Shadow Slave

That revelation had given Sunny a lot to think about.

The Demon of Hope… or Desire. A daemon whose power was most likely tied to souls and mind. What act could such a being have committed to cause Sun God to destroy their whole domain?

And what had happened to that being after?

Just as usual, there were no answers.

Sunny was slowly learning more and more, though. For now, the pieces of information he had earned were scattered and disconnected. But if he continued to slowly accumulate knowledge, one day, they were going to start clicking together. And then... what terrible and wondrous truths would he uncover?

Enough to make up for a lifetime of lies, perhaps.

…Apart from inscriptions dedicated to Weaver and the Ivory Tower, Sunny failed to translate anything else. He had, however, memorized every little detail of the unfamiliar runes describing the Hollow Mountains, Bastion, Ravenhear, a ship sailing on the Stormsea, and the mysterious pyramid to the east.

'I'll have to visit Teacher Julius when I'm back in the real world. He has to know something about this script, right?'

Thinking about the map, Sunny entered the rune hall, kept his eyes closed, and walked to the entrance to the stairwell leading to the sixth level of the Ebony Tower.

The last one.

When he entered the chamber of the stone arch, he sighed with relief. The pressure emanated by the terrifying runes was finally gone, leaving his mind at ease… the headache caused by them, however, was going to persist for a few more minutes.

Sunny sat down, leaned his back against the wall, and stared at the arch while waiting to fully recover.

The highest level of the great pagoda was not very large, in comparison to the six others. It was just one big hall, circular in shape, and almost completely empty. The only thing inside of it was the arch itself.

It was tall and composed of the same material as the rest of the Ebony Tower. In fact, the arch didn't seem to have been built… instead, it was almost as if it had simply grown out of the floor, without any seam separating it from the black stone. It looked like a doorway that someone had put in the middle of the chamber, for some reason, and then forgot to attach a door to it.

This was Sunny's only hope of escape.

He stared at it for a long time, thinking about how to make the portal work.

In the past, he had tried a lot of things to activate the arch, as well as studying the circle of runes surrounding it. But nothing he had done accomplished anything.

His recent conversation with Mordred, however, had given Sunny an idea.

What had Mordret said? That the Prince of the Underworld was somewhat of a divine smith. A builder of things… but also of the practical sort. That he would have used whatever was at hand, going for the simplest solution.

That more or less confirmed what Sunny knew of the prideful daemon already. After all, Saint and her kin had been created by the Prince of the Underworld. In retrospect, Sunny had completely failed to understand the magnitude of that accomplishment.

To create a living being from nothing… a whole race of them, really. That did sound like something that only a god would be able to do, didn't it?

The Prince of the Underworld, however, was not a god. He was a daemon, a lesser deity. Was the creation of Saint and her people his way of showing the true divinities that he was in no way inferior to them? Or was he guided by some different ambition?

'I wonder how the gods reacted…'

Teacher Julius had described daemons as terrible beings that inspired fear because of their unknown origins and strange powers. What happened after one of them had accomplished something that was supposed to be in the purview of only the gods? Saints description, back when was an Echo, said that she and her kin were designed to bring peace, but were born into an endless war instead...

'Huh.'

But regardless, that was not the point. The point was that Saint was made out of stone. Sunny had always thought that it was an integral part of her design, a fundamental aspect of the vision her creator had for the living statues. To make them stronger, perhaps, or harder to destroy.

But after witnessing the porcelain dolls and speaking with Mordret, Sunny was not so sure anymore. The broken dolls showed that the material from which to make his creations had not mattered to the Prince of the Underworld too much.

'What was at hand… the simplest solution…'

Was Saint made out of stone… simply because there was a lot of stone in the Hollow Mountains for its Prince to use in his experiments? There was nothing but stone there, really.

'That, uh… can't be right, can it?'

But somehow, Sunny felt that it was, indeed, right.

He glanced at Saint and blinked a couple of times.

'...Lazy bastard!'

Sunny shivered, half-expecting to be struck down for thinking about the mighty daemon in such unflattering terms. When nothing happened, he shook his head and returned to his thoughts.

There was plenty of stone in the Hollow Mountains, but there was literally nothing around the Ebony Tower. But what about in the past? What had there been a lot of around it back at the time the Prince of the Underworld resided in the Sky Below? What would he have used to power his magical engines?

This pagoda had been built to harvest divine flames, after all.

Feeling the headache finally retreat, Sunny stood up and walked over to the arch. Then, he summoned the Cruel Sight, activated the [Dark Mirror] enchantment, and poured his essence into it, watching the silver blade become infused with incandescent white light.

Then, he hesitated for a moment, and lightly pressed the tip of the somber spear against the cold black stone.

…Immediately, it was as though the floodgates had been open in his soul. The shadow essence flowed into the Cruel Sight, and through it, the divine flame flowed into the arch.

Sunny staggered.

In just a few seconds, all of his essence was spent.

However... the portal did not open.

Something in the hall did change, though.

The circle of runes surrounding the obsidian arch began to glow with weak, shimmering light. That light was dim and barely visible, but it was, without a doubt, there.

Sunny stared at the runes for a long time, and then, a wide grin appeared on his face.

"...Bingo!"