Chapter 441 Ocean of Flame
Sunny almost managed to direct his endless fall toward the tiny gap between the remnant conflagrations of the divine flame, but on that incredible scale, even the smallest mistake was bound to take him many kilometers away from the goal.
…A mistake that he had inevitably made, since there were no lessons on navigating eternal voids, especially without any tools except for his own two eyes.
'Damn it!'
Right below him, swiftly approaching, was an ocean of obliterating light, heat, and fire.
The conflagrations themselves were rather small, no larger than a dozen meters in diameter, and chaotically scattered in the void at a considerable distance from one another. Each looked like a furious, undulant orb of dancing white flames.
The space between them, though, was not safe. It was permeated by immolating heat that nothing could withstand… at least nothing Sunny had at his disposal.
As the adamantine wood of the treasure chest started to slowly catch fire, he hesitated, then glanced at the empty darkness of the distant rift in the ocean of light. Whether by accident or by design, there was a point in the field of false stars where no conflagrations remained. A roughly circular breach was torn through them, promising him safe passage.
But how was he supposed to reach it?
If Sunny jumped off the plummeting chest right now, he would probably be able to glide all the way to the rift… the distance was just right. However, he was pretty sure that the Dark Wing would be instantly turned to ash by the terrible heat of the remnant vestiges of the divine flame.
Not to mention that he himself would probably get thoroughly cooked inside the Mantle of the Underworld if he remained corporeal for that long.
With a mental sigh, Sunny left the comforting embrace of the shadows.
A kneeling figure in an intricate onyx armor appeared on the lid of the smoldering treasure chest.
'Argh…'
Despite the protection of the [Stalwart] enchantment, the air he breathed in was thin and scoldingly hot. It almost felt as if he was inhaling fire. Other than that, however, the Mantle of the Underworld did a good job of keeping the heat at bay... and yet, Sunny could feel it starting to slowly get warmer. He didn't have a lot of time.
Standing up, he raised the dark longbow, nocked an arrow on its string, and gritted his teeth. Then, sending a thin trickle of essence into the muscles of his shoulder and back, he strained his body and drew the mighty bow.
…It felt as though he was lifting a mountain.
'...How the hell does Saint make it look easy?'
Feeling his muscles tremble, Sunny aimed toward the rift and hesitated for a second. After he did this, there would be no going back.
'What is there to go back to, fool? Aren't you sick of that damned chest?!'
Relaxing his hand, he let go of the string.
The black arrow shot into the darkness with incredible speed, instantly becoming illuminated by a blinding radiance. It was strange… the void was full of light now, but with nothing to reflect it, the Sky Below still appeared black and empty. Only when something entered the emptiness did the light become visible.
Sunny felt the chest sway, and struggled to keep his balance.
A couple of moments later, the fletching of the arrow suddenly caught fire and burned away. However, that didn't affect its flight too much. The arrow pierced the darkness and turned into a distant spark, covering almost an entire kilometer in just a few seconds. Then, however, it slowed down considerably, and its wooden shaft began to smolder.
It was time to move.
As Sunny felt flame licking his greaves, he held his breath… and used Shadow Step.
The arrow he had sent flying in the direction of the rift was wrapped into one of his shadows. As the shadow unfurled itself from the igniting shaft, Sunny shot out of it as if launched from a giant slingshot. As soon as he left the shadow, it instantly wrapped itself around his body, and then slid toward the quiver.
'Crap!'freewёbnoνel.com
Sunny found himself flying through the darkness with nothing to support or shield him from being directly exposed to the immolating radiance. The Mantle of the Underworld suddenly shone in the torrent of light, instantly growing considerably warmer. It wasn't burning his skin yet, but he suspected that there was not much time left before that happened.
Especially because his momentum was not only horizontal, but also vertical, and was becoming more so with each moment. He was still plummeting toward the ocean of flames, approaching it with terrifying speed.
The closer he got, the more obliterating the heat would become.
Twisting as he fell to orient himself in the void, Sunny nocked another arrow and drew the bow again. This time, it was considerably harder, since he had nothing to stand on and had to rely solely on the strength of his arms and shoulders.
Just in the few seconds it had taken him to draw the bow, the heat became much more destructive.
Another arrow flew into the darkness, and several seconds later, he used Shadow Step again, appearing almost two kilometers closer to the rift.
…It was still decently far away, though.
'Curses!'freeweɓnovel.cѳm
Sunny flew through the obliterating darkness and struggled to nock another arrow. The glossy black surface of the Mantle of the Underworld was starting to glow, slowly turning incandescent. He was still fine inside, though. For now. If a little hot…
Another arrow disappeared into the darkness, and Sunny jumped through the shadows again.
This time, the jump devoured pretty much all of his remaining shadow essence. Whatever little there was left would not have been enough to repeat the process the fourth time.
However, maybe… just maybe… he wasn't going to have to.
After using Shadow Step three times in a row, and turning some of his vertical momentum into horizontal one with each jump, Sunny was now plummeting diagonally through the void, seemingly toward the very edge of the rift.
'I am going to make it… am I going to make it?'
Even if he would, it was going to be very, very close.
The string of the bow suddenly caught fire and broke with a loud ring. Dismissing the bow and the quiver, Sunny sent both of his shadows to reinforce the Mantle of the Underworld and threw his hands and legs to the sides. He was trying to create as much surface area as possible to utilize the resistance of the air in his favor.
He was well-versed in all kinds of falling and gliding thanks to using the Dark Wing so often, so this was not something new to him. Granted, he had never done it in a heavy armor.
Speaking of which…
Sunny hesitated, then directed some of his remaining essence into the Mantle of the Underworld to activate the [Feather of Truth] enchantment and make the armor as light as possible.
Then, all he could do was endure the growing heat and wait and watch as both the obliterating ocean of flames and the circle of saving darkness approached him at tremendous speed.
His life now depended solely on which of the two was going to swallow him first.
Chapter 442 Burning Heaven
Surrounded by a radiant halo, Sunny plummeted into the darkness. His breath was ragged and hoarse, and his eyes were blinded by the piercing shine of the immolating ocean of white flames beneath him.
Fearing that his eyes would be permanently blinded by it, he closed them, which helped a little.
'Hot… it's so hot…'
He was drawing closer and closer to the remains of the divine inferno, and as he did, the stonelike metal of the Mantle of the Underworld was growing hotter and hotter. Soon, its outer layer turned bright red. Then, it started to melt.
'Damn!'
Sunny directed more of his remaining essence through the coils of the Soul Serpent, activating the [Living Stone] enchantment of the Underworld armor.
As the onyx melted and cracked, causing him excruciating pain, the Mantle began to repair itself. Before anything could fully breach the surface of the incandescent onyx, the damage was undone.
…For now, the enchanted armor could heal itself faster than it was being destroyed. In large part due to being augmented by both of his shadows, perhaps.
Sunny encountered another problem, though.
It was getting harder and harder to breathe… not even because the air was scalding and hot, but because there was not enough of it.
Fire fed on oxygen, after all.
Luckily, Sunny was no stranger to being deprived of it. What's more, thanks to the Blood Weave, he could get by without breathing for much longer than most Awakened… and he suspected that he would have to do just that very soon.
Hopefully, he would be able to reach the rift shortly after that.
And speaking of the rift…
He carefully opened his eyes a little and glanced into the blinding inferno beneath, trying to judge whether or not he was going to make it. For now, it seemed that he would easily pass the field of fire and enter the dark emptiness… but that was just an illusion.
Sunny had to factor in that his forward momentum was constantly growing weaker, which meant that his trajectory would become more and more vertical the longer he fell through the searing abyss.
It was too hard to tell whether or not he was going to make it.
Gritting his teeth, he shifted his weight and lowered one hand, grabbing the hilt of the Cruel Sight. Then, he raised the silver blade to his chest, threw a cursory glance at his warped reflection, and activated the [Light Eater] enchantment of the somber sword.
Instantly, the mirror blade began to absorb the merciless light of the false stars, growing white-hot and incandescent. Sunny, however, found himself able to see once again. He even felt a little cooler, although it might have been just wishful thinking.
Surrounded by a strange bubble of darkness left behind by the devoured light, Sunny plummeted toward the obliterating stars.
'Almost! I'm almost there!'
By then, the conflagrations of the divine flame were so close that it seemed as though he could reach out and touch them. No matter how hard Sunny tried, he couldn't draw in even a little bit of air into his lungs. The rift was so close…
But in the end, it turned out to be just a little bit too far.
Sunny reached the very edge of the field of flames. He only had to fly past one last cluster of conflagrations. However, his fall took him straight into the embrace of fire instead.
Sunny would have screamed if there was any air in his lungs. Moving at a terrible speed, he pierced right through one of the seething orbs and emerged from the other side of it, wreathed in white flame. A terrible pain enveloped his whole being.
But it wasn't physical pain… it was the similar kind of pain he had experienced while using the Broken Oath, only magnified a hundredfold.
'...shadows... my shadows!'
His shadows were wrapped around the Mantle of the Underworld, and so, they had been badly damaged by the divine fire. The armor itself had caught aflame and was now quickly disintegrating. The fire was spreading, too, threatening to envelop him whole.
Half-blind from pain, Sunny did the only thing that could save him now — he dismissed the onyx armor. The Mantle of the Underworld fell into countless sparks of darkness, which then disappeared, causing the fire to be extinguished.
Naked and hurting, Sunny fell into the darkness and saw the Cruel Sight crack, the silver of its blade becoming dull and tarnished. Following an instinct, he activated the [Dark Mirror] enchantment, and then dismissed that Memory, too.
Finally, he wrapped the wounded shadows around himself and circulated what little shadow essence he had left through his entire body, spending all of it to make himself more resilient…
And then, he felt cool wind touch his blistering skin.
Sunny fought through the terrible pain and opened his eyes.
Behind him, there was a wall of ruthless radiance.
But in front of him, there was nothing but darkness.
…He had reached the rift.
***
'Hurts… everything hurts. Crap… this is so unfair!'
Sunny flew deeper into the rift, creating more distance between himself and the conflagrations of the divine flame. Of course, they were too close for him to feel comfortable. But at least he could breathe again, and wasn't being cooked alive.
Well… at least not very fast.
Before being badly hurt by the divine flame, Sunny had hoped that somehow, miraculously, he would turn out to be immune to it. He was technically a shadow of a Sun God's descendant, after all. Why wouldn't he be immune to the manifestation of his master's domain?
Well… his master's indirect ancestor's domain, to be precise.
Plus, he was not just any shadow, but a divine one left behind by Shadow God himself. Light and shadows were two sides of the same coin, weren't they?
As it turned out, the divine flame didn't care.
'Argh!'
Currently, Sunny was falling through the rift. He had reached its center and dove straight down, hoping to stay as far away from the surrounding stars as possible. It was as though there was a tunnel of empty darkness torn through the very heart of the field of flames, and he was following it down.
Down, down, down…
It was hard to even conceive of a world where he wasn't constantly falling down.
Now that he had no Mantle of the Underworld to protect him from the blaze, Sunny was suffering a lot. Rift or not, the air was still permeated by the unbearable heat. His skin was red, with patches of it blistering. Some of it was badly burned by his unfortunate clash with the divine flame and because he had not dismissed the burning Mantle of the Underworld fast enough.fгeewebnovёl.com
It was not life-threatening, though.
…Yet.
'Come on! End, goddammit!'
But the field of flames showed no signs of ever ending.
Until it did.
After a while, when Sunny was on the verge of losing conscience from the constant heat, he noticed that the scattering of the immolating stars around him became a bit thinner.
And then, even more so.
And then, suddenly and without any warning, he fell out of the field of divine flame and found himself surrounded by nothing but blessed nothing once again.
…The radiant inferno was now above him, growing further away with each second. It looked as if…
As if heaven was on fire.
And beneath him…
Sunny looked down and shivered.
'What... how?'
His eyes widened in shock.