Stranger still...
The gods had still been alive at the time of the Nightmare. And yet, the Spell spoke of them as dead.
Sunny shivered.
Had his offering... reached the actual gods, and not a substitute of them put in place by the Spell? Was the Spell even capable of creating illusory copies of the gods?
Probably not.
If so, what did it mean? And how had Shadow God granted him a blessing from beyond the grave?
Well... that last part wasn't that surprising. The gods were the ones who had created things like time and death, after all. So, it wasn't strange to Imagine that they had a special relationship with these laws, A god could very well respond to a question before it was asked, and bless a slave who had offered himself as a sacrifice despite being dead.
Especially if that altar stood in a very special place.
The black temple...
Sunny hesitated, unsure of what to think. Now that he had found the ruined temple again, he realized that he didn't actually know anything about it.
He was certain of one thing, though. This place...
It felt sacred.
A sense of solemn, silent sanctity was emanating from the obsidian walls of the ancient temple. It looked majestic and beautiful in the moonlight, and although the ground around the ruin was littered with bones, it did not feel vile or ominous at all.
With a sigh, Sunny headed toward the broken gates of the temple.
And as he was approaching...
He felt it.
He did not see it, and he did not hear it. He did not even perceive it with his shadow sense.
But somehow, he knew.
There was something in front of him... a vast, invisible, intangible being. One that was reaching out to him, emanating a subtle sense of purity, loneliness, and power.
Suddenly, Sunny realized why there were bones scattered everywhere at the peak of the Black Mountain.
However, the guardian of the temple did not seem to hold any malice toward him. Instead, there was a sense of... joy, and recognition.
The invisible being was reaching out to something in Sunny's soul.
The golden light... the flame of divinity.
Sunny's eyes widened a little.
'I... I didn't even know.'
Back then, he had felt nothing when entering the temple. But the bones had been there, which meant that the guardian had been there, as well. And yet, it let Sunny in instead of adding his corpse to the pile of bones.
Because it had sensed a faint mark of divinity on his soul.
...The Mountain King, too. Since the Tyrant entered the temple, it must have been touched by divinity once, as well.
Sunny had not known how close to death he had come, and how lucky he was to survive.
‘Would it let me pass now?'
Taking a deep breath, Sunny looked forward, and stepped through the gates of the nameless temple.