SHADOW SLAVE: HEIR OF ABYSS

Everyone was cleared things about the abomination the Lord of the dead that was supposedly asleep in the chamber. Everyone except Sunny had readied themselves to act quickly and leave without waking the abomination awake, Sunny however was fighting his inner self to question Wren about his journey to the death zone.

'Sunny! Get a grip of yourself asshole!'

Surprisingly berating himself brought cleared Sunny's mind and brought control over his inner demons. Steeling himself, he moved forward with the rest of the cohort to confront the sleeping Nightmare creature.

The giant underground chamber was circular in shape and as immense as the grand hall of the Bright Castle. its walls were built out of the same grey stone slabs as the mighty walls of the Dark City, but unlike them, the walls of the chamber were covered with whispering streams of cold, nebulous black water.

In the center of it, a vast mountain of human bones rose from the ground, reaching almost halfway to the distant ceiling. Thousands... no, hundreds of thousands of people must have perished to create it.

With a harrowing realization, Sunny finally understood where the people who built the ancient city and the impregnable wall surrounding it had disappeared to.

They were all here, piled onto each other in this vile monument of death. This horrid dark chamber was their final resting place.

An old memory suddenly surfaced in his mind.

Back beneath the branches of the Soul Tree, Cassie had seen a vision of a bloodsoaked hill formed from countless corpses. On top of it, a tiny black seed was floating in a pool of blood.

Was there a similar mountain of bones hiding under the soil of the Ashen Barrow? Was that how the Soul Devourer had been born?

Sunny shifted his gaze, only now noticing the veins of crimson coral growing from the harrowing hill of white bones, almost like muscle tissue of some colossal creature. Following the coral pillars up, he finally saw that the dome of the immense chamber was broken, with pale sunlight streaming through the breach and falling on the ghastly visage below.

A giant stone hand was reaching down through the broken dome, its palm open, as though trying to caress the mountain formed from the bones of those people who had once populated this dark, forsaken land.

Looking at the stone hand, Sunny suddenly realized where they were.

The vast underground chamber was situated directly underneath the headless statue of the graceful woman who had once saved them from drowning in the black waters of the cursed sea.

One of her hands was raised toward the heavens, as if trying to embrace them. The other had broken off and fell down thousands of years ago, lying in the mud at the base of the giant statue.

…Reaching into the depths of hell, that was the hand Sunny was looking at right now.

It was also their way out of here.

***

Wren was staring at the mountain or the Lord of the Dead, the mountain of corpses was a Nightmare creature a fallen tyrant to be exact it was the source of power of those undying skeletons.

'A Fallen tyrant, how much Void Fragments would I gain If I kill this thing?'

Wren was evaluating how much dangerous the creature in front of him was, and he did find out when the mountain of corpse suddenly trembled slightly and suddenly a twisted pillar of bones shot from it's body flying the direction of toward Kai and Nephis.

Both of them dove away and the twisted pillar of bone shot past them. Before the thunderous sound of it crashing against the wall of the chamber even reached Wren's ears, the pillar was already moving, whipping sideways with tremendous force.

It was moving toward his, Effie and Caster's direction. Effie and Caster reacted with admirable speed and fell to the ground, Wren augmented his legs, and bent to an unnatural angle his legs were supporting his posture as the twisted pillar of bones moved past their heads, straightening his upper body he returned to his usual posture.

Rising from the stone floor, the huntress screamed:

"It's just thrashing in its sleep! Move! We need to get out of here before the bastard wakes up!"

Caster stared at Wren for a moment and felt an imaginary pain on his back, Wren was thinking of summoning the slayer of the shadows, however it would be pointless against twisted pillar of bones that would pave it's way by ramming itself. Materializing and condensing darkness was out of option as it would drain mental strength so the only solution was to not get hit by it.

The Lord of the Dead was slowly coming to its senses. The bones constituting its repulsive body moved and rippled, unfurling from within the white mass like giant, twisting limbs. It seemed to be slowly turning from a shapeless hill into some semblance of a creature.

The massive pillar whipped left and right, then fell to the ground and slowly retreated back inside the body of the Lord of the Dead.

Meanwhile, Nephis was back at her feet. Dashing toward Kai, she pushed one end of the golden rope into his hands and pointed to the breach in the dome of the chamber. In the next moment, the archer soared into the air, flying to his destination with incredible speed.

With a terrifying scraping sound, the whole white mountain rippled once again, and several devastating pillars of bone shot to intercept him.

Wren didn't care and Sunny didn't have time to check on Kai.

As the Lord of Dead had send three twisted pillar of bones towards them. Instead of evading the first pillar, Wren jumped straight on it moving along the rapid motion, there was no dark sea around him to give some resistance against the speed like the last time he had killed the fallen tyrant. 

As if the bones were a sensory organ for the colossus it moved the second and third twisted pillar straight at Wren, in a moment the world around Wren seemed to slowed down, everything was moving slowly, he jumped off the first twisted pillar using it has a leverage to evade the attack from both sides, although Wren was unharmed the same thing can't be said for the first twisted pillar as it was crushed by the other two.

Landing on the ground, the veins of Wren eyes return from black to their normal colours. His nose bled a little, wiping the blood off he dashed to the other side seeking support of the members of the cohort.

'It was a good thing that I had augmented my eyes, but my brain is now suffering the after effects. However this thing... is it a sleepy bitch?'

The Lord of the Dead was slowly coming to its sense. More bone tentacles appeared from the mass of corpses, each moving with growing precision.

But Kai was already standing on the palm of the giant stone hand, the golden rope looped around one of its fingers.

Cassie was the first one to climb up. With the flying rapier loyally hovering over her shoulder, the blind girl effortlessly moved up the rope, reaching the distant ceiling of the underground chamber less than ten seconds later. It was easy to forget that she had absorbed as much soul essence as the rest of them. Her delicate arms hid much more power than one would assume.

'Perks of being blind, tch...'

Back on the ground, those seconds were a real hell. The mountainous creature was waking up, making it hard for the rest of them to stay away from its blindly thrashing limbs.

They needed to get out of here fast.

Effie was the next one to take the rope. The huntress practically flew up, pushing herself with agility and herculean strength worthy of an ancient hero.

Then, it was Caster's turn. Effortlessly dodging a pillar of bone with his incredible speed, the Legacy grabbed the rope… and turned into a barely visible blur. A second later, he was already landing on the giant stone palm.

Nephis, Sunny and Wren were the only ones left in the reach of the fallen tyrant, glancing at Sunny she yelled:

"Your turn."

...However Sunny didn't respond.

She looked towards Wren, however he was also not responding to her rather his gaze was settled on the Lord of the Dead, his grey eyes filled with malice and killing intent.

He was planning to kill the abomination in it's sleep, but before he could move Sunny dashed, summoning the prowling thorn, not understanding his intent Wren decided to follow of course the throwing dagger couldn't wound the tyrant, so something else was the reason that made Sunny move toward a looming death.

'Mad like always... huh why do I think I said something disturbing?'

Just as the throwing dagger pierced the mass of bones, a white limb suddenly shot in their direction, obstructing everything with its repulsive expanse. Commanding the invisible string to contract, Sunny jumped high into the air and flew forward as though launched from a cannon, while Wren jumped on the pillar like usual however instead of moving along the motion of the twisted pillar, he went against it by sliding on it using the motion to speed up his descent.

Sunny had already landed on the other side of the pillar

, just a few steps away from the unencompassable mass of bones, he gritted his teeth…

And then thrust his hand inside the Fallen Tyrant's body.

A moment later, his fist closed around the concealed object, and with some effort, Sunny pulled it out in the clatter of breaking bones. A sharp pain pierced his forearm.

Opening his fist, he saw… a small, intricate iron key. It looked almost ordinary, if not for the ethereal golden glow emanating from within it.

In the next moment, Sunny suddenly staggered, feeling a wave of weakness washed over his body.

Rotating his forearm, he stared blankly at it for a split second, trying to comprehend what he was seeing.

And when he did, his eyes widened in terror.

Wren reached beside Sunny, and when he did his eyes widened, he placed a hand on his mouth controlling his laughter, as he stared at a nasty leech type nightmare creature was sucking his blood.

It was indescribably repulsive.

'This thing penetrate through an awakened tier V armor memory, it is a Fallen Beast what an irony.'

Stopping his laughter, he grabbed the enormous leech feeling the slimy texture made Wren face falter a little, he pulled the beast with all his might however it didn't budge as he was not using the darkness to augment himself.

'This is so disgusting.'

Suddenly the leech left Sunny's forearm, it was in Wren's hand now writhing in agony, through it's translucent film of the skin, the innards of the big slug was bursting open. Wren eyes widened in fear.

'No no no no no.'

Before he could throw the disgusting leech to the ground it burst opened at his hand, spreading all it's blood and grime on Wren's hand. Wren stared at only hand with disgust thinking to cut it off and regrow another, but that was not an option either his eyes then fall on Sunny's back well on the armor's lustrous cloth. He patted Sunny's back while rubbing the blood and grime on it before moving away.

"Let's go."

The Lord of the Dead was finally awake.

But it was already too late. His preys had already escaped.

***

Somewhere, a blinding disc of an incandescent sun was bathing the tall dunes in a flood of immolating heat. The sands of the desert were flawlessly white, and the azure sky above him was deep and boundless like an ancient ocean, with not a single cloud blemishing its silken expanse.

Somewhere in the distance, inky-black ruins rose from beneath the sand, scattered across the desert like the bones of a half-buried giant.

In that vast desert, a figure was moving with high speed to cover as much distance they could before night falls and battle of the dead start once again. They wore a white shirt and black pants with black boots covering them was special cloak of pristine violet color with star like glitter all over it.

Lifting their hood down, revealing their long pearly white hairs and their beautiful violet eyes. Taking some time to catch their breath, they opened their runes, it read:

Name: Selina.

True Name: Apostle of the Abyss King.

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Well guys, it's me the worst writer of the history. Ahem my exam had finished today and I wrote these two chapters in shortest time possible. I hope you like the new chapters and ask questions you like. I also wanted to ask if there should be harem in this fanfic, personally I hate harems, however I think two waifus should be not considered a harem, atleast it is better than 5 waifus, tell me your views and next chapters will be on Selina their backstory, a little about their runes and memories etc etc. This will be till Wren and they meet in the Nightmare desert. So this would take a me week to write more about them, and also give me time to recover from my fever. Also I have planned to write two chaps a week with 2-3k or maybe more words. People who are studying medics like me would understand how much a pain in ass it is.

Till then bye bye.