Shadow Slave

Teacher Julius spent almost an hour staring just at the first page of the Exploration Report on Everything. The first paragraph alone was enough to shatter reality as humans knew it, turning every known axiom upside down.

It read...

[In the beginning, there was only the boundless, eternal Void. From that dark abyss, the Creatures of the Void were born. Just like chaos itself, they were endless and everlasting, vast and forever changing. But then came desire, and with it came direction. From it, the seven gods were born.]

Julius took a shaky breath.

“Seven gods? But there were only six gods...” Granted, myriad people had suggested the existence of the seventh god before—for no other reason than the prevalence of the number seven in everything that had to do with the Nightmare Spell, as well as with the bygone civilizations of the Dream Realm.

In fact, countless assumed that the mystical significance of the number seven was connected to the fallen pantheon—that there had been seven gods, and everything was inclined to come in sevens because of them, like a sacral echo.

Of course, there was not a shred of evidence to support this fanciful theory. People just liked orderly things, and the strange contradiction of there only being six gods made them feel uncomfortable. So, they stretched the truth to support the conclusion they had already made... needless to say, such conduct was woefully unscientific.

Well, at least they were better than the hapless romantics who claimed that there had only been six gods because the seventh was yet to be born. That alleged seventh god, unsurprisingly, was supposed to be born of humanity and become its savior—which smelled suspiciously like religion, not science.

Teacher Julius frowned.

“Can Nobody be one of those hacks? No, surely not...”

He took a deep breath and delved into reading.

The more he read, the more he was enthralled by the Exploration Report. Just a few minutes later, it became apparent that no... Nobody was not a hack.

The report was written in a clear, crisp language. Everything was relayed in simple words and left no room for ambiguity. The picture it painted was wonderfully coherent—so coherent, in fact, that Julius could not help but feel that what he was reading had to be true.

Best of all, the Exploration Report was not merely a collection of curious musings. It was a proper research paper that drew from and referenced myriad established works and historical documents, as well as providing sources for every unsubstantiated claim it made.

Granted, some of those sources were quite fantastical, like the description of a Memory that contained a drop of Shadow God’s blood or a poem written by the Demon of Dread on the surface of a mystical lake. Julius doubted that anyone could receive such a Memory again or travel to the Estuary of the Great River in the Tomb of Arel to confirm Nobody’s findings.

So, theoretically, the Exploration Report on Everything could still turn out to be a fabrication... but Julius doubted that it was. The facts Nobody presented and the arguments they made fit together too well, and everything clicked together too perfectly, as if falling into place.

More than that, the discoveries made by the mysterious explorer flawlessly filled the holes in the contemporary understanding of the Dream Realm and its history. Many things had never quite fit together before—but now, Julius saw that it was because the puzzle had been missing pieces. Nobody provided these pieces, and so...

”It all makes sense!”

He felt as if he had been blind all his life, and now finally gained sight.

That was the best feeling in the world... the thing that had drawn him to science and academic work, to begin with.

“Wonderful, simply wonderful...”

Not too long ago, Julius had felt like an old man. But now, suddenly, he felt like a little kid again.

The Exploration Report on Everything was broadly divided into three parts. The first dealt with the cosmology of the Dream Realm, exploring the relationship between the Void and the Flame, and therefore the war between the Void Creatures and the gods born of Desire. It explained how the universal laws of existence had been created, and how the gods used them to contain the Void.

While imprisoning one of their own... the [unknown]... with it.

The second part was dedicated to the Unknown and his seven children—the daemons.

Daemons had always been the strangest and most mysterious deities among the lesser pantheon, so learning that they were fragments of a god’s shattered soul was quite a revelation... one that provided a perfect explanation for why they seemed to have appeared out of nowhere, and why they had been feared by the gods. ‘Forbidden knowledge?’ ŗΆℕộ𐌱ÊṦ

Nobody explained in detail why most information about the seventh god was censored in his exploration report. According to him, the world denied the existence of the Unknown, as willed by the gods, and no knowledge of the seventh god’s identity could be retained by ordinary people. In worst cases, beholding the forbidden truth could even be a danger in and of itself.

That said... the uncensored version of the Exploration Report on Everything existed, as well. It was just that gaining access to it required passing a mysterious trial.

Julius did not know what the trial was, since that knowledge was shrouded in shadows—discovering it was a test in and of itself. So, only those who were powerful, persistent, determined, and possessed an inquisitive mind would gain the right to know the full truth.

One thing Julius did know, however, was that the Exploration Report on Everything would become a motivation to walk the Path of Ascension for some people—there weren’t many of them, but each one was special. They were the kind of people who did not care for glory and were indifferent to the promise of power, but were burning with curiosity and the desire to solve the mysteries of the world.

To those who burned with the spirit of exploration, the report written by Nobody would become the Holy Grail.

‘How... exciting!”

At that moment, Julius recalled a particular student, for some reason. His memory was quite vague, enough so that he could not even remember their face or name, but that student would have definitely asked something like “what the hell is a Holy Grail?” if they heard this.

Nevertheless, they were the exact type of person who would endeavor to become Transcendent simply to get their hands on the uncensored version of the Exploration Report on Everything.

In fact, if Julius was not too old to spend months on end in places without good plumbing, he would have been tempted to challenge a Nightmare or two himself.

In any case, the second part of the exploration report described the origin of daemons, went into detail about the trials and tribulations each of them had endured, and concluded with the explanation of how the Doom War began—as well as describing the role a mysterious group as the Nine had played in fanning the flames of the conflict between the daemons and the gods.

It was one startling revelation after another. A true paradise for a researcher, and a bottomless well of shocking new truths. And then, there was the third part...

Which was even more earth-shattering than the previous two.

Julius actually dropped Nobody’s journal when he read the first sentence.

It was quite a provocative statement, indeed.

[The Nightmare Spell is a lullaby that Weaver sang to tame the Unknown.]

Picking up the Exploration Report with trembling hands, Julius continued to read as if possessed.

”No, it can’t be... can it? The Spell! This is the explanation of the Nightmare Spell!”

The third part of the Exploration Report on Everything was dedicated to Weaver, the Demon of Fate, and the Nightmare Spell they had created... to lull the Unknown to sleep and forge new gods to slay him.

This was the most shocking collection of revelations written down by Nobody, by far. The Nightmare Spell was the closest thing people had to a god—it governed all of the world, deciding fates as it saw fit.

It was also the greatest secret in the world. But not anymore.

”This... this is...”

Utterly speechless, Julius closed the leather journal and stared at its cover in stunned silence.

The bold title did not seem so bold anymore.

”The Exploration Report on Everything”

A weak smile appeared on his face.

That Nobody... they weren’t kidding.