Shadow Slave

The [Underworld Armament] allowed the Mantle to accommodate and augment a charm Memory, channeling its enchantment as if it was inherent to the armor itself. That alone made the Mantle of the Underworld incredibly flexible.

What was more, this quality truly shined when wielded by Sunny. He could have augmented the Broken Oath with his four shadows, but chose to wrap them around his armor instead… achieving an even better result. Not only was the effect of the augmentation shared and enhanced, but all the other enchantments of the Mantle of the Underworld were augmented as well.

Among them was [Stalwart], which granted him extremely high protection against physical attacks, high protection against elemental attacks, and — most importantly — a moderate amount of protection against mind and soul attacks.

Currently, the Mantle was simultaneously radiating a tremendously damaging soul-annihilation aura and providing him with vastly increased resistance to soul damage.

Even then, when five of these auras clashed and combined together, he let out a scream and collapsed to the ground, consumed by harrowing agony. His already wounded soul was being frayed and eroded at a terrible rate, and all he could do was wreathe on the ground, barely clinging to any resemblance of consciousness.

The five Reflections were not doing much better.

Even though their Ascended souls, or whatever it was they had instead of souls, possessed a far better quality due to a superior Rank, they had fewer cores. While that was not enough to make them succumb to soul annihilation faster than Sunny by itself, that also meant that they had fewer shadows, and therefore their reflected versions of the Mantle enjoyed less augmentation, providing them with less resistance to soul damage.

What it all meant… Sunny had no idea. He could not guess who was going to be destroyed first — the Reflections or him. As far as he could tell, their chances were about equal.

However…

Things were very different when it came to Mordret.

Unlike Sunny and the Reflections, he did not enjoy the protection of the Mantle of the Underworld. He was also only able to steal the Aspect of the body he possessed, while his own strange and terrible ability to mirror someone's powers only worked inside the victim's soul. He could not simply copy the onyx armor onto himself, nor could he augment it.

For the moment… Mordret was defenseless.

With a startled yelp, the old man awkwardly fell to his knees and then rolled down the steps, ending up on the ground not too far away from Sunny. A stifled howl escaped from his lips, and his eyes opened wide, full of shock and terrible pain. The suffering Sunny and the Reflections experienced affected him so much worse.

Any other Awakened would have been swiftly destroyed, but the Prince of Nothing persisted, somehow. Several swirls of sparks instantly appeared around his body, heralding the appearance of protective Memories. Who knew how vast and powerful his soul arsenal was? Mordret could have possessed a Memory capable of turning the tide of events completely.

But very few Memories were capable of manifesting themselves instantly. Most took several precious seconds to appear, and usually, the more powerful ones took the longest. By the time the sparks of light turned into tangible objects, he could have been either already dead or too severely damaged to be able to act.

Wreathing in agony, Sunny threw a burning look at the old man and gritted his teeth so hard that his fangs pierced his lip, sending drops of blood rolling down.

'Die! Die, you bastard! Just hurry up and die!'

A desperate hope that Mordret would fail to survive the soul annihilation filled his hearts, despite the fact that Sunny did not really think that getting rid of the prince would be so easy. He seriously doubted that Mordret would allow himself to be killed in this fashion…

Not to mention that as far as he knew, the Prince of Nothing was as immortal as the cursed Transcendents of the Kingdom of Hope. Both his physical and spirit bodies had been destroyed in the past, but that did not stop Mordret from continuing to exist, somehow. The great clan Valor certainly did not lack means of dealing soul damage, but they had failed to get rid of his reflection.

'I don't care! Just die!'

Sunny would have been satisfied with just destroying Mordret's mortal shell, anyway. His true task was to buy Kai enough time to kill the Ivory Dragon, and forcing the prince to search for another body would do just that.

Sadly, Mordret had the same idea.

If he had lost all reason because of the pain, things could have turned differently, but the Prince of Nothing was nothing if not coolheaded and calculating. Despite the terrible suffering of having his soul slowly torn to pieces, he kept some of his composure and ability to think intact.

Twisting, Mordret struggled to raise his head and looked in the direction of one of the Reflections. The shadowspawn was on his knees, his bestial face contorted by a grimace of agony. The Prince of Nothing paled, and then whispered something.

A moment later, the figure of the kneeling devil rippled and shattered like a piece of glass. Something swift and intangible moved through the air and entered Mordret's body.

Then, another Reflection shattered... and then another, and then another. In an instant, four of the five — both Beasts and both Monsters — were gone, leaving a lone Demon behind.

As they disappeared, the components of the soul-annihilating field disappeared as well. Only Sunny's own augmented aura was left to spread the invisible poison.

He let out a trembling sigh of relief, and then dismissed the Broken Oath entirely.

Almost at the same time, a silver bracelet, a necklace made of strange black pearls, and a bone scepter appeared on Mordret's body and in his hand. Each of the Memories, without a doubt, provided him with a degree of soul protection… but by now, they were of no use.

With his soul in shambles and barely keeping itself together, Sunny remained laying on the ground. He groaned, and then threw a tired glance at his enemy. The flood of soul essence he was sending into the Shadow Lantern had run dry, and the sunlight finally prevailed, dismantling the dome of shadows that surrounded them.

Mordret looked… different, somehow.

The old man's body remained the same, but now, a subtle sensation of immense, turbulent power emanated from it. As if Sunny was facing a titan instead of a man.

'No... way… could it be?'

Two Monsters and two Beasts… between the four of them, they had shared six soul cores. Had Mordret not dismissed the Reflections, but actually absorbed them in order to strengthen his soul and survive the powerful attack?

How did it even work? How could an Awakened absorb Ascended cores? Would they weaken, or would all that excess power rip his soul to shreds from the inside?

Sunny did not know.

All he knew was that he was utterly beaten and spent, and there was an Ascended Demon and an Awakened Titan in the guise of an old man in front of him, wrath burning in their eyes.

But that… did not matter.

Because at that moment, an inhuman, pained cry rolled across the empty expanse of the empty void and reached their ears.

It was the voice of the Ivory Dragon, Sevirax.

His dying breath...