Some quick testing revealed that moving the statues around was likely to be the answer, but no matter how much the trio stared at the carvings on the door, they did not get it. Saria came to the conclusion that they were probably missing some relevant knowledge. That left them with two solutions, to either break the door, or brute force the locking mechanism.

“There are fourteen statues, so that’s only like… 87 million possible configurations,” Saria estimated.

“I can go through them pretty fast relocating the statues with my eye but that would still take forever,” Sofia said, storing the statues one by one and placing them back on the fourteen pedestals in a different order.

“That’s our best bet, though. My guess is the original statues had been destroyed, so ‘the blue sculptor’ recreated or at least restored them, and that’s what we have here. If said blue sculptor was that Exidian though, it’s likely he was higher level than we are. If he still needed the statues to unlock this, I think our chances of breaking in are slim.”

“There has to be a way… Hmm… But, you know, putting the door aside for a second… Something has been bothering me.”

“The chronology of the place?” Saria guessed.

“Can’t hide anything from you… The dead god we’re after can’t have been here for too long. If it was, the ancient humans could have never settled down here.”

“Yeah I realized that some time ago after I mentioned sightseeing,” Saria confirmed, “The god you’re after must be relatively fresh, can’t be from the lost epoch, at least. And definitely not the cursed thing that tree is feeding on.”

“Maybe we should have brought Cin along…”

“Nah,” Saria said with a shrug, “The chat probably wouldn’t be of much help, you know how they are. So what do we do? There’s a chance something that killed a god’s still hiding in there.”

“The idea didn’t seem to stop you until now since you didn’t even tell me about it,” Sofia deadpanned.

“Gald we’re on the same page! Now then…”

“Pesle is solve!” Pestle called out from a corner of the room.

In a confusing flurry of words, Pestle explained that she could feel what she thought was parts of the locking mechanism behind the walls, because it was made of midenicite and reacted with her aura. She could feel a line of seven ‘thing’, with a single one being wrongly aligned with the rest.

Removing the statues from that side of the room one by one, the thing aligned itself back when the Sunless amalgam was taken off of its pedestal.

“This one is correct then,” Saria noted, “Let’s get this door opened!”

With only thirteen statues to test, it wasn’t long before Pestle warned the sisters they had managed to move another midenicite chunk inside of the locking mechanism. The rest of the combination was quickly solved from there, Pestle moving to the opposite corner after one side of the room was solved to work on the other.

A few minutes later, the last of the grotesque Sunless statues found its place, and the doors slowly swung open without a sound. Behind them, Sofia could feel and see nothing but complete and utter darkness.

“Can you see anything?” she asked Saria.

“Not at all, no. Maybe Pestle can?”

“No see,” Pestle denied.

“It’s the second time I encounter something like that in this forest… I may have just the thing we need; though. Give me a second… I’m sure I still have it around here somewhere… Yes! Here it is! See, this is why I hoard items,” Sofia proudly declared, a small candle holder in hand, a half-melted candle on it burning with an orange flame.

“Right! Cin told me about that. It’s from when you had to burn a library, right?”

“Yeah… I still have a book from back then I haven’t had time to properly finish… But anyway, if I just send a little mana into the candle, it should light up white. Just like that. I haven’t found a darkness that couldn’t pierce through so far.”

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“Let’s try.”

Sofia made a bone hand to hold the candle with, and held it up in the middle of the group with her aura. They slowly advanced toward the black veil, weapons at the ready.

The strange darkness recoiled at the approach of the flame. The light did not spread very far, but a small bubble of warm candlelight was created around the trio as they engulfed themselves into the space beyond the doors.

The floor here… Is made of the deep blackstone. I still can’t feel anything past the light’s radius… This is dangerous…

“I’ll take the lead,” Sofia whispered, “Since I have the philosopher’s.”

Saria silently nodded, while Pestle hovered above the candle’s flame, looking around as if trying to pierce the darkness with her gaze.

Just to see what she was working with, Sofia sent a bone tendril to probe into the darkness. Perhaps unsurprisingly, she couldn’t feel the part that left the candlelight anymore, but when she pulled it back, it was still intact.

So it’s not like the darkness itself is dangerous it seems like. Or not to bones, at least…

On the other hand, the graveyard Nymphs seemed unable to manifest at all beyond the doors.

The group walked forward for what felt like a hundred meters, seeing nothing but the perfectly flat blackstone floor, before they found a wall. It was still made of blocks of blackstone, but bore a few sculpted ornaments that were hard to understand. They seemed to be purely aesthetic geometric forms meant to decorate rather than having any meaning. Following along the wall, they found a window.

A window?!

It was a narrow and likely tall stained glass window in tones of gray and tarnished gold, since Sofia could only see the very bottom of it, she had no way to tell what it depicted.

“I’ll raise the candle a bit,” she whispered to the other two.

The candle floated up as much as Sofia could before it would put the group’s feet inside of the darkness, which allowed them to observe more of the stained glass, and see that there was another one like it further to the left.

“Some guy in armor, it seems,” Saria said, “I wonder if he’s supposed to be human or Sunless.”

“What surprises me more is what I feel on the other side,” Sofia said, “Doesn’t it feel like the corner of a table with stuff on it?”

“Since it’s stained glass… I’m guessing an altar,” Saria said, “That would make this the back wall of a church.”

“... No wonder we found nothing for a hundred meters straight… That must have been the middle of a street…”

“Curious that it takes us to the back of the church, though, usually the main street would lead to the entrance.”

“Then maybe we’re at the back of the town… Unless I have a wrong read on this and this is just an underground church in the middle of an empty cavern. That’s my second time finding an abandoned church plunged in strange darkness under this forest…”

“Maybe this region is just very well suited to underground construction projects,” Saria joked, “Let’s backtrack a bit. We’ll know right away if this is a city or a lone church.”

The group did just that, and straying from the straight path they had followed almost immediately led them to the discovery that this was, in fact, an entire underground city. Sofia abruptly stopped the two others when they neared the door of the first house they discovered.

“Something moved inside,” she whispered.

The trio prepared their weapons and spells, they all felt it, something was behind the door. There was a click, and the door opened inwards.

Sofia almost instinctively attacked, but as nothing happened, she held back.

A Sunless observed the group from inside the house. Their unstable shape was only vaguely human, a single cross-shaped red ‘eye’ in the center of their head. It was unlike the one of every Sunless Sofia had seen until now, which was always white. Judging from the mana it had, Sofia felt that it was probably around level 200, but it was difficult to tell.

After a moment of tension, the Sunless slid back into the darkness of its home, leaving the door open.

What… Is it expecting us to follow? Is it going to like… Call the guards? Should we escape right now?

It was clear that similar questions were going through Saria’s mind, when just three seconds later, the Sunless came back. It was holding out three tiny red pearls in the palm of a grotesquely large six-fingered hand.

Does it want us to take that?

The Sunless just wordlessly held out the pearls, not taking a step out of his home.

Wary of a trap, Sofia passed her scepter to her left hand, and very slowly held out her right arm. The Sunless did not react. She carefully grabbed the pearls, almost expecting the black hand to close around her wrist, but it did not. Once she had the pearls in hand, the Sunless stepped back into the darkness, and the door was silently shut from inside.

What the fuck…

Saria identified the pearls and shared the description before Sofia could even turn around.

[Bead of Dawn]:

Allows one to see and be seen.

Consuming three beads will lead to irremediable consequences.