Shadow Slave

As Sunny walked in circles, drawing near to the center of the mosaic, he saw the depiction of various deeds that the Starlight Legion had achieved.

The warriors led by the seven heroes were truly a fearsome force. Forged and tempered by the relentless malice of their dark world and the unassailable will of their leaders, they drowned the Forgotten Shore in the blood of the cursed creatures.

Even though many of them had turned into monsters themselves — especially those who had allowed themselves to falter in their conviction — the rest continued on, unbroken.

Sunny couldn't tell how powerful exactly the members of the legion were, but from some clues of their battles, he guessed that they were at approximately the same level as the Awakened of his own world, at least at the beginning. With time, however, it seemed as though the warriors of the cursed land had grown much stronger.

If most of the creatures they were fighting were of the Corrupted rank, then that would put the Legion far above the humans back in the real world. Sunny wasn't sure if the seven heroes and their soldiers were carriers of the Nightmare Spell, though, and if the same hierarchy of power could be applied to them.

Eventually, the surviving humans migrated to the shore of the colossal impact crater and built an impregnable wall around their new city. This endeavor alone was so arduous and ambitious that he couldn't help but feel a sense of awe.

Sunny slowed his steps.

On the images in front of him, the construction of the Crimson Spire… no, it wasn't crimson yet back then… had begun. The cyclopean tower was built west of the city, reaching high into the sky like an axis of the world.

Like a stairwell that was designed to allow humans to touch the heavens.

This was what he was truly interested in. Sunny wanted to know what happened in the Spire, how the artificial sun was created, and how the darkness that consumed this land was turned into a transient black sea.

What he saw next made him falter, and then close his eyes with an expression of deep, exhausted resentment.

last image, the seven heroes were depicted standing apart in the seven spots of

were the warriors of the legion and the civilians from the

heroes held a

course. Of course, this is what happened. What

heroes, really. But at some point, maybe because he needed to believe that there was a tiny glimmer of light in the vast and endless night, he had begun thinking of

...What a foolish thought.

of all people should have

"Curse you all."

the Spire. Tens of thousands of people had been slaughtered, their blood flowing like rivers toward the dark tower. On top of each hill stood one

last sacrifice, the slaughterers turned their weapons on themselves,

out there, he knew, a tiny black seed floated in a

Sunny grimaced in disgust.

is how you decided to bring back

the Spire, seven streams of glowing crimson light moved above them and entered it from seven directions. These streams represented the soul essence of numerous humans who

wasn't the

convulsing in harrowing agony as the raging storm of soul energy entered her body. The conflux of all

that figure, too. To him, the

as that of the nameless goddess whose statue stood in the ruined

eyes upward, pure and white. It

its light, the darkness retreated underground, where it was locked behind seven seals that were left behind by the heroes as their last