As Sunny was walking toward the next enclosure, he had a few seconds to think.
The first thing he realized was that, despite the fact that the Spell remained silent, he had in fact received the shadow fragments from the three dread wolves. The feeling of his cores, and thus body, growing a tiny bit stronger was there, even though it was hard to sense the minuscule change in all the chaos.
'Strange… this is all so strange…'
His connection to the Spell seemed to be gone, cut by the steel collar on his neck, and yet not all of his powers disappeared. Sunny couldn't access his Soul Sea and summon Memories or runes, but he still possessed the ability to absorb fragments. He was also able to command his shadows to augment his body, as well as use Shadow Step... even though its range seemed to be limited by the walls of the arena.
What did it all mean?
Well… from the look of it, while the Spell was gone, his Aspect remained. There was a lot of meaning hidden in this simple fact, but Sunny had no time to unpack it.
What else was his Aspect capable of?
Walking under the rusty gate, Sunny hesitated for a split second, and then summoned the Soul Serpent.
A moment later, almost unnoticeable on his obsidian skin, an intricate tattoo of a coiling serpent appeared, wrapped around his arms and torso. When Sunny sent shadow essence coursing through it, the coils shone with dark radiance, revealing themselves for everyone to see.
His lips moved, revealing powerful fangs in a frightening grin.
'So you are here as well, buddy…'
What did it mean? It meant that Sunny didn't have to fight unarmed anymore. It also meant that Saint was with him, as well.
He might not have been the most deadly of creatures at the moment, still unaccustomed to this new lumbering body. But the two of them?
Together, Sunny and Saint were a duo most fearsome.
Full of new confidence, he entered the second killing box, sending his shadow sense forward to encompa.s.s it.
What he saw there made him squint a little.
…There was already a battle going on in the enclosure, a pair of humans desperately trying to fight off a swarm of small, swift lizard-like creatures. Both of them wore white tunics, the younger one unarmed, while the older one had a simple sword in his hands and a leather cuira.s.s protecting his torso.
There were several human corpses laying on the ground, terribly disfigured by the sharp claws and triangular fangs of the abominations, with their once-white clothes soaked in blood.
Sunny s.h.i.+fted his gaze and saw the vile darkness spreading through the souls of the lizard-like gremlins. From the look of it, they were all Awakened, the same as the wolves he had fought — Sunny measured the strength of the monsters during the battle and judged their Rank to be the same as his.
The younger man was an Awakened, as well, with a single radiant soul core, while the older one had none at all. He was a mundane human.
As Sunny watched, the older warrior was finally overwhelmed and fell to the ground, the gremlins easily tearing through his cuira.s.s and sinking their claws and teeth into the soft flesh beneath.
The young man screamed and dashed to help him, but it was already too late. Even though the Awakened youth managed to kill several beasts with his fists and pushed the others away, his partner was already mortally wounded. He shuddered, a river of blood flowing from a ghastly gash in his neck, and weekly pushed the hilt of the sword into the younger man's hands.
The crowd went wild, happily chanting the same d.a.m.ned word…
"Glory! Glory! Glory!"
The last surviving human raised his head, pain and sorrow mixing with hatred in his light blue eyes.
He didn't get to dwell on his loss for long, though, because the remaining gremlins were already rus.h.i.+ng to tear him apart.
…Some, however, found a new target.
Sunny grunted and tried to control his body as precisely as possible. He didn't command the Soul Serpent to a.s.sume the form of a weapon or summon Saint yet, preferring to keep his cards hidden, for now.
The lizard-like abominations did not seem too dangerous, anyway. At least not with their remaining numbers and their attention split between two targets.
'Curses…'
The four-armed demon's gaunt body was too tall, heavy, and unwieldy. Every motion required more effort, and was slower than he was used to. Even though there was inhuman strength in the shadow creature's steel muscles, which was supposed to translate into explosive speed, dragging so much ma.s.s around was still different from operating a small and slim human body he had possessed before.
'Who would have thought that I would miss being short one day?'
Four gremlins jumped at Sunny at the same time, more of them lagging a second behind. Their narrow eyes shone with rabid bloodl.u.s.t, and their jagged claws were aimed at his flesh, l.u.s.ting to rip it apart.
Wrapped in shadows, with the coils of the Soul Serpent s.h.i.+ning darkly on his skin, Sunny took a step forward and caught all four creatures from the air, then slammed their skulls against each other, crus.h.i.+ng them.
Even though he was having trouble controlling his new body, how could these beasts ever hope to survive a battle against a demon?
And a very special one, at that…
Sunny bared his teeth and lunged forward, a low growl escaping from his mouth. His four arms moved, crus.h.i.+ng flesh and bone. Several beasts managed to slip past his a.s.sault and sink their claws into his thighs, one even trying to bite off a big chunk of flesh.
Sunny hissed from pain and crouched, using his claws to rip four more gremlins apart. There was no free hand to finish off the last one, so he simply bit off its arm with his sharp fangs, feeling the bone crunch and the disgusting taste of corrupted blood on his tongue.
'Argh! I'm going to vomit!'
Sunny spit a mouthful of fetid, dark blood and silenced the shrieking creature with a bone-shattering backhand slap.
Suddenly, the box became deathly silent.
He groaned, overwhelmed by pain for a moment. The d.a.m.ned abominations had died rather easily, but not before doing a lot of damage. He might have overestimated his newfound prowess... or underestimated the gremlins due to their small stature and frail frames.
The irony...
Sunny gritted his teeth, this time careful not to pierce his own lips by doing so, then wiped his face and straightened. Finally, he glanced in the direction of the remaining group of abominations. To his surprise, they were already dead — the young Awakened had slaughtered them with the sword, somehow, and was now standing there motionlessly, frozen stiff by fear.
…The youth was staring at him with a pale face, eyes wide with terror.
Then, he took an unsteady step back and whispered:
"Oh… oh G.o.ds! Lord, protect me against the hideous demons of the night!"
Sunny looked down at him from his immense height, his cobalt black body covered in terrible wounds and blood, more streaming from between his sharp fangs.
He suppressed the desire to roll his eyes.
'Hideous? Rude…'