“Fine, fine. If you don’t want it, I’m not exactly eager to give it away anyway.”
Enya didn’t waste much time debating who should use it; she quickly steered the conversation back to the empty shell.
Staring at the grey-haired girl lying in the sarcophagus, Enya fell into a brief silence.
After a moment, she spoke to the Black Dragon Princess again.
“Pandrake, what do you know about gods? After all, you have one floating right above you—Archethia.”
The Dragon God was a deity, too.
Although this particular god seemed to exist differently than the others, Archethia still possessed the status of a divine being.
Furthermore, she was an entity Enya couldn’t simply bypass.
“One must not speak of such things recklessly.”
Pandrake answered with those few words, but it clearly wasn’t the response Enya wanted.
The Black Dragon Princess’s age spanned from the ancient past to the present, and she stood at the very apex of the world.
There was no way she hadn’t encountered information regarding the divine.
Was she really trying to brush her off with “don’t speak recklessly”?
Enya knit her brows, expressing her dissatisfaction to the Pandrake within her. “Are you really being this dismissive with me?”
“I can only say this much: do you not realize that while the voices of mortals are so small as to be inaudible, the voices of the powerful are louder and more easily heard?”
Pandrake explained the reasoning. It was simple: the greater one’s presence, the more one needed to be cautious with their words.
Enya couldn’t verify the truth of this and didn’t entirely believe it was the real reason for the secrecy. However, she knew that asking Pandrake directly wouldn’t yield results. It would be better to investigate herself. With that thought, she locked her gaze onto the girl in the sarcophagus once more.
Enya remembered the text written on the lid referred to this girl as “she.”
Since that pronoun was used, it meant the passage described her as a human—at least at that time.
‘People needed to forget the gods, so she became a dream. When the dream ended, she left us.’
‘The need to forget the gods is easy enough to explain. Cognizance of a power too great to comprehend is a burden to humanity, so she chose to become a dream.’
‘Once people woke from that dream, they felt it was all an illusion. They lowered their heads to continue with the trivialities of life, and over time, they forgot her. She left along with the dream…’
‘But leaving doesn’t necessarily mean dying!’
‘Did her departure also take away the Silver and Purple Twin Moons?’
‘The departure of the moons seems to conflict chronologically with this description. The moons vanished alongside the Goddess of Night, but the one disappearing here is “her,” not “Her.”‘
A god could be a god, but they could also be a human in disguise.
In the eyes of the weak, Seventh or Eighth Tier powerhouses were already god-like beings.
How much more so for those who reached the Ninth Tier?
If a Ninth Tier Legendary Powerhouse played the role of a god, they would be virtually indistinguishable from the real thing—not to mention there might even be a Tenth Tier beyond that.
Following that logic, one could infer that this grey-haired girl was once a Ninth or perhaps even a Tenth Tier being.
She shed her mortal shell, transformed into the Goddess of Night, and eventually vanished from public view for some reason.
‘Is this sentence describing her ascension?’
‘Then this really is the Goddess of Night’s cicada shell?’
Enya looked around the surrounding space. She recalled that withered humanoid—the Mist Bishop, Tulius. Could the thing he wanted so badly have been this very body?
“Yuck…”
The thought made Enya’s skin crawl. Tulius’s ghastly appearance was a result of being a Plague Elder in the Cult of Calamity; he had practiced his way into that monstrous form.
His creation of the Lord of Mist Church was likely an attempt to change his path.
In that light, his desire to seize this “cicada shell” as a new vessel was actually quite logical.
Gender? Did that even matter?
In a world this horrific, could anything be more important than power? If Enya went out now and offered power in exchange for changing one’s gender, she’d have a line of people willing to do it.
Some might even draw their blades and do the deed themselves before she finished speaking.
Enya had heard of a bizarre cult like that once, though it was quickly dismantled by the Zephyr Empire’s authorities.
Anyway, back to the point.
Enya narrowed her eyes at the girl who looked like she was peacefully sleeping.
If the body didn’t still have a heartbeat and breath, she would have thought it was just a beautiful, hollow doll.
A doll… that would actually suit Sylvia quite well. She had wanted this cicada shell to use as a puppet, or perhaps she intended to transfer her very soul into it.
Enya looked down at the Spirit-Soothing Flower Dagger in her right hand.
A spark of inspiration flashed through her mind, and she lowered the dagger into the sarcophagus.
Before the black-and-white blade could even touch the girl, the dagger lit up.
If her intuition was correct, some power still lingered within this grey-haired girl’s body—a power that made her exceptionally alluring.
Fortunately, the pollution had no effect on Enya.
Otherwise, under the pull of that desire, a person might have climbed right into the coffin.
A faint purple glow emanated from the girl, transforming into threads that wound around the Spirit-Soothing Flower Dagger.
Finally, at the tip of the blade, they condensed into a Purple Cross Star.
Seeing this, Enya acted quickly.
She pulled out a bottle, captured the star within it, and immediately placed a high-level seal on the container.
She could feel that the aura within this Purple Cross Star was very similar to the one on the mask Antiros had given her.
Enya retracted the dagger and held the bottle in both hands, her golden-red Dragon Eyes fixed on the floating star.
Upon seeing the Purple Cross Star, Pandrake spoke. “That is a Divine Fragment—or what humans call a bloodline.”
“I know.” The corners of Enya’s mouth curled upward.
A Divine Fragment of Desire.
Once she absorbed this and returned to Red Pine City to retrieve Phil, she would possess half of the Goddess of Night’s fragments.
Enya felt she could finally try to loosen the defense against the dragon blood in her body and attempt to balance the two.
Although this would hasten her dragonification, it was something she had to do eventually.
Dragonification? After all this time, Enya had grown somewhat accustomed to the idea.
However, she didn’t plan on absorbing it here. She tucked the fragment into her Sea of Consciousness and turned her attention back to the girl. Even after the Fragment of Authority was stripped away, the body remained unchanged—still the image of a beautiful, youthful girl.
In all her years as an adventurer robbing graves, Enya’s rule was to take whatever she could. As long as it fit into her Sea of Consciousness, it was hers.
She reached out to touch the girl and then pulled back quickly. The girl in the sarcophagus didn’t react; everything seemed normal.
Enya let out a soft breath. “I was half-afraid she’d grab my hand and say, ‘Have you forgotten me?’ while staring me down.”
Pandrake was speechless and couldn’t help but retort, “Could you please not be so full of yourself?”
“Well…”
“Hmph.”
“It’s not like it hasn’t happened before…”
How many years ago was that? Enya couldn’t remember clearly, but it had been a long time. Once, while digging up a grave, she encountered a Cursed Puppet hidden in a wooden coffin.
That puppet had said those exact words to her.
Luckily, Enya was immune to soul damage, so she didn’t end up lying down in the coffin like the other victims.
Seeing the girl still motionless, Enya grew a bit bolder. Using her fingernail—no, her dragon claw!—she poked the girl’s tender cheek. As expected, it was soft, feeling exactly like the skin of a living person.
Enya exhaled and was about to pick the girl up when Pandrake’s voice stopped her. The Black Dragon Princess spoke with a strange tone.
“You’re going to pick her up? Aren’t you afraid she’ll turn to ash the second she hits the air? This is an ancient relic!”
“Hiss… you’re right.”
With that reminder, Enya realized that while the girl looked fresh and even smelled of flowers, she was an antique of unknown age.
If the only thing preventing her from rotting was this seemingly ordinary sarcophagus, Enya’s attempt to lift her would have undoubtedly destroyed a cultural relic from the ancient era.
Enya let go, her expression becoming serious. She thought it over—she didn’t have much use for this yet, so why not just take the whole thing, coffin and all?
Once she made a decision, Enya’s efficiency was unmatched. She grabbed the lid and slid it back over the girl. Then, pressing her hand against the stone, the sarcophagus dropped into a pitch-black void. The rift vanished quickly.
The sarcophagus was now tucked away in Enya’s head. Pandrake watched the coffin fly into the library, looking as if she had seen it all before.
After spending so much time together, she had grown used to Enya’s habits.
Enya might be a gentle, loving mother in front of her daughter, but once the reins were off, she was truly wild beyond measure.
The sarcophagus landed steadily in the center of the library.
Pandrake stood up and sat directly on top of it. The coffin was a bit small for her.
“I’ll use it as a chair for now,” the Black Dragon Princess remarked.
Enya scanned the starry night around her.
This space was real. It might have originally been a burial chamber, but after being soaked in pollution for countless years, it had mutated into a living entity.
However, while it could digest Tulius, it couldn’t digest Enya.
If she could, she wouldn’t mind taking this entire space with her—her appetite was quite large, after all.
But after some investigation, she realized that might be impossible. To leave, she had to kill it.
“What a pity…”
The Spirit-Soothing Flower Dagger appeared in Enya’s hand, its blade shimmering with silver-white light.
She raised her hand, slashing through the air, and spoke two words.
“Kshana.”
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