisible wounds — Nephis healed those wounds and endured the agony, scorching them in turn.
The rest waded through the ocean of flame, blinded, still overcome by the desire to obliterate the invaders who had dared to enter Ariel's Hell.
Their black bones slowly ignited like embers and then turned incandescent, shining with an angry red glow in the sea of fire.
It was then that Saint, whose fearsome armor and jade body were all but impervious to elemental attacks, emerged from the flame and slashed the nearest Deathless with her black blade.
The adamantine bones, which had been nearly indestructible before, parted in front of the dark sword like butter. That was because even if they were not destroyed by the soul flame, they were rendered softer and far more fragile in their incandescent state.
Saint did not stop even for a split second, instantly dismantling the Deathless warrior before moving on to the next one with measured, indomitable steps.
Behind her, the figure of Azarax emerged from the flame, as well. The ancient tyrant laughed, his glass armor shining like a terrifying beacon, His axe fell, splitting a Deathless beast in half, and his boots stomped the fallen creature into dust, a swarm of red embers shooting to swirl in the overheated air.
Luckily, neither the undead vassals of the ancient conqueror nor the shades needed to breathe. Otherwise, their lungs would have turned to ash already.
The rest of the invading army moved behind its champions. The white flames flowed, opening a path to them — a few seconds later, the two forces clashed, and this time, the Deathless fell far more easily under the blades, claws, and fangs of the invaders.
The Shadow Legion marched on through the white flame, which parted in front of it like an immolating sea.
It seemed to be working, for now..
But even in the depths of her agony, Nephis knew that she would not be able to maintain that fearsome assault for long. That was because she had lost most of her Domain, and therefore, the vast torrent of spirit essence that used to flow into her soul was replaced by a thin stream. She was burning more essence than she was receiving, and even with the [Fire] empowering her soul, she would exhaust her reserves of it soon.
Before that happened...
They needed to leave the Deathless Spirit and the vast expanse of his insurmountable Will behind.
Far away, engaged in a ferocious battle with the Deathless Spirit, Sunny could only vaguely see Nephis and the Shadow Legion advancing in the distance. The Nightmare Desert was illuminated by her radiant flames, and dark figures clashed in the sea of white radiance, indistinguishable from each other.
His shadow sense was going haywire from all the chaos and mayhem of the cataclysmic battle, so he was having trouble determining which figures were friends, and which ones were foes. Their army was advancing at a good rate, though, so it seemed that Nephis and Azarax had a handle on the situation for now, at least.
At first, the Shadow Legion was behind him. Then, it was far to the side, circling around the area where Sunny and the Archon fought. And then, it was finally ahead of them, slowly making its way closer to the looming shape of the Tomb of Ariel.
There was not enough distance between the Shadow Legion and the Deathless Spirit yet, though, and there wouldn't be for a long time. So, Sunny had to continue fighting.
It was tough.
The Archon was a terrifying enemy — an enemy that Sunny had no business fighting, really — and even if the Wolf was cunning and elusive, attacking from the darkness only to retreat moments later, aided in its predatory dance by Sunny carrying its weight through the shadows, the damage they had received was slowly accumulating.
The giant figure of the Wolf was frayed now, surrounded by a billowing cloud of grey smoke. Sunny, meanwhile, was in the throes of agony, several of his soul cores already covered in cracks.
Every time the Wolf was a little bit too slow to evade the Archon’s attack, his entire being shook and quaked, barely surviving the terrifying tyranny of the fallen deity's unfathomable killing intent.
Sunny could endure a lot of punishment, but there was a limit even to his endurance. For now, Soul Weave was preventing his wounded soul from collapsing and his cores from crumbling, but if the battle continued in the same manner, he would suffer a loss or even be outright destroyed. Unfortunately...
The battle had to go on.
He had occupied the Deathless Spirit for some time now — minutes, perhaps even dozens of minutes — but dawn was still hours away. Which meant that Sunny had to continue fighting against an undying god of Hell for hours more... and he was not sure that he could manage that.
'Think, think, think...'
The Wolf clawed at the looming figure of the Archon, adding more rifts to his tattered robe. It bit onto the white staff of the Deathless Spirit, leaving deep grooves in it and ripping one of the golden ornaments free. It leaped into the air and sank its fangs into the giant skeletons jaw, dislodging it from the joints.
Now, the Archon’s jaw hung crookedly, which only made him look more terrifying. The eerie glow emanating from behind the golden coins covering his eyes grew more intense, and Sunny felt something cold grasp his heart.
The Archon twisted space and time, answering to the ferocious attack. Sunny felt a ghastly pain first, and only then felt the Deathless Spirit's bony fingers rending through the Wolve's hide, leaving a ghastly wound on its side..
And on Sunny’s soul, as well.
‘I... don't think I am going to survive until dawn.'
Even if he used the [Chain] enchantment of the Curse, it would only buy him a little bit more time.
His mind spun furiously, trying to come up with something — some trick, some devious scheme, or even some bold gamble — to turn the tide of this brutal battle. Was there some application of his Aspect Abilities that he could use, some revelation he was failing to grasp, some Memory he could summon to turn the tables?
‘Memories...’
He remembered every Memory in his soul arsenal, and every enchantment those Memories possessed. He also remembered every instance of using those enchantments and what the results were.
Sunny had created most of those Memories himself, so he knew what they were capable of very well.
That was why he knew that there was no Memory that could truly help him defeat a Sacred being — not really.
That was because Memories did not usually possess a Will of their own, and were therefore only as powerful as the Will of their masters. In the battles between beings of lesser Ranks, that did not matter that much... but when one fought against a deity, any Memory could be easily rendered ineffectual simply by being denied the power to reshape the world in accordance with its design.
So, even if Sunny had forged a Sacred Memory for himself, it would still be fueled by his Supreme Will. Unless there was an adversarial Will opposing him, it could still work just fine — if it was designed well enough to push against the universal laws of existence — but if Sunny had to fight someone like the Wandering Archon, even his most powerful Memories would probably prove to be unreliable.
‘Forged myself... a Sacred memory...'
The Wolf received another blow and was thrown into the air, collapsing on the sand with a terrifying impact moments later. Sunny let out an anguished groan and focused on the Deathless Spirit.
Suddenly...
A completely mad idea found its way into his mind.
Sunny had been known to entertain an outlandish idea or two, but this one was really, truly mad — even by his standards.
‘But is there a reason why it shouldn't work?’
Actually, there were a million reasons, but Sunny did not need those. He only needed one reason why it could work — his Will would do the rest and make the remotely possible become inevitable.
Hopefully.
In any case, he knew that he was not going to last long against the Archon, and this was the only plausible — albeit deeply mad — idea he had been able to come up with.
‘Let's try it, then. What's the worst... no, I'm not finishing that sentence...’
As the Wolf staggered to its feet and glared at the Deathless Spirit, baring its fangs, Sunny secretly allowed one of his incarnations to separate itself from the Sacred shade.
He hid in the darkness, watching intently, and when the Wolf lunged forward to attack the Archon again, quietly assumed a human form once more.
Looking around in hesitation, Sunny took a deep breath and reached into his Soul Sea. He needed to retrieve something from there, as well as summon a particular Memory.
The shadows flowed up his body and extended from his torso, turning into two additional pairs of hands.
‘If brute force doesn't work, try sorcery.'
He summoned Weaver's Needle
ch2893
The Deathless Spirit towered above the shadow of the Wolf, and in the darkness of the night, he seemed like a black mountain that obscured the distant, radiant ocean of stars. He might not have been stronger than the Sacred shade, but his Will was far superior...
Sunny was not even sure that calling it superior would be the right word. The difference between his own Will and that of the Archon was like the difference between a clear brook and a vast sea. Like the difference between a stone fortress and the boundless expanse of the wide world that surrounded it.
The Archon did not possess a weakness that Sunny could easily exploit, either.
In the battle against Abundance, Sunny had been able to lock it in space and slowly poison the enormous godworm with his Death Will — but the Archon was Deathless.
In the battle against the Rat King, Sunny had been able to destroy the single rat that was the source of the terrifying swarm, thus cutting its connection to the Puppeteer, and watched the rats devour each other to satiate their maddening hunger. But there was no single weak spot that could be used to destroy the Archon, and no one was in control of him.
In the battle against the Wolf, Sunny had been able to grasp the concept wielded by the enemy and personify its opposite. That allowed him to hold out long enough to use the Cursed Demon's own terrifying power to fuel the grand spell he had woven in advance, thus destroying it. But there was no spell that could help Sunny against the Archon...
And the Archon did not seem to wield any concept, either.
Or rather, it did, but it was of no help to Sunny.
After exchanging the first blows with the Deathless Spirit, Sunny had gotten a better taste of his Will. And what he found was that the ancient horror seemed similar to Azarax, the Plague of Steel, in some regard. There was almost nothing common between them, except for one thing that mattered most.
Azarax was Supreme, and therefore, his Will had an innate affinity — just like Sunny's Will was innately tied to death, while Neph's was connected to desire and longing. What of the Plague of Steel, then? What affinity did his Will possess? What concept did he personify, or at least would grow to personify if he ever underwent Apotheosis?
Sunny had racked his brain about it for a while, observing the ancient tyrant closely in the ferocious battles they fought. The answer he eventually arrived at was, needless to say, quite surprising.
The Deathless Sovereign's Will expressed only one concept, and that concept was... himself. The natural affinity of Azarax, the Plague of Steel, was to nothing more and nothing less than Azarax himself.
Perhaps he was too arrogant and full of deadly ambition to tie the concept of himself to any greater force — after all, as far as Azarax was concerned, there was no force and no element that was greater than him. In the end, all of existence, including all the elements and forces contained within it, was meant to submit and bow down before him.
The Archon was very similar, albeit for a different reason. The Deathless Spirit was not overcome by an insatiable lust for conquest, but whatever it had been, whatever concept he had personified, whatever kind of Apotheosis he had undergone was washed away by the curse of Shadow God and the merciless passage of years.
Now, he was an empty, fallen deity that personified nothing but himself. Whatever made him the Wandering Archon had been erased and swallowed by oblivion, and so, he wielded no power but the power of godhood itself — the power to reshape the world according to his Will.
On one hand, it was a great relief. After all, Sunny still remembered his terrifying experiences in Ariel's Game, especially the days that were mysteriously missing from his memory — the days of the battle against the eerie Snow Demon that had infected their minds. He also remembered the Cursed Demon Abjuration, which had come close to wiping out all of humanity during its battle against Nephis.
So, it was a boon that the Archon did not remember how to wield his powers, whatever those powers might have been. At the same time, it put Sunny at a disadvantage, because there was no concept for him to counteract or channel the opposite of. There was nothing for him to exploit, and so, all he could do was try to match the Deathless Spirit in a contest of brute force.
Luckily, the Wolf was not helpless in the fight against an overwhelmingly strong enemy. Yes, the Archon was far greater than it, towering above the giant beast like a dark mountain... but the Archon had been a human once, or at least a creature that resembled humans.
And there were very few things humans feared more than a predator stalking them in the night.
After that first clash, where the Wolf received a devastating blow, it changed tactics, channeling all the cunning and ferociousness of a primeval beast. At the same time, having become one with the Wolf, Sunny reshaped himself in the image of a wolf and sharpened his Will for a focused, singular purpose.
That purpose was to force a concept upon the hollow deity of Ariel's Hell, on the Spirit who had been the Wandering Archon once. The concept of prey.
When the Deathless Spirit and the Wolf clashed for the second time, the world rippled and twisted like a piece of crumpled paper. The Nightmare Desert shook.
The Wolf did not manage to bring down the Archon... but this time, it managed to escape unscathed, if only just barely. A split second later, it was already moving through the shadows, ready to attack the enemy again.
Time was flowing, and the Deathless Spirit was focusing on the Wolf instead of turning his attention to the Shadow Legion...
So, even if Sunny was in pain after enduring a heavy blow to his soul, he was accomplishing his mission.
Out there on the battlefield, the Shadow Legion and the undead warriors serving Azarax were making their way forward. However, their pace had slowed down to a crawl, and they were suffering casualties at a far greater rate than before.
After all, Sunny’s absence could not be ignored. Not only had he acted as not one, but seven deadliest champions of the invading army, splitting the tide of the Deathless before they could reach the battle formation, but he was also the commander of the Shadow Legion. Now that he had to pour all of his attention into the battle against the Archon, his shades could only follow Saint.
And Saint, despite her [War Master] Attribute, was yet incomplete. She was a mere Devil, after all — so, her ability to lead armies was going to remain rudimentary for as long as she did not rise to the Class of Tyrant.
Added to that was the fact that the Deathless Spirit's Will was still fueling the undead prisoners of the Nightmare Desert with indomitable resolve. The world itself was playing favorites, assisting the Deathless while obstructing their enemies. Nephis was not there to heal and mend the wounded shades anymore, either, since she was fighting on the frontline.
So, the invading army was suffering. The shades were being slowly whittled down and vanquished. Even the undead warriors of Azarax were starting to be destroyed — just like Sunny and Nephis had dismantled and obliterated the Deathless before, the Deathless were not dismantling the turncoats.
The curse of Shadow God would probably restore them, eventually — but not nearly fast enough to be of use for the expedition to the Tomb of Ariel.
Azarax seemed to have pushed himself even further than before, rampaging among the enemy like a spirit of inevitability and destruction. However, even his terrifying strength was not enough to turn the tide of this losing battle...
Nephis had to get involved and fill the great chasm left by Sunny’s absence, somehow — even if she possessed only one body, not seven, and could not control the Shadow Legion at all.
So, that was what she did.
At first, she simply summoned the Blessing and entered the melee, serving as the spearhead of the slowly advancing formation. Her sublime swordsmanship revealed itself in all its glory, and as flashes of brilliant white light illuminated the dark mass of the charging Deathless, her lithe figure could be seen moving between them, cutting one after another down.
But, of course, that was not enough.
Even channeling her flames through the Blessing to unleash incinerating rays of pure light was not enough, since the Deathless were too numerous and too powerful, resisting the devastating power of her burning soul with daunting efficiency.
Having dismantled another skeleton and crushed its skull under her foot, Nephis stopped for a moment and looked over the endless horde of the Deathless, her gaze turning cold.
She closed her eyes for a heartbeat and exhaled slowly.
When she opened her eyes again, they were full of immolating white flame.
A soft white radiance ignited under her skin. Then, it grew brilliant and blinding, until there was nothing soft about it, and as Neph's tunic collapsed into a whirlwind of white sparks, she assumed the form of the Spirit of Light — of a being whose body was woven out of pure radiance and flame, not mortal flesh.
When she did, the night of Ariel's Hell did not seem so dark anymore.
That radiant form, however, was not Neph's true and full Transformation.
It was merely a shell that contained the boundless ocean of her soul flame in a radiant vessel.
And now, Nephis chose to open that vessel, unleashing herself upon the world.
ch 2992 just cuz that syn__23 whiny kept whining
What was the best way to fight a Sacred enemy?
Of course, it was to be Sacred yourself. Sadly, Sunny was not a Spirit yet. However, he did command four Sacred shades: Puppeteer, Abundance, the Rat King, and the Wolf.
The Puppeteer Moth was technically the most powerful of them, being a Tyrant. However, its powers did not lend themselves well to direct confrontation — or rather, not as well as those of the other Sacred shades. That was the very reason why Sunny had managed to defeat the Spirit of Doubt and was alive today. Abundance and the Rat King each excelled at many things, but facing a single overwhelmingly powerful adversary was not one of them.
The Wolf, however... the Wolf had been a
Spirit of primal fury, cunning, and hunting. It personified the concept of the Wolf, and wolves were exceptional hunters. They were known to bring down prey much larger than themselves, as well.
Apart from that, the Wolf had been a Cursed Demon — a being of a higher Class than both Abundance and the Rat King.
So, it was Sunny's best choice to battle the Wandering Archon.
The problem, of course, was that despite being Sacred, the Wolf was a Sacred shade. And shades did not quite possess a Will of their own — and even if Sacred shades were somewhat different, they still could not compare to real Spirits. The shadow of the Will they could exert was far less potent than that of living beings, Sacred or Cursed. There was a cure for that, though — a partial cure, but a cure nonetheless.
As the Wolf launched itself into the horde of the Deathless, barreling toward the distant figure of the Wandering Archon, it
was surrounded by all seven of Sunny's incarnations.
And then, all seven avatars turned into shadows, wrapping themselves around the shadow of the primeval predator.
One, two, three, four... seven.
With each shadow, the power of the Wolf increased. More than that, it became a direct conduit of Sunny's own Will.
That Will was Supreme, not Sacred... but it was the Will of a Titan. It was empowered by Spirit Weave, as well. And when it was being channeled by a Sacred shade, the result was truly fearsome — not quite as fearsome as having a true Sacred being attack the enemy, but still terrifying nonetheless.
As Sunny wrapped himself around the Wolf, he fused with it on a deep level. As always, he was instantly overwhelmed by the vastness and unfathomable depth of a Sacred being's consciousness. It was so overwhelming, in fact, that Sunny could not
contend with all of it. Instead, he had to limit his perception to a narrow band, only focusing on what was important.
All around him, the Will of the Wandering Archon churned and flowed, drowning the world.
If there was one silver lining in all of it, though, it was that even if expressing their Will seemed as natural as breathing for the Spirits, the Deathless did not possess enough of themselves to wield it with a fine level of precision. Sunny, however, knew how to wield his.
Even if the natural affinity of his Will — death — was meaningless in a battle against the Deathless, the fact that he was adept at wielding his Will like he would a weapon gave him an advantage.
The Wolf flew through the horde of undead warriors, followed by his pack. Some of the Shadow Wolves were brought down and vanquished in that mad dash, but most made it through the mass of Deathless by
following the leader of their pack.
The Wandering Archon was already near. ‘It's good to learn...’
The Deathless Spirit raised his staff and brought it down. It seemed to fall slowly, and looked too far away to hit Sunny... but the space itself was torn apart and twisted by that unhurried blow, and a split second later, the Wolf was only a single moment away from being erased from existence, as if it had never existed at all.
‘..that not knowing death means not knowing salvation:
Sunny pulled the Sacred shade into the shadows, stepping through them to appear behind the Deathless Spirit.
Ignoring the laws of space? Two could play that game.
‘Not knowing death means that one's suffering will never end. I would have loved to teach this bastard a harsh lesson about unending agony...
The wolf lunged into the air, aiming to sink its fangs into the enemy's throat. Sadly, the Archon was suddenly facing them, the horrifying gaze of his empty eye sockets pressing Sunny into the ground.
But no, they weren't empty... two golden disks were set into the eye socket, like enormous gold coins.
An eerie radiance was spilling from behind those disks.
‘But something tells me that the Deathless know that better than I ever would: Instead of the towering skeleton's spine, the Wolf could only bite into his arm. The shadow of the primordial beast pressed down onto the sleeve of the ivory robe, aiming to crush the black bone beneath. It pulled the Archon down, jerking its head sideways with terrible force to tear the entire forearm off.
At the same time, two Wills — the elemental Will of the Deathless Spirit and Sunny's sharp, deadly one — clashed with each
other, sending an invisible, imperceptible, inconceivable shockwave spreading through the fabric of the world.
They were competing to see which one of them would get to lure the universal laws of existence to their side.
‘Come on... come on!’
In the end, the bones of the Wandering Archon did not shatter.
The obsidian fangs of the Wolf cracked, instead.
In the next moment, the Deathless Spirit calmly brought his staff down on the enormous beast's back. The blow fell on the spine of the wolf with the weight of an entire realm, almost managing to snap it in half.
The Wolf survived the attack by releasing the enemy and allowing the force of the impact to throw it down, rolling over the dunes in a whirlwind of white sand.
A few moments later, it was already on its
feet.
The Wolf was ready to continue the fight, a terrifying growl escaping from its maw. Sunny, however...
Sunny was in a sea of pain.
Because the moment the Archon struck his shade with the staff, a net of cracks spread across one of his cores, as well.
He suppressed a tortured groan.
"Yup. It hurts a lot.
ch 2991
A giant slowly rose from beneath the dunes, erasing them. As rivers of white sand flowed down from his rising figure, his shape and appearance were slowly revealed.
The being who had changed the underlying currents of the world with his mere presence resembled a human — a skeleton of a human, at least. He towered above the desert like a terrifying monument, a tattered robe of fluttering ivory fabric obscuring his ancient bones. Those of the bones that were in sight were black, like the bones of other Deathless, but also different.
That was because they were inlaid with strips of pure gold, which framed his cheekbones, empty eye sockets, and rose above his skull like a crown.
In his hand, the giant was holding a white staff — one that might have been carved from the trunk of a sacred tree, or perhaps fashioned out of the spine of an enormous serpent. At the top of the staff, a clear crystal was emanating pure white light, set in gold.
The moment the heavy gaze of the giant skeleton fell on Sunny and the Shadow Legion, he felt as if something pressed him into the ground. A few of the severely damaged shades simply collapsed, vanquished by the mere weight of that gaze.
‘D—damnation...'
Sunny stared at the Deathless Spirit, momentarily frozen by the oppressive power of the fallen deity's presence.
Azarax was staring at the enormous skeleton, as well, his jaw set grimly.
A moment later, he opened it and said:
"It's... it's him. The Wandering Archon."
Sunny finally composed himself.
“What are his powers? What concept does he command?"
Azarax remained silent.
“Answer me, damn it!"
Finally, the ancient tyrant turned to look at one of Sunny's incarnations. Strangely enough, it seemed like his usual confidence was gone.
He spoke in a distant tone:
"I... I don't remember. Why don't I remember?"
Then, his empty eye sockets were suddenly full of anger.
"Who cares what powers he wields?! It's a damn Spirit, Shadow! Even if he lost his Aspect, his Will alone is enough to be a problem!"
Sunny winced and studied the battlefield.
‘That's true.'
With the arrival of the Wandering Archon, the fragile balance on the battlefield was broken. His tidal Will was like a guiding force that subjugated the collective Will of the Deathless — not intentionally, but simply by virtue of being so overpowering. It was a single source of intent that gave shape to the tumultuous vastness of their murderous determination.
As a result, the cracks Sunny and Nephis used to resist the Deathless horde were gone. Their Will could not overcome the enemy's anymore, and so, the world was being bent and twisted against them.
The Deathless grew stronger, faster, and more durable. The silent warriors of the Shadow Legion and the undead warriors following Azarax, meanwhile, grew slower and weaker. Their weapons missed more often, the sands shifted beneath their feet, and the blows raining down at them found their marks with greater ease.
Sunny's expression turned grim.
They had to deal with that Sacred skeleton...
But that was easier said than done.
Sunny was wary of Cursed beings, but he was not particularly wary of the Wandering Archon. That was because it was the unnatural powers that made Nightmare Creatures of the Cursed Rank — the dark gods of the Dream Realm — so dangerous. The Deathless only had a tenuous grasp on their powers, at best, so a Deathless champion of the Sacred Rank was not as frightening.
All he possessed was raw power and the terrifying immensity of his Will. However, Sunny and Nephis were both Supreme Titans, and had Azarax as an ally as well. By all accounts, the three of them should have been enough to slay a Cursed One or two, especially if those Cursed Ones were mere Beasts.
However, the Deathless could not be killed, and therein lay the problem.
They could not slay the Wandering Archon, so they had to dismantle him bone by bone. And completely obliterating a Sacred being was far more difficult than simply killing them.
Looking at the towering figure of the Deathless Spirit, Sunny made a tentative prediction that if the three of them — Nephis, Azarax, and himself — joined forces and poured everything they had into the battle, they would be able to destroy the terrifying creature before it destroyed them.
The problem, though, was that the Wandering Archon was not alone. There was still a great horde of Deathless warriors around them, and these undead horrors would not stay still while the champions of the invading army assaulted their god.
If all three of them focused on battling the Sacred prisoner of Ariel's Hell, the Deathless would swiftly overwhelm their army and attack them from the rear, making an already deadly clash simply impossible to win.
So, that meant...
That instead of destroying the Wandering Archon, someone would have to stall it until dawn.
"I'll take him on, Shadow."
Azarax seemed to have regained his previously indomitable confidence and was now looking at the Deathless Spirit with a dark anticipation.
In truth, he had probably never been rattled by the appearance of this powerful foe. Rather, what had robbed the undead tyrant of his confidence was the fact that he could not quite remember who the Wandering Archon was — that was perhaps the first time he realized that there was something wrong going on with his mind.
Something wrong with it apart from the damage caused by spending thousands of years nailed to a tree, that was.
Sunny gave him a dark look.
“You will do no such thing."
Azarax was powerful — powerful beyond compare, even, having been made so by countless years of bloodshed. However, that power of his would be of little use against an enemy that could not be destroyed and could only be contained for a time. His Aspect was that of a conquering warlord, not a brawler.
Apart from that... if Sunny was honest with himself, he would have had to admit that he was alarmed by the implausible notion that Azarax could actually win that fight. In the unlikely event that he did, there would possibly be a Sacred vassal following him around. And that was not something Sunny wanted to see, tempting as it was.
That only left him and Nephis, then.
"Sunny..."
She was already near them, having advanced from the rear of the battle formation. Sunny turned to her, and for a brief moment, they looked into each other's eyes. That brief moment was enough for them to have an entire mental conversation without saying a word, though.
Nephis was willing to take on the Wandering Archon. She was eager, even, wanting to prove to the world — and perhaps to herself, as well — that she was still Nephis of the Immortal Flame clan, that she was Changing Star — with or without her Longing Domain.
However, Sunny did not think that she was the right choice for this particular trial, either.
Both of them were badly matched against the Deathless Spirit, and against the Deathless in general. Neph's powers lay in controlling flames and summoning destruction upon her enemies, but the undead warriors did not burn easily. So, destroying them took her a lot more effort than usual.
Nephis had incredible staying power due to her ability to heal herself, true, which meant that out of the three of them, she could last the longest. And yet, the number of tools she could use against the Wandering Archon was quite limited.
Sunny, on the other hand... he was nothing if not versatile. Nephis excelled in healing and destruction, but he had all kinds of tricks up his sleeve. So, for a task that involved containing a powerful enemy without being able to obliterate him, he was the best choice.
His Domain was just as robust as it had been before, too, so he would not have to fight a Sacred being in a weakened state, like Nephis would.
Letting out a sigh, Sunny looked away.
“I'll stall the Archon. I'm the best equipped to handle a battle like that, and possess the strongest Domain among us three at the moment. You two continue pushing forward — Nephis, take my place in the formation. My Shadows will support you, so clear a path forward. Azarax... you do what you do. Get as far away from that thing as possible, as fast as you can. I'll buy you some time and rejoin you before dawn."
If he survived.
The undead tyrant stared at him solemnly. It seemed like he was regarding Sunny with something that resembled emotion for the first time...
Eventually, he looked away and said:
"...And what are we supposed to do if a second Spirit rises from the sand?"
Sunny blinked a couple of times.
‘Did he just...'
He clenched his fists.
“Hey, fossil. I am going to tear your damn jaw off. Can you stop running your mouth, fool?!"
Shaking his head, Sunny headed in the direction where the Wandering Archon was already taking heavy steps, walking towards them.
“If a second Spirit shows up, deal with it! Smack it with your damn axe, why don't you?! Better yet, smash him with your skull! There doesn't seem to be anything inside it, anyway!"
Azarax laughed.
“Look! Now, you are finally starting to resemble a real Supreme!"
Sunny cursed at him.
"That damn bastard... I am going to come back and kill him right after I kill Eurys..."
He gave Saint an order to assume command of the Shadow Legion, and commanded his shades to follow Saint. By then, Nephis was already descending upon the Deathless in a whirlwind of white flame; Azarax dashed forward to rejoin the fight, his heavy axe crushing bones with each blow.
Now, it was up to Sunny to make sure that they would not have to deal with the Deathless Spirit.
‘This... is probably going to hurt.'
He called upon the Wolf.
ch 2890
The speed of their advance did not diminish. That was because today, Sunny employed a much more aggressive approach.
His shades were not cautious anymore, and neither were they trying to preserve themselves at all. Instead, they intentionally ignored the blows that rained down upon them in order to deliver the adversary as much harm as possible, as quickly as possible. This complete lack of self-preservation went against most underlying rules of combat and gave them a fearsome advantage against the Deathless... Of course, it came at a cost. The price of this speed was destruction.
And yet, they were not being destroyed. Once a shade received enough damage, the formation of the Shadow Legion would instantly shift, allowing it to fall back and for another shade to take its place. The wounded one, meanwhile, would reach the rear of the formation, where Nephis moved among the shades waiting for their turn to advance.
She would lay her radiant hands on the torn and tattered surface of the returning shade and heal it, allowing the silent warrior to rotate back to the line of battle contact soon.
In that way, the formation of the Shadow Legion continued to revolve, with fresh and nearly uninjured shades constantly attacking the adversary.
‘Look at me, playing the general...'
Who could have thought that he would command an entire army one day, back when he was crawling through the mud with the rest of the grunts in Antarctica? Sunny was glad to see his latest strategy work. However, he knew that it was unlikely to last long.
That was because while Nephis healed the shades, she wasn't bringing fire and destruction upon the Deathless from the sky. Their focus wasn't split, and the undead warriors further behind the contact line were not being torn apart and damaged by her flames.
The pressure was going to mount the longer the battle continued, and his best hope was that the increased power of the Shadow Legion would balance out the absence of Neph's incinerating flames.
But if it did not...
That was alright, as well.
After all, Nephis could always join the battle again. With the Longing Domain in shambles, her power was diminished, not gone. She was still a Supreme Titan and a wielder of a Divine Aspect... she was still a descendant of Sun God. So even in this weakened state, she was a terror to behold. It was just that they needed to find a way to use her powers in the most effective and efficient way. Nephis had almost always fought on the front line — not the most common role for a healer, but also not something that was unheard of. Tonight, they were going to see if she could do just as much damage, or perhaps even more of it, by staying back.
She was in a unique position to do so, after all. Usually, those who would be fighting on the frontline in her place were people — and unlike her, people could not heal their own wounds. So, they died.
Neither the Deathless thralls of Azarax nor Sunny's shades could die, though. Therefore, Neph could allow herself to stay back without paying a bloody price for it. So far, it was working really well. It was working splendidly, even — so much so that Sunny could not help but wonder just how much more fearsome the Shadow Legion would have been if he were still bonded to Nephis, and could therefore share in the power of her soul flames.
Perhaps he would find out, one day soon. Their small army advanced forward in a devastating storm of violence. Just like during every previous night, the Nightmare Desert was being ravaged by that storm, silently enduring the deafening mayhem of the battle and the inconceivable fury of forces unleashed by each clash.
Saint fought on the left flank of the battle formation, while Slayer fought on the right. The former was just as methodical and indomitable as always, while the latter was just as malevolent and vicious.
No, if anything... Slayer had become even more ruthless than usual.
She had come around a lot ever since Sunny first became her master, but during these weeks in the Nightmare Desert, she slowly returned to her former feral self.
Perhaps the Hell of Ariel reminded her of her days in the Shadow Realm. One was a desolate wasteland of obsidian dunes, while the other was an endless desert of white sand. One was populated by the shadows of the dead, while the other was populated by undying skeletons. It wasn't difficult to imagine that Slayer felt right at home here in Hell.
The difference, of course, was that now she was of a higher Rank and had regained her Aspect. So, instead of stalking and hunting her prey, Slayer was simply tearing it apart. When needed, she used her bow and arrows. Most of the time, though, she fought by assuming the shapes of the beasts she had once slain — and there seemed to be a myriad of forms she could take, choosing the most lethal one depending on the situation she was in and the enemies she faced.
Sunny, who was notoriously bad at recognizing extinct animals, saw all kinds of harrowing beasts in these last few weeks. Most of them were powerful, mythical creatures of the distant past, of course, but still...
He was almost glad to have been born in the time when most of the planet was a lifeless desert. He couldn't wrap his head around the fact that humans had survived when all these strange, terrifying creatures were just walking around as if it was no big deal.
Take a mongoose, for example...
“Hey, Shadow."
Azarax had just finished stomping a skeletal Deathless beast into dust after shattering its skull with his axe, and was now looking ahead with a grim expression.
"I think we are about to feel some agony."
Sunny did not need to be warned, because he had felt it himself.
Out there in front of them, the dunes were moving as something rose from beneath them, sending rivers of sand flowing down from its enormous form.
But that was not what made him tense. Instead, it was the fact that the world itself was changing. The currents of Will were twisting, as if a vast whirlpool was forming in its boundless, oppressive ocean.
"You just had to open your jaws and say it, didn't you..."
Sunny's voice was full of resentment.
The ancient tyrant's warning was coming true.
It seemed that they had stumbled upon a Sacred foe, after all
yeah yeah wtv you don't need to thank me Niggers
ch 2889
The Deathless were growing stronger the deeper into Ariel's Hell they went, yes — but Sunny and Nephis were learning how to fight them better, as well.
There were the mundane lessons of how to dismantle the undead warriors faster and more effectively. There were the broader lessons of developing better strategies and implementing better tactics, as well. Most importantly, Sunny and Nephis were learning about the nature of the Deathless, and therefore about their weaknesses.
One of those weaknesses, for example, was the tenuous grasp the undead warriors had on their Aspects and powers. Most Deathless had either lost them entirely or could only use them on a shallow level, as if using muscle memory to do something that they did not understand or remember anymore.
As a result, fighting the undead horrors was an exhausting, but mostly straightforward affair. It was combat in the purest of forms, a clash that relied solely on physical prowess and martial skill — even if the physical power involved in that clash was obliterating and terrifying enough to destroy lesser realms and reshape the very landscape of Hell.
It was a physical clash shaped by the underlying battle of warring Wills, of course.
Even then, Sunny and Nephis had found ways to overcome the tyrannical vastness of the enemy's Will.
The secret to doing so lay in the fact that it was not just two Wills that clashed with each other — their Will against the Will of the Deathless. Instead, it was actually three Wills struggling to subjugate one another. That was because the Deathless were not a monolithic force.
Even if they were united in their determination to obliterate the invaders, the undead warriors who had once belonged to the Demonic Legion were still opposed to the undead warriors who had once belonged to the Divine Host, and vice versa. Even consumed by the curse of Shadow God, the two great armies still struggled against each other.
Their resentment ran so deep that even after forgetting themselves, the Deathless still carried an overwhelming hostility toward the enemy. The thousands of years that had passed since the Doom War did not diminish their animosity toward each other one bit — if anything, it only made that animosity far greater.
The Deathless seemed to forget their strife when faced with a new enemy, but that was only an illusion. In truth, both sides still harbored a deep resentment for the other army, even while they were trying to eradicate the invaders. That division was not noticeable in their movements and seamless tactics, but betrayed itself in the turbulent expanse of their Will.
In other words, there were powerful undercurrents in the vast ocean of crushing Will the Deathless wielded, and those undercurrents clashed and collided with each other, creating a state of chaos and discord.
If one knew how to make use of that discord, how to slip through the cracks in the insurmountable mountain of the enemy's Will, they could overpower it with far less effort than would have been needed to summit the mountain through brute force.
So, that was how Sunny and Nephis managed to make it halfway to the Tomb of Ariel despite facing a seemingly endless horde of ancient, undying, immensely powerful foes.
Tonight, however, it all felt different.
The power of the Deathless they faced had taken a qualitative leap. The billowing ocean of murderous Will they possessed felt deeper than ever before. Their presence, too, felt different from before — it was colder, crueler, and far more focused.
‘Let's think positively...'
The seven incarnations of Sunny were the vanguard of the battle formation, serving to break the momentum of the advancing Deathless and soften them up for the marching army behind him. He moved like water, being elusive at times and exploding with crushing power at others.
His mind had entered the state of battle clarity and turned into a diamond under the pressure of controlling seven Supreme bodies in a ferocious, deadly battle. Every second, he unleashed a hurricane of attacks and withstood a storm of blows, breaking and weakening the Deathless while attempting to remain whole.
His Shells were damaged and torn, but at a slower rate than his ability to repair them. So, he could continue to fight.
Some distance ahead, Azarax was rampaging among the undead warriors. He had grown to tower over the dunes, clashing with the most powerful of the enemies as the desert quaked and groaned around them.
Unlike Sunny, there was nothing elusive or flowing about how the ancient tyrant fought. His battle style was all about dominance and oppression, explosive force and relentless aggression — which was not to say that it was brutish or lacked sophistication.
On the contrary, Azarax channelled his merciless, cruel fury in a chillingly calculated manner. As Sunny watched, he lunged forward to clash with a towering black skeleton clad in the rusty remains of bronze armor. The ancient tyrant created a false opening by lowering his enormous axe, then ducked under the enemy's rusty greatsword.
At the same time, he hooked his opponent's leg with the beard of the axe and pulled it back, sending the black skeleton falling to the ground in a cloud of white sand. In the blink of an eye, Azarax was upon his fallen enemy, bringing his foot down on the undead warrior's chest.
He pressed the Deathless champion into the sand and brought his axe down on his skull. As a shockwave rolled from the point of impact, and the skull of his adversary cracked... however, it did not shatter. Azarax had left it in one piece on purpose. Because a second later, when the ancient tyrant removed his foot from the enemy's ribcage and dashed forward to meet the next opponent, the Deathless warrior slowly rose from the ground and joined the formation of the undead warriors who followed the Deathless Sovereign's commands.
Sunny was trying to keep up.
‘How do we think positively? Well, let's think about it as training. Training to finally kill Eurys, that vile bastard...'
Unlike Azarax, who could subjugate the Deathless by defeating them, Sunny could only dismantle them completely — or at least severely damage them and leave the rest to his soldiers. So, every clash took him much longer.
‘But hey... there's seven of me. So who's to say which one of us is accomplishing more?’
While Sunny and Azarax fought in the front, their armies followed behind, soaking the brunt of the undead horde's assault.
The Deathless following Azarax were in the first row of the formation, assembled loosely, while the soldiers of the Shadow Legion were positioned behind them. The skeletal warriors were the first line of defense, and the shades were the sharp blades that lashed out from behind them to bring the enemies down...
Well, most of them, at least. The Wolf was not someone who respected or had a need for a defensive formation, so it ravaged the enemies wherever there was an opening, crushing their black bones between his mighty teeth.
From a distance, the battle formation of the invading army looked odd — almost comical, even. It was as if an army of living beings divided itself in two, with the blackened skeletons of the soldiers moving forward while their inky souls fell back.
The enemy was much stronger tonight than it had been before...
But the speed with which the invading army advanced was not at all slower.
since that nigger syn___23 kept complaining I'm going to upload all the chapters here until this Dumb sight fixed their skill issue
ch2888
The Deathless were already rising from beneath the dunes, ready to descend upon those who had invaded Ariel's Hell in all their unending fury. Sunny and Azarax took their places at the head of the battle formation, while Nephis remained at the back, standing among the shades like a flash of pure white flame in the sea of darkness.
Just before the battle began, Sunny glanced at the distant — but not as distant as before — silhouette of the Tomb of Ariel.
At that moment, he thought he heard something...
An echo of a distant, indiscernible whisper that crawled into his ears and disappeared, as if it had burrowed into his brain.
He stumbled slightly.
Azarax gave him a contemptuous glance.
"What, Shadow? Are you afraid?"
Sunny remained motionless for a moment, then shook his head — the incarnation who was closest to Azarax did, at least.
“No. I just... I thought I heard something. Didn't you hear it, too?"
The black skull of the ancient tyrant just stared at him with its empty eye sockets, then turned away with a snarl.
“Get your head into the game.’
Sunny smiled darkly.
‘What the hell was that?’
Of course, he knew what it was even while asking the question.
It was the Call of Nightmare.
The great pyramid was built from numerous enormous blocks of black stone, and each of those blocks was a Seed of Nightmare — just like the one that had been knocked free and sent flying by some titanic blow eons ago, ending up far away in the desert. The block of stone Sunny and his cohort had used to enter the Nightmare about the last days of the River People.
All Seeds emanated the Call, and all Awakened were susceptible to the Call. In fact, the more powerful you were, the more maddening the Call of Nightmare became, drawing you forth to challenge the Seed... Actually, Sunny had never known if the Call of Nightmare was simply something innate to the Seeds or if it was a function of the Spell meant to push Awakened to grow stronger.
Now that he was not a carrier of the Spell but still suffered from the maddening melody of the Call, though, he knew that it was the former.
Which was an interesting philosophical question to ponder, if one had free time. Why were all Awakened drawn to the Nightmare Seeds? After all, it was only the carriers of the Nightmare Spell who could destroy them by challenging the Nightmares. For everyone else, touching a Seed simply meant surrendering themselves to Corruption.
Perhaps that was why the Seeds emanated the Call — maybe they were meant to lure living beings into becoming twisted by Corruption... like enormous flytraps emanating a sweet scent.
Or maybe it was the reverse side of what the Puppeteer had once told Sunny. According to the giant moth, all Nightmare Creatures were drawn to the Flame because of a maddening contradiction within them. They longed for the Flame and wanted to either possess or destroy it, because only then would they know peace.
Perhaps the Awakened were drawn to the Void for the same reason, as well.
And the Call they heard was simply an expression of that innate, primordial longing.
That was the philosophical question... Sunny, however, did not have the luxury of free time to ponder it. Instead, he had to contemplate a far more practical matter. With so many Seeds of Nightmare constituting the Tomb of Ariel — millions of them, quite likely — just how deafening the Call of Nightmare would become by the time Sunny and Nephis reached it?
Would they even be able to withstand it without going mad?
‘I guess we'll cross that bridge when we get there.'
Sunny shook his head, as if trying to shake the whisper out of his ear.
“I have seven heads, and they are all in the game. Worry about your own head, fossil.”
Azarax laughed.
“I've never beheaded someone seven times. I have something to look forward to now... thank you, Shadow."
In front of them, the endless horde of Deathless was already advancing to descend upon the invading army like a flood. Sunny exhaled slowly and sent all seven of his avatars forward.
‘One step at a time...’
The battle washed over him, drowning out all unnecessary thoughts.
Azarax had been right — tonight, the oppressive force of the Deathless felt much heavier.
Sunny and Nephis had already been fighting in the Nightmare Desert for weeks. Not a single night had been easy, and their fatigue accumulated — their enemies, on the contrary, only kept growing stronger and stronger the deeper into Ariel's Hell they went.
The Deathless were, naturally, a terrifying foe to face... after all, it was in their name. Fighting creatures who could not be killed was something that only a madman would do, and yet Sunny and Nephis did just that, night after night.
The undead warriors couldn't be destroyed, but they could be rendered harmless. To achieve that, each had to be dismantled bone by bone — and even then, the black bones tended to assemble back together after some time. So, they had to crush the bones into dust, even if each of those bones was as tough and durable as a steel weapon of a high Rank would have been.
Added to that was the chilling skill and cunning of the Deathless warriors, as well as their eerie ability to cooperate with each other and instinctual understanding of military tactics.
The most deadly thing about the Deathless, however, was their Will.
To most people, the undead prisoners of Ariel's Hell and Sunny's shades would seem quite similar. But actually, they were the opposite of each other — the shades were shadows cleansed of their mortal vessels and their sense of self, while the Deathless were mortal vessels who had been denied their shadows, and therefore their deaths. As a result, they were just as void of personhood, but at the same time far more aware of their own selves, and therefore in possession of a quiet, but powerful Will. More than that, their Will was vast like an ocean.
Sunny had already encountered that phenomenon while fighting the Black Millipede Tribe. Back then, none of the millipedes had possessed a Will powerful enough to threaten him — not even the Queens, since he outclassed them. However, there were simply too many nightmare creatures in the great swarm of their ghastly tribe. Their weak Wills fused together, forming a vast and alarming force that could crush and wash away anything, least of all a lone enemy.
Sunny had withstood the harrowing immensity of the Black Millipede's collective Will — the spirit of their species — because he was a Supreme Titan, and because he was cunning and cautious, eroding it away bit by bit before finally forcing a decisive battle.
However, the Deathless were far more powerful than the Black Millipedes had been, and he was pressed for time on top of that. So, even with three Sovereigns — Sunny, Nephis, and Azarax — fighting side by side and supported by three Supreme Shadows, waging a war on the Deathless was a daunting affair.
They had made it this far into the desert due to their strength, determination, and skill... but most of all, due to their ability to adapt.
Their ability to learn.
mfs nine chapters behind..istg novelight is buns now you guys might spot me on novelfire, it uploads DAILY
now just go to the comments section srool a little down and read all those chapters you whiner!!!!!!!!
huhhhhhhhhhhh are you betraying us..... such a disgraceful sight you'd never enjoy it in novelfire!!! hmph
there are 9 more ch in other website
spoiler:sunny turned the sacred deathless into a memory
fucking chud no need to spoil
uhh I'll just upload them here for you all guys
i alr read it on novelight the second it got uploaded dw but im still not spoiling
you fuc- ugh I ain't cursing a kid , still couldn't you told me that before I literally uploaded 9 chapters for you ugggghhh
also mf fym you aint cursing a kid how old is you???
*are you, still I'm indeed old enough to be a mummy
alr gng my fault also the grammar was incorrect on purpose
such a good boy still I'm not a mummy tho yet!!!!!!!!!!
yea you'll never be a mummy yk why? because you a 35 yr old dude
ouch , do I give 35 yr old uncle vibes!!!!! you being unfair hereeeeeeee!!!!
ugh such mean kiddo , meanie!! you racist fool
the ragebait is so strong im lwk crying rn
lets continue ts on discord if you up for it i cant send shit here
huh what you talking about I'm a 35 years old geezer I ain't texting a minor or alil kiddo I'll go to jail
SON😭😭
i ain't adopting you
lil kiddo stop whining
daddy
is busyyyy
uhhh sorry about that i meant novelfire
fucking traitor, don't read there read here, do you understand that, if you want to read them copy them and upload them here don't be a traitor you traitor!!!!!?
pfppppppppppppp update me rabbit no more me nadiiiiiii da Jew Niggers hunter
grrrrr where's the rest of chapters i can't believe i finished 2 months of stacking in 2 days or 24 hours
who is sos
Sin of solace
whi is sos
Imagine SOS would come back cuz of some bs, Sunny could then gain thousands of years of experience and maybe become sacred. Maybe since hes supreme now and has 6 waves he can maybe not become corrupted.
Azarax getting flexed on lol
London bridge is falling down falling down London bridge is falling down my fair lady London bridge is falling down falling down falling down my fair lady
buns bro buns im getting so impatient, lwk hate myself but please just end this deathless arc i need to see TOA start
nigggger
oh dih
oh a happy dih
genuinely, we better enter TOA by monday
Ts lwk not happening till chapter 2900
i dont even think the vile bird is a thing right now
like one clone defeated a cursed tyrant
can you imagine 7 with 6 six weave and the curse and serpant