I am God LSLCCF

Chapter 481: The Teleportation Gate to the Southern Hemisphere

Suinhor had once been an alliance of city-states. Two generations of kings, Osis first and then Morabi, had carried their reforms through, and now it was called the Kingdom of Suinhor.

Beneath the kingdom the land was divided into provinces, counties and cities, and every province in the north now lay in the grip of the Death Demon Plague. The apostles and temple divine servants of the Land of Sunrise and the Royal Court of Ten Thousand Serpents were said to have acted already, cutting off all contact with Suinhor.

Camps stood all along the borders to take in the infected and deal with them, and every method was being tried in hopes of halting the plague and treating it.

Even so, nothing could hold back the plague's spread.

At this very moment a terrible shadow came flying up out of the south, trailing black mist across the whole sky, leaving fierce panic wherever it passed.

Outside a small town, snake people in short tunics were dealing with the dead, digging a great deep pit in the woods and burying the bodies in it.

This way, the plague would have a much harder time spreading, and even if the dead rose as ghouls, they would never claw their way back out.

Terrible as the disaster was, life still had to go on, and on every face one could see the kind of numbness that comes only after despair and fear have run their course.

The gravediggers were still hard at work when the animals throughout the jungle took fright, one after another, and broke for no clear reason into a mad run.

"There's a monster... there's a monster flying this way." The snake people stopped what they were doing, and one of them, catching sight of something, pointed off toward the horizon.

"Something black." The snake people saw a thick black mist spreading toward them from the edge of the sky, but they could not tell what it was.

"A black what?" By the time it had drawn close enough, the black shadow blotting out the earth beneath it, they finally saw clearly what it was.

For the first time in their lives, they were looking at a true giant dragon.

A dragon, soaring through the sky.

Horns rose from the giant dragon's head, black scales covered it from end to end, and much of it bore armor plating.

Its bearing was fierce, savage, powerful, and yet it carried also a sense of matchless perfection.

That was, without question, no living being that belonged to the mortal world.

Roar!

The black dragon opened its jaws, and out of nowhere a wild wind tore across the land.

Black mist gathered from every direction, blotting out the sky, and surged upward.

That terrible plague, the Death Demon Plague vast as an ocean, was drawn whole into the black dragon's own body, and became part of the dragon's innate divine technique.

The gravediggers had no idea at all what had happened, and only stared blankly as the black dragon flew off into the distance.

Back in the town, they found that the black marks were fading, one after another, from every infected person who lay in bed waiting to die, and that they were slowly recovering.

"The plague's receding?"

"Are they really better?"

"Look, quick, they really are better!"

From that very day on, no new cases appeared in the town again.

A few days later, people slowly began to recover completely.

Village after village, town after town, city after city, the same change unfolded everywhere, beginning from the very moment they saw the black dragon fly past.

The gloom hanging over the land began to lift, and the disaster of the plague slowly dispersed.

No one knew quite what had happened.

As for the black dragon itself, the temples and the kingdom's officials and nobles alike were unwilling to say much of it at all, as though it were some sort of taboo.

So the common people began to pass around a rumor of their own, that it was the Dragon of Death and Disaster.

Everyone simply took it for a messenger that brought death to the mortal world, one that had delivered its punishment and then taken the plague back with it once more.

If one saw him for the first time, it meant disaster was about to fall.

If one saw him a second time, it meant the disaster was already over.

With his own innate divine technique, the power he had gained upon the Void Continent of the Tenth Ruhe, Black Dragon Anu brought this disaster to its end, a disaster that had begun with the lizard people.

With that, he drew a final line beneath his own last story upon Ruhe Beast Island.

He returned to the lizard people's village.

"Fourth-rank power?" Even from far off, the lizard people could feel the fourth-rank mental domain, a force that blanketed the sky itself, and even bent the very laws of reality.

"It's Lord Anu, is Lord Anu back?" At once, someone caught sight of the black giant dragon.

The black dragon had come flying straight out of the Volcano Forest, having circled the whole of Suinhor before it returned. The lizard people knew perfectly well that this black dragon was Anu himself.

Every lizard person there burst into cheers, and came rushing out to welcome him.

At least to the lizard people, Anu was a hero and no mistake.

Whoosh, whoosh!

Whoosh, whoosh!

The giant dragon's wingbeats carried none of the wind lizard dragon's soft puffing sound. Every motion of his stirred up a howling gale that surged and rushed throughout the forest.

The black dragon's shadow shifted little by little within a burst of light, and took on God's Form at last.

Anu had changed, inside and out. His appearance, his features, even the look in his eyes, none of it was the same as before.

But in the eyes of the lizard people, he was still the same Anu he had always been, and they crowded warmly around him, offering their congratulations.

"Lord Anu!"

"You've finally broken through to fourth rank!"

Though Black Dragon Anu had not brought back the power he had gained upon the Void Continent, he had brought his memories back with him instead, and in this world, memory and knowledge could turn directly into power of their own.

Without expending the slightest effort, Black Dragon Anu pushed open the gate between third rank and fourth.

At the same time he turned the beast knight's power into the magical beast power he knew far better, and became a black dragon once more.

The moment Anu's feet touched the ground, he looked first toward the teleportation gate, built now and waiting.

Anu's teleportation gate was made of wood, carved all over with a pattern of climbing vines, and it looked nothing at all like the rough, commanding presence of a black dragon. It seemed, instead, delicate, and finely made.

Much as Anu's own heart had once been. A lizard person rough and towering to look at, and yet carrying within him a heart that matched nothing of his outward appearance at all.

Anu walked up to the gate, and drew out a key.

"The teleportation gate key."

"A key that stands for hope, and for distant places."

Black Dragon Anu held the key tight, and turned back to look at the lizard people behind him.

In another world he had spent an entire lifetime chasing one thing alone, the recognition of every lizard person, hoping only that he might lead them toward the future.

There had been a time, once, when he too had longed to become a hero, to become someone who could turn the tide of an age and change the future.

But in the end, sad to say, all he could do was watch the lizard people die out before his very eyes.

Now, everything was just right. Everything was only just taking its first step.

He pushed the key into the lock, and turned it gently.

Light poured out from deep within him, and flowed into the key.

Light spread outward from the key, and the teleportation gate began to shudder and shake violently.

Anu understood at once.

"It is open."

This time, he pushed the door open.

Rainbow light spilled outward without end, and space itself rippled in answer.

Within the gate lay a chaotic whirlpool, a warped path leading nowhere in particular, a spiral that turned and turned without end.

No one could ever say clearly where those warped paths, that chaotic whirlpool, might actually lead.

Knowledge came flowing to Anu from the key, how to use this gate, and every taboo that surrounded it.

Anu lifted his head, and watched the whirlpool spinning within the gate.

He shook his head. This gate was truly powerful, but its true power would only show itself once the mortal world held countless such gates, once a whole system of teleportation had been built.

"A teleportation gate only carries anyone anywhere once two gates are joined to one another. Then distance counts for nothing."

"It seems we will have to rely on the Avel's ships after all."

Anu was just about to close the gate, when all at once the twisting spiral within it began to change.

That winding, twisting path straightened out in a single instant.

On the far side of the gate, an entirely new scene came into view, a place no one had ever seen before.

Anu stopped at once, and stared fixedly at the other side of the gate.

Someone else, in that very moment, had opened a gate too, and it had connected with Anu's own.

Two blurred, indistinct figures stood before their gates at the same moment, and asked in the very same voice.

"Who are you?"

"Who are you?"

As he listened, Anu found something familiar in that voice.

It seemed he had heard it somewhere before.

"Someone I know?"

The other voice's timbre was far too distinctive, a little different from an ordinary person's.

Something seemed to be surfacing in Anu's memory, and he called it up at once and sifted through it.

All at once, within the memories of Lizard Person Anu he had only just fused with, he found the matching piece, and recognized who this was.

"So it is you."

---

Southern Hemisphere, Main Continent of the New World

In a world of dark, desolate, eternal ice and frost, a figure wrapped tightly around itself pressed forward, shivering.

The ceramic figurine carried a lantern, an icicle hanging from the tip of its nose.

Its two hands curled tight together, its teeth chattering without pause, and with every step it sank deep into the drifted snow, swaying as it fought its way forward against the bitter wind.

For days now it had pressed on along the direction the Door Nymph Rosa had shown it, though the world around it never seemed to change at all, as if it were only marking time in place.

But it could feel that it was truly drawing nearer, moment by moment, to leaving this land behind, because it could feel the temperature changing.

That morning the ceramic figurine, which had been hiding in a snow cave waiting out a blizzard, chipped open the entrance early.

What greeted it when it broke through was not darkness and a bitter, howling wind, but a single ray of light.

The ceramic figurine paused for a moment, then began digging faster and faster toward the outside, clawing through the snowdrift and bursting out from within.

All it saw was a world that had long since shed its darkness. At the far edge of the sky a blazing sun was rising, scattering light and warmth down upon the mortal world.

At last, the sun had risen.

The ceramic figurine stared straight at it, and for the first time in its whole existence it felt how deeply moving a thing it was, simply to see the sun.

It even dropped straight to its knees on the ground, tilting its head back to gaze up at that "great ball of fire."

On its knees, it scrambled toward the sun, shouting as it went.

"Light!"

"It's light!"

"It's the sun!"

It gazed at the sun, then lay down flat in the snow and let it bathe its front side through, before turning over to let it warm its back as well.

While its back was turned to the sun, it buried its face in the snow, and wept.

It wept like something gone mad, its voice tearing out of it like a tooth beast about to be slaughtered.

Its whole life long it had been arrogant, wild, unrestrained, the second most powerful figure in the Abyss since the moment of its birth, wielding a god's authority to deal in slaughter.

It had done exactly as it pleased, taken whatever it wanted, and never once suffered anything like this in its whole existence.

Once it climbed back up out of the snow, it laughed again like an utter fool.

Carrying that lantern it had once dropped and now kept bound with a rope, it danced across the snow, letting out every manner of strange cry beneath the sun.

"Heh heh heh heh heh heh!"

"Hahahahahaha!"

Then, catching sight of the lantern in its hand, it flung it to the ground all at once.

"Feh!"

"Get lost. I'm never going to need you again."

But it had run only a short way before it turned and went back for the lantern, realizing that the sky would still turn dark, and that the lantern would be needed after all.

Even though this lantern held no flame, and gave off no heat at all.

It walked on for many more days after that.

Little by little, it began to see stretches of jungle and plant life growing up out of the ice-covered land.

The ceramic figurine threw the lantern aside once more, gathered branches together into a pile, and built a fire.

It sat with its hands held out beside the flames, head tilted back, eyes rolled up to show the whites.

"Ahh!"

"Fire!"

"Ahh!"

"This heat. The heat of this fire."

All at once, it caught sight of an animal.

The two of them locked eyes for a moment, and the ceramic figurine took off running at once, chasing after the fleeing little creature and shouting.

"Stop right there!"

"I told you to stop. Stop, do you hear me?"

"Lord Ceramic commands you to stop!"

Before long, the creature had become roast meat over the fire.

The ceramic figurine sat by the fire eating its meat, thoroughly pleased with itself.

This body could not starve to death, but that endless feeling of hunger was something the ceramic figurine never wanted to endure again.

The farther the ceramic figurine went, the thicker the jungle and plant life grew, until it found itself in a boundlessly lush green world, home to every kind of living thing.

Not a few of the animals here were creatures unheard of even on Ruhe Beast Island, and had never once been recorded on either the Avel Peninsula or the Black Mountain Peninsula.

But here, there was no trace of any intelligent life at all.

And so the ceramic figurine settled down here. It seized a fierce beast's mountain den, and remade it into a home of its own.

Life here was rougher than before, but at least it was steady enough.

At least here no one hunted it down from every direction at once, and no gods across the heavens had it marked for capture.

It no longer had to starve or freeze, with food beyond counting waiting for it to enjoy.

The only shame was having no proper cook. The ceramic figurine's own skill in the kitchen left something to be desired, and after eating its own cooking too many times, it grew sick enough of it to want to gag.

Now that it no longer had to starve or freeze, the ceramic figurine finally began examining the wounds on its own true body.

"This missing piece."

"How am I supposed to patch this up?"

A great section of the ceramic figurine's true body was missing entirely, riddled with holes throughout, and in a state like this there was simply no mending it at all.

Luckily it had this nesting-doll body wrapped around it, so it was in no real danger for the moment.

The ceramic figurine walked outside.

There, standing just outside the cave, was a wooden platform, and upon it sat a strange door covered all over in graffiti-bright colors.

The ceramic figurine climbed up onto the wooden platform, and stood before the teleportation gate.

"Let's open it and see!"

Every single day it opened the door once, sometimes even several times, checking whether another gate had opened on the other side.

It had not forgotten, even now, that it meant to reach the Land of Light, that it meant to leave this place behind.

But through all these days, no matter how many times it opened the door, there had never been any sign of a connection on the other side.

So this time, though the ceramic figurine opened the door out of habit as always, it held no real expectations at all. It was only going through the same old motions.

What the ceramic figurine never expected was that the instant it pushed the door open, the gate stirred with far more force than it ever had before.

All it saw was rainbow light spreading outward without end, and the endless spiral behind the door unfurling, straightening into a single path that led off into the distance.

Light seeped in from the other side, and the two worlds were joined.

"It's open?"

"It's open!"

"It's open!"

The ceramic figurine, believing it had opened the gate to the Land of Light at last, could not contain its excitement, and let out a cry of wild joy.

Standing on its own side of the gate, it called out to the shadow facing it from the other side, "Who are you?"

To its surprise, the very same words came back from the other side.

"Who are you?"

As the words fell away, the ceramic figurine, just like the one on the other side, found the voice strangely familiar, as though it had heard it somewhere before.

While it was still puzzling over it, the other one had already come through the gate.

A terrible shadow bore down upon this side of the gate, pouring out from behind the door as endless darkness, then gathering itself again within the rainbow light into a shadow the size of a small hill.

What the ceramic figurine saw was no person at all, but a black giant dragon bursting out from the rippling light, and coming to a stop right before it.

"What in the world is that?"

The ceramic figurine staggered back in terror, again and again, and toppled clean off the wooden platform. It stared up as the great black dragon wheeled around, beat its massive wings, and rocketed into the sky.

It watched the giant dragon soar above the land of the southern hemisphere, letting out a roar.

Its bearing was terrible, dreadful to behold, and the mental domain it gave off reached across the whole sky. The plague-power radiating out of its body made people feel an instinctive fear and revulsion.

"What kind of monster is that?"

"Where did something that huge even come from?"

The ceramic figurine had opened the door only to have a creature that enormous come charging out of it, and it was scared out of its wits on the spot.

It scrambled at once on all fours toward its own home, burrowing straight for the mouth of its cave.

But the giant dragon dove swiftly down out of the sky, and came to a stop right before the ceramic figurine, its two eyes fixed hard upon it.

Anu asked, "Ceramic Figurine?"

The ceramic figurine lifted its head, and at last recognized the ripple of consciousness before it.

"It's you, that lizard person?"

In the last moments before it left Ruhe Beast Island, the ceramic figurine had crossed paths with Anu once, upon the deck of a ship out on the open sea, and it had come very near to falling into Anu's hands that day.

But neither Anu nor the ceramic figurine could ever have imagined that the two of them would meet again, of all places, here.

Between that parting and this meeting, far too much had happened.

Circumstances had changed. Hearts had changed. Everything had changed.

The ceramic figurine's mouth fell wide open, its two hands clamping hard around its own skull.

"It's you?"

"Why is it you?"

"I've fled all the way to the edge of the world."

"And they still sent you all the way here to catch me? What grudge could possibly run this deep?"

It seemed like nothing good ever came of the ceramic figurine opening that door.

The Door Nymph Rosa had told it plainly that this door led toward hope, and toward distant places.

But now, as far as the ceramic figurine was concerned, all of that had been nothing but the Nymph Rosa's lies. This door led plainly toward death, and toward hell.

The black dragon looked at the ceramic figurine, this legendary servant of the Evil God of Original Sin, Xiao.

By now Anu's own foundation was not far behind an ordinary divine being's. He had found a path all his own, and left Ruhe Beast Island behind as well.

So now, none of this mattered much to him at all anymore.

"I did not come here to catch you."

"Whatever lies between you and the God of Original Sin has nothing to do with me. I will not become involved."

"Come to think of it, I owe you my thanks."

Anu looked out over the jungle, looked up at the sky above it.

He could tell for certain that this place no longer lay upon Ruhe Beast Island at all, because here he could feel nothing whatsoever of the Ruhe Great Gods' power, that towering, all-pervading divine force.

"You found us a new home, a place like this."

The ceramic figurine stared at Anu, puzzled, unable to make sense of it. This was the very edge of the world, a godforsaken place even ghouls never came near.

Here was this creature, calling it their new home.

But the open teleportation gate rippled once more, and the shape of a lizard person clambered out from within it, looking around.

"Where is this?"

And so, the lizard people left Ruhe Beast Island behind, and settled upon this new land.

A legendary giant dragon made its home here, and so this land would later come to be called the Land of the Giant Dragon.

---

Inside the Royal Palace

A snake person with only one arm left to him stood crowned before a tall, wide window, and the wind stirred the gauze curtains into a gentle sway. His splendid robe, woven through with gold, trailed along the floor, and sunlight fell across the pillars of the palace court, casting reflection upon reflection.

From somewhere far off, another dispatch had arrived. Someone carried the letter in through the reflections of the pillars, and came to stand behind him.

Before the messenger could so much as speak, King Morabi said.

"Has he gone?"

The one who had come was Suinhor's Chancellor, an office responsible for handling every manner of official document on Morabi's behalf.

At Morabi's words, the Chancellor answered at once.

"As I reported to you last time, the magical beasts of the Volcano Forest have been stirring up trouble again and again of late, with no one left to manage them, and Limestone City has not seen a lizard person come out in a long while now."

"As you instructed before, we sent word to the Harvest Temple of Maya City."

"The Chief of the Harvest Temple of Maya City went into the Volcano Forest, and found that every lizard person had already gone. The village had been emptied out completely."

"But they were unable to enter the pyramid themselves, or win the recognition of the Feathered Serpent Kurmis."

King Morabi nodded.

"Where did they go?"

The Chancellor answered, "No one knows, but they must have left Ruhe Beast Island."

King Morabi meant to say something more, but felt a wave of dizziness wash over him instead.

His body swayed, and he nearly toppled to the floor.

The Chancellor panicked, and rushed forward at once to catch him.

They called out to the attendants outside.

"Quickly, send for the court physician."

Old age, added to the arm he had lost, was bound to take its toll, however skilled his divine technique might be.

Morabi's health was visibly failing more with each passing day, and everyone knew he had not long to live.

He was helped to his bed, and let the physicians tend to him as they would.

He did not so much as look at the physicians, but turned instead to the Chancellor beside him, and went on with what he had been saying.

"He was right. I wronged him!"

Morabi found himself remembering something from long ago, himself standing in this very palace, clapping Anu on the shoulder, and saying to him.

That he was his own right hand, and that a future had been promised him.

"I lied to him. I told him that snake people and lizard people could live together."

The Chancellor beside him hesitated a moment, then spoke up.

"Was there truly no way for them to live together?"

King Morabi glanced at the Chancellor, then lay back down once more, and gazed up at the domed ceiling of the palace.

"People change."

"The Anu of today will not change. The Anu of a hundred years from now will not change. But what of the Anu a thousand years from now?"

"Even if he never changed, would everyone else stay unchanged too?"

"Would the rest of the lizard people be content to live beneath us forever?"

"Even if he truly had no ambition, no scheme of his own, his own thoughts, his own will, would count for nothing. They could change nothing at all."

That moment's sorrow was only some fleeting slip from deep within him, and King Morabi turned rational and hard once more.

"In this world, one person's will alone might change everything."

"But that person is neither him, nor me."

King Morabi saw the physician's troubled expression beside him, and waved them away.

"And I am nothing more than mortal flesh myself. Let alone a thousand years, I will not even live to see a hundred."

"It will not be long before I am gone, while he remains, able to go on living for a very long time yet, and only growing stronger as the years pass."

"Could he truly hold himself back forever?"

"Could the rest of the lizard people truly hold themselves back forever?"

"It is impossible."

King Morabi gazed at the pattern carved into the dome above him, let out a long, slow breath, and said, at last.

"An ending like this. It is already the best we could have hoped for."

After resting a while, Morabi climbed back up out of bed once more.

The Chancellor tried to stop him, but he said.

"I am old now. Of course I have my aches and pains."

"But there is still work to be done."

A few more years passed, and King Morabi's life came at last to its end.

When he died, the palace court, inside and out, was thick with figures, and with the sound of mourning.

Some grieved in earnest. Others were simply waiting, plainly, for Morabi's death, waiting for the succession to the throne, and for power to be carved up anew.

Amid the bustling noise, Morabi watched everything around him slowly fade away.

A figure crossed the boundary between the real and the unreal, and came to stand before him.

It was none other than the Divine Blessed King, Osis, come to receive Morabi himself.

The two of them looked at one another, and it seemed there was little need to say more. Everything lay already understood, unspoken.

Osis told Morabi, "You have done well, better than ever I imagined you would. Come away with me now. A place has already been made ready for you in the Divine Technique Kingdom, and the goddess will transform you with her own hands into a divine technique spirit."

But Morabi shook his head, and turned him down.

"I think I shall go to the Creator's Domain instead!"

"To the Dream Starry Sea."

Morabi laid one hand upon his chest, and lying there, looked remarkably at peace.

Even on the verge of death, those eyes of his showed not the slightest clouding, carrying still the strength that only years, settled deep, could bring.

"Back when I studied at the Academy of Literature and History in the Temple of Life, our teacher would always recite to us the poems of Divine Blessing."

"The teacher would play upon a harp, chanting the verses from within those poems."

"Telling us the story of the second Divine Blessed King, King Smerkel, walking across that sea of stars, where every soul who has passed on returns at last, dreaming beautiful dreams within the Creator's divine kingdom, and enjoying peace everlasting."

King Morabi's lips moved faintly, his voice grown much smaller now.

"After death, a person becomes the most beautiful dream of all!"

"What a wondrous story. What a beautiful blessing."

"It is enough already."

"I do not need anything more."

Osis let out a small sigh, touched, but made no move to stop him.

He said to Morabi, "Farewell then. Sweet dreams!"

Morabi smiled, and answered in turn, "O immortal Divine Blessed King, of the divine race, this farewell between us is no blessing. It is a curse."

"There is no need for a farewell at all. I only hope that, many years from now, when you happen to pass by Suinhor,"

"even if Suinhor is gone by then, even if everything has vanished entirely,"

"You might still remember my name. That... would be enough."

Very quietly, Morabi closed his eyes.

The moment his eyes closed, he saw every scene of his whole life flash before him.

He saw a sacred light spill into his dream, driving away all darkness and fear.

In the distance, a great golden ship could be seen, faintly, sailing toward him.