I am God LSLCCF

Chapter 456: Who Will Send the Dream Vine Leaves to the Abyss

Anu carried a wooden box with him into the royal palace.

Most of the snake people's stairways had no railings at all, only a slope worked over with patterns, and some of the passages up and down were nothing more than a single strange pillar.

Even so, the Lizard Man Anu climbed with a steady, even stride, step after step, higher and higher.

The guards before the royal palace caught sight of him and turned to come over. "Commander Anu."

Anu returned the greeting with a nod. "Is His Majesty the King within?"

"I will go and announce you," the palace guard said.

Anu offered his thanks, then stood waiting outside, straight-backed and still.

The other nobles and ministers waiting by the doors turned to look as well, drawn to this outsider whose face and form were so unlike their own.

The lizard man wore chainmail and a cloak, a sword at his waist, every line of him full of spirit. Not a trace of decay showed in him, and there was something else about him besides, a quality no one could quite name.

That Anu carried himself with such martial bearing was no surprise. Every general who had ever led troops carried something of that air. What people found strange, and rare besides, was that he carried none of the arrogance so common among generals and powerful ability users.

He had been born to nothing. Yet the events of these past years had remade him entirely.

He had weathered great upheaval and led a band of lizard people to carve out a homeland of their own. He had lived through the Ghoul War, and stood beside the previous king when the King of Ghouls was sealed away.

He had founded the profession of the beast knight, built the Palace Guard Corps, and taken part in the sealing of the Contract of the Gods.

Few in all the world could claim a life such as his. It had changed him little by little, and given him a bearing and a confidence entirely his own.

Born to nothing, weathering great upheaval, and yet everything had gone tolerably well for him all the while. He had looked upon powerful beings of every kind, and upon the divine besides. All of it had left Anu strong without making him arrogant, had raised him high without stripping away his plain, unadorned spirit. And a road as smooth as that had naturally left him nursing dreams that, to an ordinary person's eye, might seem entirely unrealistic.

Before long the guard came back out from within. "The King says you are to go straight in and see him."

Anu passed straight into the royal palace, and behind him the crowd still waiting outside broke into a murmur of talk.

Once inside a certain chamber, he found King Morabi seated behind a long table, a quill in hand, signing one decree after another.

Anu bowed with the box in his arms. "Your Majesty!"

King Morabi's eye went at once to the wooden box in Anu's hands. "What is this?"

Anu opened the box. Inside lay a very small fragment.

"Your Majesty, it is a fragment of the ceramic figurine."

Anu had drawn on the power of the Spirituality Seal Imprint to find this fragment of the ceramic figurine within the sea itself. It was one of the two fragments the ceramic figurine had flung away as bait, in its desperate bid to escape.

That monster was no ordinary thing. Even with every god setting out after it, it had gotten away in the end.

The whole of Ruhe Beast Island had been thrown into an uproar over it, and though the gods had achieved their purpose in the end, they had never truly caught the ceramic figurine. Not even a god knew where it had finally fled.

In all likelihood, though, it was no longer anywhere on Ruhe Beast Island.

The Scarlet Goddess had once sent down a divine oracle. Whoever could find the ceramic figurine would be granted an audience with her, and could ask of her a single wish. In the end no one had ever succeeded, and even now that oracle still held.

Now that Anu had found this fragment of the ceramic figurine, if he could offer it up to the Scarlet Goddess, it would surely please her.

Only Anu was no believer of the Scarlet Goddess, and so that oracle held no power for him. He had brought the fragment here instead, that King Morabi might present it to her in his place.

The instant King Morabi laid eyes on the fragment he was on his feet, hurrying out from behind the table to stand before Anu.

He reached out and took the box, examining it closely.

He seemed to be making certain the thing was genuine.

Before long, King Morabi burst into laughter.

"Commander Anu, what you have done has astonished and delighted me."

He lifted his gaze from the fragment and turned it upon the Lizard Man Anu.

"To have found such a thing. That can have been no easy matter!"

King Morabi knew well enough that Pontiff Menro had once piloted the Fire Guardians in pursuit of a wisp of the ceramic figurine's scent, and had been driven into a terrifying tornado for his trouble, barely making it back alive.

The ceramic figurine had meant nothing good when it cast away these two fragments in the first place. It had wanted nothing more than to lure whoever came searching for it straight into a place of death.

Anu said nothing of how he himself had pressed deep into a region where gravity itself had run wild, how he had very nearly been torn apart by it before he finally found this fragment.

"It was nothing. I gave Your Majesty my promise that I would spend every last ounce of my strength to find the ceramic figurine."

"It is a pity we could not catch it in the end. This was all there was to be had."

King Morabi looked again at the fragment, and something like anticipation showed in his eyes.

Even King Morabi had never imagined that a mere promise to try his best would send Anu combing the whole of the sea for this fragment, braving the risk of trespassing into a place of death itself.

"The Goddess and the Evil God of Original Sin are mortal enemies. The ceramic figurine is a servant of the Evil God of Original Sin, and it carries a secret of great importance upon it. Never once has the Goddess given up the search for it."

"With this fragment in hand, the Goddess will surely turn her gaze down upon the mortal world."

What truly mattered was not that she turn her gaze upon the mortal world, but that she turn it upon him.

King Morabi looked to Anu. "And what reward would you have of me?"

Anu seized the moment to make his request. He hoped to raise temples in Limestone City and Maya City where the Feathered Serpent God might be worshipped and given offerings.

"I have heard that Your Majesty has already granted the believers of the other gods out of the north leave to raise a Temple of Knowledge and a Miracle Temple, and has recognized the standing of the Moon Sanctum. I hope that the Feathered Serpent God might win that same recognition here in Suinhor."

The Knowledge Divine System and the Desire Divine System were both faiths of tremendous strength, backed by gods with believers beyond counting. Kurmis, the Feathered Serpent God, was nothing beside them.

Now that the Contract of the Gods had been sealed, there was no stopping them from establishing themselves in Suinhor.

But if Anu wished to raise a temple to Kurmis the Feathered Serpent God here in Suinhor, he still needed King Morabi's own approval.

King Morabi had once promised Anu that the moment he found the ceramic figurine, the faith of the Feathered Serpent God could spread freely. But for now he had only found a fragment of it, and so Anu had no way of knowing whether the King would agree.

King Morabi fell into thought. "A Harvest Temple..."

He lifted his gaze and studied Anu a moment, and Anu bowed at once.

"Anu!"

King Morabi broke into a smile, and gave the answer Anu had waited so long to hear.

"You may."

Anu could barely contain himself. "My thanks to you, just and merciful King Morabi."

Morabi raised a hand and said to Anu, "But if you mean to spread this faith among the snake people, then the temple's own divine servants ought to number more snake people among them, and it will need more snake people beast knights besides."

And Morabi swept a hand out in a gesture of open generosity. "And two temples are hardly enough. You may spread the faith freely throughout Suinhor, and it shall stand on equal footing with the Temple of Knowledge, the Temple of Desire, the Contract Guild, and the Tower Keepers."

"All I require of you is this, that you bring us more beast knights, and that you bring us more potion plants."

"Of course," Anu said. "That is exactly what we want as well."

The King had one more thing to ask. "I have already granted you this much, that the faith of the Feathered Serpent God stands equal to the faith of any other god."

"Might you allow the snake people to enter the Feathered Serpent God's pyramid as well, and seek an audience with him there?"

"They are all believers alike. Surely there ought to be no difference in how they are treated?"

Anu's brow furrowed all at once. "That..."

"That is not something I can decide, not now."

What Anu meant was that only Kurmis the Feathered Serpent God himself could decide such a thing.

But Kurmis had not yet recovered from his wounds, and remained deep in sleep even now.

King Morabi studied the look in Anu's eyes, then smiled, and did not press the matter further.

"I only mean to say this. If you truly wish to spread the Feathered Serpent God's faith, you must not favor the one and slight the other."

"But how it is done, precisely, must rest with you. Are you not the very voice of the Feathered Serpent God yourself?"

The tall lizard man bowed his head in gratitude. "I understand your meaning, King Morabi."

King Morabi went on to talk over a long list of details with Anu, all of them touching on the power of the beast knights.

The potion plants, the Spirit Fusion Seal Imprint, and the Harvest Temple yet to come.

At last, Morabi asked after Anu's own vision. "The Harvest Temple of your dreams. What will it become?"

Anu had of course given the question much thought, and he told King Morabi, "Harvest. That one word is the Feathered Serpent God's dream, and it is mine as well."

"People cannot live without food. People need a harvest."

"And Lord Kurmis can bring harvest and grain to everyone. When the Feathered Serpent God descends into this world once more, I believe there will not be one soul left to go hungry."

A smile of overwhelming brightness broke across the lizard man's face, and he repeated his own words once more.

"I believe it will be so."

King Morabi applauded as well. "I look forward to that day myself."

---

Temple of Fire Protection

King Morabi brought the fragment of the ceramic figurine to the temple, and Pontiff Menro, who received him there, was far from pleased. He had spent every last scrap of his strength and found nothing, and in the end it was another man who had succeeded where he had failed.

In the end, though, King Morabi chose to offer the fragment up to their god together with him all the same, and the Temple of Fire Protection paid for that in concessions on any number of matters.

A blazing bonfire rose roaring into the night, and King Morabi and Menro made their preparations at its side.

"The Contract of the Gods has been sealed. The faiths of every god will come flooding into Suinhor now," King Morabi said to Menro.

"And all of this was agreed to by the Goddess Herself. So do you think it was you who were wrong?"

A god could never be wrong, and so of course it had to be Menro who was wrong.

King Morabi's words were a trap. If Menro admitted he had been wrong, it would color everything he did from that day forward.

And of course, if Menro had dared say the goddess herself was wrong, King Morabi's mouth would have twisted into a grin at that too.

But Menro was never one to be caught out so easily, and he answered at once in that gravelly voice of his, hurling the words back like a rebuke.

"God, of course, can never be wrong."

"What god wants is the future. What god wants is the whole world."

Menro was certainly not about to admit he had been wrong either, and he glared back at King Morabi.

"And what we ought to do is guard well the ground of faith god holds now, and then win still more ground of faith for Her."

"There will be no flood of any other god's faith into Suinhor. Those false believers will not advance a single step on this ground. Suinhor belongs to the Scarlet Goddess forever."

"This is our chance to open up still more ground of faith."

Several days of heart-wrenching prayer had gone into this, and a hard-won moment of clarity at the end of them, before Menro finally arrived at what he now called the divine oracle's true meaning.

King Morabi was somewhat startled. He had not expected Menro to be able to talk his way back around even this.

But his surprise soon gave way to pleasure. It meant that Menro had not given up the contest for faith against the other two divine systems, that he still fiercely resisted any spread of their worship into Suinhor, and that was precisely what King Morabi wanted to see.

So long as the other two divine systems kept Menro tied down, no one could threaten his own position.

The two men, each unable to stand the sight of the other, ended their talk there and came to stand beneath the bonfire to pray to their god.

A great crowd of priests holding sacred canons sang hymns, and snake women danced their ritual dances beneath the fire.

After a ceremony offering tribute to their god, the two men presented a whole series of sacrifices to the Scarlet Goddess.

Every other offering drew no response at all, but the moment they presented the fragment of the ceramic figurine, the roaring bonfire stirred.

A blood-colored flower bloomed within the flames, wrapping itself around the fragment.

And then, before the eyes of Morabi and Menro, the whole world seemed to change.

The two snake people beneath the bonfire saw countless blood-colored flowers burst into bloom all at once. Kneeling amid that sea of flowers, they watched a figure like some demon god itself come walking out from beneath an ancient lighthouse, and look down upon them.

The lighthouse rang on and on with an ancient, sacred voice, though neither of them could make out what that voice meant.

The moment Morabi saw that sea of flowers and that lighthouse, he understood.

He threw himself down and lay prostrate. "Great Scarlet Goddess. I am Morabi, King of Suinhor, and Your believer offers up to You his most exalted reverence and devotion."

Pontiff Menro, by contrast, took a long while to come back to himself, standing frozen and dazed where he was.

His mouth hung open, and he murmured to himself.

"God!"

"God Herself has summoned me."

The Scarlet Goddess's voice came down from on high, and that towering presence, vast as some demon god, now turned her gaze upon the two of them.

"You have found a fragment of the ceramic figurine. This pleases me greatly."

"But you have not fulfilled my divine oracle, and so you have no right to ask a wish of me."

"As your reward, I have decided to grant you an audience."

"I shall answer your doubts, and your questions."

Menro, who had been so slow to react a moment ago, was now the one who could not wait. He scrambled forward on his hands and knees, then flattened himself to the ground.

He pressed his head deep against the earth and asked, his voice trembling with overwhelming emotion.

"Great Scarlet Goddess, Blood Progenitor."

"Your Pontiff listens for Your oracle, and awaits Your guidance."

"Menro has no question of his own. In all that he does, he wishes only to walk forward in true obedience to Your will."

"Menro, you have done well," the Scarlet Goddess said to this fanatical believer.

"I promised you once that after death you would return at last to the Kingdom of God, and dwell there forever in God's own company."

"A place has already been made ready for you in the Divine Technique Kingdom. When your mission here is done, someone will come to receive you and take you to the Divine Kingdom."

Pontiff Menro's eyes brimmed with grateful tears.

There was nothing left he wished to ask. There was only what he wished to do.

To guard the ground of faith well for the Scarlet Goddess, and then to open up still more ground of faith.

"Thank You, God!"

"God, I can still do better than this."

"Your own shepherd will guard Your ground of faith for You..."

"I know it," the Scarlet Goddess said, her voice indifferent.

And amid Menro's cries of uncontainable, overwhelming joy, his figure slowly faded away.

King Morabi had stayed silent all this while, but now that the divine gaze had turned upon him, he finally spoke.

"God, what is to become of Suinhor from now on?"

"Morabi hopes that You might grant him some guidance?"

The Scarlet Goddess did not give Morabi the guidance he wanted. She said only, "You are the King of Suinhor."

Morabi had never imagined the divine answer would be this.

And he turned the thought over more deeply still. What could the goddess possibly mean by it?

Did it mean she had washed her hands of Suinhor entirely, or did it mean that from now on the mortal world truly belonged to its own kings to govern, and a god needed only her temples to supply her faith?

Blood rushed to his head, and as if driven by some demon, he found himself asking a question that could only be called reckless, even a betrayal of faith itself.

"Great Scarlet Goddess, the Contract of the Gods says that mortals are free to choose their own faith."

"Then..."

He paused a moment, then finally asked it.

"What of the royal houses and the executive officers of every nation?"

The goddess did not grow angry at Morabi's question. Instead, she asked him calmly.

"Are you not mortals as well?"

That single line left Morabi rooted to the spot, speechless.

And so it all came to a close.

Pontiff Menro knelt prostrate beneath the bonfire still, tears brimming in his eyes, overcome with emotion.

Morabi, though, tilted his head back toward the sky, as though the shadow of that demon god still lingered there, the shock of it frozen on his face.

A lingering dread clung to Morabi. He did not know how he had ever found the nerve to ask that question.

In truth, that question had lain hidden away in his heart for a long, long time now, and only today had he finally dared to ask it.

And what Morabi had never expected was this.

That this was the shape of the divine will.

He thought to himself, "Does the Goddess not care?"

"She does not care at all."

"That is right. She does not care at all."

But as he turned it over in his mind, it almost seemed that this was exactly how a god ought to be.

Everything one cared about was nothing at all, before a god.

He was a king, and yet in a god's eyes he was every bit as much a mere mortal as anyone else.

He was only the King of Suinhor now, not the Divine Blessed King.

King Morabi bowed low once more, then rose slowly from beneath the bonfire, turned, and left the Temple of Fire Protection behind.

As he walked down the temple stairs, he said quietly to himself.

"The age of the Divine Blessed King has truly come to an end. What I represent now... is only royal power."

"A king of mortals."

---

Divine Kingdom of Creation

In the Spirit Lake, the vast, primordial Dream Vine connected the Dream Continent to the Dream Starry Sea, and along its banks the lake nymphs made their home, ringed about by a dense forest of Rainbow Trees.

Today the Barter Emissaries were holding another great gathering, and every lake nymph had come together for it.

Some lay sprawled across the stones by the lake, others swam in the water, and a few stood talking on the shore.

At the moment they were all debating whether every last target had received a Dream Vine leaf yet.

"Is there anywhere we still haven't sent one to?" the eldest of the lake nymphs asked.

At once several nymphs spoke up one after another, telling her which places still had not received theirs.

"There's still the Abyss!"

"And Purgatory!"

"And the winged people's side hasn't had one either!"

The messengers of the Divine Kingdom of Creation made no distinction at all between good and evil. Every god, every divine chosen, and every apostle received one alike.

The Abyss and Purgatory were treated exactly the same way.

As for the winged people, it was simply that the distance was too great.

Once before, when the wood nymph who served as the messenger of the gods went out delivering Rainbow Tree branches, she had brought one to the Abyss as well.

Only the Fallen Angel Melde, Lord of the Abyss at the time, had refused to accept it, and had driven the messenger of the gods away instead.

"So who wants to take them over?" the eldest of the lake nymphs asked them all at once.

The lake nymphs fell into a great buzz of talk, and then someone raised a hand.

"I want to go to the winged people's side!"

"I want to go to the winged people's side too!"

"What's it even like over there, on the winged people's side?"

"Is nobody willing to go to the Abyss?" the eldest nymph asked.

The chatter cut off at once, and every lake nymph wore the exact same expression. "No."

It was not that the Abyss itself was so frightening or so wicked. What mattered far more was that a certain big-mouthed Storage Nymph had once described it so unflatteringly that the lake nymphs now gave it a wide berth on principle.

Seeing that not a single nymph would choose Purgatory or the Abyss, the eldest of the lake nymphs declared at once, "Since nobody wants Purgatory or the Abyss, then let's play the big wheel."

"Whoever it picks has to go."

The big wheel was a kind of game the little spirits liked to play, staging all manner of pranks with it. Whoever it picked had to do whatever it demanded.

The lake nymphs had borrowed the big wheel this time, and it had been divided into four sections. Seventy percent of it was marked "don't have to go," and the rest was split between the three options of the Abyss, Purgatory, and the Land of Light.

One after another the lake nymphs spun the wheel, and every time the needle swung toward the Abyss they went pale with fear, while landing on the Land of Light drew delighted little gasps.

Before long, someone had spun their way to the Land of Light.

"I'm off to the winged people's side, to see the legendary sky messengers!" One lake nymph raised her hand high, looking thrilled at the prospect.

"But how do we even get there?" The lake nymphs had never traveled anywhere so far before.

"You can hitch a ride on the Divine Boat, find the tree hollow coordinates for the Land of Light, and then squeeze out through the tree hollow!" The little spirits who had lent them the big wheel offered up their suggestion.

"And be careful which tree hollow you pick! Pick a big grown-up tree, or you'll get stuck like Saint Raphael did!" One of the little spirits was clearly up to no good.

A certain nymph off to the side flared up at once, calling out loudly.

"I did not!"

"It's all lies!"

"I have never once gotten stuck!"

The little spirits flitted over at once, tugging at their own eyelids with the corners of their sleeves.

"Bleeeh~"

"Even the Cup of Desire in the Sky Miracle Garden saw it happen! Go and ask them if you don't believe us!"

Saint Raphael pouted, her voice dropping low.

"It wasn't me who got stuck."

"It was the box. The box was too big. It was the box that got stuck."

The little spirits' suggestion, though, was rejected almost at once.

Only the wood nymphs' own kind could ever squeeze through a wood nymph's tree hollow, after all, and the lake nymphs held no authority whatsoever over space.

"Only wood nymphs can squeeze through a tree hollow. So that won't work." The lake nymphs pronounced the little spirits thoroughly unreliable.

"You don't need to go at all. Just mail it straight to them!" The Storage Nymph who had been watching the fun grew unusually clever all of a sudden, raising her own hand and calling this out loudly.

The lake nymph who had just spun her way to the winged people's Land of Light deflated at once, staring in open shock at that helpful Sister Saint Raphael.

"Huh?"

"Mail it?"

Wasn't that the same as spinning for nothing?

The other lake nymphs seemed to catch on all at once too, and broke into chatter.

"That's right!"

"They've got Rainbow Trees over on the winged people's side too!"

"We can just mail it over!"

And so the eldest of the lake nymphs marked an X over the Land of Light option on the big wheel and declared it void.

There was no more need to travel to the Land of Light, but the Abyss and Purgatory that remained still could not be reached by mail. Someone would have to deliver those in person.

The lake nymphs who remained took on the big wheel with hearts pounding in fear. Whoever missed the mark broke into cheers of relief, but sooner or later, someone unlucky was bound to turn up.

Two unfortunate nymphs were chosen, one bound for the Abyss and one for Purgatory.

The two lake nymphs set out from the Divine Kingdom of Creation with great reluctance, hitching a ride on the Divine Boat and slowly making their way toward the Abyss.

Hand in hand, the two of them came to that great dark egg with the broken gap in its shell, and the moment they had tossed a few Dream Vine leaves down into it, they clapped their hands over their noses and fled as though flying.

They shouted all the while as they ran.

"Ah!"

"Run, quickly! Sister Saint Raphael said they like to splatter people with stinking black mud."

"Don't let them see the two of us!"

The silver leaves turned to starlight and drifted down, scattering into every layer of the Abyss, and one fell all the way into the Abyss Core itself.

---

Dark Prison Abyss

Atop a metal throne burning red with raging fire, a horrifying charred corpse caught hold of a wisp of starlight as it swept past the palace.

The instant he caught it, he knew what it was he held.

"A Dream Vine leaf?"

Dark Moon, the King of Wrath, tried it out at once, and so discovered the whole array of barters within the Barter Emissary's Dream.

But the instant he saw that Barter Dream, he understood something else entirely, how the former King Osis had once made the sealed coffin of Akmanmon, the King of Ghouls, vanish without a trace.

"So that is how Osis made the thing disappear. Through the lake nymphs' Barter Dream."

The King of Wrath went searching at once for a barter option concerning the King of Ghouls' sealed coffin.

Sure enough, he found it before long.

But when he came to the line that marked the price, he could see nothing there at all.

"The King's shed remains?"

What could it mean, that he was not permitted to see this?

The King of Wrath was puzzled, but he understood well enough, in broad strokes, that this was a thing he would find very hard to get his hands on any time soon.

Who, after all, could snatch something out of a Barter Emissary's own hands.

And at that very moment, a vengeful fire corpse appeared out of the raging flames with a wail, dragging its chains as it made its slow way toward the King of Wrath's palace.

At last, it came to stand before the King of Wrath.

It was the shape taken by one of Dark Moon's own followers in the mortal world, and now it brought a piece of news of great importance to him.

"General!"

"I have the news you wanted. Before he was sealed away, Akmanmon, the King of Ghouls, was seen once in the Volcano Forest."

"They say he was seen there at the time, fighting the Feathered Serpent Kurmis."

Dark Moon, the King of Wrath, recalled that name, not one of any great note, and yet one that had stayed with him all the same. "The Feathered Serpent Kurmis?"