Shadow Slave novel Chapter 1497

Chapter 1497 Chain Barrier

1497 Chain Barrier

The Chain Breaker rose higher, eventually cresting the wall of the floating stronghold and coming to a stop above the ramparts. From there, they could see a bit further into the haze.

Far away to their left, another floating fortress could barely be seen in the dim twilight, just as battered and forlorn as this one. There was one more to their right. All three had been connected by thick chains once, but those had long been torn.

Sunny remained motionless for a moment.

'...It's a barrier to block the Great River.'

There must have been a ring of these fortresses built around Twilight once, with massive chains strung between them both above and beneath the water. That way, the Defiled would have had to break through the chain barrier before reaching the city.

The other choice would have been to dive much deeper and bypass the fearsome barricade of floating fortresses altogether. But that would have left their backs wide open to retaliation by the garrisons of the vanguard strongholds… in any case, it was easy to see that the Defiled had chosen to assault the chain barrier directly.

The fighting seemed to have been especially harrowing in the vicinity of the fallen fortresses. And beyond them…

Sunny shivered.

On the other side of the breached stronghold, there were so many floating corpses that he could barely see the water. It was to such a degree that one could probably walk from here to Twilight without getting their boots wet once.

Frowning, he placed his hand on the railing.

Before he did, however, Sunny hesitated for a moment and looked at his companions.

Mordret…

The Prince of Nothing was their ally in this Nightmare — or at least, he was supposed to be. In truth, it was hard to predict what the devious bastard would do.

In the Second Nightmare, Mordret had slaughtered the entire population of the northern reaches of the Kingdom of Hope, all in pursuit of power. So, he was not someone who was going to have a problem with destroying the remains of the River Civilization to achieve his goals. Nor would he feel burdened by releasing the Defiled Saints into the waking world.

In other words, Mordret could have chosen to ally himself with the Six Plagues if he thought that their method of conquering the Nightmare was better.

However… Sunny was pretty sure that the Plagues needed to either kill or Defile every human in the Tomb of Ariel to win. And, no matter how odious, Mordret was still a human. Unless the Prince of Nothing was ready to surrender his soul to Corruption, his only way out of the Tomb was to destroy the First Seeker.

At least that was what Sunny hoped for… especially because Mordret was the only person who could teach them about Soul Stealer's Flaw, or at least use his knowledge of it to slay his past version.

Still…

Cassie was immune to Mordret's power due to being blind. Neph's Soul Sea was most likely just as dangerous as Sunny's — if Mordret tried to possess her, he would be incinerated in a radiant inferno of white flame. Jet's shattered soul could not be easily possessed, either, due to how unique her Aspect was.

But Effie had no defense against the Prince of Nothing. The anvil amulet forged by Mordret's father to protect people against his son was with Kai — back in the Second Nightmare, the huntress had refused to take it in favor of the charming archer.

Of course, it wasn't a given that Mordret would be able to defeat Effie in a soul battle. But Sunny did not want to risk it.

After hesitating for a moment, he looked at the huntress and said:

"Can you stay and guard the ship?"

Verify captcha to read the contentVerify