I am God LSLCCF

Chapter 484: The Star of Death's Meteor Form, and Ray Sees the Winged People

West of the New World's Main Continent

Out in the midst of the sea, something enormous squirmed and writhed its way forward, its strange shape never once holding still as it crossed the water.

It seemed made of starlight itself, and starlight spread out over everything it passed.

An object this massive, crossing Ruhe Beast Island, crossing the sea, should by rights have brought destruction beyond imagining.

But this time the only harm was the light around it being swallowed up, and a few creatures that had strayed too close having their forms twisted, their flesh and blood collapsing, melting away and devoured without ever realizing it. Beyond that, at least, no great destruction had been done.

At last the starlight came rushing up to the edge of a small island.

The faithful Star of Death had finally arrived before its master.

Thud thud thud thud!

Inside the hot air balloon boat moored at that small island, a burst of hurried footsteps broke out, and a door was flung violently open.

Trailing along behind, the Mythology Spirit Vellen stared at his cabin door with a gloomy look on his face.

He worried endlessly over how many more of the Mother of Life's poundings that door could take. Next time, would she simply tear straight through it?

Shelly had changed into a new outfit that looked like a set of black pajamas, patterned all over with stars, and the cap on her head carried a star as well.

A single glance at the style was enough to tell that the little spirits had made it with their Miracle Technique.

Shelly reached out and tugged at Hila, as though she wanted to show her something. Hila had a set of golden pajamas of her own, patterned with the sun.

The spirit seemed to be growing a little drowsy, and let out a yawn.

Sleep was a good habit, especially for a race of spirits who dreamed.

Shelly, though, had no use for sleep. Her energy was boundless, and she rested only once every few hundred years. Lately, however, boredom had driven her to imitate the spirit.

Just then Shelly pointed excitedly at the doorway, pointed at the enormous shape that had appeared in the distance.

"See!"

"I told you it'd get here today for sure!"

The sea ahead had vanished. In its place rose land upon rolling land, and mountain ranges that stretched beyond sight.

The Star Night Mountain Range of Ruhe Beast Island had appeared.

Hila opened her eyes lazily, glanced at the Star Night Mountain Range, then looked toward the eastern sky.

"Is the sky about to grow light?"

Shelly said excitedly, "Wherever Big Meteor is, the sky never grows light!"

Wherever the Star of Death appeared, the place turned at once into an eternal starlit night, where nothing shone but the mottled stars.

Together, Hila and Shelly walked out to the edge of the island to watch the Ruhe beast.

Hila's face suddenly filled with confusion.

"Shelly, how has it grown so much weaker?"

Just then the Star of Death felt exceptionally fragile to Hila, nothing at all like the power it had held back on Ruhe Beast Island.

Any weaker, and it would be on the same level as the Scarlet Goddess.

Shelly was still lost in the joy of having summoned the Star of Death here herself, and the moment she heard Hila say that, she set about examining her servant.

Only then did she notice how much the Star of Death had shrunk.

"Huh?"

"What's wrong with you? How did you get so small?"

Though calling it small was, in truth, quite an overstatement.

From this angle on the island, at least, the enormous shape before them ran on past anything the eye could take in, layer after layer of mountains piled together, towering and immense.

Ancient cities stood towering upon those mountains too, along with temples left behind from the previous era.

But this was hardly the whole of the Star of Death, one of the seven gods that made up Ruhe Beast Island.

The Star Night Mountain Range was only the symbol of it that had surfaced upon the continent, not so much as one ten-thousandth of its true body.

It had heard its master's doubt. At once, layer upon layer of starlight came radiating up from the Star Night Mountain Range, spreading outward into a halo of light.

Hmmmm~

The starlight spread through the darkness on a gust of night wind, holding within it a stillness and a mystery beyond words.

The Star of Death explained, and understanding dawned on Shelly all at once.

"Ruhe Beast Island is their divine kingdom. Big Meteor's gone and left Ruhe Beast Island, so there's no blessing on it here."

"All it could bring over was its own core. Most of its divine blood wouldn't come along, so it's all left lying back on Ruhe Beast Island."

The Ruhe Great Gods were likewise demigods, on the same standing as the other divine beings.

But what made them so powerful was that the whole of Ruhe Beast Island served as their joint divine kingdom. Upon this land, they were invincibility itself.

Now that the Star of Death had broken away from Ruhe Beast Island, its situation and its circumstances were naturally no longer what they had been.

The Star of Death explained itself to the Mother of Life, and told her besides how fast it had come rushing over the moment it heard her command.

What it got in return, however, was not the Mother of Life's pity, but her disdain.

Shelly pulled a sour face, deeply unhappy that her garden and her palace had shrunk down so small.

She had only to blow her conch horn, and Ruhe Beast Island came into being.

She had only to toss the conch horn down, and the Dream Continent came into being.

When had anything of hers ever been so stingy and small? A garden and a palace this tiny left her unhappy.

"You're so useless!"

"The moment you leave Ruhe Beast Island, you're nothing special at all."

Shelly thought too of another matter that displeased her even more, the very thing she had been talking about all along, Big Meteor.

"I've waited and waited for you to turn into Big Meteor, and you still haven't done it."

"And now you've gone and gotten smaller. Who knows when you'll ever turn into Big Meteor now."

"From now on you're not Big Meteor anymore. You're Little Meteor."

"No, hang on, you're not even a meteor anymore..."

The Mother of Life was on the point of casting the useless Star of Death aside in disgust.

The starlight given off by the Star Night Mountain Range rippled outward ring after ring, carrying with it a faint trembling sound.

Hmmmm~

The Star of Death was wounded and terrified.

Standing at Shelly's side, Hila spoke up just then on the Star of Death's behalf.

"It does not matter!"

"It can still be a meteor. Only lift it high into the sky, and it will become a true meteor."

For all her talk of disgust, Shelly could not bear to give up her Big Meteor after all. She turned back around, her eyes sizing up the distant Star Night Mountain Range.

The starlight from the Star Night Mountain Range circled Shelly round and round.

Just like a pet nuzzling up against her, trying to win her favor.

At last, she reached out a hand too, and gave her servant a pat.

"Mm!"

"If we lift it up into the sky, won't it just fall back down?"

"I can't just hold onto it forever! That would be exhausting."

Hila had spent all these years at Yin Shen's side, and not for nothing.

She said, "That is no trouble. We need only lift it a little higher, up into the planet's orbit, and that will do."

"So long as it is raised high enough, it will not fall."

"And this way it will find it easier to catch meteors as well."

Lifting the Star of Death up into the sky sounded good to Shelly as well.

From then on she need only stand still and let the Star of Death come to meet her. She could play on the meteor whenever she liked, and travel wherever she pleased while she was at it.

Shelly's eyes lit up. Hila really was too clever.

"Then it'll really be Big Meteor! And here I thought I'd have to wait ages longer."

The Star of Death had long been capable of taking on its meteor form. What it lacked was not power, but the shift to taking the initiative.

Once decided, Shelly acted. She was, as a rule, never one to hesitate, and always exceptionally decisive.

As a result, she rarely gave much thought to consequences.

Nothing in this world frightened her, or else she had simply never learned what the word "fear" meant.

Shelly cried out, "Glass tank!"

Void's Mold Mother came running at once.

"I am here, Master!"

Hila saw Shelly summon the glass tank, meaning to draw the Star of Death's power straight out of Ruhe Beast Island and squeeze the Star Night Mountain Range down into a single meteor.

The spirit walked at once to Shelly's side and shook her head at her.

"Shelly, if you draw the Star of Death's power out so directly, the whole of Ruhe Beast Island will collapse."

"Even if it did make you a meteor, it would not be worth the cost."

Shelly badly wanted to make Big Meteor, but she did not want her garden to collapse either.

"Then what do we do?"

Hila suggested, "Let us go and ask God!"

At the mention of Yin Shen's name, Shelly finally gave up the idea.

Shelly looked back into the cabin.

"But God isn't here?"

God's Moon had appeared in the sky at some point without anyone noticing. Hila looked up at it, then pointed out at the Star Night Mountain Range on the sea.

"God descended the very moment you summoned it, Shelly."

Star Night Mountain Range, Stan City

This city, named after the second-generation Saint, was known above all for one thing, its pottery figures of every kind.

Inside its temple stood white pottery statues of God Yinsai, pottery figures of both the first King of Wisdom and the second King of Wisdom, and statues too of the Mother of Life Shelly, of Hila, and of Polo.

Through every street and alley, pottery figures of one historical notable after another crowded the space.

White pottery reliefs could be seen everywhere along the streets, and shops liked to use them as decoration too.

But the Star Night Mountain Range was the most mysterious and the most rarely seen of the Forbidden Zone of Death. It did not merely come and go like a ghost, its shape forever shifting. Even the Stan City that manifested within the mountains changed from one day to the next.

Sometimes what appeared was the Stan City of the Henir Dynasty at the height of its glory, and sometimes it was the Stan City of the God-Forsaken Era, desolate and abandoned.

Sometimes what appeared was not Stan City at all, but Tito Town, the settlement that had come before it.

Or something older, the place in full bloom with Sun Cups where Queen Star and Polo had once lived in seclusion.

Beneath a white pottery relief that stretched over a dozen meters along one street, they caught sight of God Yinsai.

Shelly ran straight toward Yin Shen at once, waving and calling out as she went, "God!"

Only once Hila had drawn close did she say with a smile, "You arrived here even faster than we did!"

Yin Shen did not need Shelly to say a word to know why she had come.

"The other Ruhe beasts joined together to form Ruhe Beast Island. They became part of the continent itself, part of its cycle, part of its ecology."

"For the Star of Death to become a meteor, the most primal and lowly form a star can take, marks out one direction in which the Ruhe beasts may yet evolve."

"For now it stands apart from Ruhe Beast Island's cycle, yet that is not because it serves no purpose."

"It is only that the moment for it to serve that purpose has not truly come."

Shelly asked, "Then how do I make it into Big Meteor?"

Yin Shen put out a hand and reached lightly into the void.

Across a distance spanning more than half the world, He took hold of something.

In an instant, the whole of Ruhe Beast Island lay blanketed beneath an unseen, giant hand.

Layer upon layer of starlight fell into the palm of that giant hand, condensing into something.

But unlike Shelly's demon-god-like presence, this hand seemed woven together from formless, clear light, carrying with it a faint starry glow.

Everyone knew that Shelly's true form was a demon-god's shadow, able to devour stars, sun, and moon alike. What most did not know, or did not dare think too closely on, was that Shelly's very form had itself been inherited from Yin Shen.

Before long, a light appeared at the very edge of the sky.

A faint meteor streaked across the sky, the force field thrown into disorder wherever it passed.

At last that meteor drifted down out of the sky and fell into Yin Shen's open palm.

Shelly and Hila leaned in close at once.

"What is this thing?"

It was a black stone.

Small as it was, a single glance gave a sense of tremendous weight.

Yin Shen said, "A stone condensed from the Star of Death's divine blood. Let us call it the Gravity Stone!"

Yin Shen held the stone He had reached across half the world to seize, and set it gently into Shelly's hand.

In an instant the force field around Shelly's body grew turbulent too, gravity began to climb, and a powerful force pressed down on everything nearby.

To an ordinary mortal, a force like that would have been formidable enough, but to the three of them standing there, it was as good as nothing.

Still, Shelly found it fascinating, and held the stone right up to her eyes, examining it closely.

Yin Shen went on, "This is only a part of it. Refine the divine blood that the Star of Death has fused into Ruhe Beast Island into stones such as this one, and you may draw its power out little by little, at the smallest possible cost to Ruhe Beast Island."

Shelly nodded. That Yin Shen should offer her guidance and answers surprised her not in the least.

In her heart, there was nothing in this world that God Yinsai did not know, nothing that God Yinsai could not do.

Unless it was simply that He chose not to say it, chose not to do it.

Shelly threw her hand up high.

"That means my garden won't collapse after all!"

It was not as though the place were built out of blocks, so "collapse" was not really the right word for it.

But in Shelly's mind, Ruhe Beast Island really was more or less like something built out of blocks, and the Ruhe Great Gods were each one of those blocks.

Yin Shen went on, "But the Star of Death as it now is cannot leave Ruhe Beast Island altogether. It still cannot do without the Eye of Mutation."

"So at intervals it must return to Ruhe Beast Island, and connect once more with the Eye of Mutation's power."

Shelly nodded.

"That's fine. Big Meteor runs around all over the place anyway, and it runs super fast."

Shelly gazed at the curious black stone, murmuring over and over the plain, unremarkable name Yin Shen had given it.

"Gravity Stone!"

"Gravity Stone!"

Shelly thought then of another of her servants, the Lava Monster, which held a similar but opposite power.

"Then what should the stone made out of Big Fireworks's power be called?"

"Floating Stone, maybe?"

Her way of naming things was, it turned out, exactly like Yin Shen's.

Hila too looked curiously at the stone in Shelly's hand, sensing the power held within it.

"A stone such as this is most unusual. Perhaps it might be put to use elsewhere as well."

That casual reach of Yin Shen's, condensing the Gravity Stone out of Ruhe Beast Island, had drawn attention from every direction as well.

On Ruhe Beast Island itself it was one thing, but out in the wilderness of the northern highlands, some of the snake people saw only starlight gathering in the sky, then rushing up through the clouds and away into the distance.

But as that meteor crossed the Land of Light and, nearing its destination, began to press downward and fall, it drew no end of attention from the winged people below, and quite a stir.

In the Land of Light, one winged person after another had just left home at the break of dawn, ready to begin another day's busy work.

Having lived here for hundreds of years now, they had long since absorbed all manner of skills learned from the Avel.

They had learned to cultivate Curled Ball Fern, to craft goods of every kind, to brew liquor.

To grow Net Rope Vines, weave coarse cloth, and fire iron tools and pottery.

They had even given rise to many things wholly unlike anything among the snake people.

Their architectural style, for instance, bore no resemblance to the snake people's at all. Their buildings ran tall and grand, nearly all of them fitted with launch platforms and windows built for flying in and out.

Their music and painting differed just as sharply, with instruments all their own, and their own particular methods and techniques for mixing color.

They had a writing system of their own, and spoke a language of their own.

The winged people of today were nothing at all like what they had been hundreds of years before. They could rightly be called a new civilization now, one that had raised up nation after nation, great and small, across the Land of Light.

One winged person after another came flying out into the sky, wheeling there in circles, diving down from the mountain ridges, gliding down along the slopes.

All at once, everyone's eyes turned toward the distance.

There, coming on together with the dawn light at the edge of the sky, was a strange meteor.

"A meteor?" That meteor moved so fast it felt as though it might tear the sky itself open.

"What a beautiful meteor!" More and more winged people, in town after town, caught sight of it.

"Where's it flying to?" Some winged people even took to the air in pursuit, but for all that they could fly, the meteor had torn across the sky in a single instant.

The meteor swept over the high mountains where the sky messengers made their home.

Unlike the ordinary winged people, these sky messengers noticed at once that something was wrong.

Their temple stood spotless white, towering above the sea of clouds, and out of it came sky messenger after sky messenger, each one handsome and tall, to look up at the strange sight.

A few of the more sensitive sky messengers were not looking at the sky at all, but at the ground, where the sand in the crevices trembled and lifted skyward, all sorts of things around them rising up into the air.

"Why is the sand moving?"

"Why are all these things floating up?"

"It's not the sand moving on its own. There's a pull coming down from the sky."

The sky messengers who lived among the temples and the sea of clouds watched the meteor tear through the dawn, and understood at once that this was the meteor's own power at work.

"It's that meteor. It's the power that meteor is giving off!" One sky messenger after another cried out in astonishment.

"That's no ordinary meteor." They had seen meteors before, but no ordinary meteor could ever hold power like this.

"Then what on earth is it?" They watched the meteor race off into the distance, unable to keep the question from rising in their hearts.

The meteor streaked across the whole of the Land of Light, and strange portents appeared all along its path.

On the ground it was one thing, but it was the sky that felt the greatest effect.

Especially one ancient puppet demon spirit, who was riding an aircraft on a wandering circuit of the continent, drifting deeper and deeper into the heart of the Land of Light, and toward the south.

He and his two companions flew the aircraft along, taking in the beauty above the sea of clouds and looking down over the vast land below.

They had only just passed through a stretch of pure white cloud.

Suddenly, everything changed. A meteor came hurtling straight at them.

It streaked past directly over their heads.

A terrifying force field made itself felt across a wide area around them, and pulled them straight toward it.

The aircraft went into a wild spin and flung Ray and his companions all clear out of it.

"Watch out!"

"Hold it steady!"

"I can't hold it!"

"My aircraft!"

The Kite Demon Spirit tore through the sky at once, catching up the puppet demon spirit Ray and the Big-Head Flame Demon Spirit.

Then they shot off after their aircraft, and steadied it before it could hit the ground.

Puppet demon spirit Ray climbed down off the Kite Demon Spirit's back and stood on the ground, watching the meteor recede into the distance, utterly baffled.

"What was that?" Ray asked his companions.

"A meteor?" The Big-Head's droning voice buzzed inside Ray's mind. They had no organs for speech, but they could communicate mind to mind.

"It was still so far off from us. How could it have reached us like that? Was it the wind?" Ray still could not make sense of it.

Fluttering in the air, the Kite Demon Spirit spoke up in a light, airy voice.

"Wind?"

"There wasn't any wind just now, and no air current either."

"It was some other force working on us. That meteor up there seemed to be dragging us in."

Even so, the Kite Demon Spirit could not say exactly what that force had been.

In the blink of an eye, the meteor had vanished at the far edge of the sky, gone for good.

"It flew off in that direction."

That was the very direction he himself had come flying from.

What Ray did not know was that this very meteor had come from the place he himself had first set out from. It was traveling now in the exact opposite direction to his own, and their paths had crossed in this one moment.

Unable to find an answer, the three of them regrouped, and Ray set off once more, pressing onward.

The sun climbed fully into the sky, scattering its light across the land, and the aircraft's outer shell gleamed bright with the reflection.

Ray flew the aircraft on and said, "Tell me, how much longer is it going to be before we actually see the place where the sun rises!"

The flame demon spirit answered in a somewhat dull-witted voice, "Don't know."

The Kite Demon Spirit did not even bother answering the question. Ray had asked the very same thing at least a few dozen times already on this trip.

But as they flew on, Ray suddenly sensed something was off.

Down on the ground below, he had begun to see traces that belonged to no ordinary animal.

They were the kind of traces only a Wisdom Seed could leave behind, traces belonging to civilization.

"People?"

"There's actually a Wisdom Seed all the way out here?"

Ray flew down out of the sky and walked into a wooden building, where he even found food made from sun-dried Curled Ball Fern.

"Curled Ball Fern?"

"There's Curled Ball Fern here too?"

Finding a Wisdom Seed here was one thing, but was Curled Ball Fern not supposed to be something found only on Ruhe Beast Island?

It was no naturally occurring plant. It was a crop born out of the Moonlight Jungle, brought into being by the radiating power of the great god Moon Magic Fern, first discovered and first cultivated by Alcina, ancestor of Suinhor.

Ray looked to the members of his little team, the companions who had followed him all this way.

"Number Two, Number Three, let's have some ideas!"

The Big-Head Flame Demon Spirit thought it over for a moment, then said gravely, "No question about it. People definitely used to live here."

Ray gave the iron skull a pat, feeling he should not have bothered asking in the first place.

The Kite Demon Spirit had not worked out any real answer either, but what they said was useful all the same.

"We're not going to work it out standing here. Head on forward and we'll see the answer for ourselves."

The three of them set off again, and after flying onward for a whole day, they found traces of the Wisdom Seed's activity growing more and more numerous.

Little by little, they realized too that this particular Wisdom Seed definitely was not the snake people.

They soared over a broad river, and shapes appeared in the distance, gathered together in flocks.

Sitting in the back, the Big-Head Flame Demon Spirit cried out just then, "Look up ahead!"

"Look up ahead!"

"Off to the right, up ahead, there's something there."

Ray followed the direction they had pointed out and looked over as well, and he too saw the flock of dark shapes.

"Flying up in the sky?"

"They can fly?"

Ray took control of the aircraft at once and flew straight toward them.

The other side seemed to have spotted Ray's trail too, and came flying toward him in turn.

Both sides closed the distance together.

At last, Ray got a clear look at the race flying through the sky.

They wore clothes of coarse cloth. Their upper bodies were shaped like a human's, but a pair of broad wings sprouted from their backs, and their lower bodies were thick-limbed, tipped with sharp claws.

In an instant Ray recognized exactly what they were. Wasn't this precisely the shape of the winged people recorded in the snake people's myths?

"Winged people?"

"What are winged people doing all the way out here?"

Ray had never once imagined it. He had flown east for so long now that he no longer even knew how far he had come.

He had thought he must have reached the very edge of the world by now, a place no one had ever set foot before.

Instead, here, he had found the winged people.

"How could this be?"

"Aren't the winged people supposed to be... aren't the winged people supposed to be... west of Ruhe Beast Island?"

Ray knew the history of the Avel, and he knew that the Avel Peninsula lay to the west of Ruhe Beast Island.

But he couldn't understand it. He had been flying east this whole way, hadn't he? So how could he possibly have run into the winged people?

This sudden encounter left Ray with a bad feeling all the same.

Somewhere deep down, he sensed, faintly, that this might not be the place where the sun rose after all, the place he had been searching for.

The winged people, for their part, were thoroughly terrified too.

"On guard, on guard!" The winged people scrambled in a panic, snatching up their weapons at the same time.

"Isn't that one of our own?" At first, seeing something flying in the distance, they had taken it for one of their own kind. But once it drew close, what they saw was a hunk of iron flying through the sky.

"A talking puppet? A puppet that can talk?" They had never seen a craft so finely made in their lives, and worse, riding atop it was a hunk-of-iron puppet demon spirit that could speak. The ordinary winged hunters were terrified down to their bones.

"And what are those other two things?" As for the Kite Demon Spirit and the flame demon spirit, to their eyes those two looked just as much like monsters.

"Monsters... careful... every last one of them is a monster." They had seen magical beasts before, but never anything like the advanced form of one.

The ordinary winged hunters hurled the javelins in their hands. The javelins struck the aircraft's shell with a series of dull thuds and did nothing at all, not so much as leaving a mark.

"This thing was made with dark sorcery!"

"These things must be Abyss monsters."

"More monsters have gotten loose from the Abyss!"

Realizing there was nothing at all they could do against that great hunk-of-iron aircraft, they turned and ran.

At the same time, word of the monsters was carried back.