I am God LSLCCF

Chapter 485: The Winged People's Kingdom and Ray's World Map

Ray had finally entered the central region of the Land of Light.

This was frontier territory belonging to the winged people. Those who lived here had come over only in the past few decades, drifting in little by little, taking root and multiplying. The true heartland of the winged people lay somewhat farther east.

This land was extraordinarily rich.

Rainfall was plentiful here, and water sources abundant.

More importantly, the territory stretched on almost without end. This Land of Light was probably quite a bit larger than Ruhe Beast Island itself.

Beasts of every kind ran free across the land, and creatures of all sorts made their homes throughout the jungle.

Passing overhead in his aircraft, Ray could see herds of beasts drinking together along the riverbanks below, the whole scene unusually peaceful.

Watching the scene, Ray could not help but say, "It really is just like paradise on earth!"

The Big-Head demon spirit behind him nodded.

The words had barely left his mouth when a pack of wing demons burst out, wing demons large and small alike, and in an instant they slaughtered the herd by the river, devouring every last one of them.

Ray watched the bloody scene below, and could not help scratching at his iron skull.

He said, "The world's a beautiful place. And a cruel one."

The Big-Head demon spirit nodded again.

"Yeah, yeah!"

For some reason, Ray felt as though he were being mocked.

But he turned to look at Number Three's not-so-bright expression, and decided he was probably just overthinking it.

Ray said, "Number Three, you've got to learn to think for yourself. Don't just agree with everything I say."

Number Three gave the flame inside their big head a shake, as if to say, see, there was no brain in there at all.

Ray could not help but say, "Demon spirits think with the magic rune circuits the Demon Spirit Pyramid gives us."

The deeper they went, the more winged settlements they found.

The winged people had raised their towns and villages upon ridge after ridge, slope after slope.

But even the smallest village here looked to have been built like a fortress, as though it stood guard against something.

Settling the wilderness was no easy task.

Out in the wild there were not only powerful beasts and fearsome venomous insects, but unknown dangers and deadly traps.

More importantly, the wilderness was home to magical beasts of every kind.

In recent years, horrifying corpse beasts had even begun appearing out in the wild.

At the same time, relations among the winged nobles leading the settlement effort were far from harmonious either. Secret plots, and even outright war over supplies, mines and territory, were hardly rare while the settling went on.

The border regions, where conflict and death broke out again and again, were often wreathed as well in the power of curses, and in corpses risen anew.

All this left the winged people of the interior deeply afraid of expanding their lands, and so, naturally, those willing to leave the heartland behind and push out into new territory were tribes of a harder, fiercer breed.

That was the reason for the scene Ray and his companions were seeing now.

Ray flew on through the sky, taking out his notebook to record what he saw and writing up his travel log as he went.

"The winged people have built up a civilization here, built cities, even nations."

"And farther out, there must be more of them yet."

The more he saw, the more certain Ray's tone became.

This must be the winged people's kingdom recorded in the Avel's own histories, the land of civilization they had built after crossing the Desert of the Fallen Sun.

The arrival of the aircraft set off widespread panic through the winged towns.

All along the way, every village and town braced for the worst. Some had gotten word ahead of time, while others were caught in a scramble of confusion.

Some of the winged people even struck first, flocking together to attack Ray's aircraft.

But it was hopeless. They could not even catch up to the trailing colored light of Ray's aircraft, and could only roar and shout uselessly from behind.

Ray flew the aircraft along at his leisure, not even bothering to acknowledge them.

At last, Ray caught sight of a stone city built into the mountainside.

The city had no walls.

There were none of the ordinary flat-roofed houses one usually found inside a city, after all.

These buildings had been carved right out of the mountainside and stacked one atop another, until the whole thing looked like an enormous cake, with towering fortresses and round towers rising from every layer.

A waterfall poured down from the mountaintop, flowing neatly along channels carved through the city, layer by layer, supplying water to the winged people who lived there.

The buildings were lined with wooden doors, and out of them winged people came streaming in flocks.

Layer after layer of terraces stood crowded now with winged people.

They stood with weapons in hand, watching Ray's aircraft in the sky above, ready at any moment to spread their wings and launch into battle.

Among them were quite a few ordinary winged ability users too, their wings beating up gales of wind as their whole bodies rose into the air, watching the "enemy" above with wary, grim faces.

Then the group that ruled this nation appeared, and one elder among them, having gotten a clear look at the aircraft in the sky, gave the order at once.

"Do not attack."

"This is likely no monster."

A mindless or crazed monster would not normally make use of an artifact so finely made.

The elder was a late second-rank ability user. Once they flew up into the sky and got a look at Ray, they could tell that this was, at the very least, a third-rank ability user, or something even higher.

They reached out to Ray with their power of mind-to-mind communication.

"You can speak?"

Ray, seated atop his aircraft, answered honestly, "I know the Wisdom Language, and the snake people's language too, but I don't know yours."

The winged elder, though they had guessed as much, was still thoroughly astonished.

"The snake people? You know of the snake people?"

"What exactly are you, and where do you come from?"

They had, after all, never once seen a metal puppet that could speak.

But he could sense the strength in Ray. This was certainly no monster.

Even if it were a monster, no one would dare call something with this much power a mere monster.

Ray said, "I'm a demon spirit."

They asked again, "What is a demon spirit?"

Ray thought it over for a moment.

"Demon spirits are a people who worship the goddess Elena. Most of them are higher intelligent life forms transformed from magical beasts, and they live in the Abyss Royal City, out in the Endless Desert."

"And I'm a rather special sort among them, an ancient puppet demon spirit, one of the very first and oldest demon spirits there ever were."

The elder had never once heard of this divine being, and as for the demon spirit race or the Abyss Royal City, they were completely at a loss.

But from Ray's words alone, he could tell this was no ordinary race.

A people under the protection of a divine being could never be anything simple.

Ray asked in turn, "Where is this place?"

The winged elder answered, "This is the Matale Principality. I am Ose, its previous Grand Duke. The present Grand Duke is my son."

The elder held a very high station, but now that they were on in years, it seemed they had already withdrawn to live behind the scenes.

Had a being like Ray not appeared so suddenly, they probably would not have shown themself at all.

Ray looked down at the winged people in the city below. The one who lived highest of all among them, the winged person in the feathered robe, was probably the elder's son.

Ray told the winged elder, "I've come from Ruhe Beast Island. I'm on a journey chasing the sun."

Then he made a request.

"I wonder if I might stay in this country a while. It's the first nation I've come across since I left Ruhe Beast Island."

The winged elder cried out in astonishment, "From Ruhe Beast Island? You have truly come from that legendary place, the one the snake people call the origin site of the gods?"

The winged people still preserved some of the Avel's ancient texts to this day. It was said these had been obtained by Duma, the King of the Sky Messengers, from the snake person Divine Blessed One, Yafuan.

Among them were all sorts of secret accounts from the Avel, such as tales of Ruhe Beast Island, and the myth that both the winged people and the snake people had been created by the Life Sovereign.

Though nowadays, most of the winged people across the Land of Light did not believe the rumors of Ruhe Beast Island, and were even more doubtful of the myth of the Life Sovereign's creation.

Once the two of them confirmed they could actually communicate, the elder's whole attitude changed.

After their cry of astonishment, the winged elder offered their welcome at once.

"Of course. The Matale Principality welcomes your arrival."

To the elder's mind, this was an extraordinarily powerful ability user, and one who had come from Ruhe Beast Island.

If they could exchange words with such a being, that alone would be a fine gain.

Even trading a little knowledge back and forth could bring benefits beyond imagining. The winged people's present-day skill at farming, at forming contracts with magical beasts, at weaving, smelting and firing pottery, had all come from the Avel to begin with.

Ray followed them down and brought the aircraft to land, then with a wave of his hand stowed the whole thing away inside his storage artifact.

That single gesture alone was enough to make the winged elder Ose's eyes light up.

But the winged nobles at the very top of the city saw a puppet, a flame demon spirit with a glass shell full of fire, and a great, quick-darting kite all lined up together, and they stumbled back one after another, crying out in alarm.

Terror and fear showed plainly on their faces. One glance was enough to tell that all three of these creatures wielded extraordinary power beyond question.

Apart from those fierce, reckless young winged people too ignorant to fear death or know their own limits, who would dare get too close to beings like these?

The fire that great skull-head could breathe out would be enough on its own to burn the whole city down.

The winged elder raised their hand at once, and said to all the winged people gathered there, "Do not be afraid!"

"They are not monsters. They are guests, come from far-off Ruhe Beast Island."

Most of the winged people had never even heard of Ruhe Beast Island. Only a handful of winged nobles and scholars knew the name at all.

Ray, once he had landed, began at once to study the winged people's city.

He noticed that the city had probably been built with the help of stone demons, and likely a third-rank stone demon at that. This Matale Principality, it seemed, had a bit of real foundation behind it after all.

Even so, wood was still used throughout the city, in the windows, in furniture and fixtures of every kind.

The lower a layer of this cake-shaped city sat, the broader it grew, and the more people lived on it.

Winged people by the hundred and the thousand flew up and landed down all around, filling the city with a lively bustle.

The winged elder introduced Ray to their son, and to a number of other figures within the Matale Principality. Ray nodded to each of them in turn.

But no expression could be read on that metal face at all, and to an ordinary onlooker this strange living being seemed somewhat cold and distant.

As they walked along, the winged elder suddenly asked Ray's name.

Only then did Ray break off his observing, realizing he had never actually given his name.

"My name is Ray, Ray as in thunder!"

Ray introduced his companions too.

"This is Number Two, and this is Number Three."

Demon spirits transformed from magical beasts had, at first, no real notion of giving themselves names, and Ray, for his part, was a rough, careless sort. So Number Two and Number Three had simply become the two demon spirits' real names, just like that.

Ray did not mind, and Number Two and Number Three did not mind either, and so it had stayed.

Ray was given lodging in a mansion at the very top of the city.

The city itself had been built up high, set into the mountainside, and this building sat at the very summit of it all.

More than that, there were no stairs at all leading outside the building. Step out the door, and there was a sheer drop of a thousand feet.

For some reason it left Ray with an odd feeling. The sight brought to mind a certain story from Tales of the Spirits, a princess locked away in a high tower.

For a race that could fly, a place like this offered scenery unlike anywhere else.

But without the notion of flight in mind, the place was little different from a cage, and left one with a stifling, oppressive feeling.

This had likely once been the residence of some great winged noble, given over to Ray for his stay, and it still had no shortage of servants on hand, ready at his command.

Ray had lately taken to questioning these servants, or going out to look around with them as his escorts and guides, learning about the state of this nation as he went.

Only, every time he went out, crowds of winged people gathered to watch.

That day, Ray sat on a round wooden stool, facing the window, writing in his travel log.

Outside lay blue sky and white clouds, a sight to lift the spirit and ease the heart.

"These winged people are just as I guessed, migrants out of the Avel Peninsula. They flew across the Desert of the Fallen Sun to reach this place, and built a new home for themselves here."

"The servants here in the mansion only know that this place is called the Land of Light, and that the neighboring nation is called the Good News Kingdom. They don't know much about the other nations, which makes sense, since most of them can't even write."

"To them, even the snake people exist only in legend and strange rumor, let alone Ruhe Beast Island, or a race of demon spirits like mine."

Just then a stir of noise went up from the servants outside. Winged people dropped to their knees on the ground one after another, folding their wings in tight, taking the posture of submission.

Ray rose to his feet, and saw Ose walking in from outside.

This elder carried themself entirely differently from the other winged people, partly because of the second-rank power they held, and partly because they were the most learned person in the whole nation.

Ray had learned, from talking with the servants, that Ose had once been to the Sacred Mountain of Light.

The moment Ose entered, they called out, "Master Ray, forgive me for intruding on your rest."

Ray nodded a greeting in return.

"Not at all. I was just about to come and find you for a talk, Master Ose."

At that, Ose grew excited at once.

"I had exactly the same thought."

In the sitting room, once the servants had set out food and wine and withdrawn, the two of them began to talk.

Ray asked, "I hear you've been to the Sacred Mountain of Light. Have you met Queen Duma?"

Ose looked startled.

"You know the name of the King of the Sky Messengers too?"

Ose did not think this had come from the servants, since they only knew that the King of the Sky Messengers lived atop the Sacred Mountain of Light. Duma's name they could not possibly have known.

Even a noble among ordinary people would never dare speak the King of the Sky Messengers' name so freely.

Ray nodded.

"I heard it on Ruhe Beast Island."

The winged elder marveled.

"To think that those on Ruhe Beast Island would know of the King of the Sky Messengers, and of us."

Ray told Ose, "Some of the Avel's heritage still remains on Ruhe Beast Island. They still keep in contact with the Avel on the Avel Peninsula, and that's how these stories made their way over."

As the excitement of their talk faded, the elder gradually grew calm again and began to speak of some of their own experiences.

"I have indeed been to the Sacred Mountain of Light, but I never once laid eyes on the Great King of the Sky Messengers."

"At the time, I had only just become an ability user. I went to try my luck at earning the honor of becoming a sky messenger, but in the end, I was passed over."

Regret filled every word the elder spoke.

Ray offered his sympathy, then asked, "May I ask how many nations of winged people there are across this Land of Light?"

Ose told Ray, "Ever since the King of the Sky Messengers led us here, there have been the three great kingdoms, the Oracle Kingdom, the Good News Kingdom and the Silent Kingdom, and beyond them several dozen more nations great and small, along with tribal territories that belong to no nation at all."

"The Matale Principality is one of them, a new nation only just founded a few decades ago."

"Our ancestor, Matale, was once a sky messenger upon the Sacred Mountain of Light, and this nation is named for them."

Ray at once wrote down the names of the three kingdoms, the Oracle Kingdom, the Good News Kingdom, and the Silent Kingdom, meaning to put them in his travel log. Perhaps he could go see them for himself later on.

Ose, for their part, could not help but ask, "How do the nations on Ruhe Beast Island compare to the nations of the winged people?"

Where Ray was curious about this Land of Light, Ose was even more curious about that legendary Ruhe Beast Island, the origin site of the gods as the snake people called it.

Ray glanced at Ose, and could only answer tactfully, "I haven't seen enough of the winged people's kingdoms yet myself. I haven't even been to the three great kingdoms you mentioned."

Ose said, "The three great kingdoms are richer and stronger than Matale, of course. But set aside the gap at the very highest tier of extraordinary power, and Matale still counts as a strong nation among those below them."

There was a note of pride in their words all the same.

Ray could see that Ose was genuinely only after knowledge, with nothing more behind it.

Ray could only say, "There's no comparison."

Ose's mouth fell open.

"Is the gap really that large?"

Ray nodded.

"Ruhe Beast Island is the origin site of the gods, the Mother of Life's own back garden. Back at the very dawn of the era, the snake people could already dig extraordinary artifacts up out of the ground by the score, and knew how to form contracts with magical beasts."

"It has the protection of the seven Great Ruhe gods, extraordinary resources beyond counting, and countless servants of the mortal gods walking the earth. The power and convenience the gods bring are things you couldn't begin to imagine."

"Over these past few hundred years, alchemists, tower keepers, witch spirits, contract lawyers, demon spirits, beast knights, all sorts of new extraordinary professions have arisen, one after another."

"And just recently, in letters with an apostle I know, I learned that the gods among mortals have sealed a contract, so that even the boundaries between lands of faith no longer exist. The number of ability users keeps on growing."

"The Land of Light and Ruhe Beast Island are simply at two entirely different stages."

"On Ruhe Beast Island, extraordinary power has already reached into every corner. Many professions have been changed and steeped through by it."

"Alchemists mass-produce artifacts, for instance. Tower keepers manufacture goods using alchemical workshops. Contract lawyers grant power to codes and contracts. Beast knights can even raise and control magical beasts, and those magical beasts hold all sorts of strange and wondrous powers of their own."

The winged elder could not begin to picture the world Ray was describing. Their heart both longed for such a world and quailed a little in fear of it.

"What a flourishing world that must be!"

Ose sighed over it for a long while, then looked at Ray and spoke.

"In truth, the moment I saw that artifact you call an aircraft, and your power to make things vanish and bring them out again, I understood that the civilization of Ruhe Beast Island must be beyond anything we could imagine."

"And yet, we may lag behind you."

"We are both a Wisdom Seed all the same, and I do not believe our potential falls short of theirs."

"One day, we shall catch up to them."

Ray listened to these words of Ose's. The elder had discovered how vast the gap was, and instead of flying into a shamed rage had taken it in with humility and thought it through seriously, and Ray could not help but say, "If the winged people have many wise heads like yours, hungry for knowledge and calm enough to take in the outside world, then I think that day may really come."

At last, Ose worked up to asking a question that, among the winged people, counted as something of a taboo.

"Were the winged people truly created by the Life Sovereign?"

Ray did not hesitate for a moment.

"Of course. Every living thing in this world traces its origin back to the Mother of Life's power."

"She's one of the Sovereign Deities after all, the very origin of life."

Perhaps some among the winged people would have found the claim hard to accept, but the elder seemed to take it in quickly enough.

Or perhaps it was simply that, grown old and seasoned as they were, even if their heart found it difficult to accept, at least they would never let it show on the surface.

Ose noticed something.

"Your name for Her seems a little different from the snake people's. The Mother of Life. Is there something special in that name?"

Ray nodded.

"That's how we ancient puppet demon spirits refer to Her. The gods use that name sometimes too, in praise of the Great Sovereign Deity."

Ose could not help but ask, "The gods call Her that?"

Ray answered as though it were only natural, "To the gods among mortals, the Mother of Life is the god of gods."

"You doubt the Mother of Life's greatness only because you've never seen Her power with your own eyes."

"She blew upon the Mother Conch of All Things, and Ruhe Beast Island was created. You must have heard that myth before."

"And if you had ever witnessed the power of the servants She left behind in the mortal world, the Seven Gods of Ruhe, I dare say you would never question Her again. The God of Earth, one of the Ruhe Great Gods, needed only to open a single eye to shatter the Gate of Mythology of two other deities, and cast them down into slumber."

"Can you even imagine what kind of power that is?"

Ose said nothing for a long while. It struck them all at once that the world of the winged people might lie impossibly far from the true world.

Perhaps they had never once truly known what this world was really like.

Ray saw that Ose had said nothing for a long while, sunk entirely into deep thought.

He rose too, and stood before the window, looking out toward the distant east.

When Ose finally came back to themself, they noticed the mood in Ray.

"Is there something that puzzles you?"

Ray lifted his head, pointed east, and asked Ose, "There's something I can't work out. Did you really fly here from that direction?"

"The winged people flew from the Avel Peninsula, west the whole way, until you reached this place?"

Ose rose too and walked over to the window. Looking in the direction Ray pointed, they answered firmly, "Indeed. We crossed the Desert of the Fallen Sun, flying west the entire way, and only then did we come at last to the Land of Light."

Ray turned back, and told Ose, "But I set out from the eastern edge of Ruhe Beast Island, and I've been flying east the whole way. I'm certain I never once strayed from that direction."

Ose froze. They too remembered a doubt that had been sitting in the back of their mind.

"Just so!"

"When I first heard you say that you had come from Ruhe Beast Island, and that the first nation you entered was Matale, it struck me as strange at once."

"By all rights, you should have reached the Avel Peninsula first, then passed through the other winged nations, and only at the very end arrived at Matale."

"How could you have come to us first of all?"

"How could that possibly be?"

Ose asked again, "Master Ray, are you certain you have not mistaken your direction?"

Ray closed his hand around the compass at his chest, and told Ose, "I have this compass with me, so I shouldn't have gone wrong."

Ose could not make out what the thing was at all, but Ray told them, "It's a gift from Lady Elena."

Ose's eyes went wide at once. Stammering, they pointed at the plain, unremarkable compass.

"That is a holy relic, bestowed by a divine being?"

At that, they felt certain there could be no mistake. If the man was using something granted by a divine being itself just to find his direction, who could possibly question it?

At the same time, they grew all the more curious about who Ray really was. Just what was the background of this powerful, mysterious demon spirit? What had let him befriend an apostle, and what had let him earn a gift from a divine being?

Ray, meanwhile, was still troubled by the doubt weighing on his mind.

But no matter how he turned it over, he could find no answer.

He could not understand it. He had been flying east this whole time, so how had he ended up out west?

Did that not mean that if he simply kept on ahead, he would eventually come flying straight back to Ruhe Beast Island?

Just then, Ose put forward an idea.

"Why not draw out every place you have passed through along the way, and set it all down as a single map?"

"Then set it beside the maps of Ruhe Beast Island and the Avel Peninsula, and perhaps you might find where the problem lies."

The idea set Ray's mind racing at once, opening up new possibilities.

"That's it, a map of the whole world!"

"My travel log has the whole of this journey in it. Put the routes and places I've passed together with the world and the territories already known, and I'm bound to work out just where things went wrong."

Even now, Ray still believed that somewhere along his journey, something must have gone wrong.

Ose said, "That is certain to be the broadest and most incredible map this world has ever seen, for no one alive has traveled farther than you."

"And the map you draw, together with all you have been through, is sure to become a legend one day in its own right."

Ray scratched at his iron skull, a little embarrassed.

"Thank you for the kind words, Master Ose, but I set out for no better reason than to see what the place where the sun rises looks like. It's nothing so grand as all that."

Just then, movement stirred atop the Sacred Mountain of Light too, and a sky messenger was dispatched down into the mortal world.

But they were not going to deliver a divine oracle, nor to patrol the winged kingdoms.

Outside the white temple that towered into the clouds, a powerful upper third-rank sky messenger stood before a gushing spring, waiting for the order that would come down from inside.

Soon enough, a voice came from within the temple.

"Go and find out exactly where that meteor went."

"That meteor holds a power that has never been seen before. You must find it, no matter what."

The upper-rank sky messenger accepted the order, their expression turning grave.

"Yes!"

"I shall find that meteor, without fail."

Their pure white wings beat once, and they turned into a shaft of light, rising up into the vault of heaven.

White light drifted down after them in waves, and within that light lingered the phantom shapes of pale white feathers.