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The Necromancer in Shadow by TheOminousRain
Anime » Eminence in Shadow Rated: M, English, Horror & Humor, Cid Kagenou/Shadow, OC, Words: 548k+, Favs: 386, Follows: 387, Published: Oct 27, 2023 Updated: Aug 9
768Chapter 14: Shadow
Chapter 14: Shadow
Something's going on. I can tell from the sounds of explosions, screams of knights being cut down one by one and the ground rumbling. Shall I break the cell door? Oh wait. Someone's coming. It's a cloaked figure who, from the silhouette, is most likely female. Although her face is obscured by the hood she wears, I can still see it due to my night vision. She looks familiar. Have I met her before?
She breaks the lock easily and opens the door of the cell and stepped closer, allowing me to see her features more closely.
"Nicoletta… Marquez? " I recognize her from one of the dossier of Compatibles. She was declared dead years ago but the truth is, she caught the Demonic Possession and was scheduled to be transferred to a Cult base before the carriage was intercepted by both Templars and this "Shadow Garden" organization. In the end, this "Shadow Garden" people are the ones who managed to take her in. And judging from her black cloak and bodysuit, which are made of slimes, she seems to have joined them.
"I see. I underestimated the extents of your knowledge. No wonder why our lord thinks you are an important ally. But that is no longer my name. My name is Nu."
"Nu, huh? So what happens now?" I ask cautiously, wondering what they want with me.
"Nothing for now. You are free to go. But know that you are not alone in the war against the Cult of Diablos." With that, she left and I left my cell afterwards as well. Things are getting interesting and I need to watch as it unfolds.
Tonight, Shadow Garden has invaded several Cult bases located in the capital with the intent of destroying them and collecting information about the Fenrir faction as much as they could. Nu was assigned to free Claude Normann, someone that her lord called a friend, from his cell in the Knight Order headquarters. Seeing as she has completed her mission, she took the liberty of investigating the base.
As Nu was about to investigate the Knight Order headquarters even further after freeing Duke Normann's son, she sees her lord Shadow entering the officer's room and immediately bows to him.
"Your friend has been released as you instructed, my lord."
"Good work." He says as he walks to a bookshelf and reaches out to a random book but instead of taking it out, he pressed it.
"Hm? Neat." He mutters while Nu was left in awe of her lord's intelligence due to him spotting something that even she missed. The bookshelf moves away and reveals a secret passage to an underground facility where they both heard roars of creatures.
They both walked down the stairs and encountered the beasts. Beasts of various sizes and shapes. Beasts with some human features but was mutated and disfigured so badly they could hardly be called humans anymore. They were banging on the walls to create an exit for themselves, some of which has succeeded and escaped to the city.
"They're…!" Nu recognizes them as victims of Possession. However their condition seemed to be worse than what the Shadow Garden have encountered so far. They have become mutated to becoming rampaging monstrosities. She grits her teeth as she has now found another reason to hate the Cult.
"Hm." Her lord simply slices through them and appears behind them before she could even register what's going on.
"I'll leave them to Alpha and the others." Her lord declares as he proceeds to go deeper into the underground facility.
"Yes, my lord!" Nu confirms her orders as she left the building to call upon the assistance of the Seven Shades before the monsters could regenerate their wounds.
"Gaaahhh! They've come! They've come! They've come! Dammit! They're going to kill us! They're going to kill us all!" Shouts a mad man wearing white lab coat. His voice echoes throughout the underground prison cell where Alexia and several monstrous beings were being held captive to be experimented by said scientist.
"The Knight Order won't kill you if you surrendered quietly." The captive Alexia remarks calmly as if the whole facility isn't shaking from whatever is going on outside.
"I don't care about the Knight Order! They've come and they're going to kill us! Screw that Zenon! I'm leaving this damned place! But not before I release my babies. Heh heh heh." Laughs the mad scientist as he approaches the cell of one of the beasts, who retained its white hair. Alexia noted that he mentioned Zenon's name, suggesting that Zenon is his employer and that he intended to leave him.
"Can you stop it? If you agitate them even further…" Warns Alexia weakly after her blood has been harvested almost daily.
"This base is doomed. I'm going to Everick and I'm gonna join Necromancer and receive his knowledge! These babies are nothing compared to his work! Not to mention he is able to resurrect the dead!" Declares the mad scientist as he holds a huge syringe filled with blood in his hand.
Alexia recognized that name. She came with Iris to Everick years ago after the mysterious figure who called himself Necromancer appeared and kidnapped that infuriating person's sister.
"Now, show me the power of Diablos!" The mad scientist injects the contents of the syringe and it caused a reaction to the creature. Spikes made of bones emerged from its back and it grows massively in size.
"ROOAAARRRR!" It lashes out, destroying its own shackles and Alexia's own as well as their cell doors with its newly acquired massive claws. It stares at Alexia as Alexia began to fear for her life. With the last of its consciousness, the creature left without harming Alexia out of gratitude for speaking with it like a person rather than as a thing. The creature eventually lost all reason as it left them.
"What's going on!?" Shouts a knight who guards the entrance to the cells before he was mauled by the creature who then proceeded to destroy other cell doors and letting other creatures go.
"ROOAAARRRR!" The creatures left together as Alexia can only watch.
"Heh heh heh. They're dead." Laughs the mad scientist in satisfaction. Alexia takes the sword that the mauled knight carried. As she held the sword in her hands, she noted that it's no ordinary sword. With said sword she proceeds to stab the mad scientist in the back.
"What… are you…. doing…? I can't die here…! I can't die before receiving his supreme knowledge…!" Alexia drops him on the floor, letting him bleed to death. But before she can escape, she noticed that a very distressed Zenon has arrived to the entrance where the monsters exited from.
"So you've come, Zenon! I knew it was you who's responsible for all this!" Alexia points her sword, which is one of the Pseudo-Artifacts she looted from a guard's corpse, at him.
"Tch! Normally I'd engage you in a meaningless banter but right now I have neither the time nor the mood! You will come with me now!"
"If you think I'll just come with you quietly-"
Not having it, Zenon instantly slices through the sword in her hand and breaks it in half, striking fear into Alexia's heart.
"Now come quietly before I get rough with you." As he was about to reach for the girl, he noticed that the hallway became… eerily quiet. The roars of the beasts behind him can no longer be heard. All he can hear instead are the sounds of footsteps echoing in the dark.
*Tap Tap Tap*
The sound of footsteps echoes in the now quiet hallway and a man, clad in dark… emerges from the shadows.
"So you're the dog who been destroying our bases left and right! Shadow Garden is it?" Zenon says as he recognized the man in black from the reports his subordinates gave him.
"My name is Shadow. He who lurks in the shadows and hunt the shadows."
"Heh. I applaud you for your accomplishments and for your courage of facing me alone. But you now face Zenon Griffey! A candidate for the Knight of Rounds!"
Zenon brandishes his Artifact and swiftly attacks Shadow, their blades locked together.
"Can you feel it? This power… This weapon that I purchased from him."
"Hmph. Ridiculous." Remarks Shadow.
"What did you say?" The man's remark angers Zenon as he continues launching his aggressive attacks. Slash after slash are effortlessly parried by Shadow at speed that Alexia could barely see. But what she does see amazes her. Shadow showed amazing skills with the blade, on an entirely different level than her and Zenon, but she recognized that swordsmanship style, not the swordplay of a genius but the swordplay of a hard worker who has mastered the basics, a Mediocre Swordplay.
This sword style…. I like it. Thought Alexia as she remembers her last defeat at Iris' hands at the Bushin Festival… "I like your swordplay." and the words that her sister said that caused their relationship to drift apart… and how foolish she was for giving up her love of swordsmanship due to her own inferiority complex. She continues watching and admires Shadow's swordplay as he toys with Zenon, a talented swordsman in his own right, using swordsmanship style similar to her own. The sight of his black blade and his moves inspires her deep inside.
"Tch! How are you able to keep up!? What kind of Artifact are you using!?"
"Hmph. Borrowed powers will not defeat me." Remarks Shadow as he began his own assault, giving an uppercut which slices Zenon's chest.
"Aghh! You… Who are you!? There's no way someone like you remained unknown!" Shouts Zenon in disbelief.
"Hmph. We are the Shadow Garden. We lurk in the shadows and hunt the shadows. That's all there is." Shadow replies before giving him a punch in the face.
"Uaaghh!" Zenon can only stagger backwards and clutch his bleeding nose after receiving that punch, which reminds him of the injury suffered by his subordinate Whiny from Claude. The memory of his pathetic subordinate and him being put on the same level as said subordinate angers him even more.
"Grrrr! Don't underestimate me!" Pouring more magic into his sword, he enhances his body further and moves at higher speed. His strikes now have greater pressure due to him putting more force to them. But Shadow seemed even more relaxed as he barely dodges and simply deflects any attack Zenon would give him, which causes Zenon to get angrier and angrier. Shadow then proceeds to punch him in the face once again.
"AAGHH! How did you-!?"
"You're full of openings. You think that sword makes you stronger while in reality, your reliance on it makes you weaker." Remarks Shadow calmly, which makes Zenon realize that he has long abandoned the discipline of the Royal Bushin Style in favour of brute force. But his anger still overrides his reasoning as he produces a vial filled with red pills from his pocket.
"We'll see who laughs last, Shadow! With these pills, I shall obtain ultimate power!" He swallows several pills which causes his magic power to skyrocket and his muscles expands, ripping his clothes apart.
"This is the power of a Rounds Candidate! A Third Awakener! And now… you're dead!" Roars the hulking Zenon as he swings his sword again, this time blindly like a maniac, slicing through the walls, floor, and ceiling.
"Hmm…. Now you're just fighting like Gamma." Mutters Shadow, comparing his current adversary to the weakest of the Seven Shades, an insult that Zenon couldn't understand not just because of his lack of knowledge of the Seven Shades but also due to his current lack of reasoning.
Shadow uses another opening to once again punch him in the face, which makes him even angrier than he already is.
"Hmph. This is what you called ultimate power?"
"SHUT UUUPP!" Zenon roars again as his form continues to mutate as his anger consumes both his mind and body, his right hand merges with the sword he's holding, its enchantments now in direct contact with his magic circuits, which, combined with the Red Pills he consumed, turns him into a monster similar to the creatures he held prisoner here as experimental subjects.
"ROOOAARRR!" Roars Zenon as he has degenerated into a beast.
"Ughh… Now your outward appearance match your insides, huh, Zenon?" Remarks Alexia as she watched the once dignified and cunning man turned into a monster.
"Haahhh…" Shadow sighs as he now find the battle to become progressively more boring as time goes on. "Playtime is over." He says with a determined look.
"Carve into your soul… with every last consciousness you have left… The true supreme power."
Purplish light began surrounding them, though it stops before it can reach Alexia. Alexia watches in awe as she has never witnessed someone with that much power before. The power she is sensing from Shadow greatly exceeds that of Zenon's even though he enhanced himself with an Artifact and suspicious pills to the point of turning himself into a monster.
Even the monstrous Zenon couldn't believe what's happening as he starts to feel fear… Fear he haven't felt since he met Necromancer in person years ago when he purchased the very sword he currently held in his hand, which made him abandon his plans of sabotaging him, especially after Sir Gaunt failed miserably at that.
"I…."
The beast desperately slashed at Shadow to stop him from unleashing his magic, but the Artifact in his hand breaks upon contact without harming Shadow. It didn't even make him flinch.
"AM…."
The beast, once known as Zenon, regains some of his senses after his sword broke and falls into his knees in absolute despair as he watches the lights getting brighter.
"ATOMIC."
A white explosion engulfs the underground facility, entire Knight Order headquarters and various buildings surrounding it.
Author's Note:
The first I AM ATOMIC is here! Hope I depicted Shadow's epicness properly. In this fic, Zenon was stronger than he is in canon due to the sword he got, but to Shadow the fight gets easier the more Zenon get desperate, like Zenon got the power boost and start turning his brain off. He even devolves into Gamma's level. That's quite something.
Even though I want the Zenon arc to deviate from canon, I still need to make Alexia witness Shadow's swordsmanship because it's an important part of her character development and she cannot witness it properly without him fighting a fellow swordsman so I had him fight Zenon like in canon. He will not fight the Necromancer yet.
Also, I'll make punching someone in the nose multiple times a running gag. Can't have Gamma's nose being the only one abused after all.
J-More: That reminds me of the theory of Po Tato and the other friend for Cids to be two of the knights of rounds doing the same as Cid. It was nice to see them interact at last.
Answer: Yea I've heard that theory. Would be a plot twist if it's true lol. This interaction Cid had with Claude is now a source of future misunderstandings.
Soulbow109: So Shadow has called Claude a friend huh. Considering the cult believes that Claude has known about their existence for a long time I feel this will cause some entertaining misunderstandings lol. Might be fun for Claude too since I guess he can pull off some kind of betrayal scene. Like the true final boss being one of the hero's companions all this time. Sounds kinda cool as a prelude to one of Shadow and Necromancers fights. Considering his past with Alpha this kind of scene would certainly get the kind of reactions he enjoys. Can easily see her look of horror as someone thought to be an ally maybe friend ends up being her worse nightmare.
Look forward to shenanigans between Claire and Charlotte. Cid and Claude can be brothers in suffering as they deal with their sisters lol.
Answer: Yeah indeed. That's what I'm aiming for.
Overprotective sisters UNITE!
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