I am God LSLCCF

Chapter 464: Death of the Horseshoe Crab

Glass Temple

Hila emerged from inside with several witch doctors, and caught sight of Shelly sitting in front of the main gate.

Hila was a spirit who cared deeply for others. The moment she saw that Shelly was troubled, she sat down beside her at once and softly asked what was wrong.

The witch doctors stood off to one side. Unsurprisingly, every one of their eyes went straight to the glass tank the Mother of Life had set aside, and to the horseshoe crab inside it, clinging to its last breath.

Not one of them spoke aloud. Off to the side, they conferred with great care, entirely through the power of mind-to-mind communication.

"Is it still alive?"

"It is still alive."

"It is in a bad way, though. It may not last much longer."

"Once the Life Sovereign puts it back, let us give it another treatment!"

"Do not let it die. If the Mother of Life truly makes us bring it back to life, we are finished."

"Could we not simply make another one exactly like it?"

"And what if the Life Sovereign says that does not count as bringing it back?"

"Better that it does not die at all."

With that, the witch doctors took their leave of the Glass Temple. Other chores were still waiting for them.

Once she had heard what was troubling Shelly, Hila drew on her own experience and offered a method. Shelly should go and look more at the various things of the mortal world. Perhaps there she would find the answer she wanted.

"Whenever inspiration deserts me, I go and look at the things and the doings of the mortal world."

"When I created the wood nymphs, it was a flowering tree in a mortal king's garden that I saw, and out of that came the rainbow tree."

"And when I created the lake nymphs, it was because I had watched the feathered serpent use the Eye of Mutation to make the brown ball vine. So I drew upon the power of the Eye of Mutation myself, and made the lake nymphs."

"Shelly, if ever you are short of inspiration, you might go and look at the mortals' books, or at the deeds they have done. You may well find inspiration there."

But Shelly wasn't buying it. She was the original, and always had been. Only mortals learned from her. She would certainly never learn from them.

She turned her head away. "I'm not learning anything from mortals. Back at the start I was the one who taught them how to talk. Every last thing they know, they got from me."

"Those pyramids they build? I built the first one."

"Their big airplanes? I had those carved in front of the temple over two hundred million years ago."

"Apart from God, I was the first to hold a God's Form. Even the trilobite men learned that from me."

Shelly went on, "And I told them to listen to me, and they didn't listen, not one bit. Mortals are nothing but a pack of disobedient little brats."

"It makes no difference how I explain things to them, it's no use at all. I mean one thing, and they twist it into ten thousand different meanings."

"And then they turn around and tell me that's what I meant."

"Not like me. I never twist what God means."

When Shelly got to the part about ten thousand meanings, she even drew a great big circle in the air with one hand, to show just how outrageous mortals could be.

Hila covered her mouth, unable to keep from laughing. There was something rich about Shelly calling the snake people a bunch of disobedient little brats when Shelly herself hardly ever listened to God either. Sometimes she even sulked at God, sitting alone in front of the temple gate in a temper, waiting for God to come and comfort her.

Once she had stopped laughing, she said gently, "They do have their faults, that is true. But they have a great many good points as well, and sometimes a fault, looked at from another angle, can turn into a strength of its own."

"And mortals come along so fast. They are nothing at all like what they were at the beginning. Shelly, try looking at them with new eyes."

Shelly seemed to waver a little, but all she did was mutter, "If I go learning from mortals, doesn't that mean I'm not as clever as they are?"

Hila, though, saw right through her, and said with a smile, "And what of it? They are the race that inherited the wisdom of God and of Redlichia, after all!"

"We are Life and Dream."

That only made Shelly more indignant. To her ears it sounded as though Hila were calling her dumber than some Divine King, and she pouted at once.

"Well, I'm still not learning from them, whatever you say."

No sooner had she said it than she craned her neck, stealing a furtive look into the temple, and asked, "Where's God?"

Hila answered, "God is resting."

In truth, what people meant by "God is resting" was that God's consciousness had cut itself off from the earth below for the time being.

His projection in the mortal world had vanished as well, and no one could find where He was.

Their conversation over, Hila rose to her feet, drew out a bag of candy in an exquisite silk pouch, and placed it in Shelly's hands.

"This is the candy the whole Spirit Country is mad for just now."

Hila thought for a moment before the candy's name finally came back to her. "Exploding Candy, I believe it is called. The little spirits miss you terribly, and they made a special point of asking me to bring it to you!"

"They say the flavor is like nothing else, and it has taken the whole Spirit Country by storm."

"Though for some reason, the nymphs do not seem to care for it."

Shelly took hold of the Exploding Candy and pointed at herself, thrilled beyond belief.

"They miss me?"

Never once, before this, had she received a gift from the spirits. What they used to bring her had not been a gift at all. That was called an offering.

Shelly looked at the pretty, delicate little pouch, and her heart lifted at once. She still commanded plenty of respect in the Spirit Country, it seemed. She'd only just left, and already the spirits couldn't bear to be without her.

It seemed the spirits still adored her after all.

"Hehe, once I'm back I'm going to go and play with them."

Hila was delighted too.

She was glad to see Shelly on such good terms with the little spirits, and said, with some relief, "I am sure they are looking forward to having you back as well."

Once Hila had gone, Shelly couldn't wait a moment longer. She undid the colorful ribbon, took out a piece of candy, peeled back its gold wrapper, and popped it into her mouth.

A smile spread over her face as she chewed the sweet candy.

The strange spirit candy melted into ribbons of colored light that swirled through her mouth. Its distinctive flavor seeped into her mind and her thoughts, until it felt as though she were floating in midair.

Put more plainly, the moment that candy went into her mouth, a loud noise rang out in front of the temple.

Bang!

Looking over again, one could see Shelly's entire head of brown hair standing straight on end, as though it had exploded.

Shelly finally understood why it was called Exploding Candy.

She also finally understood why only spirits liked the stuff, and not a single nymph did.

Shelly stood before the temple, the bag gripped in one hand and the candy wrapper in the other, her hair still bristling in every direction.

"You wicked little wretches, I'm going to plant every single one of you in a flowerpot."

"And I won't let you so much as hop about."

For a spirit, losing the power of flight along with its freedom truly was the cruelest punishment there was.

Maybe this candy from the spirits really was a gift, and a kindness.

Candy that burst in the mouth and made one's hair stand on end really was popular among the little spirits, after all.

And lately, all over the Spirit Country, one really could spot little spirits sporting that very hairstyle.

---

Inside the main hall of the Glass Temple stood a statue of God Yinsai.

Sunlight fell from the sky, and countless rays of light passed through the mirrors to be reflected behind the statue, framing God's towering form in radiance and glory.

Just then, a small head of exploded hair peeked out from behind a pillar and looked into the temple.

Good. No one was in the temple.

Sure enough, God wasn't there.

Shelly slipped inside quietly, and just as quietly made off with the bronze mirror on the table.

There was not a single soul in the temple, and still she crept about on tiptoe, looking thoroughly guilty.

Was she worried someone might see her exploded hair?

Or perhaps she was worried that someone might catch her talking big in the open while doing the exact opposite in secret.

The moment the mirror was in her hands, Shelly bolted out in a puff of smoke, and she was gone in a blink.

And the instant she was outside, she broke into fits of muffled giggling.

"Hehe!"

She hadn't actually done anything wrong, yet the thrill of sneaking about left her wonderfully excited, and for some reason her mood was especially good.

But Shelly was as forgetful as ever. She took the bronze mirror and left the glass tank with the horseshoe crab in it sitting forgotten at the foot of one of the temple's pillars.

She never did put the horseshoe crab back in the big tank deep inside the temple.

Shelly made her way into the sea of flowers. Tucked away in a corner of it, mirror in hand, she said, "Mirror, tell me everything in this world about races, and life, and evolution."

The spirit's magic mirror. The magic mirror of the Dream Sovereign, Hila, one might just as well call it.

It was a partial manifestation of the Authority of the Dream Starry Sea. Whoever held it could know everything that had ever happened in this world, or was happening even now.

And now, this was exactly the power Shelly meant to use to find the answer she wanted.

The words had barely left her mouth when images began flowing ceaselessly across the mirror's surface.

Among them, she even saw herself, back in the age of the Snake Mother, Sermos, just after she had created the snake people.

After that came images of her creating the winged people.

Then came the Abyss, and after it the feathered serpent Kurmis, then the lizard people, and then the ghouls and the silver insect.

"And this counts as a new race?"

Shelly looked up at the sky, at the Crown of Wisdom within God's Moon.

She pulled a face of pure contempt, hooked a finger down under her eye, and stuck out her tongue.

"Bleh!"

"Your idea of what makes a race is terrible. I don't accept it."

Viewed from the vantage of life ability or from that of wisdom ability, the definition of a race was an entirely different thing.

In Shelly's eyes, the monster race, the abyss race, the ghouls, none of them deserved to be called a race at all. Could a rock that gained sentience and started moving really be called a new race?

The Ruler of Life had one thing to say about that. Unacceptable.

At the very least, inside her Mother Conch of All Things, the monster race carried no brand at all. In truth, there was nothing there that even could be branded.

The Mother Conch of All Things held bloodline samples and life templates for every living thing and every species in this world, but the monster race had no bloodline at all.

Of all the new races the mirror had shown her, the only one that struck Shelly as genuinely new was the lizard people.

And in a sense, this race, too, had been made indirectly by Shelly's own power.

And so Shelly took a particularly close look at this new race, the lizard people.

At that same time, down in the mortal world, the governor's mansion of Moonlight Province was a hive of feverish activity.

For some time now, the Volcano Caravan had been shuttling between Moonlight Province and every corner of the land, hauling all manner of extraordinary materials back to the governor's mansion and delivering them into its back garden.

There a tall pillar rose up, painted over with colorful totems and inset with magic crystals and extraordinary materials of every kind.

By now, both the materials and the artifact's main structure were finished.

Next came the artifact's refinement and the blessing of its properties.

Apostle Oran and Lizard Person Anu came out together, and side by side the two of them set to work refining the artifact.

Oran now had a host of lamp spirits circling the pillar, adding one detail after another to its surface.

Some of the lamp spirits threw off blazing flame to smelt the metal, some carved array patterns into the surface, and others carefully set the magic crystals in place.

Lizard Person Anu, meanwhile, branded the chart of species evolution he carried in his own memory into the totem pillar's interior, bit by bit, fusing it completely with the array patterns already there.

For now, the chart of species evolution looked dim and lifeless, waiting for the right person to awaken it, piece by piece.

At Lizard Person Anu's urging, the magic crystals set into the pillar melted away one after another.

As each magic crystal melted, a portion of the species evolution chart inside the totem pillar lit up in turn.

This stood for the magic crystal's former owner, after all, a magical beast that had once used the ability of spirituality mimicry to imitate some portion of its ancestor's own power.

And now, that portion of power had been folded into the totem pillar as well.

As the sun rose and set, day after day, the light and the pulse the pillar gave off grew steadily stronger.

A few days later, Apostle Oran finally stopped his work, and the lamp spirits filling the sky faded away, one by one.

The artifact had at last been successfully forged.

Oran looked to Anu. "Third-rank. The artifact has not yet come fully into its shape, and even so I can feel that one day it will hold power beyond imagining!"

Anu bowed to Oran in thanks. "I thank you most deeply for your help. If there is anything you would ask of me, or anything you need done, put it to me at any time."

Oran said, "The faith of God Iva has already begun to spread through Moonlight Province. I would ask for some support in that."

"The temple is not yet fully built, and local powers of every kind are still shutting the coming of God Iva's faith out of this place..."

Oran did not stand on ceremony either, and laid out exactly what he wanted at once.

Anu agreed to every request in turn. None of them, after all, were unreasonable.

As for the resistance God Iva's faith was meeting from the Scarlet Temple and the Moon Sanctum, Anu had lately been working on a way to get the Harvest Temple established in the city. That effort was running into the very same resistance, and one stroke might now settle both problems at once.

Anu saw Oran out of the governor's mansion with the utmost respect, then made his way back to the foot of the totem pillar and said, happily, "The first step is taken at last."

He was still a long way from his real goal, a fourth-rank artifact, but Anu was already well satisfied. In truth, this was simply the limit of what his own ability and wealth could reach.

Forging a fourth-rank artifact in a single leap was not something he dared even dream of, and he could not have done it regardless.

【Divine Artifact: Ancestor Totem Pillar】

【Sequence Number 458】

【Ability 1 Surge of Magic Power: The Ancestor Totem Pillar is forged from a great quantity of magic crystals, and holds within it power on a vast scale. Releasing that power can bless magical beasts and beast knights alike, strengthening the power of every magical beast and beast knight within a certain range.】

【Ability 2 Totem Spirit: The Ancestor Totem Pillar can summon multiple Totem Spirits. A Totem Spirit can turn an ordinary wild beast directly into a magical beast, granting it powerful combat strength in an instant.】

【Ability 3 Mimicry Domain: Incomplete】

【Ability 4 Beast Spirit Lineage Chart: Incomplete】

The two abilities already in place could only be described as powerful. But the two still unfinished, their power not yet fully realized, were the ones truly worth looking forward to.

Anu walked to the foot of the totem pillar and ran his hand along it.

"Beast Spirit Lineage Chart."

In his own mind's eye, this was the totem pillar's strongest power of all, and it stood for the hope and the future of the entire beast knight profession.

He tilted his head back and looked up, his gaze passing straight through to the divine chart etched into the pillar's interior.

At last, his eyes settled on the very topmost image.

"Ancestor of countless species, forebear of every beast that ever lived!"

"I will reverse the flow of years and time, and reclaim the power the Life Sovereign truly granted us, back in the primeval age."

The chart showed nothing but ordinary animals, and the Ancestral Fish was nowhere near as powerful or sacred as Anu had imagined.

All the same, his approach had blundered onto the right path, and it opened up an entirely new road forward.

The power carried in these species' own bloodlines, joined with extraordinary power, would take the shape of magical beasts in this era and bloom into something wholly unlike what had come before.

The most obvious powers among these bloodlines were wings to fly with, the ability to burrow through earth, the ability to live underwater.

Trace deeper into the bloodline still, and one could even draw on special mimicry organs to sense electric fields, vibrations, sound waves, and scent.

With that, one could stand rooted in place and still sense every stir nearby, even across an entire city, or read the world's secrets by scent alone.

It could release pheromones, send messages across dozens of miles, and command whole populations of ordinary animals.

If one could trace it all the way back to the age of the Ancestral Fish, the power to be gained there was beyond imagining.

It was an accumulation of hundreds of millions of years, a treasure trove left behind by the birth and extinction of countless populations and species.

But reaching that far back might be beyond even an ordinary being of mythical rank.

---

Behind Lava Mountain, night had fully fallen.

Blood mist cup blossoms covered the whole cliffside, and Shelly sat alone at the center of that sea of flowers, running her finger back and forth across the bronze mirror.

The blood mist cups swayed gently, as though singing a lullaby.

The whole world seemed hushed and at peace.

Shelly had watched the birth of the lizard people too, and everything that followed. Somewhere along the way she discovered that they were actually trying to find a way, through mimicry, to take on the shape of their own ancestors and gain their ancestors' power.

"What's this thing even doing?"

"It finally works its way up from a food fish into a lizard, and then into a person, and now it wants to go back?"

"Does it want to be eaten by the trilobite men that badly?"

Shelly couldn't make sense of it, though that was hardly unusual. She had never once understood what these mortals were actually thinking.

But then, at last, she saw the lizard person standing at the foot of the pillar, bowing down in worship before the Ancestral Fish.

And then he cried out, "Ancestor of countless species, forebear of every beast that ever lived!"

"I will reverse the flow of years and time, and reclaim the power the Life Sovereign truly granted us, back in the primeval age."

Shelly scratched at her hair. "I granted them power?"

What power could food possibly have?

Did it taste good?

Was the fish meat tender?

Shelly couldn't work it out, but that did nothing to dampen her mood. "That's right. I really am amazing!"

She still didn't quite understand why the lizard people thought so highly of the Ancestral Fish, but at the very least, there was no doubt that she herself was amazing.

And Anu's approach had given Shelly some ideas and inspiration of her own, exactly the way Hila had told her it might.

"Mimicry?"

"Simulation?"

"Imitating their own ancestors?"

A thoughtful look crossed Shelly's face, and at once her mind went to her own servants, the nine beings who held a Ruhe Seal.

"My servants keep evolving too, on and on, until in the end they turn into this world."

"So in a way, my servants are simulating this world."

"And in the end, they'll become the world."

"That's it! That's exactly it!"

"My servants are the world itself. They keep evolving, growing more and more complete, until in the end they become this world."

"This is my power. And it's my servants' power too."

Before this, she had never actually stopped to think in any detail about what her own power really was.

But long, long ago, back in the previous era, God Yinsai had already seen through to the true nature of life ability.

Wisdom ability moved from the real toward the void. In the end, its holders all became something like spirit entities, transcending beyond the world itself.

But the true nature of life was that its holders, in the end, would become the world itself.

In that instant, Shelly suddenly remembered these very words God had once spoken. Though God had said them to Hila at the time, she too had been standing right there at God's side.

Something lit up in Shelly's mind, and an idea came to her all at once.

"I've got Volcano, Forest, Sky, Ocean, and Desert already. They've come together into Ruhe Beast Island, and that's a little world all of its own."

"They're perfect already, and they only keep getting more perfect. So what more could I possibly want?"

Shelly had always felt her own back garden was too big. She had no idea at all what was happening inside it, no idea what state it was even in.

Shelly looked at the mirror in her hand and said, "It'll be my mount. It'll stay right at my side, wherever I go, whenever I please."

"And it'll be able to watch the whole world, any time, from anywhere at all, and simulate the whole world for me."

"Hila has a mirror. I should have a mirror too."

"No, wait. A mirror's too old-fashioned."

"I want a sand table."

"I'll carve my world onto its back. I'll carve it right into its body."

"Then it'll be just like putting the whole world inside my glass tank."

Shelly broke into a childlike smile, innocent and cruel all at once.

"And all I have to do is poke at the sand table from the outside. Whatever the sand table turns into, that's what my world turns into?"

"Whatever I want my world to become, I can just make it become that."

Shelly was overjoyed. She sprang up and stamped about in the middle of the flowers, whooping and cheering.

"That's it! That's exactly it!"

This was clearly well beyond the reach of a Ruhe Great God's own power, but that hardly mattered.

She was the Life Sovereign. All she needed was for the thing to simulate her own back garden, her own small world, clearly enough for her own eyes to see. Everything after that, she could manage herself.

Shelly had her idea. What remained was working out how to make the thing.

"It should be a part of what this world is made of too. It should be everywhere at once, able to exist anywhere at all, and able to turn into every kind of shape there is."

"Is there any species in this world that's everywhere at once?"

Shelly was the Mother of Life. The answer came to her at once.

"Bugs?"

"No, that's not it!"

"Fungi?"

"Still not thorough enough."

A flash of inspiration struck Shelly, and she called out a name.

"No, wait. Microorganisms."

Never once had Shelly given a name to this smallest and most basic form of life, and yet, right now, that name simply surfaced in her mind on its own.

As though this was simply what such a thing had always been meant to be called.

Or perhaps she had once overheard God say the word by chance, and had paid it no attention at the time, let alone thought to make the connection now.

Shelly had finally settled on what power to grant her future mount and pet alike.

She sprang up out of the sea of flowers at once and began searching for her pet.

"Where's my glass tank?"

Shelly searched everywhere, and at last found her pet at the foot of a pillar in the temple.

But by now, the horseshoe crab inside the glass tank wasn't moving at all.

"What's the matter with it?"

"Why isn't it moving?"

Shelly crouched down and poked at the horseshoe crab in the tank.

Before, it would still twitch a little. But now there was no sign of life in it at all.

That was it. The horseshoe crab was dead.

In the scorching heat around Lava Mountain, it had even begun to give off a foul smell.

Shelly pinched her nose, grabbed the horseshoe crab by the tail, and lifted it up. Now she was sure. It really was dead.

Shelly was not happy about this at all.

How could it die without her permission, without her say-so?

"Dead?"

"It really was much too fragile."

But Shelly still had a way to fix this. She summoned the witch doctors at once, pointed at the horseshoe crab in the tank, and said, "You know how to heal, don't you?"

"Now bring it back to life!"

In their God's Form, the witch doctors broke out in a heavy sweat, men and women alike. On coming back they had been all ready to give the horseshoe crab another thorough treatment, but who could have known they would find nothing in the tank at all.

One of the witch doctors edged forward and said, "But... it is already dead?"

Shelly nodded. "I know. That's why I'm telling you to bring it back to life."

The witch doctor tried once more to explain the difference to Shelly. "This is no longer healing. This is resurrection."

Shelly nodded, wearing the look of someone who understood without understanding at all. "Oh!"

Then she pointed at her dead little pet. "Then just use resurrection!"

The sweat on the witch doctors' foreheads only grew heavier. "But we do not know resurrection."

Shelly glared at them, and the witch doctors trembled one after another. "You can't do this, you can't do that," she said. "You're all completely useless."

The useless witch doctors did not dare raise their heads, terrified that the Mother of Life might throw the whole useless lot of them out onto the trash heap.

Shelly looked at her little pet and let out a rather wistful sigh.

"Ahh..."

She wore, just then, the look of a grown-up.

After all, she'd raised it for a long while now. She did feel something for it, if not very much.

It had been so close. Just one step, just a little further.

This horseshoe crab, born of the sea and blessed with fortune, could have become one of the divine candidates, a Ruhe god ordained by fate.

But it didn't have that kind of fate. It hadn't managed to hold on.

It had died on the very eve of success.

But the horseshoe crab's death changed nothing. It still wouldn't stop the Life Sovereign from making good on her own promise.

A god's will could not be shaken, could not be revised.

"It doesn't matter that you're dead. I said I'd make you my tenth servant, so my tenth servant is what you'll be."

"Dead or not, you're still my servant."

Shelly stood, and boundless darkness surged out of that small, slight body of hers. Behind the curtain of the world, a demonic shadow vast enough to swallow the sun rose into view.

That terrifying form and power proved it. This little girl's face and body were nothing more than a disguise. She was the Supreme Divine Being, the Life Sovereign, the deity who had created every living thing and who could destroy it all.

And now, the Life Sovereign prepared to bestow the tenth Ruhe Seal, not upon this corpse itself, but upon the microorganisms living within the horseshoe crab's body.