Thelsa was no longer the same person that she had been fifteen years ago. The once cautious, carefully planning Saint of Shadows now openly took commissions from the Adventurer’s Guild under her own name, working together with Petra. The two of them were part of an adventuring group that had named themselves Twilight.
Of course, Thelsa didn’t reveal the specific relationship between herself and Petra, because she felt that that would be rude and undermine Petra’s own accomplishments. If they found that Petra was merely created from Thelsa’s shadow, all of her deeds would be attributed to Thelsa herself.
“Black Bolt!” One of their other teammates called out, sending a bolt of black lightning out towards a charging bull-like monster with flames in its eyes. The lightning struck between its eyes, launching it back and causing its legs to twitch as it lay on the ground.
The two of them weren’t alone, not by any means. On the surface, the requirements to join Twilight was for one to be a goddess with a dark theme. For instance, the individual with the Lightning domain wielded black lightning as opposed to normal lightning. However, there was far more to it than that.
“Jeez, Sora. Save some for the rest of us!” A toned warrior walked up, carrying a black hammer over her shoulder with a grin.
“Not my fault you’re too slow, Maria. I’m still just warming up!”
After overcoming her trauma and truly attempting to enhance her shadows again, Thelsa had come to an epiphany. The two beloved friends that had sacrificed themselves for her, she had painstakingly created them from her own shadow. Every thought and every emotion, even their souls came from her.
Now that she had the domain of Shadows, what was stopping her from creating her again? She had never once forgotten a single moment with them, and was absolutely confident that she could reproduce their original minds. Watching Sora and Maria bicker playfully, Thelsa couldn’t keep the smile off of her face. It felt as if she had gone back in time, back to before things had gone so wrong.
Of course, there wouldn’t be another situation like last time. Sora was the Goddess of Lightning, and Maria was the Goddess of Stone. Even if another dangerous situation emerged, they could handle it.
As for why Sora’s lightning was black… when Thelsa was creating divine shadows, she realized that she could not give them a ‘true’ domain. Instead, she could only assign them the ‘shadow’ of a domain by using her own Shadow powers in conjunction with her World’s Shadow. Although this did not give a practical change, it caused all of their divine powers to have a dark aesthetic.
Maria pulled out a small knife, walking over towards the fallen bull. “Stabilize it for me, before all the good parts dissolve!” She called out to Sora, who nodded her head and cast a simple spell.
As Maria worked on dismantling the corpse of the monster, another voice spoke up behind them, causing the group to be briefly startled. “Wow… okay, this isn’t something that I was expecting to see.”
The four quickly turned around, only to see a familiar face standing there. Petra and Thelsa had met Dana on a few occasions, and her face was well known enough for the other two to recognize her. When Dana saw Sora and Maria near the fallen bull, a small smile spread on her lips.
“Is there something we can help you with?” Petra asked, walking up towards Dana and offering a polite nod of her head. Despite being the visibly youngest of the group, Petra had always been the ‘voice’ for them, due to her having the biggest reputation.
“Well… yes, actually!” Dana nodded her head, and a small sphere appeared in one of her hands, holding it out towards Petra. “Seeing that you’re all gods, this makes what we want way easier.”
“What’s… that?” Petra asked curiously, looking down at the item Dana had produced.
“This is a scanner, specifically customized for Fyor. With it, you can quickly find the gates as well as any special orbs on each floor. All you have to do is insert it into the floor’s crystal pillar, and it will bring up the interface.”
When Petra heard that, she couldn’t help but think back to the time when the Keeper helped her rush through so many floors of Fyor. Now, it seemed like the Keeper himself wouldn’t even be needed for a similar operation. Well… aside from the instant creation of cities. Though… if they managed to call Philia of the Sylvans over, they could probably do that.
Petra quickly shook off her thoughts. If we need a city planner, Thelsa can handle that. After seeing Sora and Maria brought back, Petra’s trust in Thelsa had grown even further. She knew how hard it was to create them, and just how vulnerable Thelsa was making herself in doing so. If anything happened to those two, Thelsa might truly lose herself, and they all knew that.
“Shall we go test it out?” Dana offered, placing the orb in Petra’s hand. “I need to make sure I watch the initial test run, in case there are any improvements that need to be made.”
Petra blinked, looking back at the others. Seeing her questioning gaze, Maria gave a light laugh. “What’s the matter, kid? If we’re going, let’s go!”
Petra nodded her head at that, black masses of energy rising up around the five of them. They had long since incorporated the fortieth floor into their shadow world. While it may be difficult to find the next gate, due to the sheer size of the floor, it was an easy matter to find the crystal pillar. After all, it was an item that reached for nearly eight million kilometers, connecting the ground and the sky.
Even with the army of shadow helpers, it would take years of dedicated searching to find something the size of the gate. Finding the level limit orbs? They’d have to rely on luck to locate those on their own.
When they emerged from the shadows, they were standing before the skyscraping crystal, its body hundreds of kilometers wide. Dana could hear the sound of construction work nearby, and turned her head to see large machines digging out tunnels, as well as druids constructing various buildings. “They’re only just now getting to the Mage Heart vein here?” She asked in surprise.
Thelsa gave a somewhat bitter smile, shaking her head. “We went through the last few layers too quickly, so it is taking them time to catch up. Before they can safely begin mining, there are a number of other steps that they have to take. For instance, clearing out any monsters in the area, setting up a safe and habitable area for the miners, and securing supply lines.”
“For safety reasons, they are only moving the mining operation up one floor at a time, rather than trying to handle all of them at once. For this one… it looks like they’ve already cleared the area and set up the supply line, judging by the construction progress. In a couple more months, we should have a full mining city here.”
“Huh… is there a unified name for the mining cities, like Gate’s Rise, and Gate’s Rest?” Dana asked curiously, only for Sora to smirk and shake her head.
“Nope. This is probably too new of a thing, so they just name them whatever they feel like. Usually after the guy who’s initially put in charge of the city.”
“Alright, then… either way, Petra?” Dana looked over at the little demoness, who nodded her head. Petra walked up to the crystal pillar, holding up the sphere that Dana had given her. There didn’t seem to be any immediate reaction, so she placed the sphere directly against its surface.
Once she had done so, half of the sphere seemed to melt into the pillar, with a holographic display appearing. Petra immediately recognized the first image as a map of this floor, and below it were two search parameters, ‘gates’ and ‘orbs’.
Out of curiosity, Petra first touched the button to search for orbs. The light within the pillar rippled briefly, and Petra saw a circle expanding over the map, starting from their current location.
Unsurprisingly, there were no results found from this search. The Keeper had already provided Petra with this floor’s level orb, so there was nothing left for the enchantment to locate. Instead, Petra pressed the other button, causing a second ripple.
This time, the results were clearly different. Although it took roughly half a minute for the scan to finish going over the entire floor, there were two glowing dots by the time they were done. Petra looked back at Thelsa, who observed the map with interest.
“This one over here should be the gate we came in.” She said, pointing to one of the dots deep inland. “And that would mean… this one is the next floor’s gate.” Her finger moved to an island far off the coast. It made sense that the shadow scouts hadn’t found it yet, given how far away it was from the coast.
Petra’s eyes went wide, quickly nodding her head. She looked at the display, noticing a red X at the top corner. Bringing her finger to it, the sphere seemed to simply fall out of the crystal spire and land in Petra’s hands once again. She turned her head to look at Dana, blinking curiously. “Can this be reused…?”
Dana, of course, nodded with a broad grin. “Of course it can! We made it so that you could speed up the exploration of Fyor, after all. It’d be kind of a waste if it just broke after one use.”
Petra nodded her head slowly at that, finding Dana’s words reasonable. Her hand gripped the sphere protectively, able to tell just how valuable it was. If they had something like this from the start, how quickly could they have colonized Fyor? Now that they were so late in doing so, they needed to get help from all of the other worlds just to fill in the necessary population to keep things functional.
It might not be a problem to populate the cities with shadow people, but Thelsa had genuinely considered the possibility at one point. After all, just the fortieth floor of Fyor alone had the surface area of two thousand Deckans. Every five levels was practically an order of magnitude larger, so it would take generations to fully inhabit this layer as if it were the tenth.
“Well, what are we waiting for?” Maria asked with a broad grin. “Let’s get going! I don’t know about you girls, but I can’t wait to see what comes next!”
Listening to her laugh, Dana gave a small smile. “You go ahead. Now that I’m sure that the device works properly, I can report back to the boss. Oh, and Thelsa?” She asked, looking towards the Shadow Saint herself.
“Yes?” Thelsa returned the gaze, seeing a deep look in Dana’s eyes. Part of it seemed to be gratitude, another part of it sorrow.
“I’m happy for you, really. It’s not easy to get back what you’ve lost.” Dana spoke in an uncommonly soft tone, and Thelsa could feel the loss in her voice. Dana’s story was, for the most part, public knowledge at this point. It only took a moment for Thelsa to realize that Dana was talking about her father. However, by the time she was able to respond, the little elf had already left.
Thelsa clenched a fist at her side, thinking to herself. You might not have gotten him back… but at least you found someone special. Don’t forget that, Dana…
