I am God LSLCCF

Chapter 483: The Summoned Ruhe Great God, Star of Death

Above the Sea

From the Lava Mountain on the southeastern edge of Ruhe Beast Island, a trail of rainbow starlight set out eastward.

It crossed back and forth between the Dream Realm and reality, its shadow flickering faintly in both worlds.

The ordinary way to the main continent of the New World was the Avel Sea Route, and it was the fastest way, too. One set out from a harbor in the northern Royal Court of Ten Thousand Serpents, the Wasteland Witch Kingdom, or the Coastland Witch Kingdom, crossed the Sea of Storms, and could then reach the Avel Peninsula.

More and more ships plied that route these days, and one after another, those drawn to the sea and the New World were setting out on the journey to that other continent.

Likewise, no small number of the Avel were making the return from the New World, in search of the homeland they had left behind so long ago.

But setting out from the east was another matter entirely. That was the road the ancient puppet demon spirit, Ray, had once walked.

Half a circuit around the world would bring one at last to the far western edge of the northern hemisphere of the New World's main continent, which was the winged people's own Land of Light.

Ting-a-ling~

The dreamlike starlight crossed more than half the world, ringing like wind chimes the whole way.

At last a hot air balloon boat took shape within that starlight, drifting slowly through the clouds above the sea.

Inside the cabin the witch doctors stood in a row at the window, looking down on the vast, boundless sea.

Nothing at all showed upon the sea, but as the hot air balloon boat drifted slowly downward, a small point on the water grew larger, little by little.

One of the witch doctors pointed down and called out, "There is an island!"

At last the hot air balloon boat came to rest above a small, unremarkable, desolate island.

The island was tiny, probably no bigger than a single snake person town, small enough to take in whole at a single glance.

A handful of trees grew on it, and a stretch of reef and rock worn down by wind and rain.

Bang!

Shelly was the first to the door. She shoved it open with all her strength and stood there in the cabin doorway, gazing out with eyes full of anticipation.

But there was nothing outside at all, and Shelly took it that they were only passing through, and turned back to the Mythology Spirit Vellen.

"Why aren't we flying anymore!"

Vellen told Shelly, "Lady Shelly, we have arrived."

Shelly's mouth fell wide open.

"Huh?"

She could see nothing interesting about the place at all, and had no idea why they had stopped here.

At once Shelly shouted, summoning her servant.

"Glass tank!"

"Glass tank!"

"Where's my glass tank!"

In no time at all Void's Mold Mother appeared, balancing the glass tank atop herself, and came scurrying up to Shelly.

"Master, the glass tank is here!"

The glass tank came the instant she called, as it always did.

Shelly looked into the world inside the glass tank. Ruhe Beast Island was there, and the sea was there, and even the outline of the New World had appeared.

Void's Mold Mother's power had grown further now that she had gained the ability to simulate the evolution of living races.

Little by little she had come to sense the world beyond Ruhe Beast Island as well, though past the island itself her perception of the outer world remained imprecise, still somewhat hazy.

Blurred as the world beyond Ruhe Beast Island was within the glass tank, a rough outline of it could still be made out, enough at least for Shelly to work out just where she was.

Hmm~

Hmm~

Shelly stared hard with her big round eyes for a long while, and at last picked out their own hot air balloon boat, a little over a thousand li from the main continent of the New World.

"We're right here."

From outside the glass tank the island looked very close to the other continent already, but in real distance there was still a long way to go, a considerable stretch whether by ship or by flight, and all the more so in a place this far off from the "center of the world."

In this world, Ruhe Beast Island was without question the "center of the world."

This was the sort of godforsaken spot where, across untold hundreds of millions of years, probably only one puppet demon spirit dreaming of flying up to the sun had ever passed through.

Shelly ran off at once to find God Yinsai.

But He was not in the cabin at all. God Yinsai had gone down to the island already, and stood in silence on the rocky shore, facing the sea and the setting sun.

Shelly hurried after Him at once, and said to God Yinsai.

"God, this is the wrong stop."

"We have to go further on before we get to the other continent."

Yin Shen said, "It was random from the start. There was never a destination at all."

Yin Shen looked at Shelly, and said to her.

"When we first came into this world, did we not live upon a small island just like this one?"

"There was nothing at all in those days. Only you, and me, and Redlichia."

Counting it out, the distance from here to the main continent was about what the distance had once been from the God-Given Island to the God-Descended City.

Shelly stuck out her tongue at that.

"Bleh!"

Shelly complained, "The two of you, one just sits in the temple all day, and the other one only knows how to give orders."

"And I'm the one left doing all the work, all day long, all on my own."

Yin Shen seemed to be remembering those days too. Shelly had always had the biggest build and the most strength, after all.

"This place is good."

"The sea is beautiful. The beach is beautiful as well."

Yin Shen turned His head and looked behind Him.

"And there are trees growing here."

Yin Shen walked on across the rocky shore with Shelly trailing behind Him, and she picked up a conch shell from the sand as she went.

Yin Shen said, as they walked, "In the old days on that island, I longed more than anything to see a single tree."

"A green tree, covered all over in leaves."

"Even one would have been enough."

But back then there wasn't so much as a tree to speak of, and not even the very idea of one existed yet.

Shelly went back into the cabin, and found Hila there too, gazing into the glass tank at the Ruhe Beast Island within it.

Shelly went straight over to show off, her little chin lifted high.

"My glass tank isn't like your mirror at all, is it! You can see the whole world in there, clear as day."

Hila nodded, and smiled as she looked at Shelly.

"It is very interesting indeed!"

The glass tank showed more than what lay on the surface. Deep within the great island were the Seven Gods of Ruhe as well, each one turning the wheel of law and order, of the great island's whole ecological cycle.

The Burrowing Demon Worm governed the earth and its mineral veins. The Sele Sea Spirit governed the rivers and lakes. The Sky Beast governed the clouds, the thunder, and the rain. The Desert Worm ruled over the desert and the monsoon winds. The Lava Monster governed the volcanoes and the geothermal heat. The Moon Magic Fern ruled over the plant life of the jungle and the very air itself.

But of the seven, one alone fit with none of the other six.

Hila pointed at this being and asked Shelly, "Why does this one bear so little upon Ruhe Beast Island, as though it took no part in the cycle at all? What is its power?"

What the Dream Sovereign pointed at was none other than the most mysterious of all the Ruhe beasts, the Star of Death.

Shelly glanced at it, thought it over for a moment, and said.

"Big Meteor!"

"The thing it's strongest at is devouring. It just loves eating! It can eat light, and eat meteors, and eat lots and lots and lots of things."

"And besides that, it's got the power of gravity. It can pull things in from way, way far off."

As she spoke, Shelly waved her hands about to show what she meant.

"Because once it's eaten enough, it can turn into a meteor itself! And it can call meteors down too."

Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh!

"A whole swarm of meteors comes crashing down out of the sky and smashes the whole continent into one big crater!"

"It's even more fun than big fireworks!"

Shelly introduced her servant with tremendous enthusiasm. Had the Star of Death's power only finished forming, she would have loved nothing better than to bring it out and put it to use right then and there.

For a moment Hila pictured it, a great meteor sliding down out of the sky and crashing thunderously into the ground.

The things Shelly called fun were, every one of them, rather terrifying.

"Gravity?"

Hila thought suddenly of the Lava Mountain. She remembered that the Lava Monster itself, and some among its kin, held power over gravity as well.

She had seen boulders of every size floating in the air along the shore back then, tearing apart again and again, then colliding together.

That strange force field had twisted even the light in the sky into clustered blocks of color.

"I recall that the Lava Monster's power carries a mythical trait of gravity as well. Do the two not overlap, then?"

The Lava Monster did indeed hold this power, but neither it nor its kin ever handled it with anything one could call precision, and in truth they never meant to control it at all.

Short of a being whose own strength made it all but indestructible, virtually anything that dared trespass into the Lava Monster's domain met that unstable force field and was either torn apart in an instant, or slowly twisted into a knot like a braided dough stick.

Shelly told Hila, "They aren't the same thing."

Shelly thought it over a long while before she finally hit on a way to explain it.

She stretched a hand toward a rock in the distance, and the rock shot straight into her palm.

"This one pulls things in from far off."

Still holding the rock, Shelly turned her hand over, and it rose at once, floating up off her palm.

"And this one makes things float up off of it."

Shelly pressed her palms together, and the rock dropped.

She opened her hands, and the rock floated up at once.

She did it over and over, thoroughly enjoying herself, and grinned across at Hila.

"See? Just like that."

Hila understood it now too.

"Ah, so the two of them are opposites!"

The witch doctors off to the side had been watching all this as well, and they crowded together, murmuring back and forth.

"So the Lava Monster's power and the Star of Death's power are opposites after all. This is the first I have ever heard of it."

"Now that is interesting!"

"Whichever of the two it is, that is a tremendous power."

The witch doctor named Torso spoke up.

"I know what it is that made their powers run opposite to one another."

The other witch doctors turned to look at Torso, curious what sort of reasoning this one had come up with.

They were a demigod of wisdom. Could they really know so much of the mysteries of the demigods of life?

To the other witch doctors' surprise, Witch Doctor Torso really had worked out a whole line of reasoning, and laid it out with an air of real authority.

"The Star of Death is the Ruhe beast of the Xilong family. Xilong's royal power destroyed Hosen's royal power. So naturally the Hosen family's Lava Monster and the Star of Death must be sworn enemies to the death!"

It seemed to make a certain kind of sense.

But the witch doctors didn't believe a word of it.

They were all old-timers carried over from the previous era. Which of them did not already know how it had really happened?

Witch Doctor Right Leg spoke up.

"But the Star of Death belonged at first to Ense, the King of Wisdom's eldest son. And Ense killed Boon. Would Boon's Burrowing Demon Worm not hate the Star of Death far more, then?"

Witch Doctor Left Hand nudged Right Leg just then.

"Do not speak carelessly... of a thing like that."

Only then did Right Leg realize they had said something they shouldn't have.

The tangled grudges between Ense and Boon, and all that came after, were in a certain sense taboo for every member of the wisdom race.

---

On the first day after they arrived on the island, Shelly gathered conch shells along the beach, and picked up quite a few.

On the second day, Shelly went back to the beach for more conch shells, and picked up quite a few more.

On the third day, Shelly stood with a conch shell in either hand, staring hard at the distant main continent. The winged people she had once created lived there, and by rights, if they flew hard enough, they ought certainly to have been able to reach this place.

But being able to fly here did not mean they ever would. There was nothing at all on this stretch of sea, so of course the winged people had no reason to come this way.

"Aren't there supposed to be winged people around here?"

"How come not one of them ever comes by this way?"

"If you can't even fly out this far, then I made you those wings for nothing, didn't I!"

Shelly gazed off into the distance, pouting.

It wasn't that she truly wanted so badly to see the winged people. It was only that this place was unbearably boring.

However boring the places she'd passed through before, at least they'd had all kinds of good food, and somewhere high up where she could stand and look out over the mortal world.

There were temples inside, and there were many buildings, and all sorts of places and secrets left behind from the last era for her to explore.

Here there was nothing for her to do at all besides gather conch shells.

Even the God-Given Island, back in those days, had at least given her a whole sea of sunflowers to play in.

Only a being like Yin Shen could possibly enjoy staying in a place like this.

Shelly held a conch shell in each hand, and a mushroom person followed carefully along behind her. All at once Shelly caught sight of her, and remembered the Star of Death she had told Hila about earlier.

But Void's Mold Mother saw the look in Shelly's eyes, and a shiver ran through her at once.

She spoke up timidly, "Master!"

Shelly waved Void's Mold Mother over.

"Come here."

The mushroom person crept carefully closer at once, only to find that Shelly wanted nothing more than to look at the glass tank.

Shelly looked into the glass tank, her eyes settled on a certain being, and she pursed her lips.

Gurgle gurgle~

Shelly only ever made a sound like that when she'd hit on some "good" idea, or when she was in an especially good mood.

"Big Meteor doesn't even have to hold up a continent. It runs around all over the place all day. So what's it doing sitting about on Ruhe Beast Island?"

"I'll just call it over here to come and play with me!"

The thought was no sooner formed than Shelly went straight ahead and did it.

She grabbed the whistle hanging around her neck, stuffed it into her mouth, and blew.

Tweet, tweet!

At that single whistle, heaven and earth themselves seemed to shift.

More than half the world lay between them, and still that sound rang clear in the ears of the Ruhe Great God.

The most mysterious of all the Ruhe beasts, which had lain hidden beneath Ruhe Beast Island all this while, stirred at once in answer to the sound.

In that very moment it broke free of Ruhe Beast Island in earnest, and emerged.

---

Northern Ruhe Beast Island, Between the Fire Demon Marsh and the Highland Wasteland

A band of ascetics in strange and mysterious garb had raised a tall tower out in that wilderness, and called it the Star-Gazing Tower.

These people belonged to a devotee organization that worshipped the Star of Death, one of the Ruhe Great Gods, and were called the Starlight Ascetic Order. They called the Star of Death the Great God, Star of Death, and every one of them spent their whole lives chasing after the traces of the Star Night Mountain Range.

Within this tower there were always people watching the movements of the sky, day and night without pause.

What they watched for, though, was not ordinary stars but meteors.

They tracked the sky's movements through a certain instrument, and the moment a meteor showed any sign of appearing or drawing near, the instrument would sound its alarm at once.

The Starlight Ascetic Order had chased the Star Night Mountain Range for hundreds of years, and in that time had gradually worked out some of the patterns behind its appearances.

The most important and most crucial thing they had learned was that wherever a meteor appeared, the Star Night Mountain Range would, without fail, appear there too.

This stretch of land was one of the higher-lying regions upon Ruhe Beast Island, and also a place where, throughout history, the Star Night Mountain Range had been sighted many times over.

The last to see the Star Night Mountain Range in this region had been Apostle Sukob and his student, Long.

In the dead of night, chaos broke out suddenly within the Star-Gazing Tower, and a piercing sound rang from its very top.

"A meteor has appeared." At the same moment, someone came rushing down from above.

"A meteor has appeared! Due north, right at the edge of the wasteland!" The one who had come rushing down kept running quickly downward, pointing north and shouting at the top of their voice.

"This time it's come down somewhere very close. Go and inform the lord at once." That last line came out especially excited, since this time the meteor's predicted landing point had turned out to lie not far off at all.

The ascetics within the Star-Gazing Tower were excited and stirred alike, every one of them looking as though they had waited long for this.

The highest-ranked ascetic in the tower came out, and sent a pillar of sparks up into the sky at once, to warn their companions in the distance.

"Send up the signal at once. Tell the ones out there to get moving."

"This time, we must see the Great God, Star of Death with our own eyes."

Far off at the foot of the Highland Wasteland, a great crowd of people saw the signal and moved at once, each of them climbing onto a flying magic carpet and rising into the sky, away toward the distance.

Soon enough they caught sight of a meteor streaking across the sky.

"Do you see that? It's a meteor!" Everyone aboard the flying carpets stared at the brilliant light blazing at the sky's far edge and cried out as one, their eyes going wide with astonishment.

"It's so beautiful. It's just like rain falling." Many of them had never once in their lives seen such a sight, those dazzling meteors blazing with fire and trailing long streaks across the sky, and not just one of them but a whole swarm.

"Then this might well be the most wondrous rain in all the world," someone said, marveling.

"The meteor isn't what matters. What matters is that the Star Night Mountain Range is about to appear! Every one of you, look alive! This time we absolutely cannot let the chance slip past us!" But the one leading at the front turned back, and shouted to the companions behind them.

At that, everyone fell silent at once, and gave themselves entirely to the chase after the meteor, terrified of missing this one chance to draw near the Great God, Star of Death.

The meteor was plainly behind them at the edge of the sky, and still they rushed off in an entirely different direction.

The place they meant to reach was where the meteor was predicted to fall.

Before long they caught sight of the place where the meteor would come down.

Midway through their flight, they saw the meteor streak past overhead. It had drawn very close to the earth by now, and it let out a sound like the very heavens and earth being torn apart.

"This..." That terrible sound sank straight into the heart, and everyone who watched the meteor streak overhead was left gripped with panic.

"It's real. That is truly a star falling out of the sky." Seen from this angle it was an entirely different thing. That starlight was no longer some distant illusion, but something real, something felt.

"This is a star out of the sky itself, a star fallen down into the mortal world," someone stood up on their flying carpet and shouted toward the heavens.

"This is a beauty with death held inside it. This is the one exquisite instant in which a star fades and dies." Someone even prostrated themselves right there upon the flying carpet.

"And when the star falls to the earth, what then?" More and more of them stared off into the distance, fear rising in their hearts.

Only in that moment did they understand that the star, so beautiful to look at, that sight beautiful beyond all measure, carried within it the most terrible power of destruction.

The meteor tore across the sky, closing on the far-off place where it would land.

Rumble!

A sound rose up from beneath the earth.

In an instant the mountains, the rivers, the peaks all began, invisibly, to change.

A strange mountain range appeared upon that stretch of land, rising as though it were surfacing from beneath the earth itself, come into the mortal world.

The meteors came streaming down in a torrent, aimed straight for that uncanny mountain range.

From the ground one might not see the whole of it, but looked down on from high above, it was just like a five-pointed star.

Five mountain ranges converged, and at their center, which was also their highest point, a single towering peak thrust upward.

It was one of the Seven Great Forbidden Death Zones.

The Star Night Mountain Range.

The stars streamed down in a torrent and fell, before the eyes of everyone watching, into the Star Night Mountain Range.

Hmmmm!

Hmmmm~

Ring after ring of light spread outward, and within that light the meteors vanished from sight, gone behind the towering peaks.

The ascetics of the Starlight Ascetic Order came to a halt. They had already crossed into the bounds of the Star Night Mountain Range.

The sky above was thick with stars.

A vast river of stars ran clear across the sky, spanning the boundless universe, glimmering with light as it went.

To look up at that starlit sky was to feel a wave of dizziness.

It was not that the sky itself seemed to spin.

It was the ground beneath one's own feet that turned instead, the whole world wrapped beneath the power of that starry sky.

They stared unblinking at the place where the stars had vanished. Those meteors had crossed the universe and all of space to come here, as though they had made the journey for no other purpose than to be buried within that mountain range.

That place was the meteors' graveyard.

It was the final resting place of the stars.

In that moment, every ascetic who had ventured into that starry night was struck utterly speechless by the sight.

"It's the Star Night Mountain Range! Look, quick, it's the Star Night Mountain Range! It really is... the Star Night Mountain Range." Tears sprang into someone's eyes in an instant, their teeth chattering, their eyes stretched impossibly wide, unwilling to blink even once.

"So it is true. This is the graveyard of the stars, the place where all the stars lie down to sleep." In their hearts, that mountain range rose in an instant to the very heights of sanctity.

"The Great God, Star of Death has come to receive them, to welcome the death and passing of all the stars." In that moment, the legends and myths of the Starlight Ascetic Order were proven true.

"How magnificent it all is. We're witnessing the death of the stars themselves." In that moment, they felt that their whole lives had been worth it, without a single regret.

Now they understood, too, why the Starlight Ascetic Order had chased after this Star Night Mountain Range, generation after generation, without ever once giving up.

Their forebears, too, must once have seen a sight like this, and could never forget it afterward.

They had spent their whole lives chasing after the traces of the starry night and the meteors.

All so that they might see a sight like this again, might witness the moment when all the stars rushed to their deaths.

Even if it meant dying along the way, dying within this very Star Night Mountain Range.

They would not feel the slightest regret.

To be buried alongside the stars, what a happy, wondrous thing that would be.

That was the highest pursuit, the highest glory, a mortal member of the Starlight Ascetic Order could ever hope for.

They prostrated themselves in worship before the Star Night Mountain Range, then flew on, deep into the mountains.

Closer and closer they came, until they could faintly make out ancient, crumbling structures upon the mountainside.

It was the Pottery Temple and Stan City, of the Yinsai Kingdom.

But just then, from somewhere far off, came a sound no mortal ear could ever hope to hear.

Tweet, tweet!

At that simple sound, the starlight itself turned all at once into a pillar of light and shot toward the heavens.

A violent shockwave tore through the layered clouds, scattering the ascetics of the Starlight Ascetic Order in every direction.

The Star of Death had been summoned.

It was stirred beyond all measure, excited beyond all measure.

It had no time even to chew, to digest the meteor it had just devoured, before it went rushing off into the distance.

Before the eyes of the Starlight Ascetic Order's ascetics, the Star Night Mountain Range suddenly sank into the earth, sweeping off into the distance and carrying its starlight with it.

"What just happened?"

"How can it be over already?"

"By the records, we should have had time enough."

"The Star Night Mountain Range hasn't sunk away completely. It's gone off into the distance!"

The people of the Starlight Ascetic Order chased madly after the shadow of the Star Night Mountain Range, pursuing it deep into the wasteland.

This group could not catch it, and sent word to their companions farther off, telling them to keep up the chase.

But they only managed to chase it as far as the sea, and there watched with their own eyes as the Star Night Mountain Range they had pursued their whole lives left Ruhe Beast Island behind, racing off toward the far side of the sea.

"O divine being!"

"Why have You left us behind!"

In that instant, the ascetics there upon Ruhe Beast Island broke down completely.