Chapter 2972: Dark Wanderer

Shadow Slave

‘No!'

By the time Sunny reacted, it was already too late. The Vile Thieving Bird plunged into the time fissure, pulling him with it — and leaving Nephis behind.

Naturally, Nephis could follow them into the fractured expanse of broken eternity. However, that place was like a maze — entering it was easy, but following it to the same exact moment in the endless tapestry of time as those who had entered earlier was all but impossible.

Sunny did not know how they were going to find each other again... but he wasn't afforded the luxury of considering that at the moment.

The Vile Thieving Bird was severely wounded, one of its wings barely attached to its charred and mutilated body. The bottomless ocean of its vitality was drained, almost showing signs of exhaustion. Even its harrowing Will was not as firm as it had been before, finally betraying a hint of weakness. But it was still alive and full of dreadful, unfathomable power. It was still more than capable of tearing Sunny apart — and now that Nephis was not with him, the traumatic wounds the Cursed Terror's talons dealt him were not going to heal.

In other words, Sunny was on borrowed time now. He could only stay alive by relying on the [Chain] enchantment of the Curse, which consumed his essence at an alarming rate.

Once his essence was completely drained, Sunny was going to die.

So, his only chance to survive was to kill the Vile Thieving Bird before that happened.

‘Well... I can also run away.'

Sunny smiled darkly.

No... no, he wasn't willing to run away. Not after coming this far to reclaim what had been taken from him. Not after tasting the Vile Thieving Bird's blood and learning that the cursed creature could really be killed. He was going to see this battle through to the end, no matter what that end might be — even if it killed him.

There were a lot of reasons why Sunny was unwilling to let the Thieving Bird go. Most of those reasons were prudent and logical, taking into account both the present situation and the future. However, if he was honest with himself...

The main reason was that he simply wanted to kill it. He wanted to kill the thieving horror with such intensity that it felt like his mind was being consumed by dark flames. He hated it, he was full of spite because of what it had stolen from him, and he wanted to see it die.

Sunny was not going to run away from this fight. It was only going to end when one of them killed the other.

‘It's you or me, thief...'

They escaped into the azure sky once more. Only, this time, the Thieving Bird did not flash across its expanse like a dark comet — with one of its wings practically severed, it couldn't control its flight anymore, so they plummeted from great heights, tearing each other apart as they fell.

Sunny’s consciousness was like a dark island in an ocean of pain.

He had already been severely damaged by the conflagration of celestial flames that escaped the crumbling expanse of the shattered sun, his nebulous form growing tattered and shrinking in size. And now, the Vile Thieving Bird was mangling what was left of him with its dreadful talons, shrieking in fury as he refused to let go. Sunny was not the only one suffering and in pain, though. Even diminished, his true form was still vast and terrifying, hiding harrowing power in its dark depths. He bit into the charred flesh of the Thieving Bird, he tore at it with sharp claws, he pierced it with adamantine tentacles...

Its profane blood poured down like rain — it was just that they were falling far faster than the drops of cursed blood fell, so it actually seemed like the countless drops were floating up past them.

Sunny poured his Death Will into the Thieving Bird, trying to poison the source of its endless vitality and extinguish its loathsome life. In fact, he had already flooded the soul of the Cursed Terror with so much killing intent that a whole realm would have been made into a lifeless desert if it were exposed to the same amount.

The trees would have rotted, all living things would have died, and even the soil itself would have turned sterile and dry, no different from dust...

Quite like the obsidian dust of the Shadow Realm, possibly.

And yet, it was not enough.

Sunny could feel it... the Thieving Bird was slowly beginning to feel the burden of his murderous Will, but he was being destroyed far faster than it approached the threshold of death.

At this rate, he was going to die instead.

‘No, no! I refuse!'

At that moment, it was not the thought of being killed that infuriated Sunny. It was the thought of failing to slaughter his adversary — of missing the chance to see the Thieving Bird bleed, suffer, and die.

By then, Sunny could already see the still surface of the broken Great River below them.

There, far below them, a city was being besieged by a harrowing swarm of Nightmare Creatures. The abominations had already won the battle, and the humans were retreating. The civilians had been evacuated to the island-ships on the outer edge of the city, while the warriors were making a final stand against the horrid swarm, keeping the abominations away from their people. Sunny only caught a glimpse of the conquered city, but he recognized it easily — it was Weave.

It was Weave on the day it fell to the onslaught of Nightmare Creatures, and was destroyed by the...

‘By us.'

The evil omen Ananke had told him about, the Dark Wanderer. The mysterious mass of darkness that countless people had seen traversing the sky of the Tomb of Ariel across the centuries, thousands of years possibly — it was them. Sunny, Nephis, and the Vile Thieving Bird.

All of those people had simply witnessed seconds of their harrowing battle in the maze of fractured time. For the River People, centuries passed between the sightings of the Dark Wander. But for Sunny and the Thieving Bird, no more than a few heartbeats passed.

Which meant...

Sunny and the Thieving Bird plummeted from the sky and crashed into the sprawling landscape of Weave. The impact happened in the very heart of the city, where only Nightmare Creatures remained — a moment later, the temple of the Nightmare Spell was completely annihilated, turned to dust, while the Nightmare Creatures were obliterated by an annihilating shockwave.

The shockwave spread, ravaging the core of the abominable swarm and giving the warriors defending the escaping ships an opportunity to retreat.

Weave was torn apart, destroyed... erased from existence.

While Sunny and the Vile Thieving Bird plunged into the cold depths.

There, another fissure swallowed them, and their deific battle continued somewhere far away, in a different time.

Knowing that he was losing, Sunny attempted something he had never attempted before...

He attempted to shadow another being's Ability.