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.

highest level of the great pagoda was not very large, in comparison to the six others. It was just one

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

only hope of

stared at it for a long time, thinking about how

to activate the arch, as well as studying

however, had

smith. A builder of things… but also of the practical sort. That he would have used whatever was at hand, going

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

being from nothing… a whole race of them, really. That did sound like something that only a god would be able to

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

wonder how the

them had accomplished something that was supposed to be in the purview of only the gods?

'Huh.'

thought that it was an integral part of her

The broken dolls showed that the material from which to make his creations had not mattered to the Prince of the Underworld too

was at hand…

of stone… simply because there was a lot of stone in the Hollow Mountains for its

be right, can

somehow, Sunny felt that it was,

at Saint and blinked a couple of

'...Lazy bastard!'

mighty daemon in such unflattering terms. When nothing happened, he shook his head and