I am God LSLCCF

Chapter 457: The Harvest Temple and the Moon Eclipse's Remnant Light

Volcano Forest, Lizard Person Village

The village held more than just the homes of the lizard people now. Many other buildings had risen alongside them.

Canals, storehouses, a library, watchtowers, animal pens, and even a schoolroom where the children came to learn.

Lizard person children of about two years old ran along the path and came into a room beside the library to study.

The lizard person teacher held up a book. "The Feathered Serpent God is the god of the lizard people, the God of Harvest, who can create food, potions, and magical beasts..."

What none of them noticed was a wisp of translucent flame floating in the corner, quietly watching the lizard person children and their teacher within.

It was a Heart-Burning Demon.

The lizard person children learned their letters from the sacred canon of Kurmis, the Feathered Serpent God, which told a whole series of stories about him. The most important of them was how Kurmis had brought the crop known as the Brown Ball Vine into being.

Once they had their letters, those among them with the gift would naturally go on to learn how to become ability users, which was the substance of the beast knight's path.

"That's it for today," the teacher said. "I'm heading out hunting with the party in a bit, so you lot behave yourselves, and no running off while you're playing."

"And another thing. No teasing the magical beasts. Rile them up and you'll be in for it."

The lizard person children put on their most obedient faces. "We'll be good, we promise!"

The teacher's post was usually only a part-time duty. He carried other responsibilities besides, since the lizard people were still few in number, and every one of them naturally shouldered a heavier load.

And that translucent flame drifted away out the window, wandering on through the village.

At that same moment, deep within the Dark Prison Abyss, the charred, flame-wreathed corpse sat in his palace amid its heaps of bones, gazing up at the twisted air where scenes of the mortal world were mirrored back.

Dark Moon, the King of Wrath, was watching everything here through the eyes of his Heart-Burning Demon.

He saw the fields of potion plants, and the magical beasts that had been created there by artificial means.

After that, he saw the miracle tool, the Pouch of Woven Hope.

"A miracle tool?"

He watched all manner of things pour out from within the woven pouch, though every one of them was some ordinary article of daily use, plain things with no trace of transcendent power in them at all.

Marvelous as it was, Dark Moon found little in it worth his attention.

Only one thing here truly interested him.

The translucent flame swelled and turned to face the direction of the Feathered Serpent's pyramid.

"A Demon Spirit Pyramid?"

The shape of a pyramid put Dark Moon in mind of another god at once, Elena, the God of Demon Spirits, whose own signature form and power took exactly that shape.

Like Akmanmon before him, Dark Moon had looked upon countless magnificent structures in his time, and yet the sight of this pyramid's shape still struck him with awe.

And knowing rather more than most, he felt a deeper reverence still toward that pyramid shape.

"This is a ritual!"

"An extraordinarily powerful ritual."

Dark Moon found himself recalling those children's books, and the name of the god they had been chanting.

"The Feathered Serpent God?"

"Using the lizard people as believers, using potions as offerings, sealing himself away within a pyramid."

"This could very well be the ritual of ascension to godhood."

Dark Moon meant to go inside and investigate further, but the moment his Heart-Burning Demon reached the altar beneath the Feathered Serpent's pyramid, something seemed to sense it, and a force came probing outward.

Dark Moon reacted in that same instant.

Far away in the Dark Prison Abyss, the horrifying charred corpse reached out a hand from atop his scorching metal throne and annihilated the Heart-Burning Demon on the spot.

The Heart-Burning Demon vanished at once, like a flame stripped of its source, without leaving so much as a wisp of smoke behind.

And so when that probing force swept through, it found nothing there at all.

At that same moment, the many lizard people of the village seemed to sense something too, and gathered in toward the Feathered Serpent's pyramid.

"What's going on? What was that noise?" They had felt the outermost layer of the ritual disturbed.

"Might've been some animal that set it off. It's happened a few times before." Someone went to look, and sure enough, found the body of a dead animal beneath the pyramid.

"Let's be careful all the same. Check it properly." But they were not satisfied to leave it at that, and kept on searching.

The lizard people went over every inch of the Feathered Serpent's pyramid, inside and out, and searched the whole village for any trace or scent of an outsider. Akmanmon had once slipped in here using an artifact of invisibility, after all, and that had left them wary ever since.

Unfortunately, what had come in this time was only a wisp of flame, and it left no trace behind at all.

The greatest trait of a creature like this was that its presence was all but impossible to sense, hidden away within the hearts of men.

And so, though the lizard people searched every corner, in the end they found nothing at all.

On a hilltop not far off, a snake person ability user, an ouroboros marked upon their robe, opened their eyes. The Heart-Burning Demon had used them as its anchor to descend into the mortal world, and it was they who had summoned it out of the Abyss.

They were a member of the Abyss Cult, and at the same time a servant sworn to Dark Moon, the King of Wrath.

The snake person could feel the will settled within them, and looking out toward the distant lizard person village, they spoke.

"Master. Great King of Wrath, Your servant obeys Your summons and Your command."

A deep and gravelly voice came from out of the Abyss, sinking straight into the heart of the Abyss Cult's wicked servant.

"Bring the Bronze Oil Lamp."

"Cover yourself in the Dark Domain, and walk the space between the real and the unreal."

"Go inside and see for yourself what it is really like in there."

The cultist drew out a bronze lamp and, without a moment's hesitation, activated it exactly as the King of Wrath had taught them.

A violent pain washed over the cultist's entire body, and the bronze lamp flared alight with a single tongue of flame.

The pity of it was that the flame it kindled brought no light at all, only endless darkness.

The divine artifact, the Bronze Lamp of Greed, was extraordinarily powerful, and in an instant it threw open a stretch of Dark Domain that swallowed the cultist whole.

"Splash!"

The cultist felt as though they had fallen into a bog, and vanished from the real world in an instant.

The whole world seemed to turn upside down around them. They had left the present world behind, and now stood within a stretch of Dark Domain.

Endless darkness lay overhead and on every side, yet beneath their feet they could still faintly make out a reflection of reality.

They felt as though they walked in the narrow crack between light and darkness.

"Walk forward."

"Enter that pyramid."

Their master's command came again, and they could do nothing but keep walking on.

The reflection of the mortal world beneath their feet advanced along with them.

They passed through the lizard person village, passed the altar, and at last entered the interior of the Feathered Serpent's pyramid.

A castle lay sealed within the pyramid, and every ounce of power here poured out from within it.

Dark Moon saw, too, the murals lining the castle's great hall, one after another, and through them the origin of the Feathered Serpent.

"The Feathered Serpent, the God of Original Sin, the Scarlet Goddess, the Door of Truth."

"This was the war among gods that took place in Maya City, many years ago now."

The Feathered Serpent and Xiao, the God of Original Sin, were bound together by countless threads. he had gained a portion of Xiao's own Power of Spirituality. More important still, Dark Moon saw within it Kurmis's own ambition to become a god.

Akmanmon, who had come here before him, had fixed his attention on the very first mural.

But upon that throne of wrath, Dark Moon rose to his feet and studied the very last image instead, the one depicting the Feathered Serpent's ascension to godhood.

The sacred canon the lizard person children studied outside had already made Kurmis's purpose plain enough. And yet to see it here with his own eyes was another thing entirely.

This was not, after all, some tale of ignorant mortals mistaking a powerful being for a god. This was a powerful being genuinely daring to challenge and cross the very line between mortal and god.

"So he does have a method of becoming a god after all. This is where Akmanmon got his."

"Akmanmon obtained the secret art of ascension, but was sealed away for it. And Kurmis, having paid the price of sealing Akmanmon away, fell in the end into a deep sleep."

"This is my best chance."

Dark Moon had set his sights on Kurmis.

He meant to take the secret of godhood from him, and there could be no better moment than this.

And all of this, in the end, Akmanmon had brought him. Akmanmon had guided him here, and it was Akmanmon, too, who had driven Kurmis down into his long sleep.

There was no denying it. Akmanmon had done more for Dark Moon than almost anyone.

Akmanmon had once been the stepping stone by which Dark Moon seized control of the Royal Court of Ten Thousand Serpents, and now he had become the very stone that showed Dark Moon the way to the secret of godhood as well.

And for Kurmis, this was without question the darkest hour of all.

Sometimes, good fortune and disaster followed one another like a shadow at the heel.

Fortune drawn out of disaster, and disaster brought down by fortune in turn.

Kurmis was exactly such a case.

Every disaster he weathered left him some fruit of good fortune, and that fruit in its turn always seemed to draw down wave after wave of fresh disaster behind it. He had won the secret art of ascension and earned the right to become a god, and ever since, the covetous eyes and the blows out of the shadows had come after him without end.

Kurmis, though, had understood this truth long, long ago.

And so he had already made himself ready.

Dark Moon had the cultist press further on, and the reflection of the present world beneath their feet went on shifting as they walked.

At last they reached the entrance to a long corridor, and there at its far end they saw the Feathered Serpent's Seed Jar, shining with a brilliant light.

"Stop."

The cultist had been about to step forward, but at Dark Moon's sharp command they steadied themselves at once.

Through the cultist's own eyes, Dark Moon studied the corridor. Vines crept over every inch of it, he suddenly noticed, and these were no ordinary vines but potion plants.

More important still, these plants that looked like nothing more than vines seemed at a glance to be a tangle of unruly roots with no order to them at all.

In truth they were woven through one another, forming in the end a single vast ritual.

Looking closer still, Dark Moon uncovered the secret of this ritual's magic array.

"A ritual of self-detonation through Divine Grace?"

"Mental Domain assimilation?"

This was, without exaggeration, the most terrifying resort a being of the apostle rank could turn to, and the very last one.

Dark Moon could see it plainly. The moment he truly dared to set foot within, Kurmis's own will would claw itself back to full waking, whatever the cost.

Akmanmon before him was proof enough. This was exactly what he had set off.

But this was only the first line of defense that Kurmis the Feathered Serpent had set in place. The ritual array within this very passage was the most terrifying thing of all. The moment anyone broke through into it, it was the same as breaking into the very heart of Kurmis himself, and that meant Kurmis was about to fall.

Kurmis had prepared for this long ago. Whatever the cost, he would shatter his own God's Grace Stone, fuse his own Mental Domain together with his enemy's, and perish alongside him.

He would rather die than let the secret in his hands fall into the grasp of such villains.

Akmanmon had never driven Kurmis this far before, and so he had never seen this particular hand played.

But Dark Moon, here and now, saw the third hidden hand that Kurmis had laid in place.

"There is one more hidden hand."

Dark Moon lifted his head, his gaze narrowing to a single point.

And there beneath the golden jar at the corridor's end, he saw a blood-red flower growing, strangely beautiful.

Dark Moon had seen this flower before. "A blood mist cup."

If even Kurmis's self-detonation failed to hold his enemy back, the Scarlet Goddess, mistress of Suinhor, would very likely be roused by it.

she would come rushing here in an instant, and grind whoever coveted the secret of godhood into dust.

For a moment, even Dark Moon found this an exceedingly thorny problem.

His original plan had been to descend here in his true body, subdue the sleeping Kurmis, and then, with the power of the divine artifact, the Bronze Lamp of Greed, focus all his strength on devouring and seizing Kurmis's memories.

The Bronze Lamp of Greed could strip away every scrap of another being's power. It took everything, greedily, without exception.

And memory and knowledge, too, were a part of that power.

But if he could not descend in his true body, he had no hope of suppressing a being like Kurmis. The Bronze Oil Lamp on its own could never stand against him.

But if he did descend in his true body, he would very likely be walking straight to his own death in an instant.

The moment Kurmis woke, even if he could not win, he would drag his enemy down to ruin along with him. And if even that failed to finish them, he would summon a true god here to do it instead.

Dark Moon turned his gaze upon that gray, blurred reflection, staring at the Feathered Serpent's Seed Jar at the corridor's end.

Nothing showed on that charred, blackened face but an unyielding refusal to admit defeat, and so, seeing another being every bit as stubborn as himself, he could not help but let slip a word tinged with something like admiration.

"Now that is a hard one to crack."

No one who had come this far could be some simple figure. But most such figures kept their last resort in reserve for saving their own lives, since so long as they did not die, there would always be a chance to try again.

This one was different. He had done everything in his power to keep anyone from ever wresting the secret of godhood from him.

Dark Moon had the cultist turn and withdraw, though he had no intention of giving up so easily.

"Hiss!"

Wind lizard dragons circled above Maya City one after another, and below them a crowd of snake people craned their necks to look up.

"Look, quick!"

"It's Lord Anu!"

"Lord Anu's come back!"

"The voice of the Feathered Serpent God!"

The people of the city had seen wind lizard dragons more than a few times by now, and they even recognized who had come this time. They called out loudly from below.

Anu rode the wind lizard dragon back to Maya Province, and came down within a brand new temple in the province's capital.

The temple had only recently been completed, and it was Kurmis, the Feathered Serpent God, who was worshipped within.

The divine statue took the shape of a tall, long-haired man bearing God's Form. Behind it, carved into the wall, was a great serpent with two wings, its body long enough to pierce through the sea of clouds.

The temple's divine servants all wore yellow priestly robes, and among them were lizard people as well as snake people.

Before the temple's gate stood magical beasts of every size and shape, wind lizard dragons, earth-piercing beasts, water magical beasts, and more, all of them striking enough to draw the eye.

Anu entered the temple, and a great crowd came out at once to receive him, though he did nothing and said nothing to them at all.

Instead he went straight into the main hall and knelt beneath the divine statue to pray.

He shut his eyes tight, murmuring silently.

"Great Feathered Serpent God Kurmis."

"At sunrise, Your will shall descend with the sun's first ray of light."

"Please accept our offerings. May You return soon."

And behind him, a whole company of divine servants made the same gesture along with him.

Only once Anu had risen did the others follow and rise as well.

Anu looked out over the gathered crowd and asked a single question.

"Are the people of the city willing to believe in the Feathered Serpent God?"

The temple's Chief Divine Servant was a lizard person, but its Deputy Divine Servant was a snake person.

In the ordinary course of things, the Chief oversaw the worship of the god, while the Deputy handled all dealings with the outside world.

Now the two of them came forward together to report to Anu.

The lizard person Chief Divine Servant said, "The Brown Ball Vine is the Feathered Serpent God's own miracle. The Feathered Serpent God can bring the farmers more grain than they have ever had, and plenty of them have already become believers. In our spare hours we take people out and teach them how to grow the Brown Ball Vine too, and the results have been very good indeed."

The snake person Deputy Divine Servant spoke of his own accomplishments too. "I have found no small number of young people in the city with the makings of beast knights. Lord Anu, you might see them today, and if you judge them fit, you could hold a ritual yourself and set them on the beast knight's path!"

The Deputy Divine Servant went on with a smile, telling Anu.

"This way, the Feathered Serpent God's servants will only grow more numerous."

"And it will show mortals the god's own great power besides."

Anu was plainly delighted, and yet he still made a show of thinking it over.

At last he said, "Then let us go and meet them!"

That very afternoon, Anu met more than a dozen young people in a side hall of the temple, several of them children of only a few years old.

These young people and children, every one of them, burned with the same longing and passion Anu himself had once carried.

He asked after them, and found that not a few of them could even trace some connection to Kurmis himself. It was hardly surprising, after all, since Maya City had once been Kurmis's own home.

Even so, the passion these people held for the Feathered Serpent God's faith went far beyond anything Anu had expected.

"Lord Kurmis is the very god of the Maya people!" one of them called out bluntly.

"The Maya people ought to worship the Feathered Serpent God. He is our own god, and He belongs to us alone," someone else declared, more radical still.

"Lord Anu, is it true that you once followed King Osis and helped seal away the King of Ghouls?" another asked, fixing their eyes on Anu.

"Lord Anu, when will we ever be as strong as you?" A child's eyes always turned toward whoever was strong and renowned.

Anu looked at these young people, this new generation soon to become servants of Kurmis, the Feathered Serpent God, and felt something stir in him too.

"So long as you are willing to give everything to the Feathered Serpent God, Your reward will surely come."

And with that, Anu held the ritual for them with his own hands.

Using their own blood, he brought forth an entirely new potion plant, and with that step they too had set foot upon the path beyond the mortal.

From here, so long as they could successfully raise a magical beast companion of their own, and then master a set of basic divine techniques, they could count themselves proper apprentice beast knights.

After leaving Maya City, Anu went on to Limestone City.

This was a newly built city, and naturally it could not compare to the splendor of Maya City. Even its temple lacked the grandeur of Maya's own Harvest Temple.

But Anu never favored one over the other, and he treated the people here exactly as he treated those of Maya City.

He met with all the young people and children soon to become apprentice beast knights here too, held the ritual for them, and cultivated the potion seeds with his own hands.

And afterward, he personally gave them a lesson of his own, telling them of the Feathered Serpent God's greatness.

At the end of it, he looked out over all of them, full of hope.

"This place is not far from the Volcano Forest. You are the knights who guard the Feathered Serpent God."

"The Feathered Serpent God brings food, potions, and magical beasts to the mortal world, and one day the god will fly out from beneath the volcano itself, and pour harvest and magic down over the whole of it."

"And we, too, shall go with Him, and drive away every hunger and famine in this world."

There was no denying it. Anu's speech burned with real passion, and it laid bare the thoughts of his own heart besides.

It was only a pity that most of those gathered here were the children of nobles and wealthy merchants. They applauded warmly enough, but few of them could truly grasp what it might mean to drive away hunger and famine, having never once known what hunger even tasted like.

All they truly looked forward to was becoming beast knights themselves.

The latter half of what Anu had said moved them far less than the line before it, that they were the knights who guarded a god.

A god was noble and great, and they stood at that god's side.

The Harvest Temple that had lived so long in Anu's thoughts had at last been raised.

For now there were only two of them, but the temple in Maya Province had already begun preparing to send people out beyond it, to raise branch shrines under the Harvest Temple's own name.

Once the first cohort of beast-knight apprentices had graduated, some of them would be sent out to do exactly that.

As for what came after, they meant to spread outward from Maya Province as their center, carrying Kurmis the Feathered Serpent God's faith into every land around it.

Having achieved so much, Anu naturally wished to go and give Lord Kurmis a full report of it all.

Passing through Maya City and Limestone City, Anu at last arrived back at the lizard person village in the Volcano Forest.

At sunrise, once every lizard person had finished the Harvest Sacrifice, Anu opened the pyramid's great door and went inside.

Beyond the corridor glowing with its brilliant light, Anu knelt before Kurmis the Feathered Serpent's Seed Jar.

"Lord Kurmis, I have returned."

And the special seed within Anu's own body flared to life all at once, joining itself to Kurmis the Feathered Serpent's Seed Jar.

In that instant, Anu's consciousness was drawn out of reality itself.

Anu seemed to fall into the very inside of the Seed Jar, tumbling into a strange world of jungle and growing things, countless brilliantly colored plants tangled through one another, thousands upon thousands of potion plants carpeting the whole of that jungle.

And in the depths of that jungle, the enormous Feathered Serpent lay coiled upon itself, fast asleep.

Anu walked forward and looked upon the winged serpent in its slumber.

He called out once more, "Lord Kurmis!"

And at that, bubbles rose up one after another all around him, and Kurmis's voice came down from somewhere high above.

"Anu, you have come. How have things been out there lately?"

But after that, there was no more sound.

Anu and Kurmis had agreed on this between them. While Kurmis remained in his deep sleep, it was the way he could pass on whatever he wished to tell him.

Anu would reach Kurmis's own memory through the seed, and in that state he could put questions to that memory and have his doubts answered.

In some respects, this alone showed how deeply Kurmis trusted Anu. Kurmis had all but fully settled on Anu as his own heir and voice.

And yet, though Anu could draw answers from Kurmis this way, certain more subjective questions lay beyond anything the memory alone could give him.

Those would have to wait until the day Kurmis truly woke again.

Anu stood there in that unreal jungle of potion plants, gesturing broadly as he spoke to Kurmis.

"The storm that had circled Ruhe Beast Island since the very dawn of the age has scattered entirely. I have seen the Avel's ships arrive from the new world. I have seen missionaries setting out from every corner to travel the length of the continent. I have seen this world changing, day after day."

"Lord Kurmis, Ruhe Beast Island is not the same place at all anymore."

"The will of the gods is remaking this whole world."

This account was not simply a report he was making to Kurmis the Feathered Serpent. It was, just as much, Anu's own reckoning of this stretch of time, and a look toward what was still to come.

Once Anu had finished telling of all he had seen, he went on to speak his own thoughts.

"Witch spirits can change this world. Alchemists can change this world. We can too."

"Lord Sukob says that witch spirits can craft scrolls, that contract lawyers can become judges, that alchemists can craft artifacts, and that tower keepers can turn themselves into alchemy workshops."

"And we, too, can become a part of this world. A part of this Ruhe Beast Island."

And all this while, back in reality, he stood outside the glowing corridor, talking to himself.

His eyes stayed shut, and yet his body still moved, his arms sweeping through the air with real feeling.

A long while later, he had finally said everything he wished to tell Kurmis the Feathered Serpent.

He bowed his head to the ground several times in the deepest reverence, then straightened the cloak that had caught against his leg armor, and turned to leave.

"Clank!"

As he reached the great hall, something seemed to fall in one corner of it, and his eye caught the movement at once.

He stepped back the way he had come, over to that corner of the hall.

Among a heap of gathered objects, he drew something out.

A sword.

Anu wiped the dust from it, and blew hard across its length.

"What sword is this?"

"Is this some divine artifact?"

Anu had noticed this pile of things before, but had never once looked closely at it.

Still, if it had been placed here, it could only mean Lord Kurmis had left it behind for him.

Anu closed his hand around the hilt and drew it out with a hard pull.

"Ring!"

The sword seemed not to have been drawn in a very long time, and the moment he pulled, it let out a single clear, ringing note.

Anu held it in both hands, raised before his chest.

It was a matte, unpolished blade, plain to look at, even entirely unremarkable.

Then, all at once, he swung it hard. Anu's own combat style had been built on Suinhor's infantry spearwork, its infantry bladework, and its swordsmanship, all blended with his own self-taught improvisations.

And yet, after no small number of great battles, it had, remarkably, taken on a shape and coherence all its own.

A light rippled along the blade's edge, like the glow of a waning moon.

It was as if it were the very last trace of light left in the darkness after a lunar eclipse.

Deep, beautiful, elegant.

It carried the despair of darkness about to fall, and the hope of breaking through that darkness too.

Anu had never seen a blade like this before, and at once he could not bear to let it go.

"Now this really is a fine sword!"

Anu could feel just how powerful this blade was. If he could bring the whole of it to bear, his own strength as a knight would grow by a great deal.

"Lord Kurmis, is this Your reward for me?"

"I have indeed been looking for a weapon of late. I had thought of a lance, but if it is to be this sword instead..."

Anu grinned. "That would do just as well."

He had only just achieved something of real merit, and now this sword had appeared before him. It left Anu overjoyed beyond words.

Kurmis had once said that everything here was his to use as he saw fit. It might not have been the Feathered Serpent God's own hand that gave it to him directly, but for it to appear before him now, at just this moment, was near enough to the same thing.

And so Anu bowed and prayed once more toward the depths within, then left the Feathered Serpent's pyramid with the sword in hand.

"Hisss!" One wind lizard dragon after another rose into the sky, and lizard people ran out in droves, reluctant to see him go.

"I have been away so long now. It is time I went back." Anu waved down at them, making his farewells.

"There is still business waiting for me back in the City of Fire Protection. I cannot stay any longer," Anu explained, when someone still tried to keep him a while more.

The sun stood high overhead, and one wind lizard dragon after another passed on through the clouds, dwindling away little by little into a single black speck in the distance.

And in the Dark Prison Abyss, another figure had been watching Anu all this while, listening to every word he had spoken.

He had seen Anu's hopes, Anu's dreams, Anu's own deep longing.

The horrifying charred corpse pressed a hand against his scorching throne, and wisps of searing white smoke curled up from beneath it.

He came stepping down, one step after another, watching that reflected vision through the one part of him that was not burned black, his own eyes, as the wind lizard dragon flew away into the distance.

"The more a man longs for a beautiful world, the more he will come to hate this ugly one."