Shadow Slave

Sunny stared at the severed arm of an unknown deity, then at the harrowing, profane rot spreading from it. Then, he tiredly rubbed his face.

'...Why can't anything ever be easy?'

He was sure that his fate was somehow connected to that arm, which meant that he was going to have to get to it somehow. But Sunny was also sure that there weren't enough rewards in all of the universe to make him go anywhere near that rot, let alone touch something infected by it.

He had the feeling that this thing was way, way out of his league.

In fact, he suspected that a divine being had ruthlessly severed their own arm because even someone as powerful as that had no means to resist that spreading corruption.

What was Sunny supposed to do, then?

Well…

Trying to remain as far from the rot as possible, he studied it for a while before coming to a strange conclusion… or rather, a strange question.

If the corruption was so terrible, then why had it not spread through the entire tower? Why had it only managed to crawl a few meters out of the silver brazier, turning a small portion of the second level of the pagoda into its flesh?

'Scratch that. Why didn't the whole island become one giant chunk of rotten black... whatever the hell that thing is?'

The answer was not hard to guess. It was because the rot, just like everything else inside the tower, had been sealed away from time for thousands of years.

And now that Sunny had broken that seal…

His frown deepened as he glanced at the silver hearth that was overgrown and had become a part of the spreading rot.

Time was going to catch up to the devouring corruption, and it was either going to slowly consume everything… or starve and

thing last for thousands of years with nothing to feed on except for cold

guess I am going

an eye on the patch of harrowing rot, Sunny

the rot was spreading. At least not

get closer to it. But he also knew that if the worst happened, he had no tool at his disposal that would save him. If that thing began to

after all. And he doubted that

his only hope was to find something inside the pagoda to save him. He had to explore

possibility that the rot would swiftly wither and

until he reached the staircase that led higher, to the third level. There, he summoned the taciturn demon again, hesitated for a bit, and then left one

thought of turning his back to the silver brazier, Sunny gritted his

terrible thing disappeared from view, he let out a relieved sigh and realized that his entire body was

confidence, at least. The Shadow seemed absolutely unperturbed by the horrific visage

fear can't even fit into that stone head of hers. Do Shadows have the ability to be

exterior, it was rather cowardly. He was sure that the bastard would have been

to distract himself with these thoughts, Sunny entered the third level of the Obsidian Tower… and froze, dumbfounded by what

see. Wait, no. What the

was smaller than the previous three halls he had explored — mostly because the pagoda

in particular, dozens of porcelains arms floated in the

pile of broken dolls in the basement of the Obsidian Tower and then

then walked closer. He felt as though

than he had thought. In their disassembled state, their limbs showed how intricate the design was, and how many moving parts went into making

not boast of that

why were these arms brought here and taken apart? Who had done it? The Prince of

would he need to study his