When Abel opened his eyes, he found himself lying on the cold stone floor of a hallway. There were torches all around him. They had all been lit with some black flames. Where was he now? The moment he passed through the portal he had lost consciousness. The pure magic energy from traveling through the portal must have knocked him out. As he turned around, the portal was gone. How was he gonna get home now?
But no matter, he will deal with that later, after all, he had come for one thing only, the dark golem core.
Now that he was inside the portal, the presence of the dark golem had become stronger. Now he could even sense the mana emanating. It was enough to almost make him pass out again.
Dark golems are supposed to be powerful but the mana coming from this one, is…it's too much.
Dark golems could walk through the shadow realm, a dimension created by Noir, the god of shadows. It mirrored the real world perfectly. If you were fighting someone and you entered the shadow realm, you would be able to go anywhere and appear in that same place when you got out. It's a very dangerous ability. But Abel has a way to neutralize it.
He starts walking through this, whatever it's called. As he walked toward that strong mana, he noticed a couple of phantom wolves. Another one of the God of Shadows' creations. They… what did they do again? Abel had forgotten. Phantom wolves were one of the creations that the god of shadows had kept a secret from Abel.
As he got into a stance, the phantom wolves started running towards him.
As he got ready to defend himself one of the wolves leaped on him, causing him to fall to the ground. The only thing keeping Abel's face from that wolf's mouth was his blade. Although his blade has started to turn purple. It wasn't from him using his mana, but rather the wolf, it was doing something but what exactly?
The other wolves weren't gonna wait for their turns. They started to rush towards Abel. In the spur of the moment, Abel kicked the wolf gnawing at his blade into the air. It managed to keep Abel's blade.
He quickly jumped up on his feet and backed up before the wolves could reach him. The daily task may have been brutal, but they were definitely worth it. He had been able to react quickly and had the strength for it.
The wolf he had previously kicked away was still holding onto the sword. The sword had completely turned purple. Cracks started to form on the handle, then the hilt before slowly making their way to the tip of the blade.
The sword shattered. The pieces that fell on the floor began to disappear. It was created from Qi so it made sense why it was disappearing. The real question was, how did the phantom wolf manage to break it? It was created from Qi so it should be much harder to destroy than any old sword so why did it break so easily but most importantly, why was the Qi converging into the phantom wolf?
The phantom wolf in the middle started to become bigger, its claws became longer and sharper. It's fur started to change as well, it had gone from a violet-purple to a bright metallic gray.
The mana imitating the wolf suddenly spiked. It had completely changed.
Now it made sense. When the wolf can absorb materials, it takes on the properties of the thing it absorbed. Meaning that it never had a fixed form in the first place. For all Abel knew, the form that the wolf had taken earlier may not have even been its main form.
It went from whatever it was before, to some sort of iron wolf.
At first, Abel thought that as long as he kept his distance and quickly struck the wolf, he would be able to win. But the wolf had previously absorbed the sword simply by being touched by it.
But how, how was the god of shadow capable of creating a being that could take on the form of what it ate? Not even he could do something like this. At the very least the idea never came to him.
It was time to try something new. Even if he creates a new blade, it's going to be absorbed, unless it was killed on the very first strike.
The iron wolf leaped into the ceiling and jumped off it attempting to injure the boy it saw as nothing but its food, but the boy didn't even flinch. From what the wolf had seen even it knew that this attack could be easily avoided, so why was he just there, No, why was he just there smiling?
——
What's that noise? Has someone invaded my castle?
Only a fool would dare to try. That's what the dark golem who created this space had thought.
If someone had invaded, the phantom wolves would have stopped him before he could reach the throne room.
Those wolves didn't stand a chance against him but they were by no means weak.
The god of shadows took pride in them, which made the golem happy too.
After all, he had always served by his master's side from the moment he was born.
He was the most powerful golem his master had ever created.
Why?
It was simple, he was the only dark golem who instead of being made from earth was created from dragon scales.
A single dragon scale would be very hard to obtain after all, dragons were said to roam around the galaxy.
Locating them would be nearly, no it would be impossible. Dragons had the power to destroy planets with a single stroke of their claws. Their flames were eternal. They could not be put out until their target was burned to ash.
Yet his lord and master tracked down a black dragon, one of the rarest types, and killed it with a snap of his fingers. No, not as if he killed him in a snap, he literally snapped at the dragon. The dragon which was the size of a planet, no, bigger had been defeated (from the dragon's perspective) by an ant-sized being. The air wave from the snap was strong enough to cut the black dragon, ultimately killing it.
There was a reason why he was the third most powerful god.
When his lord created him, he gave him a humanoid form making him even more different. Not to mention he had even been blessed with the name Malik.
His lord had a habit of creating things from rare materials. The phantom wolves were created from the mana of a species that had gone extinct a few million years ago. This enabled them to be able to change themselves.
Malik was happy, being by his lord's side was all that he needed but he had one question. A question he had never gotten the answer to. What was he created for?
Every time he had asked his lord, he always got the same answer.
"When the time comes, you will know."
Malik was never satisfied with that answer, but if that was all his lord would tell him there must have been a reason.
It's what he believed for a very long time. All until that fateful day, the death of the god of chaos.
That day his master had sent him to this planet along with a few hundred of his creations. In this very forest, he told Malik:
"I want you to stay here. I know you have questions but I don't have time. I hope that we can meet again so stay alive until then."
After that, his body turned into pure darkness, fading away into the night.
Malik was devastated, His master was leaving him, for what? Was he not worthy of knowing the truth? Or was it that he was useless
No, his master must have had a reason. He just wasn't allowed to tell him. Yes, that must have been it. The master himself has said Malik was his greatest creation. That was what he had told himself. He didn't want to believe that his master had forsaken him.
Malik, along with the phantom wolves, void phoenixes, and the other dark golems split up. Only 50 out of the few hundred stayed with Malik.
Their master had left for who knows what. What's done has been done, there was nothing they could do. So there was no point in staying together as well.
The ones who stayed with Malik decided to make a place for them to stay in the shadow realm. They would create a portal between the shadow realm and the materiel realm allowing for easy travel for the creations who didn't have the ability of interdimensional travel.
This castle they were in, it had been their home for 1,000 years.
So it aggravated Malik to see a small boy wearing nothing but a black suit and a cloak on top of it.
He was holding a phantom wolf by its neck. The poor thing was howling in pain and right in front of Malik the boy crushed the phantom wolf.
The boy raised his hand. Orbs of purple light began to appear in the air surrounding the boy.
Those orbs began to expand and change shape.
Some of those orbs turned into a spear of some sort while the others had turned into swords with jagged edges.
"Wanna know what I call this?" The boy spoke.
As the boy turned towards Malik with a sinister smile on his face, the spears and sword looming in the air pointed towards him.
"Night of blades."
The boy snapped, and the spears and swords struck at Malik.