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.

were only two possibilities. Time was going to catch up to the devouring corruption, and

nothing to feed on except for cold stone?

am going to find

eye on the patch of harrowing rot, Sunny

didn't seem like the rot

him. If that thing began to grow, slowly spreading across the whole of the Obsidian Tower, and then across the whole island, Sunny was simply going to die. Probably jump down into nothingness to avoid becoming a part

after all. And he doubted that he would be able to find a second secret

to find something inside the pagoda to save him. He had to

was a possibility that the rot would swiftly wither and

great hall 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 of his shadows to keep an eye on the

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

body was covered in a cold sweat. Raising a trembling hand, Sunny wiped his face, and then continued to

least. The Shadow

bet fear can't even fit into that stone head of hers. Do Shadows

haughty exterior, it was rather cowardly.

Sunny entered the third level of the Obsidian Tower… and froze, dumbfounded by what

see. Wait, no. What

had explored — mostly because the pagoda narrowed the higher it went,

in particular, dozens of porcelains arms floated in the air, each at a different level of being disassembled into

pile of broken dolls in the basement of the Obsidian Tower and then brought them here

and then walked closer. He felt

turns out, the porcelain dolls were much more complex than he had thought. In their disassembled state, their limbs showed how intricate the design was, and how many moving parts went into

of that level of ingenuity and

and taken apart? Who had done it? The Prince of the

it… why would he need