Shadow looks over at Beast, his blood-red eyes making him flinch a bit, he had never seen such a cold and murderous expression on Shadow’s face.
“I just got a bit angry, that’s all.” Shadow calmly states as the darkness dissipates in the air around him, a dark mark shines ominously around his right eye.
“That!” Beast looks at the mark with shock. “Is that?”
“Yes.” Shadow simply nods and falls down on his butt, exhausted from the previous fight, him using his newly developed bind skill on the woman was a tad too much for him right now. He gasps for air as he lies down on his back to rest. The shadows that were binding the woman don’t disappear though and hold her firmly.
Shadow looks up at the lights of the warehouse and thinks about what had happened just some minutes ago.
Shadow was swinging his daggers around while looking over at the draif, since the opponent could fly he opted to use his previous daggers for long-range attacks, his blood dagger was hanging on his waist, ready to be drawn at any moment.
“Hihihihihi, look at you, still trying to fight monsters and hold on to your humanity.” The draif snickers while looking at Shadow with a big sneer on his face. He licks his lips with his long tongue before continuing.
“I’ll make it easy for you boy.” The draif lifts his hand, outstretching his thumb and drawing a line across his neck. “Slit your neck and I might consider letting you join our ranks.”
“You, you used to be a human didn’t you?” Shadow looks at the monster with disgust, a human that was able to brag about becoming a monster such as him was the lowest of the low.
“Hahahahaha, used to, yes, now I am much more blondie.” The draif laughs and spreads his wings, using them to fly some 2m above the ground while looking down on Shadow.
“Seems like my words actually made you a bit angry, well no matter, you will see how foolish your decision to fight me was, you and every single one of your friends will die here.” The draif flaps his wings and dives down at Shadow with his arms stretched forward. The fingernails on both of his hands became longer and resembled claws more than human nails.
Shadow throws both of his daggers at the enemy, not forgetting to use his shadow blades to maximize the damage. The draif however flaps his wings again, showing his great maneuverability in the air, the daggers and eight shadow blades pass by harmlessly as he dives down at Shadow again.
The high degree of mobility and speed the wings offered was a surprise for Shadow who was ready to summon his daggers back once the draif gets closer, in the meantime he grabs his blood dagger and puts it into his mount, biting down hard on the side of the guard. ( Three Dagger Style anyone, no, never mind then… L )
As the draif looks at the scene he laughs wildly and accelerates, moving with great speed and arriving in front of Shadow in mere seconds. Shadow’s eyes betray his happiness as he summons back his daggers, immediately throwing them at the monster while spitting out the dagger out from his mouth and grabbing it with his right hand.
The daggers reappearing was an unexpected turn of events for the draif who manages to block both of them with his claws, but that was enough for Shadow as the enemy had lost the initiative and was open for an attack.
Using shadow burst he aims at the draif’s abdomen, he planned to first deal a huge amount of internal damage and destroy a couple of organs, the battle would be effectively over at that moment as the draif’s should still have a similar biology as humans. Internal bleeding of such scale together with a couple of organs dying should be enough to deal an enormous amount of damage and kill it after some time.
Plans were one thing however and reality was different as the draif quickly flaps his wings and manages to rise a bit while moving to the right side. Shadow’s dagger only manages to cut the left side of his waist while the shadow burst activated with relatively mild results. The draif’s skin was different compared to human one as much rougher and had small stubbles on it, unnoticeable from a distance.
Still, the damage had been done and the wound starts bleeding, the blood was quickly absorbed by the dagger before the draif manage to draw back and put some distance between them.
“You wounded me!” The draifs looks stupidly at Shadow as his ego flares up, he had given up everything for a chance to evolve above the level of a human, to see another human actually wound him was more than embarrassing for him.
“You will pay, you will pay, YOU WILL PAY!!” The draif shout in anger as his body starts turning into an even deeper shade of red, the pitch-black wings on his back turn crimson as his demeanor completely changes.
Shadow constricts his eyes, the pressure the draif was giving off now was completely different from before, the murderous aura and the incredible wrath the draif felt fused together and made for a suffocating feeling when being the target of it.
Shadow’s dagger erupts into blood-red flames as he uses its skill, the amount of monsters he had killed together with the others was huge and he had more than enough to use it for a longer period of time right now. The fight had become much more dangerous and he knew that he needed to give it his all now.
As the draif flaps his wings he moves with such speed that Shadow was barely able to keep up, the claws and flaming dagger immediately clash several times as Shadow felt his hand getting numb from the blows.
He summons one dagger in his left hand and tries using both to mitigate the impact, the strategy works, albeit with middling results. The blood from the draif’s wound was still being sucked into the dagger but it was slowly closing as the draif’s berserk state seemed to increase his regenerative ability next to overall speed and power.
“DIE, DIE, DIE!” The draif had almost completely lost control of his thoughts, the only thing on his mind right now was to kill the opponent in brutal fashion.
The onslaught of attacks was slowly becoming faster and stronger with each passing second, which came with a weakness though, as the draif’s attacks were very rudimentary and crude, which allowed Shadow to even get a couple of hits in, cutting into the flesh and drawing blood from his opponent.
This however didn’t come without any drawbacks as the draif felt almost no pain right now and countered almost every attack, wounding Shadow. He didn’t mind it though, the power the draif gained was certain to disappear after some time, while his skill would be in effect until all blood had evaporated.
Him losing the buff from the skill would weaken him for sure, but the drawback from the berserk state was certain to be even bigger. The battle was slowly turning into his favor before he heard the sound of flesh being cut, he managed to slip through the draif’s attacks and constricted his eyes at what he saw.
Reign was cut on the shoulder and blood was spewing out from the wound while his opponent was not even out of breath, just from that exchange Shadow could see the difference in power between the two. Immediately he breaks out into a sprint to go over to his friend but gets stopped by the draif who was laughing gleefully at him.
“Didn’t I say you were all going to die you piece of shit?!” The draif shouts while attacking Shadow mercilessly.
“Stay here and watch your friends die!” The draif changes his attacks and actually kicks at Shadow’s chest, making him slide back by a couple of meters while coughing.
“You will join the shortly after all.” The draif smiles gleefully at the panicking Shadow who suddenly didn’t know what to do, Reign was in trouble but he had no way of coming over to help him, he knew that, if he simply ran blindly to him he would just get stopped by the draif or get attacked from behind which might result in his death.
Shadow racks his brain to find a solution but was unable to. His shadow skills were not strong enough to hit the flying draif from the ground, the wings of the draif made shadows on the side of his body but Shadow’s control over his ability was not high enough to actually manipulate the shadows that were touching a live body.
The process was many times more complex and the mana consumption was larger as well. He could use his shadow body skill to deliver an unexpected attack at the draif but even that was not certain to kill the stubborn bastard, not to mention that the drawback from using the skill would probably drain most of Shadow’s current mana reserve, leaving him with barely anything to help Reign out.
He was going in full panic mode as he looks at his friend who was completely defenseless against the opponent, the draif simply stays in the air while looking down at the panicking Shadow, a wide smile still plastered on his face as he was enjoying the current situation.
Shadow was hopeless, he had steeled his mind to use the shadow body to kill the opponent and rush to Reign, even if his mana dries up and he dies it would be worth it if he could save him.
Right before he activates the skill however the world goes completely gray and time stops as a voice echoes in his head.
“Need some help little one?”