When the view cleared again, the player had returned to the top of the Liurnia Divine Tower.
The amber was still intact, and golden chains lay scattered across the ground. Daphne stood before an incongruous statue, her head tilted in confusion.
Daphne: "Hmm... Sellen?"
The player followed her gaze.
That statue... hadn't been here before, had it? The player distinctly remembered the statue being at the tower entrance. How had it ended up here?
The player tentatively attacked it.
The statue vanished instantly, and a figure appeared. She coughed twice.
Sellen gave an awkward smile, trying to break the frozen atmosphere. "Ahem, don't be so barbaric... er, haha..."
"Long time no see, my apprentice."
Sellen shrugged. "I imagine you have plenty of questions. Very well, while we have the chance, I'll tell you everything I know."
The player selected: [About Sellen's goal]
Sellen seemed utterly unconcerned. "There's nothing to hide. A glintstone sorcerer's lifelong dream is to become a star. Everything I do serves that purpose... so nothing is forbidden. It is simply exploration in its purest form."
"I will spare no cost to achieve it. My apprentice, I warned you before you became my student."
The player selected: [About the golden amber]
Sellen sighed. "Ah... I knew you would ask about that."
"I told you, didn't I? Glintstone Sorcery seeks to explore the stars and the life within them. But compared with stars we can see yet never reach, aren't the gods active here on the ground closer to the truth?"
There was more to Sellen's words than she said outright. "For the likes of us, a god of the stars is the realization of every ideal..."
"The Ranni you serve is an Empyrean chosen by the moon, but before that, she made an agreement with me... I helped