Shade, still feeling dizzy and muddleheaded, stared blankly at the strange spiritual light. It was not the Spirit Rune itself that surprised him, but the fact that he vaguely understood something:
"Whisper—Terminating Whisper Element can only appear on relics or related powers. But right now, I haven't come into contact with any relic other than the Black Time Key. That key isn't the source of this Spirit Rune either; the Spirit Rune came from the world of this spacetime. Whisper... Do Whisper Relics and Whisper Elements really represent the 'Darkness of the World' Doctor Schneider told me about?"
He took a deep breath of the choking air and recalled another description Doctor Schneider had given of the "Whisper Element"—"Whispers are almost a natural phenomenon, echoing throughout the entire Material World."
"Could what whispers represent be... the dying echo of a world on the verge of destruction? So relics are actually the world's... But that can't be right either. The appearance of relics began in the Second Epoch. And shouldn't there be more relics in the Sixth Epoch, which is closer to final destruction?"
The more Shade thought about it, the more wrong it felt. The spirit within his soul suddenly grew agitated along with his thoughts. Finally, with a "pfft," Shade clutched his chest and spat out a mouthful of blood. When he wiped his face, he found that blood was flowing from his nose, ears, and eyes as well.
Though he had not undergone any battle, he was already seriously injured. Realizing that he could not keep thinking, Shade hurriedly stopped, suspecting that this dying world was luring him toward Final Death as well.
Only after his body recovered somewhat did he have time to inspect his surroundings. Of course, he was also doing so to distract himself from