Shadow Slave

Chapter 2443 - 2443: Summary of Everything

Sunny had spent more than a decade uncovering the dreadful secrets of the Dream Realm and slowly piecing together its truth. The road to the knowledge he now possessed had been paved with blood and smoldering ruins, and very few people — if any at all — knew as much as he did about the hidden nature of the world.Which was not to say that others had not searched for the truth with just as much determination, and that no one else had a claim to the forbidden knowledge he harbored.

The late Sovereigns had known countless secrets, for example. There was Nephis, as well… she knew nearly as much as Sunny did, having spent the years they had been apart pursuing truths of her own. He did not have a monopoly on arcane knowledge, and neither did the world stand frozen while he was away.

It was just that Sunny had an overwhelming advantage when it came to solving the chilling mysteries of the past… or at least used to have. That advantage was his former innate Attribute, [Fated], which had put him on a collision course with Weaver and other main characters of the end of the world all those years ago.

However, Nephis had a great advantage of her own. That advantage… was Cassie. There was hardly a person in the world better suited to learning the lost and forgotten truths than her — so, Nephis and Cassie had learned quite a few of the same secrets Sunny had, in the years of his absence.

Later, the three of them put their knowledge together.

…Now, however, Sunny was once again far ahead.

Because this time, the secret he had learned was truly world-shattering.

It was a secret to end all secrets, as well as the answer to countless mysteries that had been plaguing them for years.

So, Sunny told them everything he had learned in Ariel's Game.

How Weaver had challenged the Demon of Dread to a Death Game. Who the Nine were … how Weaver died for the first time by Orphne's hand.hey will simply be exposing themselves to Corruption."

Cassie drew a shaky breath.

"That is one of the main functions of the Spell. The second function is to nurture its carriers in various ways and help them walk the Path of Ascension at a speed unthinkable for natural Awakened… in the most ruthless, but also quite an effective way."

She exhaled slowly before adding:

"The third of its main functions…"

Sunny ended the sentence.

"Is the most fundamental one, which lies at the root of it all. It is to keep the Forgotten God asleep."

He paused for a moment, and then said with a hint of fascination in his voice:

"Many questions about how the Spell functions remain, of course. For example, what powers it? Does it consume a bit of the soul fragments of every living being slain by its carriers, perhaps? Or is it using the Nightmare of the Forgotten God as a perpetual battery to fuel itself? Is it still intact, or has its mechanism been corrupted over the eons? How exactly does it create the Nightmares, and what is the nature of the phantoms populating them? I am pretty sure that the Spell was not woven out of essence strings, but from the Strings of Fate themselves… is that why it seems omniscient, possessing the knowledge of both the past and the future?"

Sunny shook his head.

"Weaver, that sinister daemon… they pulled quite a stunning trick back then, at the end. Didn't they? Compared to what the Spell is, even the act of slaying the gods — and the daemons — almost seems to pale in comparison. I mean, who could have guessed that killing the gods had been merely the means to an end, not the actual goal? And who could have been brazen enough to treat their deaths that way?"

He sighed, suddenly feeling suffocated.

Sunny was Fateless now… but that did not seem to free him from Weaver's grasp. The nebulous daemon had envisioned a role for their inheritor — their epigone — and even after being torn from the tapestry of fate, Sunny was still marching to the beat of their drum.

That was because Weaver did not need to manipulate his fate in order to control him. They could simply manipulate the entire world and leave Sunny no choice but to go where the Demon of Fate had wanted him to go. Even though he was not Fated anymore, the weight of the decisions Sunny had already made ensured that his future choices would be in line with what Weaver had envisioned.

'That damn daemon…'

He exhaled slowly.

"All of it is fascinating, and there's a lot we still don't know. But these details are not exactly important right now, are they?"

Nephis, who had kept quiet until then, gave him a poignant look.

"What is important, then?"

Sunny met her gaze, choosing his words carefully.

In the end, he spoke in a tone that was a little softer than usual.

"Well… you are. Your goal has always been to destroy the Spell. Now that you know that it is not as malignant as we believed, and that its existence is necessary to keep the Forgotten God from swallowing us all, doesn't it change anything? Or rather... doesn't it change everything?"

Nephis studied him for a while, her expression unreadable.

Then, she pursed her lips slightly and turned to the window.

"...It doesn't really change much, though."