I am God LSLCCF

Chapter 468: The Nymph's Book of Tales and the Ceramic Figurine's Voice

Several of the Avel who had come from the New World were granted an audience with Governor Anu, and the conversation went pleasantly for everyone.

When the talk was over, an attendant led the group out to the grounds behind the residence to collect their brown ball vine seedlings, along with the texts on how to cultivate them.

Along the way, they caught sight of the Ancestor Totem Pillar standing in the back garden.

The pillar was a mystery, and the totemic engravings covering it drew every eye at once. "What is this?"

One of them recognized it. "It's an artifact."

The others stared in astonishment. "An artifact this big?"

The leader seemed to catch an amused smirk on the attendant's face. Coming from beyond Ruhe Beast Island, they already carried a sense of their own inferiority, and now shame flushed hot through them. They rounded on the others. "None of you have seen the Alchemy Tower at the Miracle Temple before? That one's even bigger than this."

The attendant, though, was quick to tell them that this was no ordinary artifact.

"This is the Ancestor Totem Pillar, a mighty artifact that Lord Anu and Apostle Oran joined hands to forge."

"It can measure how closely a person's blood answers to a magical beast's bloodline, and tell you which kind of beast you're suited to contract and raise."

"With it, anyone can become an ability user. Anyone can become a noble beast knight."

The Avel's expressions changed, and one after another they crowded in closer.

"What did you just say?"

"Is that really true?"

"You mean we could actually become ability users?"

All composure gone, the Avel looked to the attendant.

The leader's whole manner changed. Turning to the young attendant with great deference, they asked, "Anyone at all?"

"Of course, anyone at all," the attendant said, "so long as the blood of the Wisdom Seed runs in your veins."

"There's a condition, though. You must first give your faith to the Feathered Serpent God, the Great Lord of the Harvest, and receive the potion seed granted by His divine grace."

"Set against the other extraordinary professions, the beast knight makes no strict demands on talent. However poor your talent, it's enough to make you a beast knight apprentice at the very least."

"Though if your talent's too poor, the only thing you'll ever contract is a beast of the very lowest tier."

At that, the attendant summoned out a magical beast of their own.

It was a lowly spike ball beast, barely half a meter across, the sort that puffed itself up and fired off its spines whenever danger came near.

"Look, this is my magical beast partner, Ball Ball," the attendant said proudly.

The attendant, it turned out, was a beast knight apprentice.

But a spike ball beast like this was only ever chosen by someone whose talent and bloodline were about as poor as they came. It took the least potion of any beast to cultivate, and what came out of it was weak to match.

Once a beast knight contracted one, their own strength still fell short of learning or casting even an apprentice-level divine technique. There was no potential in it at all.

Only the wealthy sons of noble houses, desperate to become ability users, would ever throw down a fortune to buy themselves that kind of status.

None of that stopped the Avel. The moment they heard, their thoughts went soaring off into the clouds.

In this extraordinary world, no one could turn down the chance to become an ability user.

Even the lowest apprentice ability user, even one who couldn't master or cast so much as a beginner's divine technique, was still an ability user.

They asked at once, "If we wanted to become beast knights ourselves, would that be possible too?"

Anyone who could cross the open ocean was naturally no ordinary person.

Back in the Green Forest Witch Kingdom, they were nobility.

Their talent had been tested once before, and not one of them had cleared the threshold to become an ability user.

"So long as Lord Anu agrees," the attendant said, "of course you can."

"Lord Anu is the Feathered Serpent God's own voice in the mortal world. He wields tremendous power, and he was the very first beast knight on Ruhe Beast Island."

The beast knight profession really was, just as the attendant had said, remarkably undemanding when it came to talent.

But more often than not, when a threshold lowered on one front, it meant the threshold on another was climbing without limit.

Beast knights were exactly that way. The resources they demanded ran extremely high.

Becoming a beast knight first required a potion seed. That seed had to be cultivated into a plant, then through experimentation bred into a matching magical beast, and only then could one form the special contract with it.

Only with every one of those steps behind them could a person be said to have stepped through the beast knight's door.

The expense of it all was simply more than an ordinary person could ever bear.

The Avel had no room left in their minds for any of that. Before long they were back in the hall of the governor's residence, seeking an audience with Anu.

The moment they arrived, the Avel made their manner as humble as they knew how, and said nothing at all about beast knights. Instead they said, "Your Excellency the Governor, all along this journey we've heard story after story about the Great Feathered Serpent God Kurmis, and of His great deeds in creating brown ball vine."

"We came here first of all to seek out brown ball vine."

"Your Excellency's mercy has given us everything we hoped for, and we thank you for it."

Anu gave a magnanimous wave of his hand. "So long as you remember that this is the Feathered Serpent God's grace, that is enough."

The group nodded again and again, then went on, "But beyond the brown ball vine, we have one small wish."

"We want to become followers of the Feathered Serpent!"

They spoke with unusual sincerity, and their faces shone with reverence whenever they mentioned the Feathered Serpent God.

On the surface Anu looked faintly astonished. Inside, he could not help laughing to himself.

In truth, the road to the storehouse never passed through the back garden at all. He had ordered the attendant to lead them that way on purpose, precisely so they would see the Ancestor Totem Pillar.

And every word the attendant had told them, Anu had deliberately arranged to have revealed.

It was who these people were that Anu was really after.

They came from the Avel Peninsula, and that whole land was still untouched ground for faith.

If these few could be made servants of the Feathered Serpent God, they would carry his faith all the way back to the New World.

They would be the very first believers over there, and the beginning of the faith itself.

Anu rapped his knuckles against the table. "If all you need is to become believers, you may go to the temple and pay your respects. There is no need to speak of it with me."

The leader of the Avel spoke carefully. "We were hoping to go a step further, to know the Feathered Serpent God's power more deeply for ourselves."

Another of them was too eager to hold back and said it outright. "Your Excellency the Governor, we're hoping the Feathered Serpent God will guide us, so that we can become noble beast knights ourselves."

It did not please the leader to hear their companion lay their purpose out so nakedly, and they shot a glare back over their shoulder.

How could anyone speak of faith as though it were a bargain?

Did their companion not fear angering a servant of the god?

They studied Anu's face, and seeing that he had made no move at the slight, they went on, "We've just this moment decided. We'd like to donate a temple to the Feathered Serpent God."

"And that's only a beginning. From here on we're willing to give the divine beings far more than that."

"And we believe we're not the only ones. There are many across the Avel Peninsula who hunger for faith in the Feathered Serpent God, who hunger for the grace of the harvest He brings."

"If we became beast knights, we could surely carry the god's power and faith far beyond this place, and let far more mortals witness the Feathered Serpent God's greatness."

They had passed through any number of places on the way here, and seen other temples working hard to spread faiths of their own.

Some of the divine servants had already decided to board ships bound back for the Avel Peninsula, to carry their faith there in person.

To their minds, the Harvest Temple and the Feathered Serpent God surely needed to spread their faith on the Avel Peninsula too, and so they hoped this much would be enough to move Anu.

What they didn't know was that Anu had set his sights on them from the very start. There was no chance at all of his refusing them.

And so, amid a chorus of praise for the divine being, Anu led the group back once more to the Ancestor Totem Pillar in the rear garden.

Anu meant to test each of them there, to check their affinity with the totem spirits already bound to the pillar, and learn what kind of magical beast each was suited to.

Anu raised his hand. "Open!"

The totem pillar came alive, blazing with brilliant light.

The one being tested stood beneath it and laid a careful hand against the pillar. A corner of the great chart of life's evolution unfolded before them, endless images of living beings stacked one atop another into a pyramid whose peak could not be seen.

A startled cry broke out of them. "What is this?"

"This is the process of life's evolution," Anu said. "Two hundred million years ago the Life Sovereign created the ancestor of every beast, and from it, in time, every kind of beast in this world was born."

"And it is from this very thing that a magical beast's power comes."

The Avel person had no idea what those words truly meant, and could only stare in awe at the chart of life's evolution, feeling as though they were looking straight into the very truth of life itself.

In that moment, they understood at last what greatness truly meant, and the sheer weight of a hundred million years of evolving life swallowed them whole.

Anu watched the chart shift and flicker on and on, until at last it settled and held still.

"It seems you are suited to be a lizard-type magical beast knight. Your affinity in that direction runs very high."

"Your talent is a little lacking, it is true, but your affinity is strong, and that will let you fall into step all the more smoothly with the power of your future beast partner."

"Who knows, you may yet amount to something one day."

Anu thought it over for a moment. "You are a devout believer. I can blend the potion formula for you with my own hands, and use the color-shifting lizard you brought to make you a magical beast that is yours alone."

"A lizard-type magical beast holds tremendous potential. What you make of it rests on your own wisdom, and on how well you learn to move as one with your beast partner."

Anu didn't really expect the person to become a powerful beast knight. He only hoped they would carry the faith onward.

Still, he said everything that needed saying, and held nothing back.

"A magical beast is not some outside thing. It is a part of you. Only when you and your beast trust each other utterly, and lean on one another utterly, can a beast knight's power be driven to its very limit."

The person was overjoyed, wishing they could become a beast knight that very instant.

"Lord Anu, every word you've spoken, I'll keep it all in my heart."

Many days later, beneath the Harvest Temple, the divine artifact Ancestor Totem Pillar rose high overhead. There, before everyone gathered, the Avel who had come from the New World, together with the other beast knight apprentices chosen from across Moonlight Province, were completing the final step of forming their contracts with their magical beasts.

One magical beast after another was born beneath the temple, each crying out in its own voice, and the beast knights could not wait to climb astride their new partners.

And every time a new magical beast appeared, a fresh wave of cheering rolled through the crowd below.

But what held Anu's attention most was one particular beast, evolved from a color-shifting lizard.

From the moment of its birth, the colors across its scales shifted without pause, and then it vanished from sight entirely, right before everyone's eyes.

Everyone in the plaza pointed in amazement at the spot where the beast had been. "It's gone!"

Heads craned and turned, searching everywhere for it. "Where did it go?"

Before long, the beast reappeared, dozens of meters away. "Look, over there!"

It was an entirely new species of magical beast, and one bursting with potential. It proved, too, that Anu's experiment had succeeded.

He had bred a new kind of magical beast, once again.

Anu turned his head, and on his Ancestor Totem Pillar another figure lit up, one that matched this very beast.

Beneath the figure was the name Anu had given it. "Color-Shifting Lizard Dragon!"

The Ancestor Totem Pillar had already gathered a great host of totem spirits. Every known magical beast had one carved somewhere upon it, and even the snake people and the lizard people had been etched in as totem spirits of their own.

The ritual was the Harvest Temple's proclamation of its own power, and it worked beautifully.

No small number of the people gathered there wore looks of open longing.

"Beast knights!"

"That's real power, an extraordinary profession like that!"

"Just look at that magical beast, it's a magnificent thing!"

"Wind lizard dragon knights are the mightiest of the lot. Look at the Governor's own wind lizard dragon, now that's a real dragon."

This was exactly why Anu had staged the ritual in the first place, hoping it would draw more people into the Harvest Temple, and win more believers for the Feathered Serpent God.

But the ritual wasn't over yet. Anu had other purposes in mind, other ideas of his own.

At the ceremony's close, Anu climbed the steps and took his place at the temple's great doorway. Every divine servant stepped back at once. Not one of them dared stand in front of him.

"Subjects of Moonlight Province. People of Suinhor, all of you."

"I am Anu, your governor."

Every eye lifted to him in that moment. He wore the robes that belonged to the governor, and the cap that belonged to the governor.

"Your Excellency the Governor."

"Look, quick, it's the governor!"

"It's the lizard person governor."

The people under Anu's rule looked up at him with complicated eyes. Not everyone could accept being ruled by a lizard person.

Some clapped below out of habit, though it hardly counted as enthusiasm. Many simply looked on with cold, watchful eyes.

Anu saw those looks too, and he began to laugh.

"It seems there are some among you who fear the shape I wear now?"

At that, Anu lifted both hands, and behind him the Ancestor Totem Pillar blazed to life.

Anu called down one of the pillar's totem spirits, one with a human body and a serpent's tail, and let it settle over his own body.

His shape could be seen shifting on and on, until at last he had become a snake person, for the moment at least.

"Ah!" The crowd erupted at once.

"He's changed, he's changed!" The snake people at the very front stared up at Anu one after another, pointing helplessly up at him.

"The governor's a snake person?" Those pushing forward from the back had only just arrived, and thought Anu had been a snake person all along.

"No, he turned into one." Plenty of those up front, though, had watched Anu's form change with their own eyes.

"What's going on here?" Everyone traded uneasy looks.

Anu, now wearing the shape of a snake person, looked out over the crowd and let out a hearty laugh.

"How about it? Does this not feel a great deal better now?"

Through its totem spirits, the Ancestor Totem Pillar could turn an ordinary wild beast into a magical beast for a time, folding it into its own fighting strength.

And activating the snake person totem upon it could, just as naturally, lend a lizard person the power of mimicry, letting them wear a snake person's shape for a time.

This was exactly the power Anu was drawing on now. Once the Ancestor Totem Pillar reached the fourth rank and gained a mimicry domain, it might even be able to fix that mimicry permanently in place.

Anu saw the shock in every face turned up at him, but he had no intention of stopping there.

He called another snake person beast knight forward.

A lizard person's totem spirit came down from the pillar and settled over the snake person beast knight, and before every astonished eye, turned them into a lizard person.

The crowd watched the two of them trade shapes, snake person into lizard person and back again, and this time they were left thoroughly dumbfounded.

"This... What in the world is going on?"

"Now the snake person's turned into a lizard person."

"This is just too strange."

Anu stood there at the center of it all, and raised his voice to everyone.

"Strange, is it?"

"It is not strange at all. If anything, this is simply how things have always been."

"Do you know why things come to be this way?"

Anu raised his hand high, and the totem pillar poured out its light.

Within it appeared a corner of the chart of life's evolution, laying bare the ties between lizards, snake people, and lizard people.

"Because lizard people came from snake people. Every lizard person was once a snake person."

"And the reason we became lizard people is that, long, long ago, snake people themselves were born out of lizards."

"And every lizard, every beast, all of them came out of the sea. All of them were born from one single source, and all of them share one single ancestor."

"The Life Sovereign did not create us a thousand years ago. Nor ten thousand years ago."

"She had already created us a hundred million years before that."

Taking the chance the moment offered, Anu laid out for everyone the idea of life's evolution, laid out the truth that every kind of beast sprang from one single ancestor.

It seemed he meant to use this very moment to win the others over to the lizard people once and for all, to make everyone understand that lizard people and snake people had always been one and the same.

The more Anu spoke, the more passion poured into his voice, as though every feeling locked inside him were finally breaking free.

"My kin, there is no need to fear us. No need to recoil from the lizard people."

"Because we have always been one. We have always shared the same root."

"We are not a foreign people. We are one and the same people."

"We are not monsters. We have only returned to a shape we once wore, and reclaimed the power our creator, the Life Sovereign, gave us."

Anu looked out over the crowd, fallen utterly silent below him, and let his own cry ring out.

"I believe it!"

"In a future more distant still, there will be no divide between lizard people and snake people at all."

"Because we are all the Life Sovereign's own creation."

"Because, all of us, we are people."

The startling truth Anu had spoken left the whole plaza in dead silence, yet deep in the heart of every person there, it stirred up a storm.

---

Night had fallen by the time Anu came back to his bedchamber in the governor's residence, worn out by the long day. Even then his mind would not settle.

Today, at last, he had truly spoken his own thoughts and beliefs aloud.

He believed this was only a beginning. If he kept at it, he was certain every snake person would come to accept the lizard people in the end.

Puff!

Anu lit the oil lamp with a gentle touch, and the flame rose up to fill the dark room with light.

He set the lamp on the table, then took from the drawer the sky messenger's feather the Avel had given him, and sat quietly admiring it.

He thought back on the New World the Avel had described to him, on places and sights so distant they seemed impossible.

"The New World!"

"The Avel Peninsula. The Witch Mountain Peninsula. The Land of Light. The Green Forest Witch Kingdom. And that sea ringed round by the continent, and the desert that looked as though the sun itself had fallen and struck the earth."

"A continent with no end in sight. An ocean without any boundary at all."

"This world really is enormous."

Anu turned the gift over in his hands a while longer, then set down what he had learned of the mutant lizard dragon in his own cultivation journal.

Only then did he finally settle down to rest.

The lizard person was in high spirits that day. He had taken his first step, and said the words he had wanted to say.

Perhaps that was the reason, perhaps not, but a dream came to him.

He dreamed of the Avel beast knights he had just taken in, setting sail out over the sea, and of the boundless ocean stretching before them, and of the New World itself.

He saw Lord Kurmis's temple rise up on the Avel Peninsula, saw Lord Kurmis become a true divine being at last.

He saw time march ceaselessly on, saw the world grow and develop without end.

Fields of brown ball vine no longer stayed penned within Suinhor, but spread across the Executive Nation of Ten Thousand Serpents, the Land of Sunrise, and the whole of Ruhe Beast Island, spread across the entire Avel Peninsula and even lands farther still.

He saw everyone grow rich and full, saw granaries piled high with grain.

He saw snake people and lizard people standing shoulder to shoulder, boarding great ships together to cross that sea locked within the heart of the continent, setting out toward a world unknown.

"No disasters!"

"No hunger!"

"Everyone living in happiness, and every life given its meaning by the pursuit of a dream of one's own."

Anu laughed aloud within his dream, laughing so hard he very nearly woke himself.

And just then, a voice drifted down from somewhere above the dream itself.

"Your dream is the most beautiful one I have seen so far. Is this the place you long to reach?"

"How far is it from Ruhe Beast Island?"

---

The Door Nymph, Rosa, had spent some time as a guest in the Sky Miracle Garden, where the god Iva had given her plenty of advice, and several books of tales.

One of them was a story Iva had written with his own hand, called Tales of the Spirits.

It told of spirits who granted children's wishes.

At last, the Door Nymph rose, arms full of her books of tales, and thanked him before turning to go.

"I thank you for your help. With these, I think I shall soon be able to write a book of tales that is truly my own."

God Iva nodded as well. "There is no need for thanks. I too am glad to have met another interesting nymph."

The Door Nymph, books in her arms, slipped back through the hollow of the tree.

The far side of the hollow opened onto a door, and once Rosa pushed through it, she found herself back in her own spirit realm.

Once the God of Desire and Alchemy had seen Rosa off, he sent a divine oracle down to his own temple at once, and told his believers, "Seek out those who have received the keys, and help them build their teleportation gates."

And so, for the first time, legends of teleportation gates and the Door Nymph began to spread through the mortal world.

Back in the Door Spirit Realm, Rosa returned to the little wooden house beneath the rainbow tree, and set the books of tales God Iva had given her down to one side.

Aside from Tales of the Spirits, the one that caught Rosa's attention most was naturally the Gospel of the Wood Nymph.

It was one of the tales about the wood nymphs, and it told the story of the storage nymph, Saint Raphael.

In the story, Saint Raphael was kind, graceful, and upright, always eager to help others. In people's minds she stood beneath a round white tower in a long flowing gown, a somewhat heavy leather case in hand, a case from which every manner of treasure could be drawn.

She was the richest nymph in the world. She possessed, after all, a treasury beyond compare.

The story wasn't wrong, exactly. It simply left out Saint Raphael's other side.

She was kind, yes, but she was also wildly scatterbrained, and she had a habit of saying the most outlandish things in the most elegant manner imaginable. She loved gossiping about the divine beings behind their backs.

Her nerve was small as well. She would gossip about the divine beings, and then live in dread that they'd find out and punish her for it.

And that treasury wasn't even hers. She was only the nymph charged with guarding it. Not one single thing inside it belonged to her.

When Rosa finished reading the Gospel of the Wood Nymph, envy showed plainly in her eyes.

"Saint Raphael is so lucky. Someone has even written her book of tales for her already."

"I shall simply have to write my own book of tales myself."

Rosa had already made up her mind.

She meant to take the stories behind her doors, change them up a little, and weave them into her own book of tales.

Rosa made her way through the Door Spirit Realm, checking once more on the keys she had sent out and the doors already made.

The teleportation gates themselves had already been summoned out into the mortal world, and all that remained in the Door Spirit Realm was an empty hollow in the wall for each, a colored vortex turning quietly within.

Every teleportation gate was its own coordinate, its own anchor point, and every one of them was unique.

"Gate One. Its coordinates lie to the south of the New World's main continent now. They say there is a stretch of wonderfully fertile land there, and a world of ice and snow that has lain frozen for countless years."

The spirits had once seen the whole shape of the world through the magic mirror, and that was how the nymphs came to know of it at all. Rosa thought of that pure, untouched world of ice and snow, and felt a small stirring of longing.

"It must be a beautiful place."

Right beside Gate One was Gate Two, the second teleportation gate ever born, and Rosa fixed its position at once.

"Gate Two. That is the ancient demon spirit's gate. Its coordinates lie at the westernmost edge of the New World's northern continent now."

"What the spirits said was true after all. This world really is a sphere."

"That demon spirit flew due east the entire way, and yet in the end it arrived in the west."

"That demon spirit's aircraft is a remarkable thing. To think it circled half the world."

Rosa waved a hand and left a number beside each of the teleportation gate vortices already made, a one and a two.

From then on, every gate born would carry a number all its own.

That way, whenever someone opened one door bound for another, there would be no mistaking which was which.

But just as Rosa finished marking the number, Gate One began to shudder violently.

The colored vortex swelled all at once, then shrank back down just as suddenly, over and over again.

It looked as though someone on the other side kept throwing the door open, then slamming it shut again.

"?"

"What is this fellow doing?"

Rosa turned to look at the vortex.

All at once, a voice reached her ears, carried from somewhere far away.

It was a voice wrung out with grief and fury, despair torn straight from the depths of someone's heart, a wail fit to rend the soul.

"Why?"

"You lied to me?"

"You're a nymph. How could you lie to someone?"

"Where even is this? What in the world is this place? This isn't the Land of Light at all! This isn't anywhere I ever wanted to go!"

"Let me out."

"Let me go. I want to leave this place."

"I want to leave this place~"

Wherever that voice was coming from, it had to be someplace vast and empty. The words seemed to be swallowed whole by the world itself.