Aren and the group sat on the head of the guardian snake as they rushed through the vast and empty wastelands of the domain. Lucy could sense the trail of demonic energy that was left behind by the demon, so she was leading them where to go.

"This is the farthest we have ever been in the domain," Aiden said. He sat with his hands at his back, pressed against the ground while looking at the sky above them.

Aren sat at the forefront, his face hidden behind the mask. He turned and looked at Aiden. "Yeah, I do have a feeling we will have to go deeper though," he said casually and turned his focus back to the path ahead.

"I hope there are new monsters for us to see out there," Zero said, eager to do some experimenting. She had not been able to do any in such a long time. 𝗳𝚛𝗲𝕖𝕨𝕖𝗯𝚗𝚘𝕧𝕖𝗹.𝗰𝗼𝕞

"Zero, don’t go looking for trouble, we don’t know what’s out here," Aiden said.

"Hmph, I can handle myself," she replied, throwing a few air punches as she stood on the head of the snake.

"Aiden is right," Lucy, who was flying above, said. "The domain is a mystery even to beings like me, and even some gods."

"Haha, that means more good stuff to be—"

"Huh? Watch out!" Aren yelled, leaping to his feet very fast and immediately creating a shadow dome that wrapped around them all.

BOOM

Something slammed into the dome hard, it trembled and then shattered, but no one was hurt.

"What the hell was that?" Aiden asked.

"It seemed like an arrow," Aren replied.

"It is," Athena said and pointed to the ground where an arrow the size of a human hand had fallen to the ground. The shaft was as black as night with engravings, and the head was made of some sort of purple metal.

Aren leaped off the head of the snake and landed on the ground. He picked up the arrow and inspected it closely, then he looked up at the others. "We are not alone," he said.

Lucy flew down and landed beside him. She took a look at the arrow and a frown immediately formed on her face. "This isn’t good," she said.

"Huh? Do you know something about it?" Aren asked.

She didn’t respond and simply looked around slowly, then she spotted, far away, a mountain.

"Dark elves," she muttered.

"Dark elves? What are those?" Aren asked.

"A race that was taken eons ago to fight in their own trials, but after many hundreds of thousands of years, they revolted, tired of the gods harvesting soul energy from them, and so they swore loyalty to the ruler of the abyss and he turned them into dark elves, a soulless race that would no longer need the gods.

They traded one prison for another, and now live in total loyalty to the abyss. If they are here, that means they made contact with the demon and now they want to stop us," she explained in detail as fast as she could.

Aren looked in the direction of the mountain. After that first shot, there was no other shot.

"What do we do now?" he asked.

"Dark elves are soulless beings, they can’t die, they’ll keep reviving over and over again. The only route to deal with them is to seal their bodies somehow.

They are relentless and once you have been chosen as the target, they’ll come after you with everything that they have."

Immediately after she finished explaining that, a massive rain of similar arrows appeared in the air above, it darkened the sky instantly.

"Shit." Aren immediately unsummoned the snake. Everyone got to the ground and they immediately started running.

The arrows slammed into the ground and caused explosions, multiple blasts ripped through the air as they ran like their lives depended on it, which it did. Aren used shadow tendrils to block off any that got close to any of them and that caused explosions over their heads as well.

They managed to get out untouched. When they turned around, all they could see now were craters that had formed in the ground, massive craters.

"I think we have to fight," Aiden said. He pulled his sword and got ready. He was impulsive, but he was right, there was nothing that they could do here other than fight.

After the arrows were done raining down, they noticed an army of darkness coming their way, they were at least a thousand beings headed their way and they were coming fast. Some would vanish into black smoke and when they appeared they would be farther in front, they were teleporting.

"I’ll slow them down as much as possible, but since they can’t die, we have to retreat while we fight." Aren said and then lifted his hands in front of him, a shadow formed and spread very far and wide, and from it hundreds of shadows formed, not any of his strongest, but enough to at least hold them back.

[....]

At the same time, humanity was at a bad place, the angels had dropped them a threat, stating that all trials would be ten times harder if Aren is not found and brought in.

There was also the fact that two of the strongest awakened of humanity were now dead, and all because of Aren, it was a state of things that no one would have expected at all, but now they were in it.

And so, ideas on how to catch Shadow were brought up and nothing really worked, well until someone suggested the unthinkable, to find his family and keep them captured until they find a way to find Shadow and use it to blackmail him.

With that plan in mind, a group of suited men appeared at the house. They had no idea their son was Shadow.

Before they understood what was happening, they were kidnapped and forced away by the government themselves, leverage against Shadow.