Sunny was getting frustrated.
No, it wasn't because the damn deer was practically impossible to kill without cutting its shadow in quick succession, which wasn't a good idea due to its reaction speed.
Well… that wasn't the main reason.
Rather, it was the fact that he couldn't reproduce the phenomena that he and Kafka seemed to trigger against eachother — his own being the one that he has dubbed the Super Duper Shadow Attack.
Each swing of his sword didn't carry the exponential might that he had seen before. Now matter how hard he tried, he imply couldn't grasp the timing of applying his Shadow Essence.
As he grabbed onto the Tyrant's antlers in order to flip himself over its body, narrowly dodging between four roots that shot out and intersected, leaving small gaps that he barely twisted through, he found that he simply couldn't wrap his mind around how he had performed the Super Duper Shadow Attack in the first place.
It wasn't that he forgot how he had done it, as his memory was mostly perfect. It was as if… his soul was rejecting him trying to perform such an act. It was the same way a limb would protest when injured, or how the body would gag when consuming something undesirable.
There were plenty of differences between Sunny and Kafka. One was an Ascended while the other was Transcendent. As such, not only was the quality of their Essence different — though, not by much thanks to [Essence of Divinity] — but the depths of their control were leagues apart. While Sunny knew plenty of Essence circulation methods from the Awakened and few Masters he has shadowed, and even Kafka's own to the extent of replicating her Super Duper Soul Attack with his Super Duper Shadow Attack, her control was much more sophisticated and delicate, if inflexible. If anyone understood what she had done, it would be her.
He didn't know if what Kafka had done was dangerous to him or not, but at the very least, his soul didn't want him to attempt that anymore.
Before he landed, Sunny manifested a thin wall of shadows in his flight path, using it as a platform to bounce off of in order to avoid the root that was waiting to ensnare him. Diving into the shadows and reappearing under the Tyrant, Sunny sliced through its four legs, telepoorting away before he got crushed.
Then, standing over its limbless body, he impaled Hail Sorrow through its torso, the blade piercing all the way through until it stabbed into the deer's shadow. Quickly drawing his blade back out, he leaped back just in time to avoid the barbed whip that slammed the spot he had been standing.
The deer's legs reformed, vines coiling together and giving them shape. The deer took a few steps away from Sunny, and further from the bundle of the Ambrosial Arbor's roots.
His eyes lingered on the spikes that have begun to appear on the plants the Tyrant used to attack him, before pivoting and sprinting in a wide circle around the deer. The fight was beginning to escalate, so he needed to quickly get all his pieces in position before the time came.
Placing Hail Sorrow between his teeth, something that would have been impossible to do as a mundane human, considering that it was a longsword, Sunny held out his hands.
A composite bow made out of black horn and dark polished wood manifested itself from a storm of crimson sparks. With one hand on the handle and the other pulling on the crimson string, Sunny slid to a stop.
Right between the Tyrant and the roots of the Ambrosial Arbor.
In an instant, an onslaught of attacks like no other swarmed him. Countless roots and vines rose from the earth, coiling and constricting as they rushed to slam and squeeze him until he was nothing but a puddle of flesh.
Sneering, Sunny found himself being flung upwards by a pillar of shadows, launching him up into the air. The Tyrant's metaphorical hands wrapped around the manifested shadows, crushing them…
But not before a black arrow pierced through the Tyrant's skull, before imbedding itself into its shadow.
Through using Hail Sorrow and learning how his Source Element, whatever that was, interacted with its [Manifest Spirit] enchantment, he figured that since Morgan's Warbow had a similar enchantment, the same result would occur.
And he was… wrong, actually. The soul arrows the bow created didn't deal direct damage to the soul using the shadow as a medium. Instead…
They completely immobilized the Tyrant.
There were five roots that had been piercing towards him, but were now frozen in space. The deer did not move an inch, a massive hole still lingering from the tip of its head to its stomach. The black arrow that was still imbedded into its shadow was swiftly shrinking, with it seeming like it wouldn't last a second longer.
Sunny's eyes widened. His soul arrows, when making contact with the target's shadow, would prevent them from moving. The size of the arrow indicated the time limit, and right now, he could only fire one more arrow…
"Serpent!"
A black, winged meteor came crashing down from above as Sunny called a shadow up to his falling form, rolling on it before quickly pulling the string, an inky arrow appearing. His Essence drastically dropped as he activated an enchantment.
The Transcendent Tyrant found itself clutched in the serrated maw of Serpent, the impact of the Ascended Demon's descent from its place up high causing the earth to bend and collapse into a crater. The soul arrow fizzled out of existence, and in an instant, countless roots zoomed over before stabbing, constricting, and slamming against its scales. However, Serpent's form was simply to great… too domineering for such small attacks to faze it. With a flutter of its gradient butterfly wings, it rose up into the sky, distancing itself from the Ambrosial Arbor's roots.
Sunny fired, the [Death Dealer] and [Burden of Peace] enchantments activating simultaneously as space distorted around the soul arrow. An inky blur stretched from his platform of manifested shadows, barreling towards the coalescence of the Abundance's roots…
And piercing right through like a shooting star.
Before Sunny's eyes, an arrow the length of his arm created a gaping hole, killing the roots instantly.
[You have slain a Transcendent Tyrant, Abundant Ebon Deer.]
[You have recieved a Memory.]