Chapter 445 Respite
Visible only to Sunny, the diamond weave beneath the surface of the gate ignited with ghostly light. Almost immediately, a thin vertical crack appeared in the ancient stone.
Then, the gates silently opened, and a gust of wind hit Sunny in the back.
He took a few steps away, hiding behind Saint, and cautiously looked over her shoulder at the dark entrance.
Nothing was moving in the darkness. From what he could see, the interior of the Obsidian Tower seemed quite mundane. As soon as the gate opened, his Shadows Sense could finally penetrate the invisible barrier surrounding the graceful pagoda — it didn't detect any danger, as well.
It really did seem safe.
He waited for a few moments, then coughed and waved a hand in front of his face, trying to get the soot that had flown into the air away from it.
"Ah, well. Nothing to worry about, then. Let's go!"
Sunny glanced at Saint, lingered for a second, and added in a polite tone:
"...Oh, ladies first."
The taciturn demon turned her head slightly, stared at him with one ruby eye, then simply walked forward and stepped over the threshold of the ancient tower. Sunny waited for a few moments, and followed.
Tightly gripping the handle of the Moonlight Shard, he dove into the darkness that reigned behind the tall frame of the entrance, made a dozen steps forward, and found himself in a wide corridor that seemed to encircle the entire first level of the pagoda.
The corridor stretched both far to the left and to the right. Here and there, Sunny could see large doors leading to differently sized rooms that were situated in the direction of the tower's outer wall, all the way to the bends of the corridor. And right in front of him was an intricate wooden gate decorated with beautiful engravings.
Behind it was the central hall of the tower.
Sunny hesitated for a bit, then pushed the wooden gate, which opened easily and revealed a vast chamber on the other side.
'That smell…'
His eyes widened.
Behind the gate was a large hall with a very tall ceiling. As soon as the gate opened, glass lanterns ignited on its walls, filling the interior of the Obsidian Tower with ghostly blue light. There were various things in the hall, all of which demanded Sunny's attention.
There was a stand holding smith's tools and implements, all masterfully crafted from black obsidian and silver. A badly burned worktable with a scattering of beautiful soul crystals on its black surface. A stone wall with mysterious schematics cut into it, the cuts themselves so smooth and deep that he couldn't even begin to imagine what had left them behind, let alone what the schematics described.
There were strange devices forged from silver and black steel, some of which reminded him of astronomical instruments, but also very mundane things, like chairs, tables, and even something that resembled a very long bed.
All of it was perfectly preserved and immaculate, with not a speck of dust anywhere, cleaner than even his own house in the real world was… despite the thousands of years that must have passed since the Obsidian Tower was visited last.
It also all felt slightly… wrong. The sizes of everything were almost fit to be used by a human, but slightly different. The shapes of the handles of all the tools were slightly strange. The way the pieces of furniture and equipment were arranged in space filled him with a slight feeling of unease, even though he didn't know why.
…But Sunny did dwell on this for too long. Neither did his gaze linger on any of these items. His attention was pulled toward one specific place.
Not too far from him stood a simple wooden table. And on it… was all kinds of delicious food.
Juicy meat, freshly baked bread, succulent grapes, glass jars of exquisite wine, beautiful pots full of steaming tea, all of it waited for him, as if served only a few seconds ago.
Sunny's mouth watered.
'How is this possible? This has to be an illusion… right?'
Covered in layers of soot, sweat, and blood, he walked toward the table. His boots left black marks on the pristine floor of the hall. Arriving at his destination, Sunny reached out and grabbed a piece of bread with his dirty hand and greedily devoured it, then took one of the intricate silver goblets and filled it with wine.
The rest of the goblets clattered to the floor, thrown off the table by his careless movement.
Not paying it any attention, Sunny gulped down the sweet wine and laughed, sending breadcrumbs flying into the air.
"Ah… this is not bad, really…"
He would have preferred something without alcohol, but then again, this wine tasted so good...
There was a wide grin on Sunny's face, but also dirty traces left by tears. His shoulders trembled.
"This really hits the spot…"
He was aware of the fact that the food could have been full of poison, but didn't care too much. He was just too hungry, tired, and spent. His body and his soul both hurt too much. He was at his wits' end.
Refilling his goblet and grabbing a piece of perfectly roasted meat, he wandered away from the table and took another look at the large hall.
"There's no one here, right, Saint?"
The Shadow silently walked behind him, vigilantly looking around and keeping the Midnight Shard ready.
But there was nothing to use it against.
Sunny wandered for a minute or so, and eventually stopped near a large bed covered with black, lavish furs. Dropping the empty goblet on the floor, he hesitated a little… and then climbed into the furs.
'...Who's been sleeping in my bed?'
Sunny dismissed the Puppeteer's Shroud and lowered his heavy head onto a soft pillow.free𝑤ebnovel.com
He wanted to give Saint the command to stand guard, but there was no need. The taciturn demon was already doing exactly that…
Before Sunny could think about something else, the exhaustion of the past few weeks took over his mind, and, offering almost no resistance, it slipped easily into the embrace of darkness.
The first thing Sunny ended up doing after discovering the Obsidian Tower and finding his way inside… was falling on a bed and going to sleep.
He slept well.
Chapter 446 Relentless Destroyer
Sunny slept for a long time, the exhaustion slowly leaving his battered body. After a while, though, his consciousness rose from the deepest layers of slumber, summoned back by pain and thirst. With a sigh, he turned to his other side and tried to go back to sleep. After a few more hours of tossing and turning, though, Sunny was finally awoken by the loud sound of something crashing to the floor.
'...What is Saint doing?'
He reluctantly opened his eyes and sat up.
As Sunny's weight shifted, the bed beneath him suddenly broke with a loud crack. He rolled onto the floor with a startled yelp.
"Huh?!"
Standing up, Sunny looked at the broken bed, then at the hall of the Obsidian Tower, which was now submerged in darkness. A bewildered expression appeared on his face.
The room he had entered before had gone through a dramatic transformation while he was asleep. The magical lanterns were now extinguished, and everything inside seemed dilapidated and decrepit, almost on the verge of crumbling to pieces.
The magnificent tools and implements had rusted through and deformed, the worktable had collapsed under its own weight — that was the sound which had awoken Sunny — the food he had enjoyed yesterday had turned to dust. The pristine condition of the hall was gone, and now it was full of darkness, debris, and dirt.
It was as though eons had passed since he fell asleep.
A cold feeling appeared in his chest.
'...Have I slept for a thousand years?!'fɾeewebnoveℓ.co๓
Remembering fairy tales where similar things often happened, Sunny felt a hint of horror, but then thought about it for a few moments and calmed down.
No, he had not… judging by how much shadow essence had accumulated in his cores, he slept for about twenty-four hours straight, which was a lot, but nowhere near a thousand years. Saint, who was keeping watch nearby, also didn't look as if she had been guarding him for a few centuries.
Instead, it was the pagoda itself that had aged. As if an invisible seal that had kept it untouched by the passage of time for all those thousands of years was now broken, and time was finally catching up with it.
Time was the most relentless destroyer, after all.
Sunny sighed with relief, then grimaced.
'Curses! I should have eaten more yesterday… much, much more!'
All that delicious food, wasted!
Shaking his head dejectedly, Sunny looked around, then accessed his own state.
His wounds were already much better than they had been the day before. The burns were still rather painful, but within his capacity to endure without being slowed down in battle… too much. A couple more days of rest, and he would be close to being fully functional again.
He was really hungry, though.
But that was going to have to wait.
Summoning the Moonlight Shard, Sunny gave Saint a command to follow, and went to explore the Obsidian Tower.
***
It took Sunny about an hour to fully explore the first level of the ancient pagoda. Some of the doors in the outer corridor had collapsed and turned to dust, some remained standing and required him to use a tiny bit of shadow essence to unlock them.
Behind the doors were all kinds of rooms. Most of them were empty, suggesting that the master of the tower had moved away a long time ago, taking all the valuable things with him, while some contained weathered debris and dust. Sunny spent a lot of time trying to understand what all these things had once been, by the damage done by the accelerated time was too extensive to even guess.
'...Such a shame.'
Feeling strangely disappointed, Sunny decided that it was time to move on to other levels of the tower. He still had to find the thing that had pulled him toward this place, as well as — hopefully — some means of returning either to the Chained Isles or to the real world.
The idea of being stuck on this island forever did not seem very appealing.
Especially now that there was no food anywhere around...
Not finding anything interesting on the first level, Sunny decided to explore further.
From the outside, it had seemed as though the Obsidian Tower had six levels, which really surprised Sunny. He had expected there to be seven. However, after finding two stairwells — one stair leading up, the other down — he realized that there was an underground level, too, which explained this small discrepancy.
Everything having to do with the Spell and the Dream Realm had a tendency to be tied to the number seven… except the gods, of whom there had been only six.
'I guess that's why they are called gods… no law can bind them. Not even such a weird and random law as all things coming in sevens.'
Sunny looked up, then looked down, and decided to explore the underground level first.
Letting Saint go ahead, he entered the spiraling staircase and descended into the depths of the dark island.
Unlike the ground level, the basement of the Obsidian Tower turned out to be one giant hall.
And in it…
Sunny recoiled.
For a second, it seemed as though hundreds of dismembered corpses were piled at the center of the hall, forming a morbid hill. But as Sunny took a step back and instinctively raised the Moonlight Shard, he realized that he made a mistake.
The bodies piled in the center of the chamber were not that of people. Instead, they were… dolls.
Hundreds of broken porcelain dolls, each the size of a human, were discarded in the underground hall. Their fragile bodies were shattered and broken, laying there like abandoned toys. Some were missing limbs, some were left with gaping holes in their torsos. Some had long ago turned into piles of small fragments, with not even their faces remaining.
But those faces that did remain…
Sunny tilted his head, then glanced at Saint.
Every broken doll had the same face, or rather, all of their faces looked alike… as if they were all imperfect copies of the same original.
They had the same flawless, inhumanly beautiful features that Saint had, only the craftsmanship behind the faces of the broken dolls seemed much less refined, as though the sculptor had not yet perfected his skill when creating them.
There all looked like Saint's lesser siblings.
...If Sunny ever had doubts that the Obsidian Tower had once belonged to a certain Underworld Demon, now there were none. The last child of the Unknown had clearly spent some time here. Was probably the one who had created the black pagoda, in the first place, for some mysterious purpose Sunny couldn't even begin to guess.
Then, however, his attention was drawn to something else.
The floor of the vast hall was covered by a thick layer of dust, which should not have been disturbed in a few thousand years.
…But it had been.
A set of fleet footprints led all the way from the bottom of the stairs, where Sunny was standing, to the pile of broken dolls, circled it, and then mysteriously disappeared.
Sunny stared at it for a few moments, surprised.
'Someone… someone had entered the Obsidian tower before me."