Chapter 34: The Black Sun

Meanwhile, back in the Third Layer, in Koda’s territory, his first sacrifice had begun.

Endless masses of thick darkness surged up from the altar, and the corrupted Fragment of Faith was devoured almost instantly.

As Koda watched, something strange happened. While the Fragment was being eaten, it let out wails of agony far worse than anything heard at a goblin death ritual.

Those screams came from the scraps of goblin souls that had poured their minds and faith into the Fragment.

The Third Layer was a strange, chaotic, mysterious, and fascinating place.

Yet it rejected those scraps of goblin soul.

Everything the goblins had ever done seemed to fit the layer perfectly, and still they were rejected.

They were cruel, chaotic, and insane, and they took pleasure in evil.

But there was more than one kind of evil.

The goblins’ evil came from the cowardice buried deep in their bones.

Their madness showed in how they crushed the weak, groveled before the strong, and blindly worshipped terrifying things they didn’t understand.

The Third Layer despised that kind of cowardice.

In its eyes, what was left of those goblin souls was worthless garbage.

So when the darkness touched them, those despicable creatures finally got the chance to learn what true darkness, true cruelty, and pure, undiluted evil really meant!

Beneath that annihilating darkness, they would face the will at the very root of all evil.

However, none of that was Koda’s concern.

"Oh? A book?"

He completely ignored the screaming goblin souls and paid no attention to the terrifying darkness.

Instead, he hurried over to the altar and picked up the treasure it had given him.

It was a thick book bound in the hide of some unknown creature. Its cover showed a pair of black-and-red eyes and a demonic sword.

Between the eyes and the sword stood a throne that looked remarkably like his own.

The book had clearly been sealed away for who knew how long. When Koda opened it, a thick, unmistakable stench of blood hit him in the face.

He ignored it and began looking through it.

But the moment he held it, he understood what it was, the same way the throne had always told him things.

The Abyssal Codex. Only a fragment of it.

It would make him no stronger. Instead, whoever bound himself to it would become an Abyssal Priest, no matter who or what he was, and gain a gift with it.

"A book that turns you into a priest, just like that? And priests of the deep are supposed to be extremely rare..."

Before Koda could even think about whether he wanted that, a piercing pain erupted in his hands.

He looked down and found something astonishing.

The Codex had come alive!

A book that could come alive?!

Countless threads of darkness had crawled out of it, splitting into thousands of tiny tentacles that burrowed deep between the scales of both his hands.

They went in so deep that when Koda tried to fling the Codex away, he couldn’t.

The tiny tentacles had already bound him tightly to the book.

At first, he fought them. But he soon stopped.

He had discovered something startling.

His hold over the demons in his territory had grown stronger!

Before, he’d had to lean on the law of the Seed to force some of them to obey.

Now, those same demons had suddenly turned extraordinarily submissive.

Every demon in his territory obeyed by instinct the moment it felt its lord’s mind.

Even if Koda ordered them to bury every desire they had and throw themselves at an obviously suicidal goal, they would do it!

Then the knowledge settled into him.

He was an Abyssal Priest now.

And the Codex had given him its gift: the Heart of the Abyss.

With it, he could control every creature of the deep that belonged to him perfectly, and force them to act on his will alone. More than that, it could be joined with other rites of the Codex, ones he didn’t have yet. A Sacrificial Contract. A Soul Sacrifice. An End Ritual.

On top of that, the strange glyphs carved across his throne, the ones he hadn’t been able to read since the day he planted his Seed, suddenly made perfect sense.

He could read the tongue of the deep.

"Heart of the Abyss... I can force them to obey?"

Once it was done, the black tentacles slid back into the Codex one after another.

A faint, unusual mark was left behind on the back of his right hand, inked into the scales.

It was a black sun, with a blurry symbol at its center that he couldn’t quite make out.

Koda didn’t mind it.

After all, priests of many faiths bore the mark of whatever they served somewhere on their bodies.

"Now I finally get why the demons kept slacking off when I gave orders."

"Back then, I probably wasn’t one of this layer’s own. Of course they dragged their feet when an outsider was giving orders."

Koda looked at the black sun on the back of his hand, and a smile spread across his face.

"But now, everything’s different..."

"As an Abyssal Priest, I can force them to obey. I can even make them throw their lives away without question!"

"Every lord out there would kill for an ability like this!"

Only after thinking it through did Koda remember to actually look at the Codex.

Just as he’d sensed, it was incomplete. It held only a single page.

On that first page, written in the tongue of the deep, was a strange verse.

The Abyssal Codex, Chapter One:

Praise be to you, eternal Black Sun.

Praise be to you, great Sovereign of Destruction.

You are the End of All Things...

"This Black Sun..."

"Is it talking about what this layer used to be?"

Koda raised his head and looked up at the sky.

The withered Third Layer had no black sun at all.

All he could see was the same black-and-red vortex that had been turning since the beginning of time.

But while he was still searching the sky for a Black Sun, he noticed something wrong through the throne.

"What’s going on? Someone’s attacking my demons?"

"Wild beasts protecting their territory? No..."

Koda’s eyes sharpened.

From the way the threads tying him to his demons were going dark, one after another, all across the Tithe Lands, he could tell at once that no wild beast could pull this off.

"It’s an enemy force!"

"They’re deliberately hunting down my scouts!"

"And not just one squad. Every scout I sent out is being hit!"

He pictured the Tithe Lands in his mind, and his brows drew tightly together.

"They’re actually trying to pick off all my soldiers with hit-and-run attacks?"

"Well, this is..."

As the threads went dark one after another, Koda’s lips curled into a strange smile.

"Wonderful!"

"I’ve been bored for far, far too long!"