Read Novel Full Chapter 473: The Clock of Time Set Turning
Chapter 473: The Clock of Time Set Turning
While Lizard Person Anu and Void's Mold Mother were striking their bargain, two other wills in the Abyss were watching him just the same.
In the Dark Prison Abyss, atop a throne wreathed in raging flame, a charred corpse kept watch through the sword Lizard Person Anu carried at his side. Every moment of every day he saw all that happened to Anu, and even what happened within Anu's own mind.
He watched Lizard Person Anu run ragged by a plague, and yet, in the midst of that very disaster, watched him cross paths with the Tenth Ruhe as well.
And the Ruhe named Void, having seen straight through Anu's sophistry, had decided to strike a bargain with him instead.
An experiment, with civilization and race themselves for its stage.
Sitting upon his throne, watching Lizard Person Anu, Dark Moon could not help but speak.
"Fortune and calamity lean upon one another."
"When luck reaches its very peak, disaster descends. When disaster shadows a man's every step, fortune comes following after it in turn."
"Could the Authority of Spirituality truly have something to do with luck?"
Dark Moon suddenly thought of Xiao, the Evil God of Original Sin. The moment Xiao had reversed the flow of years and time to arrive in this era, the moment he ascended to his divine seat, calamity had come following close behind.Had Xiao endured that calamity back then, perhaps fate would have turned entirely to favor him.
Would there, in that case, have been no one left who could have stopped him from claiming everything he wanted?
Before Dark Moon could puzzle out an answer, Void's Mold Mother, on the other side, had already set its own power into motion.
Lizard Person Anu's figure shrank smaller and smaller, drawn toward Void's Mold Mother.
Void's Mold Mother's own form grew larger and larger, impossibly so, and the thing sealed atop the brim of its "hat" began, little by little, to come into view.
It was not only Anu. Dark Moon too saw the thing perched atop Void's Mold Mother's head.
In that instant, the King of Wrath was left utterly dumbstruck.
He shot to his feet, his whole body reacting at once. "What is that?"
Dark Moon stood speechless for a long moment, his throat tight, before he finally forced out the question, as though he still could not quite believe it.
"It... it carries a whole world upon its head?"
Dark Moon knew well that a Ruhe could become the earth, could become a desert, could become the boundless sky and its sea of clouds, could become a vast mountain range that moved of its own will.
But this was the first time he had ever laid eyes on a Ruhe that carried an entire world balanced on its head.
And on the other side, in the Black Mud Abyss, the King of Lust, Melde, was watching Lizard Person Anu as well. Ever since discovering that Dark Moon had placed a wager on this lizard person, she too had begun keeping a close eye on him.
Little by little, she uncovered a great deal, and came to understand what Dark Moon was after.
"So that is how it is. That ghoul's method for becoming a god came from that feathered serpent all along."
Since she knew Dark Moon's plan, Melde naturally had no intention of letting it go either. Given the chance, she meant to snatch it straight out of Dark Moon's hands, or at the very least claim her own share of it.
Both of them kept their eyes fixed on Lizard Person Anu the whole while, and neither meant him any good. Both coveted the very same method for ascending to godhood.
And once Void's Mold Mother had drawn the lizard person into its mimicry world, it lifted its own vast head, and looked toward the Abyss.
Its gaze seemed to pass straight through the barrier between the mortal world and the Dream Realm, and fell upon the two figures within the Abyss.
That voice, like the tide rolling over the sea, came flowing in from somewhere far away, echoing through the whole of the Abyss.
"You wish to watch as well? Then come inside together!"
The Ruhe Seal activated, and the authority the Life Sovereign had granted it took hold over the two of them at once.
Neither of the two had even set foot upon the Path of Mythology yet, and in an instant both felt their own consciousness torn loose and pulled down into the mimicry world.
It was power called up from the very root of things, and there was no resisting it at all.
That a being like Void's Mold Mother had already discovered them came as little surprise to Dark Moon, though he had hardly braced himself for it either.
Melde fared no better, caught entirely off guard.
Before the eyes of the two of them, the Abyss vanished.
All they could see was that vast white living being swelling larger and larger, until it was past taking in by sight at all, while they themselves fell down into the strange world balanced atop its head.
Void's Mold Mother's white limbs went soft as noodles, floating up into the empty void, weightless beyond measure.
A soft light poured off its whole body, and it turned in slow, drifting circles.
The mimicry world it carried upon its head began to shift, and every last one of the Void's Mold stirred into motion.
"All of you, Void's Mold, become in truth a part of the world's own cycle. Forget everything. Join the wheel of life and death!"
Void's Mold Mother's voice reached into the mind of every single Void's Mold there was, the mimicry world's own supreme, unified consciousness handing down its command.
"From this moment on, you are no longer Void's Mold."
"You will forget everything, and become true members of the mimicry world itself."
"You mimic all things, you are the cycle of the world, you are the wheel of life and death."
"This too is the road and the mission of our own evolution."
Every last one of the Void's Mold began to shift, began to reshape the mimicry world entirely anew.
They forgot everything, each one becoming a blank and empty soul, and stepped into this great drama of rebirth, with race and civilization for its stage.
Anu, Dark Moon, and Melde, all three descended together upon this mimicry world, and the white of it took on color of its own.
The trees turned green, the sea turned blue, and the whole world seemed, in a single instant, to spring to life.
By the time the three of them touched down upon that ground, everything was already in place.
Of the three, Anu arrived first.
He entered the body of a lizard, and the moment he did the lizard began to change, again and again, because of his presence within it.
The lizard crawled forward, and before it had gone even a dozen steps it had become a lizard person, a splendid robe appearing over its body and a sword at its waist, as though everything he had once carried on him had been brought along here too.
In truth, the Void's Mold had simply mimicked it all into being.
Anu walked in a daze, staring in shock at everything around him.
He lifted his head, looking in astonished disbelief at the sea of forest surrounding him, at the canopy of leaves and the blue sky stretched above it.
"Where... where is this?"
Anu could not sense, not in the slightest, that this was a world built merely for an experiment. It felt to him entirely real.
He could feel the wind on his skin, smell the fragrance of the trees, hear the cries of beasts and insects alike, and could even command them through the power of his own mind.
More than that, he could hear the beasts' own inner voices, raw and primal emotions and desires.
Anu walked on outward, and before long he came upon another presence.
A swamp flying lizard lay on a tree branch, and to his astonishment it opened its mouth and spoke to him, calling out his name.
"Anu!"
"Anu!"
Anu lifted his head and asked it, "Who are you?"
It answered, "I'm your magical beast companion. Weren't you the one who brought me in here?"
Anu stared at it, startled, a note of doubt in his voice. "You came along with me too?"
The wind lizard dragon said, "Of course. Aren't the two of us one and the same?"
Anu said, "Then why can I not feel the bond between you and me at all?"
The wind lizard dragon said, "I don't know either."
Anu thought it over. "It might be because what came in here is only our consciousness, not our true bodies. Our bodies are both still out there, so naturally that bond has been cut off."
Next, Anu began asking about things only he and his own magical beast companion could possibly know.
Little habits and quirks belonging to the wind lizard dragon, things that only Anu and his own companion could have known, and the creature answered every one of them without a moment's hesitation.
At last, Anu looked at it, and found himself starting to believe.
"Is it really you?"
And just then, the creature began to change, again and again, until in the end it had become a true wind lizard dragon.
The great wind lizard dragon soared above the sea of trees, letting out a piercing cry.
That familiar shape put Anu completely at ease in this unfamiliar world.
On the far side of the continent, in a stretch of marshland, rotted logs lay scattered about, and clinging to them were any number of strange insects bristling with feelers.
From within the bodies of these insects there now flew out a dense swarm of black specks, which gathered together at last and formed the shape of a woman.
It was a being in God's Form, and behind it spread pair upon pair of huge black wings.
For all that it wore God's Form, there was not the faintest trace of holiness to be felt from it, nothing but evil and ruin.
It seemed the very embodiment of plague and death demons both, the embodiment of calamity itself.
The Fallen Angel Melde.
And with that, the lizard person, the wind lizard dragon, and the Death Demon Plague were all three in place.
The Void Continent
This world greatly resembled Ruhe Beast Island, though far smaller.
All manner of animals and plants filled the continent, only there was no Ruhe Great God here, and no snake people either.
But when Anu stepped out of the jungle, he saw, among the hills beyond, a crowd of familiar shapes.
He saw a whole band of lizard people.
Anu hurried up onto the ridge and looked out over the slopes below.
"Lizard people?"
"This many lizard people?"
These lizard people lived upon this land much like wild beasts, digging holes at the foot of the mountains and making their homes in caves.
They had not yet given rise to any civilization, and had no language to speak of.
They understood only the simplest sort of cooperation, and used only the crudest weapons, utterly unlike the lizard people who, like Anu, had once been transformed from snake people. Every part of them spoke of life at its very beginning, wild and untamed through and through.
Anu felt a stir of excitement.
He seemed about to go down and meet these lizard people for himself, but before he could even take a step, Void's Mold Mother's words rose in his mind all at once.
This was only a simulation of a race's evolution. None of it was real.
Anu let go of that impulse at once, because he understood that these were not true lizard people at all.
However convincing they might look, none of it was real.
On the first night after arriving on the Void Continent, Anu sat with his companion, the wind lizard dragon, at a campfire outside the jungle, warming himself while he scratched marks into the dirt with a stick.
Even without a notebook to hand, he saw no reason to break the habit of keeping a record of his own cultivation.
"First. I must gather every scrap of information there is about the Death Demon Plague. That should not be difficult, and it is the simplest item of them all."
But Anu also knew that the Void Ruhe had not dropped him here merely to gather information, nor would gathering it all be enough, on its own, to let him leave.
Only by completing its experiment, by fulfilling its goal, could he ever leave this place.
So in the meantime, there was room enough for him to see to a few things of his own as well.
He went on writing. "Second. Within this Ruhe god's own power of working-out, I mean to perfect my strength as a beast knight, to find a beast knight's road to becoming an apostle, and a higher road still. We shall mimic a sacred beast rank magical beast totem spirit, and higher yet."
After hesitating a long while, he wrote down a third goal as well. "Third. This experiment stretches across a vast span of time. I must find some way, without fail, to hold on to my own will, so that the self inside this experiment never loses himself entirely."
On the other side of the fire, the wind lizard dragon was dozing.
But before long, it woke again, and looked off toward the lizard people gathered in the distance.
"Anu, is what you're saying really true?"
"This whole world is fake? Those lizard people are fake too?"
"But however you look at it, none of it seems fake at all, does it?"
"This is a real world, through and through."
Anu said, "If this were true, then are the memories we carried before we came here not the false ones instead?"
"Rather than believe this world is real, I would much sooner believe in the memories I had before I ever came here."
The wind lizard dragon asked, "And what if the memories we had before coming here really are the fake ones?"
Anu said, "Never let yourself think that way, because the moment we have such a thought, it means we have already lost ourselves entirely in this false world."
Anu meant it as a warning for the wind lizard dragon, and just as much as a warning to himself.
"We must tell ourselves, every moment of every day, that we do not belong here, and that in the end we will leave."
Something shifted in the wind lizard dragon's eyes. It looked at Anu for a long while before finally turning its head away, curling up by the fire as though it had fallen fast asleep.
Anu settled on a handful of plans, and set about carrying them out at once.
The first plan was to gather every clue there was concerning the Death Demon Plague.
The wind lizard dragon said, "How do we go about that?"
Anu said, "There is no need to trouble over it. Before I came here, Void's Mold Mother said the Death Demon Plague was part of this evolution as well, and I expect it will come down upon us soon enough."
"We need only gather our data when it comes."
"We need only wait quietly, and the goal will be met."
The wind lizard dragon asked, "But then won't these lizard people just die? They're your own kind, aren't they?"
Anu froze. After a long moment he spoke. "Have you forgotten again?"
Anu looked at the wind lizard dragon, and said it once more, plainly.
"Everything here is false. This is nothing more than a false experiment."
"Apart from you and me, nothing here truly exists at all."
The wind lizard dragon nodded. "In that case, we can move straight on to the last two goals."
"But without a potion seed, without a magical beast, without even a beast knight, how are we supposed to work out a beast knight's path forward?"
Anu said, "Are you not a magical beast already? And I am already a beast knight."
"We ourselves are the spark. We ourselves are the origin."
Anu mounted the wind lizard dragon, and together they flew off toward the horizon.
He meant to raise a new Ancestor Totem Pillar in this world. Having been through the forging of one once already, he found it no great problem this time, so long as he could gather enough of the materials.
Over the following decades, Anu wandered this world, hunting down monsters far and wide to gather transcendent materials, and at last forged a new totem pillar, one of the third rank.
Transcendent materials on this continent were far scarcer than on Ruhe Beast Island, but at least they could still be found.
Through all those years, his magical beast companion, the wind lizard dragon, never once left his side.
Anu looked at the pillar he had built with his own hands. With so few resources and no one to help him, the hardship of it all was almost beyond imagining.
Set beside the original pillar, this new one looked crude beyond comparison, and yet he smiled at the sight of it all the same.
"It holds only the one kind of totem spirit, the wind lizard dragon."
"But with this, I can go on now to make new magical beasts."
The totem spirit descended, and Anu, channeling its strength through the Ancestor Totem Pillar, granted power to another swamp flying lizard. And so the very first magical beast of the Void Continent was born.
But this wind lizard dragon showed itself wild and violent from the very moment of its birth, utterly beyond Anu's control, and simply flew off.
His own wind lizard dragon seemed to look down on this newly born one with real contempt, and said,
"What good is one like that, a fool that can't even form a contract?"
"Besides, our whole race of magical beasts can't pass our power down. If it just flies off like that, in a few decades, a century at most, it'll vanish completely."
The wind lizard dragon seemed to be egging Anu toward something, though it never said as much outright.
Anu told the wind lizard dragon, "Only the power of a mythical artifact can truly carry across any distance, to any place at all. Only then might magical beasts truly have a way to pass themselves on."
The wind lizard dragon said, "A mythical artifact? Could the Ancestor Totem Pillar become one?"
Anu shook his head. "I do not have the method for forging a mythical artifact. But I once watched Lord Kurmis set out on the path to godhood, and saw with my own eyes as Lord Kurmis forged the Seed Jar."
"But I only ever watched. What I know of it is limited."
The wind lizard dragon urged him on. "That's still knowing a fair bit. In this world we've got all the time we could want, and we can try at it slowly."
"Given enough time, we're bound to find a way eventually, aren't we?"
Anu did not answer, seeming unwilling to discuss the matter further, or perhaps it was simply too soon to discuss it at all.
He only said, "First, let us find a way to bring the Ancestor Totem Pillar up to the fourth rank."
"Only once the Ancestor Totem Pillar reaches the fourth rank will it be able to hold a Mimicry Mental Domain."
"Only after that will we have any right to talk about the rest."
Elsewhere, Melde too had spent these same decades wandering every corner of the Void Continent.
Not since the Abyss had been cast down into the darkness had she ever again had a chance to walk upon open ground like this.
This land held not a single winged person, only a scattering of ugly lizard people, and yet Melde found it a thoroughly pleasant place all the same.
Melde was the King of the Original Sin of Lust, and the power she held was the Law of Desire of the Abyss.
The Law of Desire of the Abyss. Abyss monsters carried within them a powerful, uncontrollable desire, and the Abyss Queen, Melde, granted them the power to breed, so that through the Abyss they might bring forth new Abyss monsters of their own.
And this place, here, was exactly where her law could be set loose.
This body of hers was made of the Death Demon Plague itself, and through it she could command every last person it infected. In this whole world, nothing possessed a more powerful gift for breeding than a plague.
Melde walked barefoot across the surface of a great river, gazing far off at the boundless plain beyond, and at a band of lizard people who had only just settled there.
A fierce longing rose in her face. She wanted to embrace this whole world, to keep every bit of it for her own.
"I will... take this world for my own."
With that, her form dissolved apart, becoming a formless black smoke that drifted across the land.
Ordinary eyes could never see that black smoke at all. Only within the microscopic world could it be noticed.
Melde moved across this world, spreading plague, eating away at it through the sickness she carried.
At first, the plague could pass only between ordinary lizards, but little by little it began to break out among lizard people as well.
One day, Anu and the wind lizard dragon happened to pass over this very plain, just in time to see the plague breaking out with their own eyes.
Anu dove down at once. "The Death Demon Plague!"
Anu looked at the caves outside the wild tribe's settlement, and saw bodies already fallen across the ground.
Black blotches had risen across every single body, dreadful swellings pushing up from beneath the scales, giving off a foul stench.
He recognized it at a single glance. This was the Death Demon Plague, without question.
The wind lizard dragon looked at the dead already scattered through the wild tribe, and further off there had to be still more lizard people, suffering under the plague with no strength left to fight it.
"Aren't we going to save them?"
Anu looked at all of it, and something in his eyes slowly began to shift.
And then, without warning, something came back to him.
Bit by bit, memories from decades past surfaced in him, and all at once he realized that he had already spent decades on this Void Continent.
Decades. Long, and yet somehow short.
Because against the true length of his task, this span of time was only just the beginning, if it could even be called a beginning at all.
All these years he had been utterly absorbed in building the Ancestor Totem Pillar, to the point that he had begun to forget certain things, had begun to forget the very reason he had come here at all.
All at once, a fierce panic rose up in his chest.
"I have changed. I am being changed, even now."
"This change runs down into the very bottom of my heart, down into my bones, twisting my will and my thinking, little by little."
"Even if this is a false world, for the one who fell into it, for me, there is no difference from the real thing at all."
Anu looked at the lizard people dead of the plague, and spoke a single line.
"I cannot save them."
But then, a moment later, he said,
"But I can still save the people out there, beyond this world."
Having said this much, Anu went down toward the settlement all the same. He meant to gather what data he could from the dead lizard people, and to search for some way to fight this plague and wipe it out entirely.
He went into the caves, dragged out every one of the infected, and set the uninfected lizard people apart from them.
He spoke to these lizard people through the power of his mind, letting them know what they needed to do.
"Do not touch those bodies."
"Stay well away from them."
"Do not drink water from anywhere near a body."
"..."
His mouth had said he could not save them, and yet his hands had already thrown themselves into it with everything he had.
And every lizard person who heard Anu's voice, who looked up at the great magical beast beside him, the wind lizard dragon, could only lie flat on the ground, at a loss, whimpering in fear.
Anu understood. This was how they showed submission to a power greater than themselves, much as any wild beast would.
And just then the wind lizard dragon suddenly spoke up.
"Don't let these lizard people's bodies go to waste."
"If we took them into the totem pillar, couldn't that push the Ancestor Totem Pillar into the fourth rank early?"
Anu froze for a moment. "Use their bodies?"
The wind lizard dragon said, "It's only a simulation. These people aren't even real, are they?"
Anu looked toward the lizard people still living, at their faces, one after another, at the fear and confusion in their eyes.
Lizard person children cowered behind their mothers, trembling as they watched Anu and his wind lizard dragon, their eyes full of a terror of death, an awe of strength, and a longing for power all at once.
For the first time in all his life, he felt himself waver. "They... are they truly false?"
The wind lizard dragon reminded him, "Anu, you said it yourself once. Have you forgotten?"
"You said we should never let ourselves think that way, because the moment we have such a thought, it means we have already lost ourselves entirely in this false world."
The wind lizard dragon planted its claws against the ground and lifted its head high.
"Besides, it's not as if we're doing anything to the living. These people are already dead. They're nothing but a pile of rotten meat now."
"Why shouldn't we use them?"
"And once you hold greater power, won't you be able to do so much more?"
What the wind lizard dragon truly wanted to say was that he should not let some small, hollow sense of justice make him lose sight of the goal he meant to reach. That was not real justice at all, only weakness.
But it caught itself and fell silent. This was not a thing it should say aloud.
Anu said nothing for a long while, and that silence already seemed to be an answer of its own.
A hundred and thirteen years after their arrival on the Void Continent, this plain had begun to give rise to the first stirrings of civilization. Anu had never actively pushed the lizard people's civilization forward, and yet his presence alone had already, invisibly, shaped everything around him.
Villages and cities had begun to rise across the plain, people who worked with tools, slaves and those who owned them.
Every so often, some terrible plague would descend upon this world, reaping countless lives, and with every reaping the plague itself seemed to breed and change, over and over again.
And in this same year, Anu and his companion, the wind lizard dragon, finally completed an Ancestor Totem Pillar of the fourth rank.
In the very same forest where Anu and the wind lizard dragon had first arrived, he had lived quietly, all these years, in seclusion.
Only now, the once spirited young lizard person Anu had become an old man, worn down by the weight of years.
Anu looked up at the fourth-rank Ancestor Totem Pillar, finished at last, watching it give off its own Mimicry Mental Domain, a look of deep satisfaction in his eyes.
"It has succeeded at last."
Anu, his back bent with age, reached out and ran his hand over the pillar, gazing at the totem carved into it.
The wind lizard dragon said, "Shall we try mimicry now, and make the very first sacred beast totem spirit?"
"Once that's done, you could try becoming a fourth-rank apostle."
Anu shook his head. "No. It is already too late. This body of mine is nearly worn through."
"Before I came here, Void's Mold Mother and I struck an agreement. We will never truly die."
"Our death here is nothing more than the start of what comes next. We will only become another kind of living thing, and begin an entirely new life all over again."
"Making a sacred beast totem spirit, becoming an apostle, I shall have chances enough for that yet."
"But now I must begin preparing for other things."
The wind lizard dragon said, "What is it you mean to do?"
Anu told the wind lizard dragon, "We have been in this world more than a hundred years now. We have been here too long, so long that we have begun to forget the world we came from."
"And this is only a hundred years. We may have to pass a hundred hundred years here, a thousand of them, ten thousand of them."
"When that time comes, will we still remember who we were at the start?"
"Will we still remember that we mean to return to the world that is truly our own, and to reclaim what we once had?"
The wind lizard dragon said, "So what do you mean to do about it?"
Anu said, "I once heard Lord Kurmis say that everything about a wisdom seed is made up of four parts."
"Spirituality, Wisdom, Desire, Knowledge."
"Four parts. They are the Source of Wisdom, and Wisdom's greatest secret."
"Of the four, Desire is one's very personality, and Knowledge is one's memory."
The wind lizard dragon lifted its head, its eyes turning deadly serious. This had already become a secret bound up with myth itself.
Anu went on. "I mean to preserve my personality and my memory just as they are now. That way, however unimaginably long I may end up staying here, the moment I wake, it will be this very me who wakes."
"So that I remember why I came here, and remember what it is I ought to be doing."
The wind lizard dragon looked at Anu, real shock showing in its eyes.
"I can't believe you actually thought of a way to do this."
"But have you thought about this? It might end up creating two of you."
"Are you sure the you with only a hundred-odd years of memory could hold his own against the you who carries the memory of ten thousand cycles of rebirth?"
Anu said, "Why should we need to deal with each other at all? We are both still ourselves."
"He is only the me of the future. I am only the him of the past."
"My friend, there are not two of me at all. There is only the me who knows what comes after, and the me who does not know it yet."
"We are the very same consciousness. We simply stand at different points along the same span of time."
The wind lizard dragon looked at Anu, and something suddenly felt wrong to it. It murmured to itself, deep inside.
"Spirituality, Wisdom..."
"That's not right!"
"The Path of Wisdom!"
It looked at Anu, and said it aloud, its voice rising.
"Isn't this the very method for becoming a god? You actually found it?"
More than a hundred years had passed, and Anu had, it seemed, finally found some crucial thread within his own memories of Kurmis.
Anu nodded. "I only understood it myself a short while ago, all at once. Some knowledge, some questions, you simply cannot make sense of until you have walked that far yourself."
"Only recently did I finally understand why Lord Kurmis split his own power apart before he ever forged the Seed Jar."
"I never imagined that the very things Lord Kurmis once told me would turn out to be secretly bound up with becoming a god."
None of it had made any sense to Anu before. But the moment the Ancestor Totem Pillar reached the fourth rank, he understood.
"Because only this way could a consciousness be made to last forever."
"I once watched how Lord Kurmis split that power apart, and I understand now, too, how to fuse a power like that into an artifact."
"Now my own life is drawing to its end, and yours is not far behind."
"There are two ways before us. The one is that I fuse myself into the totem pillar and become its consciousness, while you pass into the cycle of rebirth to carry the plan forward."
"The other is that you become the totem pillar's consciousness, and I carry the plan forward through the cycle instead."
The wind lizard dragon hardly seemed to need to think it over. "The plan was yours to begin with. Better you're the one to see it through."
"I'll become the totem pillar's own spirit, and sleep away inside this pillar. I always did like sleeping anyway!"
Anu reached out and patted his old friend, and said,
"Then it is settled."
The two of them came to stand beneath the Ancestor Totem Pillar, and began to awaken its power.
It was a fourth-rank artifact now, one that already held the power to perform the Four-Part Secret Technique of God's Grace.
Anu let his mind drift back, back to the moment he had watched Kurmis set out upon the Path of Mythology.
He had stood, back then, closer to Kurmis than anyone else, guarding his master.
There beneath the pillar, the wind lizard dragon and Anu had every last bit of power drawn out of their bodies, until each of them became nothing more than a hollow, insubstantial shadow.
Behind those insubstantial shadows lay a ritual array of almost unbearable complexity.
One of the two shadows was drawn out entirely, then swallowed whole by the pillar.
From the other, its personality and its memory were drawn out and sealed away.
The wind lizard dragon's body collapsed entirely, every part of it seeming to merge completely into the pillar. Though this was only a simulated world, it felt, in every way, almost exactly like the real thing.
In that very moment, a voice rose from within the pillar, putting into words what it felt.
"My spirituality, my wisdom, my desire, and my memory are all fixed inside the pillar now, but my consciousness feels as though it's slipping away. I think I'm about to fall asleep."
Anu said, "That is only natural. Only a true mythical artifact can stay awake forever, only a true mythical artifact can hold a consciousness that lasts through eternity."
It asked, "Then will I just go on sleeping like this forever?"
Anu said, "When something rouses you, you will wake, and you will be able to burn power to hold that waking state for a time. But to possess your wisdom and your own awareness whole and entire, you must wait until you become myth yourself."
The wind lizard dragon said, "And how do I become myth?"
Anu said, "Your consciousness is preserved now. From here, let us go on experimenting!"
Anu thought of the way Kurmis had once gained power through the sacrifice of potions and magic crystals, and it seemed to him he could see the next step on the path to godhood, though exactly how to carry it out would still take experimenting to find.
After all, the Four-Part Secret Technique alone, even with a clear direction and something he had seen with his own eyes to draw on, had still taken him more than a hundred years to work out how to use.
The simulated path to godhood still stretched a long way ahead of them.
The wind lizard dragon, now become the totem pillar, sank little by little into sleep, its own awareness sensing Anu's body burning down, bit by bit, like an oil lamp running dry, drawing slowly toward death.
And a power drawn from the world itself wound about Anu's body, waiting for his death, already arranging the next life that would follow it.
"Anu!"
"What will you look like, the next time you appear?"
Anu said, "Maybe a lizard person. Maybe something else entirely. Who knows, maybe even a wind lizard dragon?"
The aged lizard person leaned back against the base of the pillar, drew the long sword from his waist, and drove it into the ground beside it.
"Watch over my sword. I shall return before long."
The consciousness within the pillar spoke up suddenly. "Thank you!"
Anu laughed. "No need for that, my friend."
With that, the whole jungle fell utterly silent, and no sound could be heard again.
One of them passed into the cycle of rebirth. The other sank into a sleep that would last an age.
And on the other side, the Fallen Angel Melde, who held the Death Demon Plague within her command, had now begun to shift the plague elsewhere.
Infecting lizards and lizard people alone was no longer enough for her.
She was moving the plague onto another kind of creature entirely.
She transformed into another shape, and attached herself to this creature.
It was almost as though she herself had become this creature, holding the whole race under her command.
It seemed she meant to see the whole world fall sick, to see every last soul in it infected with the sickness of desire, and claimed entirely for her own.
Above the Void Continent, high in the boundless sky, a clock of time seemed to turn, fast and ceaseless, its hands spinning trails of afterimage behind them.
It was as though some unseen force were reaching out to spin it, faster and faster.
This was the endless cycle of three lives, the whole span of a race from its birth to its end.
They sank into endless years just as Xiao, once the traitor of the Temple of Truth, had sunk before them, lost in the shifting and evolving of one species after another.
And as it happened, all three of them had some tie to him, to one degree or another.