Six minutes.
That was how long Sunny managed to hold on until things really went from bad to terrible.
By then, the ground in front of the Gate was littered with piles of corpses, their blood soaking into the snow to create a strange crimson substance, disrupting his footwork. He had lost count of how many Dormant abominations he had slain, how many ancient hunters he had sliced apart. Despite how strong and fearsome the primeval wraiths were, their assault had broken against the impenetrable barrier of his blade, his Aspect, and his will.
Sunny paid a price, though.
By now, his muscles were burning, and he had to force the air in and out of his struggling lungs as the Preservation barely held him up. The Mantle of the Underworld held, but his body beneath the black stonelike metal was beaten and battered.
The armor itself was covered in blood and dented slightly in several places.
Those dents did not come from the hunters, though.
During the third wave, new Nightmare Creatures emerged from the darkness of the Gate… among them were larger beasts, more terrifying than the hounds Sunny had been slaughtering.
And their masters.
The Demons of the mysterious Barrow were similar to the desiccated huntsmen, but much taller, stronger, and better equipped. They wielded masterfully crafted flint weapons and armors made out of rotten leather and bone, their empty eyes burning with hungry red flames.
What's worse, they really knew how to use their stone spears and swords.
Met with the strange, ferocious, and deviously lethal battle style of the primeval demons, Sunny was sent for a loop. This was like nothing he had ever experienced before. They fought with the straightforward, yet insidious resolve of cunning apex predators, with the evil will to kill through any means necessary, always following the most efficient and barbarously cruel path to dominance.
It should not have worked, but it did.
The dents on Sunny's armor could attest to it.
Well… he shouldn't have been surprised. If these ancient wraiths came from people similar to his own world's prehistoric humans, then they were the most devastating of predators, ruthless killers on a planetary scale — not unless these guys somehow had spaceships.
From what little Sunny knew about history, ancient humans had spread across Earth like a plague, eviscerating whole types of living creatures — including all other nascent branches of the human kind — in one fell avalanche. With their flint weapons and the knowledge of fire, they became nothing less than the cause and perpetrators of the sixth mass extinction, equal to the likes of massive asteroids and climate shifts despite their puny size and lifespan.
In any case, Sunny somehow managed to kill these terrifying fighters — a few of them, at least — too. More than that, he reached into the very essence of Shadow Dance and greedily absorbed every nuance of their primeval and ferocious fighting style, and then reflected it back at the waves of Nightmare Creatures, bringing his already terrifying dance of death to a truly chilling level of brutality.
The Blood Blossom had long ago reached it's limit.
Minutes passed, and despite the fact that Sunny was battered and growing dangerously tired, his reserves of Shadow Essence swiftly diminishing as he found himself needing to dive into the shadows more, for a few moments, he felt as though he had things under control.
That maybe… just maybe… he was going to slay every last one of these abominations.
And then, he realized that he would not.
As the sixth minute came to an end, a furious bellow shook the world, and something massive lunged at him from the darkness of the Gate. The barrier of corpses he had built in front of it exploded, and a giant beast — twice as tall as Sunny and weighing at least twenty times more — emerged from it in a cloud of blood and bone fragments, two empty eye sockets full of ghostly red flame as it's legs sunk into the snow.
Sunny stared at it with wide eyes.
The creature resembled a giant bison, its black fur mottled and rotten, a ridge of long, scarlet bone spikes piercing the hide along the spine. The head of the monstrosity was crowned with two jagged, bloodred horns.
'A Fallen… that thing is Fallen!'
The bison was also different from the hounds and larger beasts he had been fighting against, since it — just like the ancient hunters — was itself a wraith. A corpse reanimated by the malevolent spirit of red flame.
'Crap!'
Sunny hurriedly commanded the [Feather of Truth] to make his armor as light as possible and began to sprint, drawing the bison to him as it charged.
Cursing under his breath as he dashed across a pool of blood-soaked snow, he felt the bison chase the mass of shadows that followed him…
Before sinking below.
Suddenly, the snow around the creature crumbled, softening around it's heavy mass. With all the blood that the snow absorbed, it's integrity as a foothold had grown questionable. It had grown so soft that something as heavy as the bison would cause it all to collapse.
Twisting around, Sunny blasted a bullet of blood towards the bison, a streak of blood soaring through the air. It perfectly hit it's mark, splattering crimson liquid and brain matter as it penetrated it's skull with ease.
And so, within the crater of snow, the bison fell, bringing an announcement from the Spell along with it.
However… there was a problem.
Now that the barrier of corpses was gone, the Nightmare Creatures were given the chance to move as they pleased. Sunny expected them to start making a sprint to Belobog, getting their hands on multiple Awakened, and countless mundane souls to feed on.
…Instead, they all turned towards him, trying to look past the veil of shadows that hid his figure.
Feeling all the bloodlust targeted towards him, Sunny simply shook his head as he held up his armed hands to lighten the mood. He was going to have a hard time.
"If you plead for mercy, I'll let you all live."