"You!" Raven was angry at Freddy, but her attention was on the ones that were no longer there. "Where is he? Where did you send him?"

Freddy simply smirked at her from underneath the black net.

Raven’s fury reached a peak. A black blade formed from her hand as she moved to strike him. However, at the last moment, she stopped.

Her hand still wanted to move, but her rational mind told her that she needed to use him for something else. With most of the powerful humans most likely dead, there were only so many that she could put to use.

So, she stopped and got back up as she calmed her anger for a moment to think properly.

The person that had been sent away beforehand, the girl... she had been someone from the outside, given her clothing. Which meant that she was most likely the ’boss’ figure.

which then meant she was most likely... the person who could conceal herself.

"Oh!" she realized. "I see. So you guys think you can run away while hidden?"

Raven stepped toward the shield as the darkness grew out of her feet. It traveled along the floor, casting the cave in shadows as she did. The shadow easily went through the shield as it was nothing but an absence of light.

Then, Raven dissolved into the shadow, appearing out of the shadow on the other side of the shield.

She walked a few steps forward as tendrils flew out of her to carry her over forward quickly. She went nearly 200 meters beyond the shield cutting through every bit of free space on the way, even marring the ceiling and walls with blade marks.

However, she didn’t hit anything at all.

She was going to go all the way and find them no matter where they went in the forest. However, she had to stop.

She looked back toward the cave and the shield, and beyond the shield outside at the waterfall. The Crawlers that she had ordered had most likely started destroying the mansion.

They would be distracted momentarily from all the people they had to kill, but with hundreds of them, it wouldn’t take long before they would get to her brother.

However, nearly a third of the souls that should have been her had been stolen away. She knew the young man couldn’t absorb all the souls right away, so she needed to steal away what he had.

But, she also couldn’t let her brother die.

However, the souls...

"GODDAMMIT!" she shouted in frustration. "Die!"

She exerted herself to a great extent as she threw out dozens of blades that covered the entire cave straight forward. The blades flew for over hundreds of meters away, falling only at the end of their natural flight path.

Raven seethed in anger, liquid shadow dripping from her fingers, turning into black smoke when it fell to the ground. She turned around and walked toward the shield, her black threads not coming out of her this time around.

As she arrived close to the shield, the shadow beneath her enlarged, passing past the shield as he fell under her own shadow, arriving out from the other side.

Stanley stood there, hands on his sword, ready to strike. However, he was being held by Sheila right next to Sheila as she couldn’t move far with her broken arm.

Both of their breaths were almost nonexistent as they stood by the cave wall, with Stanley ready to slow down time if needed to escape away.

Fortunately, his enemy had believed that they had already run away, so she hadn’t bothered to check close by. Especially with Stanley’s speed, she would have no way of catching up.

They stood there, wondering what they were going to do. They stood still, making zero noise as they watched what happened next with horror clear in their eyes.

"You are the reason they escaped," Raven spoke ominously. "You are the reason a third of what I have been preparing the last 150 years for got away."

"Good," Freddy said. "I’m glad they got away. This is my last fuck you to you before I die here today."

"Ohh... no, no, no, no, no," Raven said while more and more liquid shadow dripped from her palm, which was covered in the inky stuff.

"You... you will not be dying so soon," Raven said, darkness slowly bleeding into her eyes, making her terrifyingly creepy. "I will not reward your impudence with a normal death."

She crouched in front of Freddy, getting close to him as she grabbed him by the neck. Black veins suddenly spread through where Raven caught him as it started moving across his body.

Freddy grunted, but he couldn’t do anything at all to move. He tried to grab the girl to teleport her away, but his hands didn’t even touch her as strands of black strings would pop out of her skin, keeping it away.

A moment later, he couldn’t even move his arm. His body stiffened, his arms spread far apart, the same with his legs. Then, the liquid black shadow left her arm completely, entering Freddy.

Finally, she dropped him to the ground and moved away.

Freddy’s body shook as the darkness creeping through his veins started growing more and more. Then, they started breaking out of his skin, splitting it wide as they did so.

Freddy tried to scream from the pain, but he couldn’t even do that.

The liquid black shadow that came out of him slowly started covering most of his body, and then a few seconds later, his entire body was fully covered in that liquid, with not a single part of his body remaining at all.

Then, he expanded.

Suddenly, his chest grew big, changing from a rectangular shape to a spherical one in just a second. Then, his right leg grew out as the liquid bubbled up as well, becoming large and the leg elongating.

The same things happened with the other leg and then the two arms.

Finally, the head was the only thing remaining grew as well, becoming large and elongated, no different from any of the limbs.

The pain of his broken body, at least the feeling of it still remained for Freddy even as he slowly got up in his new body. He had no vision anymore, just a single 3 bluish spots around him.

He somehow could tell which ones were Stanley and Sheila, and which one was Raven. Even just instinctively, he tried to attack her. However, before he could hit her, his arms had stopped moving.

He couldn’t tell what was happening with his body at all, just that it hurt so very badly. Then, he heard a voice.

"How does it feel?" Raven asked. "To become such a thing while still regaining your intelligence? Amazing isn’t it?"

What did she mean? Freddy couldn’t understand.

"It’s a new trick of mine," she said. "Well, an old one that evolved once again, really. It takes a lot out of me, but I should be able to use it more often in the future."

"In the future when I will find those friends of yours and kill them," she said. "And you will be there to help me, wouldn’t you? My smart inky crawler."