Mission:07-1 Sealing Anomaly
"Is this the cave?"
Okuni jumped down from the War Chariot and stood before the seaside cavern. Uesugi Kenshin, who was driving, still looked somewhat afraid of her, but at least she was no longer at the point of wanting to run away.
"That's right."
Based on her earlier interpretation of the riddle, Ritsuka had told Okuni that the seal "might need to be broken through sacrifice." Now she looked at Okuni, somewhat worried.
"...It does have an aura similar to Amaterasu-ōmikami's," Okuni said after studying it for a while. "But..."
"But?"
"It feels strange. I can tell that the one who sealed this cave was some Sun God, and the seal does indeed require an offering to break. But the target of the sacrifice seems to point toward the depths of the seal."
Ritsuka immediately thought of the phrase "Sun Suffers the Devouring of Hatred," and her heart stirred. "Could that Sun God have sealed themselves inside the cave? No, it should be the other way around... some being that is 'devouring the Sun God' used the Sun God's divine power to seal this place!"
It was not hard to reach that conclusion. First, one thing was clear: since the power sealing the cave belonged to a Sun God, then "Sun Suffers the Devouring of Hatred" was not merely a directional hint, but a pun. The power of the Sun God was likely truly being devoured by some being.
This was the Middle Ages, before the awakening of common wisdom, the final afterglow of the Age of Gods. Though no gods had walked the earth since the Common Era began, people could still occasionally glimpse the scraps they had left behind before vanishing. Once the Renaissance began and the curtain rose on the Age of Discovery,