The Moon Goddess gave no answer.
Dark did not ask again.
He drew "Meowth" out of his card pouch and summoned it on the spot.
"Meow!"
Meowth emerged from the summoning circle with a thread of excitement in its voice.
Dark pointed at the statue and asked quietly, "Well? Any interest in this statue?"
"Meow?"
Puzzlement crossed Meowth's face, and the excitement in its eyes drained away fast.
It had assumed this summons was its chance to show off the dignity of its evolved form. Instead it had been called out to look at a statue?
What was so great about a lump of carved stone?
Its little wooden figures were better than this!
"Meow meow meow."
Meowth shook its head in flat refusal.
"No good?"
Disappointment tugged at Dark.
Still, Meowth was the embodiment of "Greed," not of "Lust." Having no interest in a statue of the Moon Goddess was perfectly natural for it.
But if Meowth couldn't summon any passion for this statue, the plan to rely on it for the carving died right there.
"Looks like I'm doing it myself."
Dark drew a light breath. He left Meowth out rather than recalling it, and pulled the chunk of "Living Metal" from his pack.
Living Metal was a pseudo-living metal, something poised between creature and mineral, exceptionally strange and exceptionally rare.
Dark had planned out its use seriously from the very beginning, and had been working toward that plan ever since.
Obtaining the gate card, entering the secret passage, searching for the temple, hunting down the statue of the Moon Goddess-all of it had been for the sake of Forging this piece of Living Metal into a very particular armament!
In his memories there existed a Digital Armament called the "Warrior Spirit," the inherited souls of the ten Digimon known as the Ten Legendary Warriors.
A human or a Digimon who absorbed a "Warrior Spirit" could evolve into one of the legendary Ten Legendary Warriors of myth.
"Warrior Spirits" came in two forms, "Human" and "Beast," and certain Human and Beast forms could even be joined into one, Fusion-evolving into a Mega-level Digimon!
Once Dark had recalled all that, the idea took shape: use this "Living Metal" to forge a "Warrior Spirit" of his own.
But there was no way for him to obtain the souls of the Ten Legendary Warriors, so he had turned his attention to the "Moon Goddess" instead!
Pour the lingering soul of the "Moon Goddess" into the "Living Metal," then Forge it with the "Tri-Armed Armament Transmutation Method"-perhaps that would yield an armament similar to a "Warrior Spirit."
It was, by any measure, an extraordinarily bold idea.
Anyone else, even knowing full well that another Moon God statue lay hidden inside the secret passage, would have struggled to entertain such a blasphemous thought.
He had no such qualms. His only worry was whether this "armament Forging" would succeed, and how good the final product would turn out to be.
After all, what he was about to use was the "lingering soul of the Moon God," not "the souls of the Ten Legendary Warriors."
With the souls of the Ten Legendary Warriors, he felt that given the bias his Magic Guide Card Forging tended to show, he could most likely have aimed straight at a "Warrior Spirit."
Using this "lingering soul of the Moon God," though-that was much harder to say.
Still, that very "unknown" element of Magical Transmutation was one of the sources of its surprises.
…
After taking out the "Living Metal," Dark unpacked the rest one item at a time: the carving tools he had prepared in advance, and a bottle of setting potion mixed specifically for this task.
Living Metal had no hard shell the way ordinary metal did. Its surface was comparatively soft, deforming under only a little pressure, but left alone it would slowly creep back to its original shape, rather like a memory metal.
With the dedicated setting potion, a shape altered by tools could be locked in place.
And if he made a mistake, a second potion would neutralize the setting potion's effect and restore the Living Metal's elasticity.
With those two potions supporting him, carving Living Metal became remarkably convenient.
Once everything was ready, Dark began to carve with his own hands.
He meant to shape this chunk of Living Metal into the likeness of the Moon God statue!
The hour wasn't especially late yet.
His carving skill, picked back up after a stretch without practice, had somehow taken a considerable leap forward.
Holding to the principle that fine work comes slowly, he chipped away bit by bit, and the result was already taking a respectable shape.
Meowth, who by the original plan should have been handling this part, had long since wandered off to explore the temple.
It seemed to find the murals there fascinating-in the physical sense.
A long ledge jutted out from the wall along the base of the murals, and Meowth paced back and forth on it, thoroughly delighted with itself.
…
Half an hour later, Dark looked up at the statue of the Moon Goddess, then down at the Living Metal in his hands, and a satisfied smile touched his mouth.
The pace wasn't fast, but the Living Metal already had a rough human form.
With the two potions to assist the fine detailing afterward, he might finish the whole carving before tomorrow night.
"What are you doing?"
The Moon Goddess's drifting, unanchored voice sounded at his ear again.
Dark was mildly surprised, but he answered anyway. "Building you a nest."
The Moon Goddess said, "What does that mean?"
Dark countered with a question of his own. "Don't you want a change of living quarters?"
The Moon Goddess lapsed back into silence.
Dark paid it no mind. He took a Magic Guide Card from his pouch and unfolded "[Paradise]," then had the "Magic Guide Scribe" summon out every one of the Magic Guide Spirits in a steady stream while he himself carried on with the fine carving of the Living Metal.
As the Magic Guide Spirits appeared one after another, the atmosphere inside the temple grew livelier by the minute.
They needed no signal from Dark. They lit a bonfire, set up a grill, hauled out box after box of fresh ingredients, and got tonight's barbecue underway.
Popplio struck up an Attract song from the water channel beside the bonfire, adding still more mood to the meal.
…
Time slipped by quickly.
Full and content, Dark went back to carving, and only deep into the night did he set the half-finished Living Metal down, crawl into his sleeping bag, and bed down inside the haunted house.
The Magic Guide Spirits enjoyed themselves to the fullest as well. Those who were meant to return to their Magic Guide Cards returned; the rest swarmed into the haunted house together and curled up beside Dark with their eyes shut.
Only the little Drifloon showed no trace of sleepiness. After circling the empty temple round and round, it drifted abruptly to the front of the Moon Goddess statue and began poking at her features.
All at once light shimmered in the statue's eyes, and her voice reached Drifloon's ears through a purely mental link. "You are very much like me."
"Driff-mii?"
Drifloon tilted its head, thoroughly confused.
The Moon Goddess said softly, "Some of your companions resemble me as well. But the resemblance is strongest with you."
Drifloon's eyes rolled around and around, and after a long moment-whether or not it had worked anything out-it suddenly flew forward and stuck itself to the tip of the Moon Goddess statue's nose with a soft plop.
[(づ - )づ]
The Moon Goddess was baffled by this behavior. "What is it you are doing?"
Drifloon said, "Driff-mii (huuug)-"
The Moon Goddess said, "…"
…
The night was long, and the years longer still.
This temple, this statue-perhaps they had not existed within the secret passage for very long at all.
But the lingering will of the Moon Goddess, cast into being out of the turning wheel of time, had been born inside the secret passage already in the state of having "dwelt within the statue for a thousand years."
It knew no confusion, felt no needs. Beyond the instinctive pursuit of "resurrection," there was nothing.
Never having encountered a human being, it had never learned what confusion was.
Not until Dark Demon appeared in the temple doorway did it truly open its eyes and look at the world.
And then, for the first time, it felt confusion.
"Who am I?"
"The Moon God, or the statue?"
That question had struck dead center, and it left her steeped in doubt about the meaning of her own existence.
"Pursuing resurrection"-was that a march toward death, or toward life?
Once she reclaimed her root divinity, would she still be herself?
The Moon Goddess sank back into stillness.
…
Dawn…
Dark woke from sleep, and his first move was to check his surroundings. Finding the Magic Guide Spirits gathered all around him, he let himself relax completely.
"On we go."
He called the Magic Guide Spirits over to prepare breakfast while he returned to the fine carving.
Nothing in the secret passage had shifted in the slightest.
Nor was there any threat inside the temple beyond the Moon God statue itself.
With only a single person entering, it turned out the secret passage could be this peaceful.
Dark let his mind sink gradually into the carving.
He held enormous enthusiasm for this armament Forging.
Everything from fighting for victory at the Dueling Festival onward had, in truth, been effort spent for today.
How much a person cares about something is largely decided by how much he has paid for it.
The more he pays, the harder it becomes to let go.
A day passed in the blink of an eye.
As evening drew near, Dark finally finished the carving.
With a complete model right in front of him, the difficulty had dropped considerably.
He raised the finished Living Metal alongside the Moon Goddess statue to compare them, and a satisfied smile surfaced on his face.
Aside from the color, the texture of the Living Metal was in fact very close to the statue's-touching it, he could feel a faint softness, and a distinctive warmth radiating from within, like warm jade.
All told, in terms of shaping a form, this was without question the finest work he had ever produced.
"Next: stripping this lingering soul of the Moon God out of the statue!"
For that step, too, Dark had prepared thoroughly and well in advance.
With a lingering soul like the Moon God's, one not truly bound very tightly to the statue itself, the "Soul-Sucker Spell" would pry that already loose connection further apart.
Then he would use the magic-brain dropper to extract the "Lust" stored inside the statue.
Over the course of that extraction, the Moon God's lingering soul within the statue would be dragged slowly outward.
The moment the last drop of "Lust" came out would be the moment the soul was pulled free entirely.
And even if that failed, the statue would have had all its "Lust" drained away, losing the very conditions that made it a dwelling for the Moon God's lingering soul.
At that point Dark wouldn't need to lift a finger. The lingering soul would have no choice but to slip out of the statue.
After that, all Dark had to do was summon "Drifloon"-at most evolve it into "Drifblim"-and the Moon God's lingering soul could be seized away with ease.
Stripped of its statue, that lingering soul was, to him, nothing more than a solitary wisp with no threat in it at all.
Put that lingering soul into the "Mental Furnace" as a supporting material for the "Tri-Armed Armament Forging," smelt it together with the Living Metal, and add a portion of Dark's own "Major Sin" as a modifier-then every element would be in place.
It wasn't actually difficult.
Of course, if the Moon Goddess were willing to cooperate, so much the better.
Dark ordered his thoughts a little, then stood up with the Living Metal in hand and put the question to the Moon Goddess a third time. "Well? Made up your mind? Maybe a change of living quarters isn't such a bad thing?"
Perhaps sensing that the point of no answer had passed, the Moon Goddess finally responded. "You wish me to enter that piece of metal in your hand?"
Dark grinned, showing teeth. "Small has its advantages too, doesn't it?"
The Moon Goddess said, "And what meaning would that hold for me?"
Dark said, "As for meaning-honestly, not much. Reasons like getting out to travel and see the world hardly appeal to a being such as you. But don't you want to be resurrected? So then: are you willing to try completing that resurrection by your own will?"
The Moon Goddess said, "By my own will?"
Dark gave a slight nod. "Cast off the statue and come back to life in another form. Not devoured by the consciousness of the true Moon God, but with your own consciousness as the core, remaking your divine soul!"
The Moon Goddess fell silent once more.
Dark waited quietly for her reply.
At last she spoke again. "How would that be accomplished?"
Dark smiled faintly and said, "Submit to me."
…
In that instant, the lingering soul of the Moon Goddess gave off a violent surge of fluctuation. Thick mist boiled up from the base of the statue and rolled outward in waves.
No surprise there. Even if it was only a wisp of lingering soul born from who-knew-what, the Moon Goddess was never going to choose submission over a few sentences.
Dark ignored the mist spreading around his feet. He took out the magic-brain dropper and the Thought Bottle without hesitation and began drawing the "Lust" out of the Moon Goddess statue.
A mere trickle of magic power was enough to coax the "Lust" accumulated inside the goddess statue to the surface, and a casual squeeze of the magic-brain dropper drew out a full drop.
Thirty repetitions filled the Thought Bottle to the brim.
Through all of it the Moon Goddess protested, but she quickly discovered she had no power whatsoever to resist.
Dark drew out one more drop and held the magic-brain dropper toward the little Drifloon that had floated in close.
"Driff-mii-"
The little Drifloon stuck out its tongue happily and gave a hard lick, sweeping the drop of "Lust" inside the magic-brain dropper into its mouth.
"Mii!"
(>w<)
Its eyes clamped shut as if it had bitten into a sour plum, jolted by the tartness yet utterly unable to stop.
"Tasty?" Dark asked.
Drifloon opened its eyes wide and nodded hard.
Dark laughed. "Then eat more."
A single "Lust III - Moon" required thirty points of the Moon God version of "Lust."
Forging three of them would require ninety points of the Moon God version of "Lust."
Perhaps he should make full use of everything on hand?
____
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