A thousand thoughts slipped through Nico's mind like sand in the wind, but one remained.
'This is bad.'
And that was an understatement.
The dark sea would rise in a tidal wave to drown the labyrinth, and a storm fiercer than wrath, darker than night, plagued the skies. Prowling Nightmare Creatures were all drawn to him like moths to a flame. Their claws, teeth, and spite knew only corruption.
Stuck between them all he would perish.
Only, he refused to accept that.
Shaman, more powerful than any Sleeper would ever be, was by his side, and just yesterday he had methodically slaughtered twenty Awakened Beasts by himself. The [Glass Torch] hung off his belt. Even the vision of Nightmare Creatures that might've been able to see in the dark would be distorted. He had his own sixth sense for souls, and while that hadn't ever allowed him to predict enemies moves, he could tell their vague position.
What was a couple dozen abominations to him? Well, it might've been more, given how many souls were converging on their position.
Three Memories began to weave themselves from sparks of light as Nico lidded his eyes.
Seconds later, the [Song of Steel] whispered as it settled onto his wrists, and his hands clenched around both the hilt of the [Mourning Star] and [Wrathful Crescent]. Two opposing lights radiated from each weapon — a white wisp of potential from the mace, and a malevolent blood-red from the glaive.
His voice rasped, laced with cold stratagem:
"Send the Demon and Monsters into the sea, then pick off as many Beasts as you can before returning and aiding me."
He paused.
"We'll try to kill them all here and flee only if necessary."
The Specter's crimson eyes flared. It ruffled its feathers, claws scraping at the ground as it flexed its spindly forelimbs. Wings rose like imposing arches, and with a single beat it had disappeared from his vision.
Left alone at the summit, thousands of coral outcrops and small ridges below him, Nico prepared himself, funneling sluggish essence into his mace. The purifying steel of the [Silver Wraith] clung to his tall form like a cocoon of cloth, chain, and silver. His helmet was austere, a long white plume trailing behind it like a banner. A white banner.
Yet, here and now, he had no delusions of retreat.
Two cruel azure eyes shone from within the visor like liquid gemstones. Power coursed through his body from the two roots he'd long since implanted into his body.
It wasn't long before he heard the Spell whisper to him:
[You have slain an Awakened Monster, Gravestone Revenant.]
Nico's grip tightened around his weapons. Still, he did not move. He waited patiently.
The same voice spoke to him several more times:
[You have slain an Awakened Monster, Gravestone Revenant.]
[You have slain an Awakened Monster, Gravestone Reven…]
[You have slain an Awakened Mon…]
Then, the first abomination clambered atop the plateau. Though he could not see it, he could feel it only a couple hundred meters away.
Shaman landed fluidly beside him. Its feathers and hide were slick with blood, posture coiled tensely as it took a few steps to circle him, claws racking against the coral.
'No Demon, then. The creature must possess enough intelligence or an eerie ability to hide itself. I can still sense it fine, but somehow it managed to slip past Shaman.'
More Nightmare Creatures crested the island moments later — most Beasts. Only three Monsters remained. The Demon was still relatively far away, rising just above the impending waves as it let the others swarm him first.
Nico finally sprung into motion. He took a few steps back from the edge, then a couple faster ones, and after began sprinting forwards, one arm raised above his head, glaive poised like a javelin.
His entire body pulsed with veins of essence as he imbued one of his soul roots into the [Wrathful Crescent] right before he released it. Shaman subtly shifted his posture with its enthrallment. The glaive streaked across the sky like a smeared bloodstain, embedding itself straight into one of the Soul Cores of a Monster that had summited on the side of the island closest to him.
A horrible, teeth-chattering wail erupted far in the distance. Nico continued unimpeded, leaping from the cliff. A flow of energy was funneled into the [Mourning Star] at his side.
His silhouette was an invisible blur in the darkness as he descended.
A couple dozen seconds later, he was only a few meters away from whatever creature had attempted to rise to slay him — still writhing at the edge of the cliff due to Nico's glaive. A revenant that, because of the darkness, he could not see.
Only, the next second, a flash of lightening purged every shadow over the land, and there, revealed for his mortal eyes to see, was a humanoid figure two and a half meters tall, its bones jutting from rotten flesh and torn skin like overgrown, black roots. Where its head should've been instead sat a revolting mass split open to reveal mismatched rows of twisted teeth. Limbs jutted like branches from its torso, and its legs and hands ended with nails stretched into claws.
The Monster, still reeling from the annihilation of one of its cores, a single bloody hole in the center of its exposed ribs and flesh, couldn't react as his morning star swung upwards, splitting its open maw into repulsive chunks.
The [Song of Steel] screamed like a banshee. The Monster toppled in an instant. Nico retrieved his glaive — the metal lustfully absorbing the sprayed blood — and reimbued himself with his second soul root.
[You have slain an Awakened Monster, Gravestone Revenant.]
Nico stood for a second, then glanced to the left. There, hooves clacking against the coral with the disjointed rhythm of a war drum, was a strider. It seemed the Beast had just reached the cliff's edge to join its now dead companion. Shaman had already dealt with the other surrounding creatures.
Malevolence burned in its void eyes as the horse's jaw split; long fangs hung unnaturally inside its gullet.
Nico didn't move as the Beast closed in, simply regarding the black space where it was with indifference before turning and positioning himself against the nearest incoming enemy from the cliffs below.
Before the abomination could ram into him, Shaman shifted. It didn't move in a human sense, but its body unfurled, toppling over the creature and pinning it down with four of its six front legs. The Beast screeched unnaturally. The Messenger's wide beak clicked open along jagged seams, then closed, skewering its skull clean through with a wet crunch and throwing the corpse down into the rising sea with a spare claw.
[You have slain…]
Nico's mace hummed pleasantly as he activated its enchantment. He tossed the lustrous silver weapon into the vast darkness of the sheer drop just beside him, watching as it left the radius of the [Glass Torch] and began to brighten into a small halo of soft light.
It illuminated one of the climbing striders. Nico had prior no clue how they managed to scale the pillar, but based off the sound of cracking stone he heard below him, he assumed they had simply stomped their hooves into the sheer wall. Turns out, they had. It would've been an amusing sight if they weren't so horrific.
'Either way, these ones are gone.'
As he turned away, the mace bounced against one of the striders stone-like backs, then erupted into a sea of flames and screams, swallowing several rows of abomination in an explosion that might've not been enough to kill them, but surely enough to knock them into the crushing waves below.
[You have slain an Awakened Beast, Gravestone Strider.]
[You have slain an…]
[You have slain…]
[You have received…]
Nico made a split-second decision. His eyes closed. The incoming monsters were no more than repulsive spheres of dark corruption in his soul sense currently, and if he summoned back his mace and dismissed the [Glass Torch], he would've been able to make them out within a small circle of vision.
He clenched his teeth, focusing every bit of his spare attention on the several dozen souls approaching him.
Instead of relying on sight, he planned to fight with his sixth sense. After all, he might be able to see what's near him, but the abominations will be able to see him no matter the distance. To give them so much clarity would be foolish.
His main advantage was the dark because most Awakened abominations were forced to hide from the sea and hadn't developed nocturnal sight, and Shaman, while it couldn't see in the complete darkness, had keener eyes due to the fact it was a wraith that didn't exactly exist in the physical world. The raging lightning above would help alleviate that problem.
All he needed to do, then, was expand his senses and forgo vision entirely. Souls encompassed more than just cores. They coursed through the entire body, though not innately visible. He needed to find that lesser part of them.
It wasn't something he had ever needed in the confines of the dark city, or even before that in the labyrinth, but now, in this rare situation, it might've been his best bet.
A mere hundred meters away, the Gravestone Striders that had ascended up on other sides of the pillar charged toward him in a stampede of screeches and snorts, hooves cracking the coral beneath. Scaling the colossal cliff below him, five more had escaped the flames and falling corpses and were climbing after him.
Summoning his mace back, Nico spent a few seconds of time to fill it with as much essence as he could spare and gave it a soul root, then let the hammer of scorching flames devour the cliff-side for a second time.
Revealed in the menacing backdrop of the explosion, Nico's bleak figure cast a deep shadow over the coral platform. He dismissed his mace and fell into a two-handed stance with his glaive. The wind flickered his helmet plume behind him. Shaman coiled beside him, the bones of its massive, pale body popping in stretch. An eerie flame instilled the will to falter amidst the incoming Beasts, staggering their steps.
Nico focused himself into a deep, meditative state. All other information except the one he needed was blocked. The souls of Nightmare Creatures: they were abyssal nodes, but they weren't just that. They were spread out, tenuous — reaching everywhere their bodies and essence stretched. As he focused on that thought, something began to change, and it was like his senses had reformed around the thought, scraping at the barrel for every last detail that his Dormant body could scrounge.
He saw the vague outlines of their bodies, how essence swirled and pulsed within their cores and muscles, and how even these mindless creatures operated with uncanny efficiency.
Empowered three-fold, armed with new clarity, and using the now-empty cliffside to protect their rear, Nico swept his glaive in a clean arc, cleanly beheading the first incoming abomination. Shaman's gaunt front legs received its still moving corpse, dug out a soul shard, absorbed the crystal with a hiss of ethereal fog, and tossed it into the rising tide ahead of them.
The Spell whispered, its lovely voice a catalogue of all Nico's most gruesome accomplishments:
[You have slain an Awakened Beast, Gravestone Strider.]
Then, the night was filled with a cacophony of screams.