Chương 39: The Shadow Chessboard

The immense purple doors locking the end of the gallery floor yielded under the weight of Kuro and Reina's arms. Upon crossing the entrance, the environment revealed itself to be a monumental Gothic hall of frightening proportions. The floor was made entirely of black and white stone blocks in a perfect chessboard pattern, surrounded by imposing columns that lost themselves in the upper penumbra.

At the back of the arena, sitting majestically on a dark throne, the Shadow Queen awaited them with crossed arms, observing them with entirely black, opaque eyes. She possessed no shadow of her own on the floor; all the shadows in that dungeon belonged to her, and the creature could emerge from any of them instantly. Knowing that the combat would demand absolute agility, Kuro moved his hands rapidly.

He removed from his back the rustic backpack he himself had crafted utilizing the dense pelt and tendons of the abyss wolves he had slaughtered on the upper floors. The backpack, packed with the gathered raw iron stones and the Orichalcum, was left on the stone floor, perfectly protected beside the grand purple entrance door. Free from the weight and keeping his wolf fur coat firm on his shoulders, he flexed his knees.

His right hand wielded his Black Steel sword, while his left arm showcased the tactical wrist crossbow coupled and strapped directly to his forearm. Even with his countenance cold due to his sixty percent of lost humanity, Kuro activated his provocative side of dry jests, staring at the Shadow Queen before the chessboard could move.

"Before you kill me, can I just say that you are the most beautiful Boss I have ever faced?" The sovereign floated majestically above her stone seat, glaring at Kuro with absolute contempt. The black mist surrounding her shadow limbs whipped against the stone blocks with a gélid fury, and her voice echoed cruelly through the Gothic hall.

"Shut your mouth. You are a pathetic being. You and that filthy creature by your side." Reina's face boiled with rage instantly, and she yelled out loud, preparing her dragon claws with deep irritation at her partner's survival flirting and the Boss's insult.

"Focus, Kuro!" Before the Shadow Queen could make her first general move, Reina extended her arms and unleashed a giant fireball against her own shadow, which was beginning to rise from the black and white stones of the floor. The immense reddish explosion brightened the Gothic hall but clashed against the dark mist of the clone, causing absolutely zero physical damage. Exactly three seconds later, the shadow on the ground mimicked the movement and returned the exact same fireball back at her.

Kuro noticed the rhythmic rebound of the mirror and fired the military command:"Red magic circle shield, Reina! Now!" Reina gathered her strength and activated her dragon runic barrier to contain the impact of her own elemental power. Kuro examined the board and decided to test the elemental reaction. With a swift movement of his left arm, he aimed straight at the throne and discharged the single light bolt he possessed in his wrist crossbow.

The rustic shot crossed the hall like a destructive lightning bolt of pure energy. The light projectile worked perfectly against the molecular structure of the darkness: the bolt instantly pierced and obliterated one of the elite shadows on the floor and continued its trail, driving straight through a second lackey shadow that desperately leaped in front to serve as a living shield and protect the Shadow Queen. The shot cleared two targets at once, but his light ammunition was now completely depleted.

The remaining enemy fronts advanced violently and coordinately across the Gothic chessboard floor. The hall turned into a chaos of steel and smoke. The clones charged forward, mimicking and copying every aspect of the targets; one of Kuro's shadows manipulated the mist from the floor, materialized two replicas of black swords, and advanced delivering cross-slashes at high speed, while the other elite shadows retreated to the back, copying even the mechanics of his wrist crossbow to fire smoke projectiles at him.

Kuro moved his body to the limit of space, blocking the clash of the two black blades with his Black Steel sword on the right and dodging by millimeters the shots whizzing through the air from the crossbow on his left arm. He leaped between the black and white blocks, feeling exhaustion accumulate with each dry impact that vibrated in his arms. Reina observed the scene with clenched teeth, seeing her partner exert everything on the vanguard to hold the perimeter while she remained retreated near a column.

Kuro is giving his all for me... yet I am just useless, even with so much raw power of an ancestral dragon. I can't even scratch these monsters. Perceiving the agitation in her mana, Kuro spun his body to evade a low thrust, propelled himself backward, and shouted out loud to restrain his partner's impetus. Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.

"Reina, stay back! I am thinking of a way to win. Wasting your mana will be completely useless now; you don't possess light magic!"

"I have something that might work!" Reina countered desperately, her chest rising and falling heavily.

"But if I use it, it will completely wipe out all of my vital mana!"

"I am going to find another way!" Kuro cut her off firmly, locking his dark eyes on the clones as they reorganized.

"Just don't let the shadows copy your powers and come attack me, understood? Facing my own shadows with assassin teleportation is manageable... but facing your vanguard dragon magic is impossible!" Driven by fury and wanting to help, Reina ignored the command for an instant. She conjured her red magic circles, charged her right arm with mana and fire magic, and delivered a colossal punch directly against her copy.

The walls, columns, and chessboard floor did not even crack; they were indestructible dungeon structures designed to withstand any apocalyptic impact without the ceiling collapsing. The dragon shadow evaded the strike fluidly, vanishing with the lightness of the dark, and returned a punch with the exact same potency straight into Reina's ribs, hurling her body away against the base of a column.

Kuro observed the crash and coldly calculated the damage, retreating another three blocks and wiping cold sweat from his forehead while keeping his guard high. I need to find a fast exit, but how? Do I need pure light? Or a stronger physical attack? What a cursed irony this battle is... How can a shadow defeat another shadow? The attack fronts advanced in a tight perimeter from the sides.

Kuro activated his assassin reflexes, read the clones' movement pattern, and began to dodge every strike with tactical flips and millimetric steps, floating between the blades of smoke. Spotting an opening in the rearguard, he took leverage from the indestructible chessboard floor and leaped high into the air, raising his Black Steel sword with his right hand to deliver a descending strike straight toward the Shadow Queen's head.

Before the black blade could touch the target, the Shadow Queen simply vanished from the throne in a trail of mist and instantly reappeared in the air, right above him. With terrifying speed, she unleashed a punch charged with dark energy straight against Kuro's chest. The impact was brutal and violent. The strike slammed Kuro's body downward with an overwhelming force, causing him to collide against the stone blocks of the floor and slide, breaking the structure of his ribs.

The indestructible floor held the impact without a single crack, but the crash was enough to make him spit black blood. In the shock, his half-shadow regeneration began to consume the runic energy from his mana tank to seal the internal wounds in real time, leaving him wheezing on his knees. Kuro tightened his grip on the sword's hilt, glaring at the Boss as she floated back to her throne. It is impossible for this arena to have no weaknesses... Do I need to clear the clones before focusing on her? Wait...

That punch she just gave me... it was exactly the same punch charged with mana and physical force that Reina tried to give her clone at the start of the fight! The tactical realization cleared his mind in the midst of the pain. So the Shadow Queen copies and absorbs the powers and abilities of all the shadows that are active and fighting inside the board! She doesn't possess all this strength on her own; she feeds on what the clones generate.

This means that if I clear the hall and leave the chessboard without shadows, she loses all these abilities and is left defenseless. Kuro wiped the blood from his mouth with the back of his hand, rising slowly upon the white blocks. He looked at the remaining shadows and released his second provocation in a measured pace, using the mockery to gain seconds for his arm crossbow to reload:"Look, I like strong women... but you are overdoing it."

The Shadow Queen furrowed her brow, irritated by the resilience of the hollow shell. Kuro prepared the alchemical explosive bolt cartridges on his left arm, aiming toward the indestructible walls of the rearguard. He ran sideways, firing the projectiles against the empty structures of the Gothic hall. Exactly three seconds later, his own assassin shadow mimicked the movement to the millimeter, pointing the crossbow replicas and firing the explosive bolts back in his direction.

Kuro had already calculated the time delay; he leaped toward the opposite side at the very last millisecond. The biological explosions discharged by the clone passed right by him and completely obliterated the other elite shadows coming in his pursuit, clearing the board utilizing the Gothic hall's own three-second mirrored power. Recovering his breath in the middle of the lowering smoke and dust over the chessboard floor, Kuro retreated to the base of the throne's stairs.

He locked his dark eyes on the sovereign and discharged the legendary pickup line to cleanly destabilize her psychological state once and for all:"I don't know why, but I always end up falling for women who try to kill me... it happened once, and I am still in love with her to this day. Who knows, maybe you will join the list of women I love. If I survive after this, would you go on a date with me?" The Shadow Queen boiled with fury at the abusive mockery and activated the collapse of the floor.

The darker the environment became, the stronger she grew. She raised her mist hands and snuffed out all light sources in the Gothic hall, plunging the entire arena into absolute pitch-black and initiating the biological drain that sucked their mana and movement speed through the stones. If she managed to steal Kuro's shadow entirely, he would lose all his vital force.

Willing to grant him the single opening for victory and prevent Kuro from being entirely consumed, Reina dragged herself to the vanguard and activated her red magic circles. She concentrated and invoked three fire spells at the same time, expending one hundred percent of her vital mana. The dragon woman's body turned into an immense torch of apocalyptic golden flames that generated a colossal, abrupt luminosity.

The flare was so overwhelming that it caused all the copycat shadows in the hall to instantly vanish, completely clearing the pieces from the chessboard floor. Taking advantage of the fact that the sovereign was exposed and disarmed without her shadows, Kuro advanced like a lightning bolt through the vanguard. He delivered a precise strike with his right hand, driving the Black Steel sword deep into the Shadow Queen's body.

In the next millisecond, he ripped the blade out in a dark trail and agilely pulled a rustic item he had found thrown in a corner of the arena before the fight started: an ancient artifact containing an imprisonment seal. Kuro drove his left hand directly onto the sovereign's head to immobilize her and, with military precision, pressed and placed the seal directly over her heart.

Upon the act, a sinister black rock sprouted from the point of impact and consumed the Shadow Queen's entire body within seconds, transforming her into a solid, massive black stone statue frozen in the center of the hall. She was immortal and had not died, but she would remain eternally trapped and sealed within that mineral shell. The effort of the light drained Reina's organism so heavily that she collapsed at that exact same instant upon the stones, in a critical state and devoid of strength.

Without losing a single second, Kuro gathered his weakened partner into his arms all at once, spun his body at maximum speed, and bolted toward the stone corridor. He breached the entrance of the escape gallery and crossed the dark walls right as the main arena's ceiling began to release dust under the tremors of the seal. Kuro ran hard through the shadows of the tunnel and, suddenly, braked his steps upon invading a hidden chamber just ahead. Before his dark eyes lay a solitary stone table.

On top of it, an ancient dark-covered book and a perfectly functional cell phone gleamed intensely in the pitch-black, its lit screen shining brightly and displaying a single title: Goddess Game.