Vanna felt that her brain was not enough.

She was familiar with this feeling of inadequate brainpower—she had felt it every time she attended Mr. Morris's lectures as a student, but she hadn't felt it for many years since she had successfully replaced most of the brain's work with her muscles during puberty.

Now, that familiar feeling is back.

She looked at the "glowing ball" in the giant's hand and blinked several times before she understood the other party's words and the object in his hand rationally and literally. However, her emotional part was still confused - this is... the former sun of this world?

"Would you like to touch it?" The giant looked at Vanna's stiff appearance, smiled friendly, and passed the "sun" in his hand to Vanna a little, "It's not hot anymore."

Fanna felt that this sentence was unprecedentedly weird, but she didn't know how to react.

After a few seconds of hesitation, she reached out her hand as if possessed by a demon - with a feeling she couldn't explain, she curiously touched the glowing ball in the giant's hand.

It was only as big as a fist - a human fist, but in the giant's hand, it looked like a delicate little bead. There seemed to be many delicate structures running on the surface of the bead, with fine flames surging, alternating light and dark areas, and from time to time some hair-like tiny light rising up and falling back to the surface.

It feels only slightly warm to the touch, like hot water slightly above body temperature.

Fanna was a little dazed. She thought of the appearance of the sun she was familiar with - rising from the sea level every day, with a brilliant double rune ring, bringing light and warmth to the whole world, a "miracle" of astonishing scale, an ancient and magnificent "vision".

At the same time, she also remembered that the captain said that the sun had another appearance, a more glorious and larger appearance - not long ago, the captain began to try to tell his followers some knowledge from the warp, which included the concepts of stars and the universe.

To be honest, Vanna didn't quite understand the captain's teachings. Even Mr. Morris and Miss Lucrecia didn't seem to fully understand them. But at least there was one thing Vanna understood... no matter what kind of sun it is, it shouldn't be... a small ball the size of a fist.

The warm "little sun" left his hands.

The giant sat on the edge of the pit. He placed the "sun" in his palm and his hand on his leg. He lowered his eyes, as if immersed in memories and thoughts. After a long time, he whispered: "They are full of wisdom and are good at using various methods to explain the operation of the world. Although they are born weak, they can rely on "science" to fight against things that are much stronger than them. I have always thought that if they were still alive, if they could develop to this day, perhaps they could explain what happened to this "sun"...

"But when it fell, the world was already quiet, the last person had turned into that tower, and those clever minds and wonderful ideas had disappeared from this world - and I couldn't figure this out."

Vanna was silent for a long time, but she was not just silent - she was telling the captain what was happening here.

She told the captain that she might have found the "sun" that the cultists had mentioned in their meetings.

It was in the hand of this giant who called himself a god, and it looked like... it could really be "taken away" with just one hand.

The giant didn't seem to care about Vanna's silence or her communication with some unknown existence at the conscious level. Memories enveloped the lonely god of the past. He stared at the small "star" in his hand that once illuminated the world and his mortal people. After a long time, he said to himself, "I have been thinking about what destroyed this place... It didn't happen in an instant, traveler. It was a long process."

"Process?" Vanna immediately noticed this word.

The giant nodded and spoke in his recollection: “At first, there were some abnormal phenomena that could not be explained by existing knowledge. Clouds suddenly disappeared and reappeared, unexplained flashes appeared in the atmosphere, the weather was wrong, and plants no longer grew normally.

“Then the anomalies began to ripple into deeper, more disturbing realms—gravity was shifting, there were breaks in the passage of time everywhere;

"During this process, we observed the increasingly intense red light, like a crack, spreading from the outside world, as if it was fixed in the sky and covered our world, distorting the distant starlight. Some kind of...'deformation' corroded the world, and no one could do anything about it.

“That’s when the archive started to be built.”

The giant suddenly stopped talking here and looked at the tall tower again. It seemed that he was not used to communicating with people. He would always fall into thought or lose focus when talking, but soon he started talking again:

"The long process has a quick end. When the archives were destroyed, I briefly felt... that something had touched our world. It took a long time for that thing to get closer, and in the process of getting closer it led to the long doomsday. Its final touch was the final advent and end of the destruction. However, a long time has passed, and I still can't figure out what that thing is."

"You said you felt something touching this world?" Vanna opened her eyes wide. Unconsciously, she had used honorifics when speaking to the giant. "You really didn't see what that thing was at all?"

The giant recalled it seriously and said to Vanna with a hint of apology: "I'm sorry, traveler, I can see that you care about this very much, but what I said is all I know."

Fanna pursed her lips. She had to suppress the regret in her heart, and then her eyes fell on the "little sun" in the giant's hand.

We can’t let this thing fall into the hands of the descendants and remnants of the Black Sun.

After much hesitation, she finally decided to be honest.

"There are people with bad intentions. They have set their sights on the 'Sun' in your hand... I don't know if they will find this place, nor do I know how to explain their origins to you, but..."

She was halfway through her words when the giant raised his hand again and placed the "ball of light" in front of her: "Do you want to take it away?"

The giant spoke gently with a smile on his face.

Fanna was stunned for a moment, then she quickly waved her hands after realizing what was happening: "No, that's not what I meant, you may have misunderstood..."

"It's okay, traveler," the giant interrupted Vanna again, still speaking in that calm and friendly tone, "I can feel your kindness, and... I don't think you can take it away from me."

Vanna was slightly startled, and after realizing that the giant was not joking, she finally hesitantly reached out to the glowing sphere - this time not to touch it, but to try to pick it up.

The warm touch came again, and Vanna felt like she was holding a solid entity. However, when she was about to exert force, the touch suddenly disappeared.

The sphere became a phantom and passed through her palm.

She looked at the sun that she couldn't lift with some surprise.

"I don't know when it became a part of me," the giant's voice came from the side, "maybe it was the day I picked it up... One phantom picked up another phantom, and they can never be separated.

"Traveler, if you can't take it with you, then it seems that those people with bad intentions you mentioned can't take it with you either."

The giant stood up from the ground.

He brushed off the dust on his robe, carefully put the "sun" close to his body, then bent down and picked up the huge cane: "We should go, traveler."

Vanna subconsciously asked, "Where are you going?"

"Walk around the world. There are still many things here. Although they are unrecognizable now, I want to introduce you to their stories and appearances in the past." The giant turned his head and looked at the distant sea of ​​sand. "You can also tell me on the way about the origins of those 'people with bad intentions' - this world has been dead for many years, and I haven't talked to anyone for too long. This is the first time I hear... news from outsiders."

He paused, lowered his head and glanced at Vanna: "I almost forgot what curiosity is. Thank you for reminding me."

"Shouldn't we go take a look down there?" Vanna pointed to the tall tower in the center of the pit. "I thought..."

"There's nothing to see there anymore. What you see here is all there is to it." The giant shook his head and turned away. "Let's go. It's getting dark again. The day and night change very quickly here, but perhaps we can reach another ruin before dusk - there used to be a view of the sea."

Listening to the giant's words, Vanna looked back at the "tower". She said goodbye silently in her heart, then turned around and followed the giant who was already more than ten meters away.

※※※

Duncan sat behind the chart table and maintained this posture for a long time. After an unknown amount of time, he took a deep breath.

Vanna found the "sun", and found it in a very... incredible state.

But for some reason, after hearing Vanna's report, apart from the initial surprise and confusion, he no longer had any other feelings. Even the surprise quickly faded away, leaving only a feeling of... "So that's it."

Perhaps it was because he had witnessed the "moon" with a diameter of ten meters with his own eyes, or perhaps it was because he had long seen a "solar prominence" that could jump on the deck. After living in this strange and twisted world for such a long time, his ability to accept things had been fully trained.

Then there is only one question left -

Vanna can't take the "sun" away.

This is a bit worrying.