"From your clothes and your surprise, I’m going to assume you didn’t know you were a Nova before this," Raven said with a bit of a chuckle in her voice. "Which means you are certainly not from the outside, like that girl over there with her latex suit and high-tech weapons."

"Which means... there was a Nova living in our little town all this time," Raven laughed. "I can’t believe this. And to think I was worried something was wrong when I didn’t sense the number of deaths matching the number of souls I absorbed. Good job on killing my little Crawlers. I wouldn’t have known you guys were here otherwise at all."

"Stanley..." Freddy called out, but Stanley couldn’t hear him at all. He was stuck in his own thoughts.

"Tell me, have you planned what your title is going to be?" she asked. "I, myself am known as the Shadow Nova. You must have a title yourself too, to distinguish yourself from... actually, never mind. Now that I think about it, you don’t really need a name."

"Well, since you are a Nova, you must have absorbed a lot of Souls in yourself. Before you fully absorb it, however, I am going to have to take it all back," she said. "I can’t let you walk away with thousands upon thousands of souls in you now, can I?"

Stanley slowed down time in an instant and saw the black blade coming for him. He struck it with his small sword, which cracked the moment it came in contact with the black blade.

He dodged the shards of the broken iron while the black blade hit the side of the wall, deflected off of his own blade.

"You truly after fast," Raven said. "I guess I will have to kill you with my own hands then.

Black strings popped out of her, grabbing onto the nearby walls as she started moving with just those strings pulling her. She didn’t even have to walk.

As she got close, the strings started going for Stanley, but Stanley was too fast to be caught by it he slowly backed away, one step at a time.

"Now, now, don’t run," Raven said. "I need those souls that you stole from me. I know it feels amazing when you absorb those souls, but I can’t let you have them all. Please, give me your life so I can take it back."

Another blade flew by Stanley, barely passing next to his ears as it landed on the wall behind him. He ducked and dodged another blade while his own attack was blocked by a strand of black goo that popped up from her.

It wriggled a bit, looking ever so similar to the Crawlers. He pulled back the sword and dodged again, stepping back even more.

Raven’s face slowly lost its smile as she couldn’t kill Stanley as quickly as she wanted to. With each attack she made, Stanley dodged it easily. And unfortunately, she didn’t have any attack that she could use that would harm him.

At the very least, she was pretty much invincible at the moment, so she had nothing to worry about.

Stanley felt confused as to what he was supposed to do here. Run away outside? How long could he run away for? At some point, he would have to confront the hundreds of crawlers out there and with how tired he was, he would certainly fail. 𝓯𝓻𝒆𝙚𝒘𝓮𝙗𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝒍.𝙘𝓸𝙢

"Stop running awa—" Raven paused and looked to the side. For a second, she seemed confused, but then her eyes widened in happiness.

"Haha, everyone outside is dead," she said in a gleeful manner. "All those fighters have finally died. That means, only the ones in the mansion are left."

She laughed at the matter, horrifying the people that were listening to her.

Everyone had died.

There were thousands of people outside that were fighting, and yet... they were all dead?

"Alright, I will really need you to stop moving now," she said. "You have taken in way too many souls and it will be truly bad if you start absorbing it."

While she didn’t say it out loud, she was also suddenly put on a timer as well. There wasn’t much time before the Crawlers went and killed those people in the mansion. While she didn’t care about them, she cared about her brother, who stayed in the room underground.

It would be problematic if the Crawlers somehow found their way to that room as she hadn’t given any orders in regards to that yet.

Since she had no time to waste anymore, she suddenly shot out a bunch of black strings in the form of a spiderweb-like net that went for Stanley once more.

Stanley slowed down time again and cut apart the black strings. However, while he was focused on the strings, he stepped over something and fell to the ground as a result.

"Urgh!" he grunted a little, but he was fine.

Raven suddenly placed a lot more of the web on him, but she knew that like before, he could easily get out of where.

However, that wasn’t much of a problem now that she was where she was. She slowly leaned down and sat on top of Stanley who tried to rip his hands out to attack her with his sword.

However, even as he did that, more strands of black string fell onto his arm, stopping it.

She placed her palm on his neck as a crazy smile appeared on her face. "Finally," she said. "I got you."

"Finally," another voice spoke at the same time as well. "I got you."

Raven suddenly dropped a few centimeters below, surprised at what had just happened. "Wha—?"

Stanley was no longer below her.

She quickly looked to the side and noticed Freddy with his arms out and a maniac-like smile. Then, she looked beyond to shield, only to be surprised that there was nobody on the other side either.

"What... what did you do?!" Raven shouted at Freddy, but Freddy simply laughed.

"You... you killed my family," Freddy said. "But I will not let you kill my friend. You... will not get the last laugh."