Shadow Slave | School Days

As she leapt from her hiding spot, Luster could only sigh with exasperation as he watched the crazy silver haired woman literally dive into a sea of enemies. They had just finished putting their children into cages and were preparing themselves to move once more, frankly, Luster was quite proud at his timing. 

With this, the children didn't need to get involved meaning he didn't need to move a muscle to help. Or at least, that was what he thought when an axe came swiveling through the air towards him. A part of him wanted the wielder to hit him with the axe and be done with it. 

Living was a drag, a tepid process of countless experiences only leading up to an inevitable end that everyone could see coming. A movie with a predictable end was boring, and Luster didn't like being bored despite his laziness. 

And yet, there were people who made his life less of a drag. Like whoever invented cake. And so, he couldn't die before he saw cake evolve to its precipice. 

Grabbing the axe between his fingers, Luster turned his head around to glance at the burly man who wielded it. "Hey, how about this. I'll leave right now if you leave me alone. That way, none of us get to die!" Luster offered, the man simply grinned cruelly, pulling his axe from Luster's grip before swinging again. 

Leaping to his feet, Luster closed in, weaving under another wide, painfully predictable arc before snapping the handle of the axe. Grabbing the blade, Luster aimed it at the man's extended arm before cutting off his entire hand. In the same motion, he grabbed the missing appendage with a sadistic smile on his face. 

"I've never seen someone get strangled by their own hand. Till now." Kicking out the man's knee, Luster slammed a few hits to the man's face to disorient him before wrapping his disconnected fingers around the man's neck. Pressing down, he quickly broke the man's windpipe before staring down at his dying body. 

"You'd make an excellent horror game villain." He commented mildly, kicking the man in the head once more for interrupting him before sitting on his rotund belly. 'At least this mission has perks, I got a chair to watch Changing Star fight in!' And truly, he was entertained. 

She had turned into a tornado of violence. A man rushed in, swinging a crowbar at her head intent on crushing it yet his movements were too obvious. Her foot slammed into his knee with a sharp crack, causing him to cascade towards the floor before she grabbed the back of his head and slammed her knee into it. 

'I'm still restraining myself; I could have killed him with that.' Nephis thought, the man was unconscious and yet her foes gave her no time to rest. If she remained in the same place for too long, she would be swarmed faster than she was able to take them down. 

A man lunged with a knife—she slipped past the blade, her hands catching his wrist. With a simple movement of her wrist—the man's knife turned from his grip, slipping onto the floor as his head collided with the floor in a sickening crunch. He had hit the floor at an odd angle, likely breaking his spine but Nephis didn't spare him a passing glance. 

Another came from behind—Nephis spun, her heel colliding with his ribs so hard shards of his ribs pierced through his chest as blood exploded in her direction. Leaping backwards, she dodged the shower of blood as two more men closed in on her. 

Ducking under a bat, Nephis stepped in and crushed his ribs with a short and brutal knee. He fell, gagging on the building blood that was arriving in his lungs as Nephis stared at his body for a moment too long. 'So, this is what it feels like to be surrounded and outnumbered. How overrated.' 

Despite her bold declaration to Orion, she had yet to actually kill anybody. The wounds she was leaving were surely maiming, likely changing their lives forever for the worst and yet she found herself unable to finish it all. Even a cripple could hurt others, even a cripple could kill. And yet she didn't take the final step. 

A punch came from her side. She caught it, her grip turning into an iron vice as she twisted his arm backward. The man shrieked, his elbow bending the wrong way, she stomped his knee backward, causing his bones to shatter and pierce his skin as he released an ear curdling roar of pain. 

Once more, they continued to attempt to overwhelm her. She slammed an elbow into a jaw, crushed wrists in her grasps and cracked skulls with her knees till they stopped their feeble attempts at resistance. Another tried to tackle her—she hooked her foot behind his and threw him headfirst into the cold cement beneath him. 

His neck twisted unnaturally as he collided with the floor yet Nephis' head continued moving. 'More information, more people, more predictions. See further, see better, see quicker. Their ideal goal: Kill me. How would I kill myself if I was a thug? Keep thinking, don't stop moving.' 

Nephis' mind continued working, continued predicting, continued assimilating information into her soul as she predicted further and further the simple movements of multiple targets. Unbeknownst to her, she found a wide smile arriving on her face as she leapt towards her opponents. 

"I'm fucking amazing." 

A silent whisper that went unheard as her foot hooked an ankle, sending the attacker sprawling. Before he could rise, she drove her knee into his skull. His body twitched a few times before falling still. Another man swung a chain at her, far too slow to even be a mockery of Eubin's battle style as she caught it midair. 

Pulling him forward, she slammed her fist into his teeth. Wrapping his chain around his throat, Nephis closed her eyes and pictured Morgan's face as she continued to pull with all her might. Eventually, she heard the sickening crack that indicated she had just taken her first life. 

Landing on the floor next to her, Luster clapped his hands in approval as Nephis stared down at the corpse of the man before her indifferently. "So gruesome, so violent, so vicious. Do you think Lost from Light would be proud of you? There's still thirty more men you need to kill, get to it." 

Upon hearing his words, Nephis paused in her movements as she stared down at the unconscious form of the next man that she was about to kill. 'Would you be proud of me, Sunny? I'm removing scum from the world and yet I still feel so fucking empty.' 

As she crushed the man's head, tears fell from her eyes. She attempted to blink them away, dismiss her grief as she moved to the next man. 

Tears continued to flow, not from guilt, but from innocence lost. 

-- 

Sweat cascaded from Sunny's face as he continued his workout through the night. He had exercised for a whole eight hours straight and he hadn't even noticed. Placing one hand against the floor, Sunny began his set of pushups as he attempted to clear his mind of lingering thoughts. 

'But it's so easy. I could kill all of them right now and they wouldn't notice.' Dark thoughts of these theme continued to emanate through his mind as a wide malicious smile arrived on his face. Sitting down, Sunny placed a hand on his face to cover his smile, his eyes flashing with venom as he tried to restrain his dark impulses. 

Suppressed violence, bred by the hatred which Morgan cultivated threated to release itself at every moment. And yet Sunny restrained it supremely. It wasn't a pertinent issue, nothing that couldn't be solved by a few murders but still quite annoying. 

Eubin watched as Sunny blitzed from one area of the training ground to another moving far faster than she could see, he was denting the steel walls with every other movement and yet oddly enough he seemed to be having the time of his life. And yet, the scowl of sadness that placed itself on her face didn't fade. 

'This isn't all of Sunny. He's a blank slate right now, meaning anyone can paint him whatever color they wish so long as he doesn't kill them. So interesting yet so saddening at the same time. I really should have made sure I killed Morgan.' 

How the woman had survived getting her neck snapped was beyond her, the only possible theory was that Valor had been tapping into the medical excellence of the immortal flame, the only ones who managed to far surpass Ki Song. 

However, such a concept seemed entirely far-fetched. How would Anvil even gain access to such technology let alone know how to use it? Shaking her head, she banished her worries for a moment as she turned around to acknowledge the presence of Moonveil. 

"Hello, sister." Eubin called, her voice entirely devoid of the warmth that would be typical of a sister. Frankly, she disliked the woman immensely. She was like a crude mish-mash of Nephis combined with a piece of worn-out blue hair dye and yet she moved like the very world belonged at her knees. 

Of course, she wouldn't let her sister know of such a sentiment as she watched Moonveil respond with a perfectly practiced fake smile. "Hello Beast Master. What brings you here?" The answer was obvious, but for the sake of relieving the awkward environment between them anything had to be done. 

"Who wouldn't want to watch Lost from Light train?" Moonveil nodded in agreeance, squinting her eyes in an attempt to follow along with his movements as she watched him crash into the ground once more before quickly disappearing. 'He makes no noise even when he collides with the ground like that.' She noted as she released her response. 

"Yes, maybe we can learn of his weaknesses should he ever betray us." It was a perfectly reasonable reason, however when Eubin began laughing in her face, the scowl which she had brewing for Eubin in the depths of her soul threatened to show itself as she finally calmed herself down. 

"Weaknesses? I've known him far longer than any of you have so I'll tell you this... Lost from Light has no weaknesses." 

Before Moonveil could respond, Sunny cleared his throat, he was only a few inches away from the two women, loosely wearing a white shirt that quickly became see through under the high amounts of sweat he was releasing as he stared at the women, wiping his face with his shirt and exposing his abs. 

'What a sight.' Was their shared thought. 

"Can you take me to Ki Song?" Sunny asked, his voice entirely neutral as he stared at the women curiously. The glimmer of curiosity that both Sunny's shared caused Eubin's lips to tug upward unnoticeably as she looked to Moonveil for an answer. 

'If Sunny put his mind to it, there isn't really a method that involves us stopping him and yet he was asking to be polite, you're still so cute.' Eubin thought to herself as Moonveil declared her answer, likely coming to a similar conclusion to Eubin as she stared at him warily. 

"If I may ask Lost from Li-" Sunny raised a hand to cut her off, cocking his head to the side with a small frown as he placed a hand on his chin. "Sunny... I think my name is Sunny." Moonveil only raised an eyebrow at his lack of formality as she continued her statement. 

"Why do you want to speak to mother?" Returning to his contemplative expression, Sunny slipped between the two women as he began walking in a random direction. 

"Next year, I'm going to kill Anvil."