Sunny cursed and prepared himself for the worst. A few moments later, the short respite they had gotten was over.
With a sound that reminded him of rushing water, a terrifying wave of undead monsters crashed into their formation, threatening to break it apart. Effie braced for the impact and withstood the furious onslaught, somehow managing to split the wave in two.
From one side, Changing Star dove into the torrent of skeletal wraiths, her incandescent sword cutting through them like a ray of pure sunlight piercing the darkness. From the other, Caster's enchanted blade was doing the same. The scion of the Han Li clan moved with astonishing speed, turning into a blurry whirlwind of ghostly green steel.
Everything that touched it turned to dust.
Sunny glanced at Kai and said in a hoarse voice:
"Prepare yourself."
In the next moment, the wave of monsters was upon them.
Left without the comforting protection of his shadow, Sunny could only rely on his own ability, cunning, and technique. Dashing forward, he clashed with the first skeleton. His sword flashed through the air with lightning speed, and a headless corpse instantly fell to his feet, blindly clawing at the stones in front of it.
Sunny had never fought like this. From the first day on the Forgotten Shore, he always had something helping him resist the horrors of the Dream Realm — be it his shadow, cover of darkness, Changing Star, or the Stone Saint. Now, he had to face the torrent of Nightmare Creature with nothing but his own frail human body... and resolve.
This was the ultimate test of pure skill.
Gritting his teeth, Sunny tried to remember the feeling of clarity he had experienced after the carapace centurion had crushed his ribcage with one strike of its terrifying bone scythe. All unnecessary thoughts were obliterated by his will, leaving only two.
Kill your enemy.
Prevent the enemy from killing you.
Using this clarity, he entered the state of flow. His perception expanded, absorbing every detail and aspect of what was happening in the dark tunnel. His thinking accelerated, turning the mayhem that surrounded them into a stark and streamlined pattern of cause and effect.
Connected to the underlying law of it all, Sunny was able to react to the actions of his enemies faster and predict them better.
…Ssssshimmm!
With a hissing sound, the Midnight Shard cut the air and slashed the next monster across the chest, splitting the skeleton diagonally in two. Without paying the defeated creature any attention, Sunny instantly lunged at the next one.
His movements were fluid and unpredictable, but also grounded and firm. Every strike, every step was calculated and efficient, focused on delivering the maximum amount of damage while preserving as much of his strength as possible. It was a perfect combination of the two seemingly contradictory battle styles that he had learned.
Just like that, Sunny danced between the countless undead monsters, his sword cutting one after another down. The Midnight Shard wasn't unimaginably sharp like Caster's jian, nor filled with annihilating white flame like Neph's radiant longsword. However, it refused to give in and remained unbroken. No matter how many tough bones the tachi cut, not a single dent appeared on its blade.
With blood streaming down his body and sweat biting his eyes, his muscles on the verge of breaking apart and his lungs desperately burning for air, Sunny somehow kept up this mad tempo and fought, fought, fought.
At some point, he heard a furious roar from somewhere ahead and briefly looked up, noticing that Effie had dismissed her battered round shield and finally summoned the beautiful bronze spear. With it in her hands, the huntress became even more deadly. Multiple skeletons burst into a shower of broken bones, cut apart by a wide arc of the ancient weapon.
However, at the same time, more and more wounds started accumulating on Effie's body.
…Despite everything, things weren't going well for the cohort.
Or at least, it seemed that way for a while.
At some point, however, Sunny noticed that the number of skeletons attacking the cohort from the front had begun to diminish. Pretty soon, Nephis, Effie and Caster were getting a few moments to catch their breaths from time to time. The pressure on himself had also lessened.
The Stone Saint, on the other hand, had to hold off an ever-increasing number of undead creatures attacking the party from the rear. When the balance of the rolling battle noticeably shifted, Changing Star gave a command to change the formation of the cohort.
She quickly dashed back to reinforce the taciturn Shadow, while Sunny moved forward to support Caster and Effie at the head of the group.
Once he got there, the huntress gave him a tired smile.
"Hey, doofus. You… look like shit."
Sunny glanced down and had to agree with her. With his armor torn in a dozen places and soaked through and through with blood, he looked pretty much exactly as dead as the Nightmare Creatures they were fighting.
However, Effie's state wasn't any better.
He smiled crookedly.
"Thanks. You're quite a looker yourself, you know."
The huntress scoffed and then turned away to face another of the undead abominations.
"Hold fast! We're almost there!"
She told the truth.
After several more minutes of furious fighting, the tunnel they were moving through suddenly opened into a large cavern. A few meters in front of them, the floor of the catacombs was broken, collapsing into a vast, seemingly bottomless chasm. That terrifying abyss was filled with darkness that even Sunny's sight couldn't pierce.
The chasm was no less than forty meters across and stretched far into the distance to both left and right, like a dark border separating the world of the living from the world of the dead. A rickety rope bridge was drawn across it, connecting to a similar-looking tunnel at the other end of the abyssal chasm.
The rope bridge looked like a derelict of ancient times. It was flimsy, slippery, and rotten through and through.
'She doesn't expect us to actually use it, does she? It's so obvious that this thing will collapse as soon as we step on it! Has she not seen any sageuk?! Even if others somehow survive, there's no chance that I, with that damn [Fated] Attribute, will make it to the other end...'
Sunny turned to Effie and scowled, really hoping to be surprised by her answer.
"So, what now?"
The huntress looked at him in confusion.
"What else? We cross the bridge!"