The Fall of Falcon Scott (54)

The [Formless] Ability allowed Soul Serpent to assume the shape of any shadow contained within its master's soul, as long as it was the shadow of a creature that was of the same or lower Class and Rank.

Once transformed, Serpent would not only look like the creature, but also inherit its traits and abilities.

...Sunny, however, was not the Serpent.

While he trained his mind and body to possess some facets of the formlessness of shadows, he was still a human. Even if he used Shadow Step to turn incorporeal, he would not be able to make use of the same mystical ability.

He could, however, command the shadows and manifest them into tangible forms.

What did it mean?

Slowly drowning in the tide of black beetles and feeling their sharp mandibles scrape against his skin, Sunny continued to fight... and think. His thoughts were desperate and feverish, but at the same time, his mind was strangely calm.

His first uses of Shadow Manifestation had been very simple — nothing more than shapeless shadows turned tangible and pushed into motion. The only form they had was the one caused by the motion itself, and so, they looked like dark tentacles.

Later, Sunny trained for a long time to be able to effortlessly manipulate the shadows into more structured shapes. Chains, blades, walls, and a few more — with those, he had made several incredible achievements. Building a bridge over a vast chasm, stopping the advance of a mighty titan... were not things a Master was supposed to be capable of doing.

However, his crowning achievement in the use of Shadow Manifestation was the shadow hands. Although not as powerful, durable, and numerous as the dark chains Sunny could create, they were vastly more complex and intricately structured. A hand had to have a rigid frame, flexible joints, dozens degrees of freedom, and many more aspects that few people ever stopped to consider.

Controlling one was also much more complicated.

Currently, Sunny could skillfully implement two types of shadow hands: the cruder and larger ones acted as an independent fighting force during battles, while the much more agile ones, scaled to the size of his body, were used to give him an extra pair of hands for complicated tasks.

So... if he could already create hands and arms... what was to stop him from shaping shadows into a full creature?

Sunny growled as he was pushed back by the river of darkness, wide cracks appearing on the dam he had created. Behind him, Belle, Dorn, and Kim were barely holding on against the ever-increasing number of the vile beetles. Just at that moment, Dorn was a split second too slow to bring his sledgehammer down, and one of the small creatures landed on his armor.

The enchanted metal instantly split, but before the beetle could burrow under the giant man's skin, Kim's rapier flashed and pierced the beetle. The sharp blade wounded Dorn, as well, but receiving a shallow cut was infinitely better than having a murderous little creature tear through his insides.

Sunny gritted his teeth, striking down with the Sin of Solace.

What was to stop him? The answer was very simple... complexity.

Even shaping a functioning hand was already incomparably hard. He had spent a lot of time teaching himself how to shape shadows into hands on the fly — creating an actual moving construct in the form of a creature would have been a hundred, if not a thousand times harder.

Plus, such a creature would not be very deadly, since in the end, it would just be a more complicated Ascended weapon.

There was something that could solve both of these problems in Sunny's possession, though...

His knowledge of Shadow Dance.

Shadow Dance allowed him to observe a person — or a creature — and learn the very essence of their style and physicality, then shadow it. How they moved, how they thought, how they felt, how soul essence flowed through their body. Of course, none of that would be possible if he did not first understand the structure of the body itself.

If Sunny knew how a body was shaped and worked on an instinctual level, the task of forcing shadows into that form would become much, much easier.

Additionally, he did not have to make that form act independently. To translate his own power through it instead of relying solely on the strength of the shadows themselves, he could build it around himself like a shell... he could wrap it around his body like his own shadows wrapped around it.

'It's like a... it's like a suit of exoskeleton armor in the shape of a Nightmare Creature... a shell of shadows, with me powering it instead of the other way around...'

If he succeeded, he would be able to assume the shape of a Nightmare Creature — just like Soul Serpent could. Of course, there would be a vast difference. Unlike his Shadow, Sunny would not inherit the creature's attributes and abilities, but the physical form itself was already enough.

He took a deep breath, almost swallowing one of the beetles. A savage expression appeared on Sunny's face, and he flinched back, narrowly avoiding the lunging pest.

Would he really be able to pull this off?

'There's only one way to find out...'

To attempt something like that, though, Sunny needed two things. First, he had to choose a suitable form, and one that was exceedingly familiar to him. The better he knew the shape of a creature, the higher his chances of success would be... and even though he had shadowed many abominations over the years, there were very few that Sunny was confident in recreating.

Secondly... he needed some time, with nothing to distract him from the task. Even if it was just a few seconds, attempting something that crazy for the first time could not be done in the middle of a furious melee.

Sunny could come up with some monster to try turning into, but several seconds of peace were much harder to come by.

Unless...

Soon... a large alloy chest appeared in front of Sunny, large enough for him to comfortably lie on.

15:15

It was the Covetous Coffer.

The bizarre idea that he had thought of some time ago suddenly popped back into his mind.

He crushed a hundred beetles with an obliterating strike of the flat of his jade sword, then continued to rain one attack after another on the inexhaustible river of vermin, summoning a new Memory at the same time.

Soon... a large alloy chest appeared in front of Sunny, large enough for him to comfortably lie on.

It was the Covetous Coffer.

Sunny commanded the Memory to open its lid, then pushed it on the side and swiftly hid behind it. He also called back the deepest and most ancient shadows unleashed from the Shadow Lantern, hoping to shape them into a monstrous form...

The Coffer was a storage Memory, and by now, its capacity was rather large. After months spent in Antarctica, that space was mostly empty.

All kinds of things could be stored inside the alloy chest, with two restrictions — the things could not be too big, and they could not be alive.

The black beetles, though... were not alive. Sunny did not know what they were, but since the creatures could travel with him through Shadow Step, which suffered from a similar limitation, there was a good reason to believe that the Coffer would be able to swallow them, as well.

...And it did.

Positioned between the tide of black beetles and Sunny, who wore the Dying Wish, the alloy chest was like a bottomless abyss. A river of the vile creatures flowed into it, hoping to tear through the bottom of the Coffer and get to the human hiding behind it. However, all of them simply disappeared into the spatial storage space instead.

A second passed, and then another, with countless thousands of beetles entering the dark chasm of the Coffer's maw and never appearing again.

After one more second, though, the storage space started to overflow. The lid of the chest instantly snapped shut, and then, the Memory dissipated into a whirlwind of white sparks.

The river of beetles surged forward to devour the human...

What rose from the veil of sparks, however, was not a human at all.

Instead, it was a fearsome creature that towered at almost three meters in height, with onyx black skin and a bestial, demonic face. Its mouth was full of sharp fangs, and four long horns crowned its head, protruding from dark, coarse hair.

The creature had four hands that ended with sharp claws, and a long twisting tail. Its eyes were entirely black, with no irises and two vertical, furious pupils.

A terrifying growl escaped from its mouth.

'Success.'

...Of course, Sunny had chosen the shape of a creature he was most familiar with.

The Shadowspawn Devil.