The dark elves soon came into view.

They were tall, slim, humanoid beings with ashy grey skin and bloody red eyes that glowed with quiet menace. Their ears were extremely elongated, and despite how slim they were, the muscle beneath their skin was tightly coiled, like rope pulled to its limit.

Their clothes and armor were black and ragged, worn like something earned through centuries of war rather than given. Many of them carried large warbows slung across their bodies while wielding different kinds of swords in hand. Every few steps they took, they vanished into a cloud of dark smoke and reappeared meters ahead, closing the distance at a terrifying pace.

Aren used his shadow sense, letting it stretch wide across the field, pulling in every detail he could so that nothing would catch them off guard.

"Alright then. Let’s get this started."

His shadows launched ahead. The wolves, the ants, the miniatures, the salamanders, the werewolves, every form he had, rushed forward like two kingdoms about to meet in war. They moved fast, and then they collided with the dark elves.

The collision was powerful from the first second. Wolves biting into elves, elves ripping back into shadows with their swords. The dynamic of this fight was a strange one. Aren’s shadows could always come back, as long as he had the soul energy to sustain them. But that also meant the moment he ran dry, everything stopped.

The dark elves had their own version of that problem, they could not die. They had sold their souls, and with it went the ability to be killed. They would keep getting back up, over and over again.

He watched to confirm it.

A few werewolves ripped into one of the elves with enough force to tear the body apart completely. The pieces hit the ground. Then slowly, like something out of a horror film, the flesh began crawling back to itself, attaching piece by piece until the elf was whole again.

Even scraps of meat found their way back.

This was going to be a problem.

It didn’t take long for the elves to stop holding back. A few of them began using longer-range teleportation, skipping past the shadow army entirely and driving straight toward Aren and the group. He had known this was coming. The shadow line would not hold forever.

He got ready.

The first few elves burst through and rushed him. He unleashed a barrage of shadow slashes, the blades ripping through the air. The elf teleported, slipping past them, and ran straight into Aren’s fist. Full force, right into the skull, sending the body flying back through the air.

Aren didn’t let it go. Shadow tendrils shot from his hand and latched on, and then he swung the body like a pendulum, wide and hard, slamming it into an incoming elf and sending both of them tumbling.

"Everyone fight and retreat at the same time," he said. "Do not let the elves get behind us."

They moved out.

Lucy took to the sky, wanting to support from above. She summoned her divine energy and began unleashing red blasts that detonated on impact, reducing elves to minced meat. From what they had seen, an elf in that state took far longer to reassemble. It wasn’t a permanent solution, but it bought time. And time was the point right now.

Aren held the line while the others fought and pulled back.

More than five elves came at him, fast and hot. One pulled out his bow, knocked a black arrow, and fired. The shot ripped through the air, whistling and twisting the space around it as it flew.

Aren moved to the side.

Dodged it clean.

Then the arrow curved.

His shadow sense caught it just in time. He shifted again, the arrow grazing past him, and he swung his hand, the wolf guard already covering it, and slammed into the elf’s arm, snapping it at the joint.

In that moment, the rest of the elves had closed the distance, each with a sword. They leapt into the air in unison, coming down on him from above, certain that the distraction had left him open.

He looked up.

And smiled.

It was the first real emotion he had shown since waking up, and it had found him in the middle of a fight. Not that any of them could see it. The mask covered everything.

All they saw were the red glowing eyes of the Shadow King.

He slashed through the air in a clean arc, unleashing a claw strike at close range. Three of the elves managed to evade it in time. The other two weren’t fast enough. The strike cut through them, and their bodies fell in two halves, already beginning to pull themselves back together before they even hit the ground.

He didn’t have time to watch.

One of the elves lunged at him, stabbing at full speed. Aren stepped to the side, grabbed it by the face, and slammed it straight into the ground. In the same motion, he lifted one leg behind him and caught another elf clean in the jaw, sending it high into the air. He released both at the same time and bolted toward the third, a knee straight into the face that shattered the skull completely.

Then the shadows around him shifted.

Tendrils burst out and latched onto the bodies, dragging them down into the dark. And in that same moment, he used Force Consume on all three of them at once.

He had accepted early on that the elves couldn’t be killed. But no one said anything about him consuming them.

It worked.

The smile behind the mask got wider.

There was a way to take them out after all, if it ever came to that.

The other elves noticed immediately. The ones closest paused, just for a moment, eyes fixed on Aren across the field. They couldn’t hold the pause long, the shadows were still pressing in on all sides, but in that moment, something had shifted in how they saw him.

They had registered him as a threat of a different kind. Something that shouldn’t exist. Something capable of making them vanish entirely.

And with that, they all began pushing toward him at once.