After giving having a brief discussion with her boss, where it took Shade quite a while to convince him that she was indeed satisfied with his pay and treatment and that the reason she wanted to leave was personal, he agreed to dissolving their contract and gave her a small gift of his own that was composed of 5 gold coins and a bunch of his secret recipes.
Shade found it cute, but at the same time, she didn't have the time to worry about it. She threw the gift at her shadow, where it was swallowed up and brought away into her Shadow Kingdom.
As a final thing, she went to meet the hero. He was quite surprised when Shade gave him the pendant, and he looked like he wanted to ask more, but she turned away to leave anyway.
Ryan tried to stop her using his authority as a noble, but Shade ignored him as she walked away. They didn't follow her.
After that was done with, Shade vanished from the kingdom. Due to the Hero's request, the kingdom had sent a large, secret search for Shade, but they had absolutely no idea where she went.
As for Shade herself, she was charging downwards towards the depths of the ocean. It had taken her a couple hours to arrive at the ocean itself, passing by several kingdoms and empires.
As she reached the 5-kilometer depth mark, her body started showing signs of imploding. At the 8 kilometer mark, she began losing blood from her eyes nose and mouth. When she reached a bit later than 10 kilometers, she had to finally stop, or she risked turning into a mini-Shade.
She moaned in pain, cursed uselessly and grumbled without end at the pain, but she still diligently curled up into a ball and started fighting back against the pressure.
Her body was naturally incredibly strong and resilient. She was completely immune to poisons and had a good resistance to the cold. However, she was vulnerable to heat and holy magic.
She couldn't do anything to gain resistances to holy magic, as it was simply impossible due to her being a vampire in both body and soul by now. Had she retained her humanity completely, she might've had a chance, but after she spent 200 years in this world during her previous life, she had already become a vampire in body, soul, and heart.
As for the heat, that was easy. Burn yourself till you're crisp, burn yourself more, more, more, more, and more. Then some more. Then even more for good measure. Finally, when you're about to become ash, run back to the Kingdom of Shadows, heal up, and go back to cooking yourself in a volcano. Easy peasy.
After 10 hours of trying to resist the pressure, Shade's mind had purged all the chaotic thoughts and emotions that had accumulated during the past months.
Her death's trauma, her longing to find her slayer and savior, her hatred towards the new hero, the strange feelings that felt so very foreign, the weakness that came with being in a safe and peaceful place for a long time...
She purged all of these and more. Her mind slowly returned to the old days, where deathly silence and loneliness were her only companions.
Unfortunately, or fortunately, she could not purge them completely, only suppress them. However, when she suppressed something, it was a complete suppression, so it wasn't too far-fetched that she had purged them.
Days passed under the tremendous pressure. The days turned into weeks and the weeks into months.
During this time, the kingdom had stopped the search and focused back into matters at hand. The Demon, or demon king, was bound to awaken soon.
The Demon was an existence very much alike to that of Shade, but also different. The Demon wasn't 'created', instead, it was forged through the fires of war and death.
The Vampire was the king of the night, the silent destroyer that whispers down treacherous words upon the mortals that would bring them to their death. Meanwhile, the Demon was the king of hell, ruler of destruction and harbinger of doom.
Or at least, the humans told their kids so. In truth, the Demon was nothing more than the king of monsters, the strongest of them all. Upon being chosen by all monster races, the Demon would be given infinite resources by all monsters in order to make him grow stronger.
Naturally, this made it so that the monsters themselves disliked the Demon, and they often tried to kill him. And yet, this made it so that, should a Demon truly ever arise, he would be both extremely powerful, cunning, and experienced.
There had been plenty of Demons in the past. The humans would summon a hero to slay the Demon, and then the hero would be 'sent back to their world' and the world would return to peace under humanity's foot.
This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.
Unfortunately, 600 years ago, the Demon unexpectedly obtained the help of a powerful being. The Vampire.
It is unknown whether previous vampires existed, but it is for certain that none ever went as berserk as the Night King.
Together, the Vampire and Demon brought forth a destruction upon humanity never before seen. A hero was summoned, and yet, he was mercilessly killed.
A second hero was summoned, and he was also slaughtered, his body turned into a powerful Death Knight by the Demon's undead liches.
Finally, realizing that the situation was dire, humanity invested a ton of their resources into summoning a much more powerful hero, and this one did the trick.
First, he pushed back the Demon's armies to give the human kingdoms time to breathe. Next, he crusaded against the Night Kingdom that had forever plagued humanity's supplies and intelligence network.
He searched and destroyed every snitch he could find, and killed every shadow as well. Or, well, he tried, at least. Every time he was about to find and kill a shadow or snitch, the Vampire would come and take them away, before retreating back into the darkness.
However, the hero still broke the intelligence network of the Vampire. After doing that, he spent the winter training harshly, and when the war started once more in the summer, he and a specialized team personally went on a mission towards the Demon's residence.
They slaughtered the way to the Demon, and after a fierce battle, the Demon was killed. The attack had been sudden and unexpected, and although the Vampire tried to intervene, he was too late.
After the Demon's death, humanity pushed back the monster armies relentlessly. For years, the battle continued, constantly turning in favor of humanity.
(I just realized this whole thing is an info dump. My bad lol)
During this time, the Vampire vanished from the public eye. However, people didn't bother, as they were too busy fighting back the monsters.
However, the hero hadn't forgotten. This time, he personally went and sought out the Vampire, alone.
What happened afterward was unknown, but a week after the hero returned, he gathered his team and a lot of experienced soldiers and went on a battlefield.
There, the Vampire was waiting.
The battle that ensued was earth-shattering. Thousands of the most elite of elite died, and the hero himself was almost killed. Some claim that during the most critical moment of the battle, the Vampire seemed to hesitate, and he allowed the hero to kill him.
The people who made these claims were hanged and then people simply claimed that the goddess blessed the hero with the power to slay the evil vampire. These claims were much more welcome.
Back to the present now!
Shade's eyes were closed and her expression was deadly serious. She constantly descended into the depths, her body creaking every now and then.
After all these months, her body had sunk down to 17 kilometers of depth. Her body had hardened considerably, and borrowing the pressure, she had slowly trained every muscle in her body.
Perhaps, after leaving the ocean, some of that strength would waste away, however, no matter what, her body had hardened considerably. And yet, she wasn't satisfied at all.
Shade's eyes turned blood-red as she charged downwards. 'If that hero could become so strong in just a couple months, what could he have done during these 600 years... I can't be lazy, I must return to my peak of strength, and surpass it!'
As she went down, she could feel multiple gigantic eyes gathering on her. She ignored them for a while, but after she understood that they wouldn't leave, she turned towards them and let out a roar that used magic to produce sound.
"Fuck off, brats! This old thing is training, scram or I'll eat your guts!"
Feeling the power within the roar, the owners of the eyes quickly left, afraid she would actually back up her threat. Normally, these aquatic titans would never even consider that such a small thing could ever be a threat to them, but they clearly remembered that this aura belonged to that big and scary bloodsucker...
Seeing the huge beasts scrambling for their lives, Shade smirked as her ego inflated a bit. With this inflation came a boost to her confidence as she rushed even deeper down into the depths.
Finally, she hit her limit when she reached 22 kilometers deep. Her whole body was shaking, but she persisted as she curled up once more and fought back the pressure.
More months passed. Her head was pounding, as she had constantly used her magic to enhance her body. Even her normally tireless muscles were exhausted, and she knew that she needed a rest, lest she hurt herself badly in her training.
She had reached the 26th mark, and she was finally somewhat satisfied. She wanted to continue, but she knew that she needed to train in other places.
Charging upwards, it looked like an underwater eruption as the water didn't move away fast enough from her rise, creating a terrifying column of water.
After 10 minutes, her body broke through the surface of the water, and along with her came a tsunami hundreds of meters in height.
Shade smirked as her wings spread out, finally releasing them from the confines of her own body and allowing her to soar the dark skies once more.
Originally, she wanted to go and train in a volcano while she waited for her Shadows to finish collecting any clues as to where her hero went. However...
She looked towards a certain direction as she felt the familiar feeling of one of her talismans calling out to her. Apparently, it was time to repay a small debt.
"How convenient... Just when I come out, they get in trouble. Seems like the heavens are favoring those impostors..." Shade sighed as she activated the teleport spell in the far-away talisman.
She had a guess as to who exactly the heroes were fighting, but the strength of it... was just too pitiful. There was no way the heroes were facing the Demon yet, as she could tell that the new Demon, while nowhere near the level of Shade and the other ancients, he was still no push-over. The thickness of demonic presence and mana in the air made that clear.
"A general? or two? Heh, ants. Squashie squash, here comes your squasher..." Shade joked as she stepped into the portal that had opened up due to the spell. Before entering, shadows rushed out of the void and fused into her body.
The old Night King would make an appearance once more. How cool would that be? Shade licked her lips in excitement.
My hero, please notice me. I'm not dead. I know I was wrong, please notice the spike in Shadow power, notice my rising, come back to me... I know you're not dead.