The side passage was full of impenetrable darkness, too, flowing around Sunny as it turned him blind and deaf. The blade of the Cruel Sight was shining with a soft radiance, creating a small circle of light around him. That light seemed to be struggling against the tide of chilling blackness, making it appear more absolute.
The walls of the passage were much closer to each other than that of the main tunnel, its roof lower, and the circle of light was even narrower still. All of that made Sunny feel extremely claustrophobic. He walked forward with a resentful expression on his face, feeling the floor slope downward beneath his feet.
If there was one thing that reassured them, it was the silent silhouette of Saint, who was by his side. The taciturn demon moved with her usual indifference, wielding the Sin of Solace in her hands.
Together, they descended deeper into the belly of the mountain.
'Curse it… damn it… this is such crap…'
Sunny was, unsurprisingly, very nervous.
There were a lot of things for him to be nervous about. Not only was he willingly walking into a trap of an unknown, but immensely powerful Nightmare Creature, he was also surrounded by true darkness — the element that directly countered most of his abilities.
Not only that, but he also found himself in a strange situation. Most Awakened possessed at least one luminous Memory — those were usually both cheap and easy to get, so everyone had some sort of enchanted item to serve as a lantern in their arsenal. However, Sunny had never needed one, so he only had the Cruel Sight.
Its [Light Eater] enchantment allowed the somber spear to absorb light, and then expel it. After months spent in the darkness of the polar night, most of the sunlight that it had devoured in the past was long gone. What little remained was supposed to last him a few hours… but what if he failed to complete his mission by then?
Sunny brought several chemical flares with him, just in case, but he really hoped to not get a chance to use them.
Additionally, he had to leave one of his shadows with the convoy. Surrounded by true darkness, he could not turn into one to swiftly travel across the network of tunnels, but he could still Shadow Step back to one of his invaluable helpers. That was why Sunny had ventured into the depths of the mountain alone, hoping to escape whatever disaster waited ahead in an instant.
So… a quarter of his power was gone, as well.
Right now, gloomy shadow was with Saint, creepy shadow was augmenting the Cruel Sight, and the haughty one was wrapped around his body. The five of them were a fearsome quintet… nevertheless, Sunny did not feel confident.
The odds were just stacked against him too much.
'Whatever… what's the big deal, anyway? It's just a creepy, inescapable mountain full of true elemental darkness. Which apparently has a heart. A piece of cake…'
Saint turned her head a little and stared at him, the ruby jewels of her eyes glowing with cold crimson light. It was only then that Sunny noticed that his teeth were chattering.
He forced out a weak smile.
"What? It's… really cold here, you know…"
Indeed, it was. Steam escaped from his lips, and his voice echoed off the stone walls, traveling far into the narrow passage. Sunny grew quiet, not wishing to announce his position to anything that might have been hiding in the darkness.
They continued to descend, soon arriving at an intersection, which was drowning in darkness It was the first one of many — just as Professor Obel had said, there was a whole network of tunnels excavated during the Dark Times here, meant to serve as a bomb shelter in case of an all-out war.
The tunnels cut deep into the mountain, creating a strange labyrinth. Sunny was sure that there was some logic to how they were arranged, but the intent of the engineers that had built this place escaped him. If anything, the system of passages and chambers cut roughly in the stone seemed random and disorderly.
Almost… organic.
And, of course, each was consumed by darkness. At this depth, Sunny started to feel as though the darkness was moving around him, flowing through the tunnels, like blood rushing through colossal veins.
He shivered.
'Calm down, damn it…'
Find the heart, and destroy it.
...What if it was not a metaphorical heart, but a quite literal one?
Gritting his teeth, Sunny continued forward. Faced with the complicated maze of passages, he navigated through it following a simple principle — each time they arrived at an intersection, he chose the path that led further down. For now, this method seemed to be working, since the surrounding darkness seemed to have become thicker, and flowed faster.
…After a while, he started to hear a strange hum. Low and distant like a quiet whisper, it reverberated through the cold stone, echoing and growing more persistent as Sunny ventured deeper into the network of tunnels.
Struggling against a sense of vast, primordial fear, he glanced at Saint, and then stubbornly continued walking.
Soon, Sunny arrived at a dead end… or rather, what should have been a dead end. The tunnel he was following came to an abrupt stop, but the wall in front of him had collapsed… or had been shattered… at some point in the past, revealing an entrance to something that looked like a natural cave.
He hesitated for a few moments, then climbed over the pile of rubble and entered the cave. It stretched forward, twisting and turning, growing so narrow that Saint had to fall back and now walked behind him.
The dark passages had changed from those cut through the stone by human tools to being rough and uneven. The floor rose and fell, too, making moving forward hard. If Sunny had felt as though he was in a maze before, now, he had completely lost his sense of direction. All he knew was that he was still moving down, and that the darkness was flowing past him with increasing speed.
The unclear hum was growing louder and louder.
By then, Sunny had been completely overcome by an irrational feeling that he was not traveling through a network of caves, but instead crawling through the veins of a bizarre, colossal, terrifying creature.
'If… if it really is alive… then I don't want to know what kind of creature it is...'
Just as that thought flashed through Sunny's mind…
The radiance of the Cruel Sight's blade suddenly flickered, and was instantly extinguished.
All that was left was utter darkness.