Guided by the white datura, Leomon surged forward like a storm front, breaking into a full sprint.
Dark clung tight to the thick arm it had deliberately raised, eyes bright with excitement as he watched torch after torch flare to life up ahead.
The road kept opening before them, firelight streaming past on both sides.
The white datura could no longer keep pace with Leomon's stride; dragged along behind, the blossoms stretched into a single tail of light.
But Leomon seemed to have caught the scent of their destination already, and pressed on, unwavering.
Then, all at once, it halted.
Momentum threw Dark forward. He pitched hard and only barely kept from tumbling off.
And in the next moment, he saw a temple that felt faintly familiar.
He recognized it as a temple at first glance, yet it was not quite the same as the Temple of the Moon he had seen before.
The most obvious difference was the scale.
The Temple of the Moon had been mysterious, but no larger than a lecture hall. Inside there had been nothing but two stone pillars, an altar, and that single statue of the goddess.
This temple, by its exterior alone, gave off a far grander impression.
Drifting clouds and strange beasts were carved across its walls, and the front entrance was a pair of brilliant golden doors: not merely imposing, but resplendent.
And Dark remembered clearly that the little Temple of the Moon had possessed no door at all.
The golden doors before him stood half open, leaving only a narrow gap.
The aura of the Moon God statue was plainly leaking out through it.
When Leomon skidded to a stop, the white datura released by the "Flower Cards" finally floated onward, drifting one blossom at a time into that gap.
Watching the flowers vanish through the crack, Dark narrowed his eyes.
"Leomon, stay on guard!"
In theory, there should be no second person anywhere in this secret passage besides himself.
But now that a temple had appeared, no one could say what might come bursting out of the passage.
It could be another Vlad. It could just as easily be a Frieza.
First things first: confirm who had pushed the door open.
…
Dark reached out, drew "Honedge (Weapon Form)" from his card pouch, summoned the "Holy Sword" straight out of it, and handed the blade to Leomon.
Then he leapt down from Leomon's shoulder and walked beside it, the "Magic Guide Scribe" in hand.
Only when they drew near the entrance did he stop, ordering Leomon to scout ahead.
Leomon stepped forward with great caution, pressed a hand against one of the golden doors, and pushed with just enough force to widen the gap enough for a person to pass.
A wave of stale, musty air rolled out over them.
Its expression never changed. It pushed again, harder, swinging the entire right-hand door wide open.
In that instant the temple's interior came into full view.
Dark's eyes went wide.
There was not a soul inside the hall. Four stone pillars stood at the center, each one carved with the familiar image of a dancing divine maiden.
And between those four pillars rose an altar, taller and more magnificent than the last.
The familiar statue of the goddess stood upon it, poised and graceful as a living woman.
As the door swung open, the braziers atop the four pillars kindled on their own. Firelight filled the whole temple, rendering every fine detail of the goddess visible.
It was much as he remembered: carved from white jade with exquisite craft, not a speck of dust anywhere on it.
The pose was slightly different. No longer the praying maiden with hands clasped to her breast and eyes shut tight, but a figure with arms lifted high, her expression stern and severe.
And balanced on that upraised palm was a bronze mirror, round as the full moon.
Firelight from all four sides fell upon the mirror, yet not a glimmer reflected back. It was as though every ray were swallowed whole, leaving the surface pitch black.
"This statue…"
Watching from a distance, Dark felt that something about it was different.
He kept surveying the surroundings carefully, and once certain no one else was present, he ordered DemiDevimon to check behind the altar.
This temple was larger than the last one, but its layout was still plain at a glance; the space behind the altar was the only place anyone could hide.
Yet after a full circuit, DemiDevimon turned up no trace of any other person or monster.
- Nobody's hiding.
But if nobody was hiding, then who had opened the temple doors and let the aura leak out?
Dark's gaze settled slowly on the statue's face.
The statue was alive.
Ever since the last incident, Dark had known that such a statue was no dead thing.
The whole reason that incident had happened came down to one lingering fragment of will that had always dwelled inside the statue of the Moon Goddess.
It was that fragment which had driven the statue, on pure instinct, to pursue resurrection: manipulating and using Attract on students, until Professor Didi spotted his opening, and everything that followed unfolded from there.
This statue before him had, in all likelihood, arisen precisely because the other one had been destroyed.
It bore no cracks at all. It needed no repair. It had been whole from the very start.
As if all it required was one special Ritual to come back to life.
"Is this bait?"
"Leaving the door cracked on purpose so the aura leaks out and draws the fish in."
"And in the end it hooked a little fish like me?"
Dark studied the fine details of the statue's face.
He wasn't worried about being "Attracted" by it the way the Seafood Cult had been.
And until the statue truly came alive, he knew he was safe.
A statue holding nothing but a sliver of lingering will, capable of only the smallest tricks: in his eyes, that was the real fish. The kind already scaled and gutted and laid out on the cutting board.
Just as he was thinking it, a thread of flowing light stirred within the statue's eyes, which had never been closed to begin with.
Then a haze welled up, a pink mist rising gradually from the altar beneath its feet.
Dark's eyes flickered, and he stepped into the temple entirely unaffected.
Walking through that pink mist felt like coming home. Not the least discomfort; if anything, the ease of a fish returned to water.
If he hadn't been worried it would drive his "Lust" up, Dark might have laid right down and taken a mist sauna.
Within moments he had crossed the mist to stand before the statue.
He looked up again at the face of this Moon Goddess.
Her features hadn't shifted so much as a hair, and yet somehow they gave the impression of acute embarrassment. Even the thread of light circling in her eyes had begun to stutter.
Dark considered for a moment, then said two soft words to the statue: "Moon God?"
…
She was born of the moon, and descended upon the earth.
She was both God of the Moon and Mother Goddess of the Earth.
She presided over the propagation of all living things, and was never sparing with the bounty of the land.
She was the most beautiful of goddesses, sovereign of the night.
Her beauty was eternal.
She was holy, she was noble, and she held dominion over abundance, fertility, and love.
…
Among the old gods who once ruled over all worlds, the Moon God had been one of a kind.
But what hid inside the Moon God statue now was only a remnant soul, shattered past any further shattering.
Dark neither revered her excessively nor scorned her excessively. He simply regarded her as ordinary.
After that soft call of his, the temple lay quiet for a long while.
The surging mist crept away like an ebbing tide, but the divine light turning in the statue's eyes only grew more brilliant.
A voice emerged from her lips, melodious and otherworldly.
"Who are you?"
…
Which inevitably called to mind the three classic questions: who are you, where are you, what do you want to do?
And then the answers surfaced in his head all by themselves: I'm me, I'm here, and what I want to do is you.
…
Dark suppressed the urge to say it out loud and enunciated clearly instead: "Someone fated to be here."
Fate is a wondrous thing, beyond words.
If "Mr. Starfish" had been the fated one of the previous Moon God statue,
then Dark Demon, the first to find this Moon God statue in the endlessly vast secret passage, was without question the fated one of this statue.
He was already beginning to sense the enormous store of "Lust" accumulated inside it.
The "Lust" in the Moon God statue lacked some particular component, which meant that in terms of quality it fell short even of Dark's own "Lust."
But it made up for that in sheer volume.
By Dark's rough estimate, this statue held at least a hundred points of "Lust." Even converted at a three-to-one ratio, that was equivalent to more than thirty points of his own.
Enough that, if force-fed into DemiDevimon, it could push it into evolving into "LadyDevimon."
If Dark had access to a higher-grade Forging array, he might have been able to produce a "Lust IV - Moon" right here on the spot.
Even if a Moon God version of a [Major Sin Card] would send a Magic Guide Spirit out of control, having an ace like that in reserve, capable of flipping a situation at the critical moment, would still be excellent.
Unfortunately, Dark had yet to so much as touch the threshold of the dedicated Forging array for "Major Sin IV."
And since he couldn't produce a "Lust IV - Moon," the Moon God's "Lust" held little meaning for him.
What he had come here for, in the end, was the "lingering will" inside the statue.
Following the traditional virtue of courtesy before force, Dark had no desire to start swinging if talking could settle matters.
So he held himself in check with great discipline.
…
The two of them weren't conversing in the same language.
It was an exchange conducted on the level of spirit and consciousness.
Having received an answer to her first question, the Moon Goddess fell silent again.
Dark missed nothing. "And who are you?" he asked at once.
The Moon Goddess spoke again, a tremor entering her voice: "I am the God of the Moon, and the Mother Goddess of the Earth!"
Dark smiled faintly. "Strip away the divine office. What's left of you?"
The Moon Goddess went silent once more.
Light flickered restlessly in the statue's eyes, as though signaling that she was racking her mind for an answer.
Dark was in no hurry. He simply waited, patient as anything.
But the Moon Goddess never answered.
That one simple question seemed to have stumped her completely.
So kindhearted Dark Demon switched to another: "Would you like to know the meaning of your own existence?"
This time, after a long pause, she did respond: "There is no need. The meaning of my existence is to reclaim my root divinity."
Convoluted phrasing, but she meant resurrection, didn't she?
Just as he'd thought. Like a living creature pursuing reproduction, it was pure instinct.
Turning that over, Dark went on: "Has it ever occurred to you that once you've reclaimed your root divinity, you will no longer be you?"
In the end she was only a single strand of surviving soul, and her capacity for thought was clearly limited.
After wringing her mind dry, she managed one sentence: "Why is that?"
Dark explained patiently. "You call yourself the God of the Moon, yet apart from the shell of the divine office, you don't even have a true name. So the office is nothing but your surface. You're only a sliver of consciousness spun off by a statue. You are the statue, not the god."
The Moon Goddess choked, as though everything she had ever known had just been overturned. "I am the statue?" she said, aghast.
Dark lifted a hand and pointed at that lifelike carving, his tone flat with the obviousness of it. "If you're not the statue, are you telling me you're actually the god?"
"No, I am a god!" the Moon Goddess retorted on reflex.
"No," Dark said quietly, "you're nothing but a consciousness a statue gave birth to. Beyond the outward appearance labeled 'Moon God,' there's nothing to you at all. And the moment you reclaim your root divinity is the moment your own will gets swallowed by the true will that belongs to the Moon God."
"You lie!" Her voice shook harder now.
"Why would I lie?" Dark said, pitying. "What would lying gain me? You're merely the self-awareness produced by one measly statue. Until I laid it bare, you spent all your time inside a false, lovely dream about becoming the Moon God, never realizing you're nothing but the tool of the Moon God's resurrection."
Moon Goddess: "No, I'm not!"
Dark nodded. "That's right. You're not a god. You're a carving."
Moon Goddess: "No, I'm not a carving! I am a god!"
"Do you truly believe you're a god?" Dark asked, curious. "Then where is your divinity? Your divine rank? Your divine authority?"
Her voice turned noticeably weak. "That is only because I am in my most enfeebled state…"
Dark: "So enfeebled you turned into a carving?"
Moon Goddess: "…"
…
The corners of Dark's mouth curled up. He turned away, leaving the Moon God's lingering will and its total ignorance of its own nature behind, and strolled through the magnificent temple.
This temple was far more splendid than the last. A band of murals ran around the hall, beginning at the left of the main door and ending at the right.
At a glance he saw farmwives steeped in the joy of harvest, a shepherd entwined among his flock of sheep, an infant wailing beneath the bright moon…
After examining it carefully, Dark called over the "Magic Guide Scribe" to record it all.
This long mural reminded him of the El Dorado mural he had obtained together with Emma.
If he could decipher this one, perhaps there was another harvest waiting.
Once he'd made a full circuit, he returned to the base of the statue and gazed up at it, unhurried. Not a flicker of movement remained in it now.
As far as he was concerned, this statue was utterly harmless.
As for whether that sliver of the Moon Goddess's lingering will had been spawned by the carving, or was a remnant soul left behind by the real Moon God: neither mattered in the slightest.
"You wouldn't mind a change of accommodations, would you?" Dark said casually.
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