Anubis POV,

I looked at the group of tall scrawny elves… they still are more beautiful than my past lives… damn. It was time to begin thinking of my plans for my future… what will I do? What will I accomplish? Do I want to be a lone wolf, or do I want to rule the world? What will be my fate, it is already in my own hands so I can choose which path I want to take. A feeling I've never had before, freedom. I remembered my past...pasts, I was a lone wolf in one, a researcher and a guardian of souls the other. I need something different, I need to be something different. Of course, I dealt with faith and commanding soldiers before. I was thinking about my past experiences, what would combine them all and in the end create something new altogether?

As my knight walked out of the shadows of the cave in front of the elves. I thought of something that will be the future. In the past, advancements of technologies were the reason for mass death, the collapse of the balance of nature, exterminations of many beautiful creatures. As a god of death, it was sad to watch these lives go not just unfulfilled, but die without purpose. If I could not only create my own empire but make it a force that has a direct focus on the balance of the world from either the shadows or in the open, then I could create a world that will never sway from the natural order. The world would never be doomed from ignorance and greed. Magic seems to flow with some order and some chaos, it has both destruction purposes and passive or utility purposes. After some more thoughts about the purpose of my future, I decided on my chosen path. To rule, to create, to protect. First steps first.

I will create an empire of the size of this continent only, it is located in a reclusive spot, away from others. I gained information from when Zero showed me the map he was able to gather before I was reincarnated. Once I have decided where the empire will be, I have to decide on what it is focused on, strength and skill seem like good starters. I will teach these native people how to become strong, how to improve, how to collaborate for the greater good, and then rule them as their god-emperor, all for the sake of balance for the world. Now I understand my role as a shadow emperor, my fate has led me here, I will not deny its gifts and it's purpose.

The void-knight seemed to scare the shadow elves shitless, they couldn’t even move one step or draw their weapons. It’s hard to forget that I am about 9 feet tall, my knight is the same height as me. He must look like a demonic titan to these people, it’s hilarious. It took every ounce of strength in my body to not giggle like a little girl.

Oh, how my future shadow army will make the world tremble. I have to remind myself to look for more shadow elementals. When the shadow elves were about to regain their senses, I stepped out from the shadows of the cave, in my shadow emperor form I walked behind my shadow knight. The void-knight turned to me and kneeled with his hands resting on the pommel in both worship and servitude to his god-emperor.

I looked at my loyal knight and spoke, “prove your self worthy of protecting me”.

I looked to the shadow elves, my hood of darkness contained no eyes, no mouth, but sound came out when I spoke, “If you want answers... if you want to even think of facing me, you will fight my new knight. If you win then you will get what you’re wishing for. This is not only to prove him worthy of me, but you will also have to prove yourselves worthy of my time”. I turned around and walked back to the cave where I stood to watch the scene play out from the shadows. I wasn’t worried about them not understanding me, I seem to instinctively know that they could understand me, whether it was through some magic, or this world’s laws, the language barrier seem to be small.

…

Shadow elves POV:

When we saw the knight we were already confused as well as scared, we thought it was the monster that we were going to face. It looked as if demons would just be toothpicks to it, however at the same time it looked like the most honorable sentinel. However, all of our puny shadow elf minds were quickly broken when we saw its master. It looked as if a god of the abyss rose just to smite us.

The knight kneeled in servitude to its abyssal master. It spoke in an ancient tongue, we knew of this killed of language as it was what the ancient ancestors spoke of. Luckily we had a few researchers of such majestic language from the histories. All of us looked upon the three shadow elves within our group to listen to what words were just spoken, however, we already knew what the god of the abyss wanted, from the looks of it, it wanted to have its knight prove ourselves to even communicate with him.

The history professors looked to each other and nodded, then turned to the rest of the group. “He said that he wanted us to prove our worthiness to him, both us and his … new knight”, one of the shadow elf professors said.

The grand elder stepped up and spoke, “I think I understand the situation now… the shadow elemental we were told to protect has been… converted. It is best we fight the knight, even though it was once what we were sent to protect I can still feel the shadows follow him. However, this knight only emits a decent aura nothing like it’s master. The master… I believe is a shadow primordial”. The shadow elves all looked at each other in surprise, the shadow primordials are the beings they once worshipped. They went extinct long ago, they were only myths now, how is it possible one is still in these lands. This thought led to the next, Are we lucky… or unlucky.

…

Anubis POV: I saw the elves communicate for a while, I had Zero begin to study their language and see if I can learn it for the future. However, I still caught on to particular words, like primordial. That’s what my soul strength is, I wonder if I am considered an ancient being, it seemed as I was narrowing down the possibilities before they decided the elves would fight. They all grouped up into a combat position, warriors up front, rangers, and mages evenly spaced out in the back. Some are assassins and flanked the warriors. It looked as though some were even priests with long staffs that radiated a pure life aura. The knight was tier 1 like me, however, there is a large fundamental difference in strength between the two species.

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

I believe this is when bloodlines come into play, it’s like comparing a dinosaur capable of crushing trees just by moving to cavemen. Although they are in the same tier, their basic strength is just too wide to do a 1v1, 30v1 is definitely more balanced. It is time to see where the strength of these shadow elves lie, and how I can improve my void-knight.

The void-night readied his sword, his left hand toward the enemy, his right holding his two-handed sword parallel with him towards the enemy. His body was side-ways and his stance was near-perfectly balanced. His left hand motioned for the elves to come. The elves first launched a volley of arrows, and the assassins took to widen the flank as they let the warriors charge in below the volley. With a wave of the void-knights sword doing a 360-degree swing, a strong gust of black wind struck the arrows launching them back at the archers. The Archers and mages had to increase the distance even further and started to spread out away from the void-knight unable to shoot from that distance.

The small break was a huge advantage and interrupted the mages casting, runic circles broke and some of the mages even stumbled back a bit from the cancelation in magic. The void-knight then charged towards the warriors in a straight on fashion. The elves with large dark wood and silver metal outlining took to the front to block the void-knight. The void-knight swung his sword with both his hands in a 180-degrees and destroyed all eight shields that were attempting to block him, the tanks that took to block him flew back 20ft/6m.

Anubis noticed this would’ve of been much less if the tanks were to angle their shields and block more smoothly. Also, the archers are launching their arrows in a group-like fashion. This is pointless as the void-knight had thick dark steel armor, those arrows would only be reflected if not aimed accurately at joints. So far, the only one who actually impressed Anubis, is the void-knight with his high skills. Lack of perfect balance and leaving openings after such wide swings were the only improvements needed noted so far.

The assassins circled around the void-knight and were about to launch a sneak attack when the void-knight turned around, expecting them. He swung in another 360-degrees but this time with the tip of the blade dragging the ground up. Dirt and rocks pushed both the assassins and warriors back breaking their charge. The grand elder understood they weren’t doing good at all and decided to step in. He flipped over the rocks and dirt wave that broke their charge and started to sprint on light feet with his dual swords in his hands. Simple silver swords, that seemed to shine with moonlight.

The void-knight met his attack head-on with his two-handed sword. Both attacks created a large shockwave that rumbled the ground and created a gust of wind. Both the void-knight and the grand elder were pushed back a few feet/ a meter from each other. However, like before they both charged at each other. For a few seconds, blades clashed against each other creating sparks.

The mages and archers were in position again but were afraid of hitting the grand elder, the Warriors were trying to get back in the fight but the shock waves were pushing them back every time they were getting close. Anubis thought, Sometimes having only one powerful person in a large group can be more debilitating to the fight than help. There is both strength in numbers and strength in one’s self.

…

3rd person POV

The void-knight was beginning to be pushed back as the dual blades were just too fast for it to block every attack with its large two-handed sword. It understood this so it stomped the ground hard with its right foot creating an earthquake around it, breaking off the attack of the grand elder. It drove its sword in the ground and pumped magic power into it. Blue flames climbed onto the sword and onto the shoulders and helmet of the knight. It pulled its sword out of the ground and swung once more at the grand elder, however, this time the grand elder knew he couldn’t block anymore and tried to dodge instead. The blue flames seared his skin as they barely missed him, and he backed off.

The mages with their spells finished, began to throw lightning, fire, water, rocks, and ice at the void-knight. The void-knight saw these incoming spells and emitted a blue flame shield that covered him like an egg. It blocked all the magic spells and arrows that were aimed at him. Akazul saw the shield of flames and as a mountain ranger of late tier 1, he took out his few enchanted arrows.

These are ancient arrows of the past and each one costs a fortune. He drew his wind-piercing arrow that seemed to gather wind on the arrow tip. With a pull of the bow-string of his Silverwood bow launched the arrow at a high speed. The arrow pierced the flame-egg shield and bit into the void-knights shoulder. The void-knight stepped back once from the impact. He pulled the arrow out like it was nothing but a mosquito bite and threw it on the ground. The arrow and the wound were dyed black, a colored dark black blood made of liquid shadows seeped from both.

The knight charged once again towards the warriors to make him unable to be shot from arrows and magic, his speed unchallenged besides his lord, reached the warriors in just a couple seconds. His sword cut two warriors and their swords, which were attempting to block his assault, all in half killing them instantly, and breaking their swords without mercy. However, this left his back wide open, in which the assassins and the grand elder drove into with their sharp blades. The daggers of the assassins barely went deep, were like the grand elder’s blades sunk deep into the back of the shadow knight. The void-knight lost his strength and begun to fall to the ground.

Right before his neck was cut from one of the veteran soldiers in front of the void-knight. With numbers only, the shadow elves won. All of the shadow elves fell onto the knees or asses, sweat dripped from their heads and a tired look was on every single one of their faces. The grand elder of the shadow elves thought, just maybe they could have no deaths. However, right after that thought, the void-knight charged into their fewer veteran warriors. He quickly killed the less battle-hardened. Even with gathering only the strongest of the shadow elves, they were still fighting on almost even terms with a new leveled tier 1 shadow knight.

…

Anubis POV,

I saw my void-knight be killed as I had expected. I knew it would be hard for him to succeed, almost impossible. However, he did still much more amazing then a newborn warrior should have been able to do. This just means less time is needed to train my future royal guards, this is nothing but a win-win situation to me. I looked at the elves and slowly walked up to the body of the void-knight. I spread out my shadow domain and let it seep into the body, I could sense the location of the shadow elemental soul that floated above the body. I grasped the soul with a large shadow hand that grew out my domain, it grabbed the soul and shoved it into the body.

The body shook and then started to get up like nothing happened. It turned to me and kneeled, I looked at the grey-skinned elves, who had their mouths open agape in surprise. I spoke in their tongue that was completely understood by Zero and sent to my consciousness; “You have both proven yourselves. Elves, come here. You will tell me why you have been chasing me, you will tell me why you have held my kin behind enclosed walls, and you will tell me where I am. In return, I will understand your situation, and decide on both of our futures”.

System(resurrection of shadow-kin)

Revelation effect: There is no death for shadows, be able to call your kins souls back into their bodies.

...