"Do you want to understand me?"
"Do you want to take part?"
"If you… can satisfy me!"
For some reason, those questions appeared without warning, bypassing his eardrums. Like thick fog, they silently spread through Shane's heart.
The voices carried no rise or fall of tone, yet they pierced straight into the depths of a person's mind.
As he stared at the ancient images constantly shifting across the obsidian mirror, his desire to uncover the other party's true name intertwined with his intense curiosity toward that savage vision. For a brief instant, Shane's reason loosened.
"Fine!"
Almost instinctively, an affirmative thought rose in his heart.
"Then the contract is established."
The moment the agreement was sealed, that empty inquiry gained substance.
It was a man's voice—low, hoarse, and tinged with pleasure.
At the same time the words fell, the smoke within the obsidian mirror exploded outward.
The images that had been confined within the frame expanded wildly in a completely unreasonable manner, shooting into the sky and echoing the cold "black sun" above.
Heaven and earth overturned in that instant.
The surrounding space twisted like melting wax.
Shane felt the ground vanish beneath his feet, and an intense sense of weightlessness seized his organs.
An irresistible, mighty force dragged him into that flowing savage light and shadow.
From here on, he was no longer a mere observer. He became a firsthand witness to the birth and death of this world. He even…
became the "creator" who ruled over it all.
…
The shift in perspective brought an unparalleled tearing sensation.
When his consciousness stabilized again, Shane found himself high above the dome of the sky—or rather, he had "become" the black sun hanging in the heavens.
Looking down upon the earth, he saw a crude, primitive, muddy world that had only just struggled free from chaos.
In accordance with his will, the earth trembled. Soil and stone rose from the ground, gathering and merging.
He personally witnessed the first lives being created in that desolate land.
They were giants with bodies enormous as mountains.
To them, uprooting towering trees was no different from plucking weeds. With every step they took, the earth shook violently.
And yet, these creations, who possessed such destructive power, had a docile nature completely at odds with their appearance.
They did not hunt living creatures. They fed only on the fruits of great trees, underground tubers, and coarse acorns.
This was the dawn of the First Sun.
It was the beginning.
Time lost all measure in Shane's senses. In a blur, countless enormous figures below piled up towering stone platforms.
They prostrated themselves in the mud and worshiped him in the clouds.
With rough voices, they sang ancient hymns, praying to the god who had given them life, begging for protection and favorable weather.
But Shane, who was at the core of the black sun, did not feel even the slightest ripple in his heart.
There was no creator's pity, nor any joy at being revered by mortal things.
He merely sat high above the dome of heaven, watching the reproduction and decline of all things below with an absolutely fair yet utterly cold gaze.
This stagnant, long, and unchanging reign lasted for more than six hundred years.
Until that day.
At the end of the sky, a glaring light appeared—utterly out of place.
It was an enormous stone axe carrying endless divine radiance and flame.
With a force that could crush all obstacles, it struck precisely into the center of the black sun.
Boom!!!
A terrifying shockwave beyond description swept across the entire world in an instant.
The black sun fell from the sky.
Wrapped in black fire, the fallen god plunged down into the boundless deep sea.
The seawater boiled in a single instant, sending up dense mist that blotted out the sky.
The world, which had only ever known dim yellow twilight, was plunged into absolute darkness and lightless silence with the black sun's fall.
In his final glimpse before sinking into the deep sea, Shane saw a colossal serpent with magnificent wings rise in spirals from the light.
Carrying a raging wind, it became the second sun, radiating scorching brilliance.
Anger, jealousy, and madness that sought to destroy everything.
At the bottom of the endless dark sea, the wrath of a god condensed into something tangible.
Shane felt his body warping, transforming into a gigantic jaguar that could prop up heaven and earth, about to crawl out from the boiling sea, roar at the sky, and tear everything apart.
However, the soul of a mortal could not possibly bear such divine might.
This time, Shane clearly felt it.
His flesh dissolved in the boiling water. His bones were crushed inch by inch into powder by the immense water pressure.
Together with the roar that never escaped his throat, his soul met total annihilation in that deep sea.
…
"Cough! Cough, cough, cough!"
His lungs spasmed violently like bellows. Shane shot upright, greedily gasping mouthfuls of cold air.
His fingers dug deep into the frozen rock beneath him.
He was back.
Back on the barren mountain near Magnolia.
Cold sweat had already soaked through his clothes, making them stick to his back like shed snake skin.
"I… didn't die?"
Shane's fingers were still trembling. He pressed hard against his carotid artery, feeling the living pulse there.
Before this, whenever he first summoned a Heroic Spirit, he had always existed only as a consciousness, watching the other party's experiences as an observer.
But this time, he had been dragged in with his real physical body!
The moment the black sun fell into the sea, he had clearly felt the death of both his body and soul.
Dangerous.
Terrifying.
Overwhelming fear lingered in his heart.
And what confused Shane even more was—
"Why am I unharmed right now?"
By all rights, he absolutely should not be alive!
Had some unknown existence protected him at the final moment?
Shane forced himself to breathe deeply, trying to recall the six-hundred-year experience inside the mirror.
However, those grand memories that should have been carved into his bones now felt like the remnants of a morning dream.
They seemed profound, but when he truly tried to piece together the details, he found his mind was unbearably blurry.
What he could remember were only broken fragments—the falling black sun, the descending stone axe, and the winged serpent.
Just as Shane stood there in a daze, full of confusion—
"Hiss—"
A sharp burning sensation suddenly came from his right hand.
He instinctively opened his palm and saw that at some point, a strange pattern had appeared along the lines of his skin.
It was a ring-shaped sun totem, formed from three crude black strokes connected end to end.
The moment his eyes touched the pattern, a flash of understanding shot into his brain like electricity.
Shane understood the meaning of this brand.
It was proof of the agreement he had made with "that existence" in the vision.
That god had opened to him the old glory and destruction of being the "First Sun."
And as equivalent exchange, Shane had to allow him to witness three struggles in the present world that would leave him "satisfied."
"Struggles, huh…"
Shane stared at the black sun on his palm, his expression ugly as he rubbed his temple.
"That really does fit this god's awful personality…"
The clues given by this vision could no longer be called obvious. The answer might as well have been pasted directly onto his forehead.
Even the feathered serpent god who struck down the black sun and ruled the Second Sun had appeared. If he still couldn't guess the other party's true name after that…
then all those miserable days of studying in his past life really would have gone straight into a dog's stomach.
The feathered serpent god.
First appearing in Olmec civilization, later revered by the Aztecs as Quetzalcoatl, and known in Maya mythology as Kukulkan.
And before the feathered serpent rose into the sky, the god who ruled the First Sun was none other than the being called Tezcatlipoca.
Also known as the Smoking Mirror.
Leaving aside the ridiculous myth in which Quetzalcoatl, jealous that Tezcatlipoca's light was not bright enough, knocked him from the sky, after which Tezcatlipoca flew into a rage, turned into a jaguar, devoured his own creations, and ended the First Sun—
Tezcatlipoca, in the entire Mesoamerican mythological system, was an existence truly standing at the summit.
His authorities were broad enough to inspire despair.
They included, but were not limited to:
battle and sorcery, beauty and discord, night and domination, storms and plague, crime and law, fortune and misfortune…
He was the "omnipotent god," presiding over all opposing positive and negative aspects, as well as the contradictions born from them.
Shane lowered his head and looked at his palm, his heart filled with mixed emotions.
He never would have expected that merely diving seven points deep into the pool would let him fish out a monster of such absurd rank.
This was like a beggar clutching two copper coins going to a casino to try his luck, not only hitting the jackpot, but then having the dealer smile and hand him the key to the entire nation's treasury!
This was no longer a surprise.
This was a fright.
And aside from being powerful beyond reason, this chief god was most famous for his capricious, unfathomable, terrible personality, as well as…
his extreme enthusiasm for granting mortals cruel trials worse than death.
The agreement made in the vision just now was absolutely not some casual joke.
Because in every myth and legend, Tezcatlipoca would never break an agreement—and naturally, he demanded that those contracted with him risk their lives to fulfill it.
Shane gently rubbed the burning black brand in his palm with his thumb.
A struggle that could satisfy this supreme god who fed on "struggle and contradiction"—just how high was that threshold supposed to be?
Surely he wouldn't really be forced to blow up the world of Earth Land?
That would indeed fit the rumors about the Smoking Mirror's style.
But even if Edolas were reluctantly counted too, that would only make two worlds in total. How was he supposed to scrape together "three" struggles?
It shouldn't be that kind of requirement… right? Shane prayed dryly in his heart.
Thinking back to the scene on the altar, the other party had not even used some underhanded external trick. He had merely guided Shane to follow his own heart, and Shane had naturally handed over that "Fine."
"As the depth of the pool increases, the power of these higher beings has grown large enough to interfere with the vision images of their own pasts…"
Shane clenched his teeth, a chill running down his back.
"In other words, from now on, even the initial vision when summoning a Heroic Spirit is no longer absolutely safe."
Annoyed and unsettled, he simply moved his thoughts and manifested the culprit from the Book of Heroic Spirits.
Light flashed, and a dark golden card, with the same pattern as Jack the Ripper's on the back, slowly floated into his palm.
"The class is actually Assassin?"
Looking at the iconic skull and dagger pattern on the card, Shane couldn't help grumbling inwardly.
Getting knocked down by his own little sister's axe, then throwing a tantrum, transforming into a jaguar, and eating his own creations to vent his anger—no matter how you looked at it, that chaotic style was much more suited to Berserker, wasn't it?
Still, complaints were complaints.
Shane slapped his own cheeks hard, forcing himself to calm down.
No matter how deadly the contract was, at least now he had fully grasped the true name of this omnipotent chief god.
The most urgent thing was naturally to cash in this power first.
Shane took a breath of cool air, and his eyes gradually settled.
He adjusted his mindset and prepared to recite the true name, just as he had done when unlocking Heroic Spirits before.
"Tezca—"
However, the instant he optimistically opened his mouth and uttered the first syllable—
Thump!
It was as if his heart had been seized by an invisible giant hand.
An indescribable terror, enough to freeze his soul, swept through his entire body without warning.
The black sun pattern in his palm instantly became scorching hot, like a branding iron. Searing pain climbed along his blood vessels, rushing straight toward his heart.
His instincts screamed a frantic warning.
It was as if the moment he dared say that name in full, this black fire would burn him from the inside out into a handful of ash.
"Guh…"
Shane forcibly swallowed the remaining syllables back down, gasping heavily.
In the unseen depths of fate, an intense understanding exploded in his mind.
Of course he could recklessly shout that name.
But the price was… his life would no longer be preserved.
"Fuck…"
Shane's pupils trembled violently.
He finally understood completely.
In the vision just now, there had been no such thing as "unharmed"!
In that six-hundred-year dream, when the black sun fell into the deep sea after being struck down by the feathered serpent god's stone axe…
his body and soul had truly, completely, and undeniably "died" once!
The only reason this body could still breathe, and the only reason he could still think on this barren mountain…
was because Tezcatlipoca had borrowed the authority of a death god to reassemble and preserve his body and soul.
And the reason the god had gone to such lengths was…
"Because my contract still isn't complete?" Shane's mouth went dry.
Thinking carefully, for a mortal like him to absorb more than six hundred years of time in an instant was almost impossible.
No wonder those memories had shattered like the remnants of a dream. Tezcatlipoca had probably deliberately set up a "protective mechanism" so Shane's soul wouldn't burst apart a second time.
"What thoughtful little 'divine consideration'!"
Shane rubbed his face hard, unsure whether he should laugh or cry.
There were only two options in front of him now.
One was to forcefully call out Tezcatlipoca's true name and gamble that the Class Card had inherited the other party's death god authority.
But there was a problem with that.
The abilities reproduced by a Class Card were not the full power of the original. They only possessed a portion.
In other words, there was a chance he would be unable to preserve his own body.
Although the probability was small, with his life on the line, he did not dare gamble.
"So that means… I can only follow the contract I made?"
Shane sighed. The other party refusing to let him call the name clearly meant the god believed he was trying to avoid the agreement.
Tezcatlipoca was a cruel god, but also a generous one.
As long as the contractor fulfilled the agreement, he had never been stingy with rewards.