Shadow Slave novel Chapter 2104

2104 /2448

Sunny landed on the obsidian dust in front of the gargantuan Serpent's skull, which towered above him like an ivory mountain. The lower jaw of the immense creature was buried in the dust, but its upper jaw loomed above him like a dark portal, its arch adorned by a palisade of great, terrifying fangs.

Sunny let his wings crumble and dissolve, then allowed himself a few moments of contemplation as he studied the ancient remains.

He had a good idea of whom these bones belonged to…

They were the bones of a Soul Serpent. Not the Soul Serpent, but one of its kin.

It made sense that Sunny was not unique in having received the companionship of a Shadow Guide. In fact, Soul Serpent was too perfectly matched to someone who had received the blessing of the God of Shadows — so, Sunny suspected that all those marked by Shadow God were bestowed a Soul Serpent of their own.

Just like those marked by the Lord of Shadows received a small shadow snake.

However…

If these remains indeed belonged to one of Soul Serpent's predecessors, then it had been a far more terrifying creature than Sunny's own loyal Shadow.

His Soul Serpent had grown to truly immense size, coiling around the entire great hall of the Nameless Temple when it slept. Its maw was large enough to swallow armored APCs whole, and its scales were like precious onyx, each the size of a tower shield.

However, Serpent was easily dwarfed by the ancient skeleton, seeming like a tiny worm at best in comparison. The remains in front of Sunny were truly gargantuan, twisting as they stretched for no less than a dozen kilometers…

Sunny was a Transcendent Terror, and since Serpent's power depended on his own… he cowered to imagine to whom this enormous creature had been a companion to, thousands of years ago.

Was it the progenitor of all Soul Serpents, or simply an especially distinguished member of their kind?

More importantly, had it been able to exist in the Shadow Realm without being consumed by it, or had it come here to die after its master perished? Depending on the answer, Sunny could try to find a way to summon his own Soul Serpent here without sacrificing it to certain annihilation.

In any case, that was not the issue at the moment.

The issue at the moment was that the shadow of Condemnation was still marching despite having become a battlefield for the nebulous slayer and the harrowing dark drifters, and all of them would reach the skeleton of the ancient serpent soon.

Sunny did not have a lot of time.

'Let's do this.'

What he needed right now were deadly tools to slay his enemies, not esoteric knowledge about the secrets of the past.

Taking a deep breath, he called upon the surrounding darkness and commanded it to embrace him as a Shell. The process was both familiar and strange — it had been a long time since Sunny ventured to construct a Shadow Shell in such a crude way, remaining in its depths as a corporeal being instead of turning into an intangible shadow and becoming its natural part.

He was a little rusty.

Nevertheless, the Shell swiftly built itself, embracing his body and assuming the shape of the Shadow Colossus. Sunny had to shift his way of controlling it, though, adjusting for the fact that the manifested shadows continued to crumble. They longed to dissolve and return into the essence of the Shadow Realm, and so, he had to pull and manifest new shadows to replace them constantly.

From the side, that process looked quite spectacular — it was as if the Shadow Colossus was wreathed in a billowing mantle of ghostly dark smoke that trailed behind him and obfuscated his figure.

Using his newfound strength to raise them from the ground and put them on his shoulders, he looked up, lingered for a heartbeat, and then leapt into the air. _{freёwebnovel.com}