Chapter 7: Amalgamation of Shadows

Of the many elemental spirits out there, the most dangerous of them all were the shadow spirits, with the exception of light spirits. After all, shadows could be anything, mimic anything, and reshape itself to be anything.

As a spirit, it could do physical and spiritual attacks. The worst part was the fact that one could not kill it normally despite it being physically material. The only way to kill a shadow is to either use darkness or emit a light so bright that it burns the shadow away.

Currently the Sun is at its brightest so the shadow abominations should burn away over time. However, the question is time. Now, that the shadows had formed one huge amalgamation, it would take slightly longer for the Sun to do its work. By then, how many people would be eaten? Hundreds? Thousands? The entire city?

If it was just a few, Ryder could take his time destroying every one of them: after all, the pommel of his canesword was made with a piece of the night sky. However, there were entire hordes of them now amalgamated into one singular blob of darkness.

Ryder could cut through shadows with his blade.

‘No, not fast enough. Same problem with the pommel.’

Ryder also could activate the Sun from his tarots.

‘Need circulation to maintain it. Activating it now would force him to shuffle constantly with each strike. It would take too long.”

Therefore, Ryder decided to forget about killing the spirit. Right now, all he could do was limit the casualties until the Paladins arrived.

Ryder turned towards Arulia as he pulled out his tarot deck and began to shuffle.

“Stay here.”

“But-!”

“Right now, you’re useless and going to get yourself killed.”

Ryder summoned his two-faced mask and placed it on his face.

“I’ll make it up for the both of us.”

He jumped down from the rooftops, unsheating his canesword, the quartz crossguard stabbing through the side of the wooden hilt. He drew a card: the Sun. A brilliant radiance enveloped the blade. It would not last long.

There were not many survivors near the shadow amalgamation as the tendrils were too fast to outrun. However, he was not going for the survivors.

Ryder reached where the gargantuan amalgamation sat. He thrusted the radiant blade into the amalgamation and sliced through it as much as possible until the tendrils retracted to stop him.

He was only one man trying to save everybody. However, the enemy was basically only one thing. Therefore, to save everyone, Ryder just needed to grab this one thing’s attention.

Dozens of tendrils zigzagged through the air as Ryder dodged each one. For those that he could not, he used the flat side of the blade to push himself off the tendril and redirect himself to a better position. The pressure caused Ryder’s arms to scream and almost lose his grip, but he held on. He had to.

Whenever he briefly lost the amalgamation’s attention, he would quickly shuffle and draw the Sun once more, repeating the exhausting process of dodging and blocking the tendrils.

After five times, Ryder was starting to feel exhausted. Eventually, his mana would run out, leaving him weakened. However, the amalgamation would not focus on him if he did not use the Sun, so he was forced to continue expelling mana to get its attention. This, in turn, made him slower and easier to knock around. A few cuts had been made by the tendrils when Ryder faltered.

How long had he been fighting the spirit? Where were the damn paladins?! Ryder would actually die at this rate. And the city as well.

Ryder clashed against a tendril, but he was too slow to dodge another that ripped through his achilles tendon. Ryder felt an intense pain as he pushed himself away just as a shadow tendril pierced the ground where he was at.

Ryder stumbled for a moment. A tendril pierced through his leg. Ryder screamed in pain as another stabbed through his right shoulder, forcing him to drop his canesword.

The next one should be straight through the head.

…

Ryder opened his eyes to see a towering knight with broad shoulders wearing black adamantium-plated armor in front of him and wielding a warhammer as long as he is tall. His black burgonet glistened in the sun. The tendril ricocheted off the armor and bent towards the man’s head. However, the man caught it with his adamantium gauntlet.

On his shoulder guard was an emblem of a white camellia and an azure blue shield behind it.

“You did well to stall, soldier. Be proud.”

Ryder felt the air around him change. The world around him was brighter and the rays of sunlight were more powerful.

The tendrils that had pierced Ryder wriggled in his wounds as it burned away.

“The stage has been set. To defeat a powerful enemy, one must use its greatest weakness. Such is the art of war.”

The knight crushed the tendril in his gauntlet. As dozens of tendrils rushed towards him, the knight pulled back his mallet. Ryder quickly pushed himself out of the way as the knight swung his warhammer at the tendrils, the shockwave dispersing the shadows.

Ryder could feel it. The world bending in favor of this knight. After all, he was no knight. He was a Paladin.

Ryder breathed a sigh of relief. His job was over.

“Could you handle this by yourself?”

The Paladin shook his head.

“No, all I can do is get its attention and set the stage.”

Just as Ryder was about to lose all hope, he pointed towards a nearby rooftop where a silver armored figure jumped off from, his emblem bearing the sigil of a phoenix.

“He will be the one to do the damage.”

An explosion rocked the city as a fireball crashed onto the amalgamation. Right, the Sun was needed because there needs to be light to burn the shadows. However, as long as it is hot enough, fire should be able to do the trick.

The amalgamation let out a cacophonous wail as it burned in the flames. It was not dead, of course. However, with just enough time, it would.

“You should get yourself to safety. You might get caught in the battle,” the black Paladin said.

Ryder nodded. He grabbed his canesword and its scabbard. Once he joined the two, he used it as a support and limped away as the Paladin charged into battle, beating down the amalgamation to buy time for the other Paladin to send a fireball onto its face once more.

It was over. Ryder entered a nearby alleyway and leaned on the wall. As the adrenaline faded, Ryder felt a rush of pain through his torn achilles tendon.

“Ah, that hurts…”

Ryder wished he could just call on the Empress, but he was nearly exhausted of mana. He needed time.

“Ryder!”

Ryder tilted his head towards the voice.

“What are you doing here?”

Arulia looked at Ryder’s sprawled body and then at his wounds. She pulled out a piece of paper with a magic circle.

Green light began to glow and Ryder felt his wounds somewhat closing. It was relatively weak healing magic, but good enough to restore his achilles tendon and soothe the pain from his other wounds. It would still need time to recover though.

“Thanks.”

“This was the best I could do for now.”

Ryder nodded as he propped himself up on his cane. As he stumbled, Arulia caught him and they walked out of the alleyway together.

“This is one hell of a first date.”

“Is that a pun?”

Ryder shook his head.

“There are worse things that deserved to be called hell than this.”

As the both of them exited the alleyway, Ryder could see the bodies that littered the streets. There was no discrimination between class levels or whether the victims were adults or children. All were food for the shadow spirits to eat.

Ryder recognized the bodies of the couple from before.

‘After all the hardship I went through to get them together, this was the ending to their story.’

It was distasteful.

“You asked for that wooden talisman that snapped from the woman, right? What was it?”

Ryder clicked his tongue.

“A fake luck talisman. It was meant to be used as a protective charm. Well, it doesn’t really protect. It more or less summons a shadow spirit to kill whoever destroyed the talisman so a common tactic was to make the enemy, usually an assassin, destroy it, and then watch them get brutally devoured by their own shadow.”

Ryder picked up a piece of the talisman with blood splattered on it.

“There should only be a handful in existence though. The only other time it was used, the shadow spirit ended up devouring an entire city. It took a Chosen to end its rampage.”

Ryder threw away the piece. Arulia grimaced at the bodies.

“If there are only a handful, then it should be difficult to find this many. Could it have been mass-produced?”

Ryder shook his head.

“The process of making that talisman had been lost to time. Even if someone found out how to make one, natural shadow spirits had gone extinct shortly after the Second Divine War. That was the key ingredient in making that talisman.”

There was only one way to find all those fake luck talismans. You either needed to be very lucky or you had to be a fatereader.

But how? Fatereaders themselves had gone extinct and Ryder was sure he was the only one left. How was it that a fatereader other than him could be walking around alive? He was sure that there were no survivors.

Whoever it was, that person was bad news. They had to be killed to ensure Ryder could live his normal life.

An explosion rocked the ground and another cacophony of wails erupted. The shadow spirit was putting up a longer fight than expected, but it should die soon.

Nothing else should happen now.

Deafening ringing echoed into the deathly quiet streets from the coast. One could hear the ringing every few nights or so. If one does, everyone should stay indoors until the bell rings again.

However, this is the middle of the day when there are still hundreds of people on the beaches. There were even more due to the shadow spirits currently causing havoc in the middle of the city.

The merfolk had always attacked during the night to prevent a quick death due to dehydration. However, with the majority of the population close to the shores and the Paladins busy in the middle of the city due to an overwhelming foe, the Siren Queen realized that this was a chance that she could not miss.

Ryder shuddered as he heard the bell continuing to ring as if begging for the gods to answer their pleas.