Above All Others

"This is Svarog's lair? I thought it'd be cold and lifeless, turns out it's pretty busy!"

March's words were heard as they stood in the middle of the Robot Settlement — a place in which vagrants can seek refuge. The people who lived here are those who have lost their homes to the Fragmentum or other reasons.

They trudged through the snow, moving with less difficulty than the vagrants. As they had superhuman physical capabilities, they were only slightly bothered by the restriction to their footing. The six of them moved at an adequate speed, directing themselves to the mansion that stood in the midst of the Robot Settlement.

Once they stood before the massive gate, they simply waited there for a few minutes…

…It never opened.

Sunny blinked before realizing something. He stepped forward, knocked on the gate, then stepped back. They waited a few more minutes…

Tilting his head at a lack of response, he wondered if nobody was home. He turned to the others, with Dan Heng in particular sending all of them a strange look.

"Any ideas?"

Immediately, March stepped forward with an air of confidence. She rolled up her sleeves, rubbing her hands to warm them up. She placed them on the gate, grunting as she attempted to open it up.

…It didn't budge. However, March didn't seem to be discouraged.

"Heh, I still have one more trick up my sleeve! Watch this!"

She took a few steps back, breathing in deeply. Suddenly, she flayed her arms out like she was sending imaginary waves against the gate.

"Open sesame~!"

…No response. Sunny clicked his tongue in annoyance.

'What a sturdy gate…'

Bronya stared at March in confusion.

"Is that a secret code or something?"

Dan Heng shook his head in exasperation.

"It's an imaginary password that children like to use... and I don't think it's going to be of much use."

Next was Seele, who summoned her scythe after making sure nobody was looking. Staring at the heavy, steel-plated wall with determination, she cocked her weapon back and unleashed a devestating attack. The sound of steel clanging against steel rang out.

…Not even a scratch.

She fervently repeated her attempts a few more times, before being dragged away by Bronya. Sunny felt like the purple-haired girl was a little more feral recently.

He looked at the gate in confusion. Why couldn't they get through it despite their numerous intricate plans?

Sampo — who had been silent this whole time — sighed, shaking his head in disappointment.

"If it was that easy to break in, I would have known the inner layout by now. Luckily for us, I've already figured out the mechanism for this gate. They don't just let any Joe Shmoe in and out of Boss Svarog's territory. I mean, if you wanna see the big cheese himself, you need 'certification'."

Sunny blinked.

"Certification?"

"Correct, only prospectors with the right certification can get in or out. These prospectors collect mechanical remnants from all over the underground, and then bring them to Svarog for him to repair. Honestly, it's a very profitable little venture. If only I'd beaten him to it... Hehe, they'd be calling me Sampo 'Boss-ki' by now..."

'How lame…'

Sunny paused due to the abhorrent scheming of Sampo's imaginary title. It was even worse than Prince of Shadows — which was pretty bad. He wasn't royalty, and the only shadow within his imaginary monarchy was his own!

"…Where do we get this 'certification'?"

Sampo grinned.

"That's simple. You see the robots over by the vagrants? They're all Svarog's scouts — every one of them is commanded to maintain order here. Apart from them keeping a watchful eye on these hooligans, another one of their duties is 'processing'. Anyone who wants to become a prospector has to pass a test from these walkin' stoplights first."

…Somehow, this seemed like more of a hassle than it was worth.

"What type of test?"

The sleazy man shrugged.

"Not a clue, I never had the urge to go on a Svarog suicide mission before. You guys are the ones that want in, why not go and ask the robots?"

Sunny resisted the urge to groan at what was surely going to become a drag.

He suddenly felt a strange shift from one of his shadows, which had been sent out to look around the area. One of them was already within the gate, having located Svarog and was idly looking around the area.

Although he wasn't manually looking through his shadow's eyes, Sunny was automatically notified whenever they found something strange. Far behind them, a flaming, specter-like Fragmentum monster seemed to have appeared, approaching the vagrant camp at terrible speeds.

He frowned, realizing that there was more work for him. He found that the creature seemed loosely similar to the Architect of Lost Preservation, but undefiled and burning rather than Fallen and freezing.

However, there was something else that caught his attention. Summoning Saint behind a decently sized outcropping of stone, he had the taciturn knight cause a small ruckus. Immediately, the battle-honed senses of the Awakened present caused them to pay attention to the direction the sound came from. Their previous conversation was left behind as their eyes looked at a suspicious outcropping.

As for Sunny, he wasn't present.

Using Shadow Step, he appeared where the flaming monster should have been. There were patches of melted snow, which were accompanied by major ruptures in the ground. The crevices that seemed to be created from a fierce battle spread across the area, and were large enough for an adult human to fall into.

…The scene confused him greatly, as he had only seen the specter-like Fragmentum monster rocketing towards the vagrant camp by using it's flames as a propulsion mechanism. Bronya had told him that creatures born from the Fragmentum tended to be territorial, so he was slightly concerned about this entity being another Fallen Terror due to the fact that it seemed completely focused on being offensive. Their similarities between the two were palpable, and only served to make his guesses more tangible.

But where did it go? Had he missed it? It had only been a split-second, so he should have been close enough to at least see it.

After a moment, Sunny froze as he looked through his shadows eyes. He turned around, finding a very comedic sight.

Wreathing its form were shifting tendrils of fire, not like the flames of ordinary destruction, but something rawer, more primal — flames that bled color where there should be none, twisting between hues that had no name. The heat did not ripple from it in waves but instead bent reality itself, warping the space around it, turning all in its presence into silhouettes against an impossible brightness.

At its edges, the fire did not flicker — it devoured. A corona of smoldering ruin trailed in its wake, embers spiraling outward like the last remnants of worlds long turned to ash. And yet, in its motion, there was no chaos, no randomness. It burned with purpose, a relentless, living inferno, a blaze that sought not just to consume but to erase.

However, that wasn't what Sunny saw.

Instead, the infernal being wreathed in searing flames was completely extinguished sprawled across the snow. The portion of it that imitated a torso was shattered apart, opening up to reveal it's hollow insides.

Within said torso, was a fluffy, white object that seemed to be moving around. Sunny doubted this creature had such an organ — both because it seemed to not have any in the first place, and because it didn't seem like it belonged — and recalled seeing something else that shared such a characteristic.

Or rather, someone else.

'This is ridiculous. This thing was an Ascended Devil at the bare minimum!'

Despite the unusualness of the situation, Sunny felt like he had been partially enlightened. Of course, he only had more questions after this.

With a wistful sigh, he wondered why life couldn't be a little simpler. He walked through the slightly melted snow for a while, thinking about the excuse that he was going to provide later. Maybe he could say that he left to intercept a threat without stating that he wasn't the one who dealt with it. That was believable enough, right?

Once he reached the corpse of the Fragmentum monster, he placed his hands on it in order to lean over it's large form. He slightly hissed at the burns that were starting to appear on his hands, but he ignored them.

"Clara?"

The white object that had been moving around stopped moving. It peeked out of the shattered torso, revealing a pair of pink orbs.

Sunny and Clara stared at each other for some time, becoming stuck in a sort of stasis. The former almost couldn't react when the latter jumped in shock.

At Clara's jolt, tremors traveled along the ground, the empty carcass she was lying in violently shaking. The limbs of the Fragmentum monster flung around like a broken grandfather clock, threatening to instantly pulverize Sunny.

Even though he dodged, a small cut appeared on his ear. A mere shockwave was enough to injure him.

'Yep. Just my luck.'

Sunny sighed as he sent a weak smile towards the Demi-god before him. Not in the sense that she carried the blood of a divine being, but that her strength was comparable to one — at least, what humans assumed a Demi-god would be like. Considering that the weakest of Ascended humans could survive being thrown into a literal star and come out unscathed, it was hard to imagine what the next step would be able to do, as few have ever seen such champions in action.

A Transcendent.