Read Novel Full Chapter 497: The Lava God That Devours the Power of the World's Core
Chapter 497: The Lava God That Devours the Power of the World's Core
Land of Light
Lately, sweeping and unrecognizable change had come over the whole domain of the winged people. It had come from the demon spirits, that strange race of beings without flesh and blood, who drove their strange, massive composite magic tools toward one winged kingdom and city after another.
If the Sacred Mountain of Light had not already sent down its divine oracle, the winged people might have taken it for an invasion of monsters.
It did not take long, though, for the winged people to discover the convenience these strange creatures, called demon spirits, had brought with them.
Capital of the Oracle Kingdom
In the sky, a number of airship magic tools, large and small alike, drifted slowly down.
Some of their cabins measured only a few meters in length, holding perhaps seven or eight people, ten or so at the very most.
Others measured ten meters, even twenty and more, standing five or six meters tall, split into two decks with a deck plate. They looked exceptionally massive, able to hold dozens of passengers, with room enough on deck to pile up a huge quantity of cargo.
The demon spirits' airships hovered above the city, drawing crowds of winged people to gather and give chase.
Wings beat overhead, and with them came the astonished cries of the winged people."The demon spirits again?" No small number of winged people already knew they existed, some through the divine oracle, some from having seen them with their own eyes, some only through rumor.
"They really are huge!" The winged people marveled at the airships. Even those who had once caught only a distant glimpse of them still found the sight staggering up close.
"A transcendent craft that big. How on earth did they ever build it?" A thing like this was still far too advanced for the winged people.
"Look at the power in this ritual formation. They've actually fitted several tools into one another. It's unbelievable. How do they keep all those tool powers from clashing?" Plenty of ability users and toolsmiths from the Oracle Kingdom had come running as well, to study and observe the demon spirits' magic tools.
Soon, the king of the Oracle Kingdom arrived, leading his people.
Scepter in hand, the king flew out before the largest of the airships at the head of a great crowd.
"Demon spirits, what brings you here?"
At that moment, a shadow squeezed itself out from the surface of one airship's cabin.
Then, little by little, it pulled free of the airship, and at last took the shape of a jar-puppet demon spirit.
They looked up at the king of the winged people.
"We're the Mechanical Fish Demon Spirit Trading Company. It's an honor to be here."
The king returned the greeting.
"I am the king of this nation, and you are most welcome here. What is it you wish to do?"
The king had already received the divine oracle beforehand, so the demon spirits' arrival was naturally no surprise. They remained somewhat wary, but they did not take it for any ill intent.
A member of the Mechanical Fish Demon Spirit Trading Company said, "We'd like to build a station here, one where the demon spirits' airships could put in."
"That way, anyone who wants to ride our airships later on, or wants them to haul cargo, only has to wait at the station."
"Your Majesty, would that be acceptable?"
The king looked over the demon spirits' flying airships, never imagining these inhuman, transcendent beings had come for something like this.
They thought it over for a moment, and agreed at once. This was, after all, a good thing for their people.
It meant that so long as they paid some small price, the power of these demon spirits could be put to their own use.
"Of course you may. The Oracle Kingdom welcomes your arrival."
"If you wish it, we could even have this station built and maintained on your behalf."
"We could raise an airship station in every one of our cities as well, and map out a shipping route together with you. There is far closer work we could do together."
The members of the Mechanical Fish Demon Spirit Trading Company conferred with one another, then spoke up.
"The first part, we can agree to right now. But for the second, we would need our captain to come and speak with Your Majesty in person."
The king of the winged people looked thoroughly pleased.
"I look forward to your captain's arrival."
These demon spirits passed through city after city, negotiating with the local winged people as they went, gradually setting up their stations. Pay the fare, and anyone could board their airships and travel on to another city.
But few people rode the demon spirits' airships purely as passengers. Most came bringing cargo, using them to move goods too heavy or too troublesome to carry any other way.
The winged people, though gifted with the power of flight, had never been skilled at taming and riding pack beasts.
The demon spirits' arrival had, quite conveniently, solved their problem of transport and trade.
Once the demon spirits' trading companies appeared, they threw open the transport and trade routes between every winged nation for good.
Silent Kingdom, An Unnamed Town
A demon spirit drove a magic tool shaped like a great egg across hill and mountain. Four mechanical legs poked out from its cracked shell, running nimbly over the ground, able to climb slopes and ridges alike.
The "great egg" made no small commotion as it came, startling the animals in their herds through the forest and the swamp, to say nothing of the winged people in the town.
Clang, clang, clang, clang, clang. Atop the wooden tower, the winged people rang the bell at once.
"What in the world is that?" The people of the town stared at the "great egg" in a panic.
"Is it some kind of moving egg?" Most of them had no idea what it was at all.
"What kind of monster is that?" Faced with the unknown, the first thing to well up in every heart was, of course, fear.
But just then the lord of the town came out. He saw the great egg in the distance, and the demon spirit's mark upon it, and at once set every mind at ease.
"That's no monster. It's a merchant of the demon spirits."
The great egg reached the village, its four mechanical legs settling onto the ground, and puffs of white steam came hissing out from it.
Hiss!
Clank!
The doors on either side of the great egg swung open, revealing rows upon rows of shelves, every one piled high with goods.
A beautiful metal puppet sat atop her own magic tool, propping her chin on a precise, mechanical-feeling hand, and looked down at the winged people below, their eyes bulging wide.
She was clearly a merchant come to sell her wares, and yet she looked utterly unenthusiastic about it.
In a bored voice, in a drowsy sort of drawl, she spoke to the winged people.
"Winged people. Is there anything you'd like to buy?"
With that, she switched hands to prop up her chin.
"Fixed prices. No haggling. Cash on delivery. No returns."
"Because..."
"I'm only passing through once. After this, our paths won't cross again in this lifetime."
The winged people of the town, and their lord with them, learned then and there that there were people in this world who did business this way.
Some demon spirits liked to travel in groups. Some preferred to travel alone.
Traveling alone, as it turned out, came in more than one variety.
A number of these demon spirits had chosen to become something like traveling peddlers, most of them driving mobile shops shaped like the great egg. They could not fly, but they could run across the ground at a tremendous pace.
Lately this group had grown famous throughout the winged people's domain, their name spreading far and wide.
These traveling merchant demon spirits made their way from village to village, town to town, city to city, hawking their goods wherever they went, and strange goods many of them were.
Every so often, some especially lucky soul managed to buy from these demon spirits a treasure beyond all imagining.
The winged people, startled at first by the demon spirit and her magic tool, soon found themselves gasping in amazement at the goods on her shelves.
Among them, someone asked the demon spirit merchant, "Where do you come from?"
The beautiful metal puppet said, "I come from Magic Tool City. Further back than that, I'm from the Abyss Royal City, on Ruhe Beast Island."
The other asked again, "Where is Magic Tool City?"
The metal puppet said, "On the edge of the Desert of the Fallen Sun. Fly past the Sacred Mountain of Light and the Silent Kingdom, and Magic Tool City isn't far off."
The other marveled.
"You flew all the way here, from somewhere that far away!"
More and more winged people arrived from the town, and a young winged person came up to ask the price of goods at the demon spirit's mobile shop.
A faint transcendent aura hung about him. He looked to be an apprentice who had only just set foot on the path of an ability user.
He set down the goods, and asked, "Do all these things come from Magic Tool City?"
The metal puppet said, "Most of it. Some I picked up along the road."
The young winged person asked again, "What kind of place is Magic Tool City, really?"
The metal puppet said, "A very ordinary place. There's a temple, and inside the temple, an altar that holds the power of a divine being, and any number of demon spirits who've settled there, and a Teleportation Gate that leads to Ruhe Beast Island."
"Inside the temple there's a great warehouse, too. It has everything."
"So long as it exists somewhere in this world, and you place an order with them, you can have it in your hands after some little wait."
"The city has plenty of magic tool repair shops, and the ones running them have hearts as black as pitch. Swap out one tiny magic tool part and they'll charge you a whole magic gold coin for it."
"And the tool shops. A useless first-rank tool, and they'll have the nerve to ask a few dozen magic gold coins for it."
"And magic tool designers selling blueprints. A single torn scrap of blueprint for some transcendent magic tool, and they'll ask you for a thousand magic gold coins."
"If you ever go there, be careful of those black-hearted types. They're nothing like me, honest and fair with everyone."
The metal-puppet demon spirit grew a good deal more talkative once the subject turned to Magic Tool City.
And yet, to listen to her, the metal puppet seemed to be nursing a whole belly full of grievances.
In scraping together the funds for her own mobile shop, she had emptied out every last bit of her savings.
Even so, she had built her mobile shop, and now drove it across high mountains and steep ridges, back and forth between one town and village and the next.
She might have looked utterly listless, but in truth, she took real joy in it.
At the very least, a life like this beat sitting day after day beneath the tall Moon Tower in the Abyss Royal City, staring up into the darkness. It was better, and it was full of hope.
But to the winged people, the place the metal puppet spoke of sounded like something out of legend, or a fairy tale.
An altar where a divine being made itself manifest. A gate leading to another world.
A place where one could buy anything at all, even every manner of transcendent goods.
The young winged person's eyes were full of longing.
A place like that was beyond his imagining. Even getting to see it once in his whole life would have been enough.
He asked the demon spirit, "What is a magic gold coin?"
The metal-puppet demon spirit told him, "A common transcendent material, stamped into round coins. You can melt it down to make tools, or use it directly to craft a single-use talisman."
The young winged person said, "You actually use transcendent material for money? Then why sell ordinary goods here at all, and take ordinary money for them?"
The metal-puppet demon spirit said, "Your money is useful too. If there's something I want along the road, I can spend it to buy or restock."
"Besides, on the road you always have to be doing something to make it interesting, don't you think?"
With that, she changed her tone.
"But if you have magic gold coins, I could sell you something rather special."
Light flickered in the young winged person's eyes, and a thought crossed his mind.
"One day I'm going to earn myself a magic gold coin. And then I'll go and see this Magic Tool City for myself."
On the road through the Silent Kingdom, monster after powerful monster crossed the wilderness, making for the Desert of the Fallen Sun, because that was where the temple and altar of their god stood waiting.
They would, in the end, transform into demon spirits there, and become part of Magic Tool City.
Then, they set to work in earnest, and sought out companions to travel with.
A handful of new friends would band together to build a magic tool of their own, and afterward set out on a long voyage, beginning their own lives and their own adventures.
Wherever a magic tool could reach, whatever end it could carry them to, that was the furthest edge of their own lives.
But these days, the road held more than just monsters answering the call. Any number of winged people traveled it too, hurrying toward Magic Tool City all the same.
Many winged people had seen the business opportunity, the chance to rise in the world, and reasoned that rather than compete with everyone back home for a chance to work with the demon spirits, they might as well come straight to Magic Tool City themselves.
A caravan made up of winged merchants made its way into the desert.
Beneath the blazing sun, they caught sight of the city, growing larger and grander by the day.
"We're here."
"This is Magic Tool City."
The winged people entered the city, and found themselves surrounded by shops of every kind, and strange magic tools of every kind.
Several mechanical-fish airships hung in midair, banners trailing down from them.
Along the streets, mobile shops shaped like great eggs stood in rows, their shelves dazzling with goods, every kind of transcendent material and transcendent item laid out for the choosing.
All at once, one of the great-egg mobile shops rose up onto its feet, its four mechanical legs sprinting off down the street, startling them badly.
On the streets, in the sky, inside their very magic tools, there were demon spirits of every kind.
Even among a single kind of demon spirit, the jar demon spirits, say, there were white ones and black ones, red ones and every other color, each marked with patterns and designs all its own.
"Go!"
"Faster!"
"Get past them!"
A handful of aircraft skimmed low across the ground, demon spirits atop the mobile shops and airships cheering them on.
It turned out those aircraft were racing one another.
Watching the demon spirits pilot their great magic tools in and out of this fantastical city, the winged people looked, every one of them, like primitive tribesmen catching sight of some civilization far ahead of their own.
The winged people who had come here finally made out the writing on the banners hanging overhead.
The words were written in the winged people's own script, plainly meant for winged travelers coming from far away.
It turned out an auction was underway inside the city, one prepared specifically for the winged people.
"An auction house?"
"Selling what?"
"It must be something precious."
The winged people hurried into a round building, and found it already packed with winged travelers who had come from far away.
A kite demon spirit, looking rather like a butterfly, drifted through the air, gliding above the seats, carrying her voice into the ear of every winged person there.
"What we have up for bid next is... a cutting of the brown ball vine."
The winged people came to their feet all at once.
"That's the brown ball vine Matale Principality put up such a rich bounty for? The crop that legend says surpasses even the curled ball fern?"
Others perked up with interest as well.
"Now that's a fine thing. Plenty of nations want it. Plenty of great noble houses are after it too."
The winged people were on their feet again, shouting up at the kite demon spirit in the air.
"But I heard the Grand Duke of Matale already got hold of a brown ball vine."
The butterfly-like kite demon spirit came to a stop, and spoke down to the winged people below.
"How could theirs possibly compare to what we're auctioning this time? This brown ball vine of ours is something else entirely."
The winged people all asked at once, "What makes it different?"
The butterfly-like kite demon spirit shifted, and blew open the seal on a box holding the bare seedling of the brown ball vine within.
"This one comes from a brown ball vine seedling out of the Harvest Temple, blessed by the very power of the Lord of Harvest."
"This kind of brown ball vine can withstand even the cold. It can still bear sweet fruit even upon a bare stone ridge."
A stir of astonishment rippled through the crowd, and one winged person after another rushed to bid ever higher, fighting to outdo the last.
From behind the curtain of the auction house, a metal-puppet demon spirit and a handful of jar demon spirits murmured among themselves.
"Sure enough, it's selling!" A few of the demon spirits let out a cheer.
"Thirty thousand magic gold coins already." Every new price called out from outside sent the demon spirits into fresh delight.
"It'll go even higher." They waited, brimming with anticipation, and one mechanical demon spirit started dancing for joy, stiff as a corpse doing a jig.
"We've got our mechanical-fish airship now," a jar demon spirit said.
"Forget the mechanical-fish airship. This time we're building a mechanical flying-lizard airship," the metal-puppet demon spirit cut in at once, dead serious.
"These winged people, do they really have this much money?" As the bids climbed higher and higher, far past anything they had expected, the demon spirits found themselves rather startled.
"It's all that pawnshop crowd's money. Never mind the rest, just yesterday afternoon a king came in person and pawned his own family's ancestral crown, set with the gemstones of an ancient third-rank sky messenger. The people running that pawnshop said they're going to commission a mechanical flying-dragon airship." One demon spirit let slip a bit of gossip.
"What, a mechanical flying-dragon airship." The others thumped their chests in envy. A mechanical dragon. Whatever they built, mechanical fish or mechanical flying lizards or anything else, would be left in the dust by comparison.
A thing like that, once it flew, would set off a sensation across the whole of Magic Tool City, even the Abyss Royal City itself.
Once their envy had passed, all they could do was mutter sourly.
"So high and mighty."
"Right, as if it could compare to Ray's Sun's Wing."
"That's a Myriad Magic Tool, that is."
They fell silent for a moment, then could not help muttering on regardless.
"But still, a mechanical flying dragon!"
"Yeah. A flying dragon."
"Ugh, I want one so badly!"
A handful of winged travelers who had come from far away stepped out of the auction house, that last round of bidding having taught them just how poor they truly were.
There really were opportunities to strike it rich everywhere here, but what good was that with an empty purse?
At just that moment, the newcomers caught sight of some colossal thing in the distance.
A dense framework of magic gold rose nearly a hundred meters high, set with plate after plate of metal, sitting behind the temple like a small mountain.
The great metal machine had scales fitted over only half its body so far, yet already it caught the sunlight and threw back sheet after sheet of golden light.
It looked, in all, like some great golden bird, carrying something of the wind lizard dragon about it as well.
The winged people marveled.
"What is that?"
That was the Myriad Magic Tool, nearing completion.
A power beyond even the ordinary fourth rank.
Inside the Temple of the God of Demon Spirits
Ray spent most of his days at the base where the Sun's Wing was being built, but today he had suddenly hurried back to the temple, and made his way deep within it, to a certain hidden place.
He had brought Number Two and Number Three along with him.
But once they reached this underground storage chamber, none of them did anything at all. They simply lined up in a row and looked, in silence, at a small fragment glowing with starlight.
The tiny fragment looked unremarkable, and yet it held a vast power, one that gathered into a great field of gravity encircling everything around it.
In the dim room, it looked for all the world like a tiny star, and truly, it was a beautiful sight.
But Number Two and Number Three could not understand why Ray had suddenly brought them here to look at it.
After a while, Number Two drifted closer.
"Ray, what are we looking at it for?"
Ray did not explain why. He only told them to wait.
They waited for what felt like half a day.
All at once, the starlit fragment burst into brilliant light, points of starlight spreading outward, and the drowsiness of all three of them vanished on the spot.
Ray came straight to his feet and walked over to the Gravity Stone.
"Look!"
Number Two and Number Three noticed it too, the way the Gravity Stone had suddenly lifted off, drifting up toward the sky.
"Is it trying to run off?"
But soon enough, the Gravity Stone came back down, settling back into its old shape once more.
Ray told Number Two and Number Three what he had observed recently.
"Every so often, the Gravity Stone goes through this same change."
"It's answering some call from the sky, drifting upward whether it wants to or not."
Number Two grew curious too.
"What's behind it? Could the thing actually be conscious?"
Ray shook his head.
"It's because there's something up in the sky, something drawing it upward."
At this, Ray drew another fragment out from his storage ring, and slowly brought it close to the first.
Number Two and Number Three saw at once how the starlit fragment on the far side began drifting, slowly, toward this new one.
"You see?" Ray said.
"That's the reason."
Number Two understood.
"You're saying a Gravity Stone passed right over our heads."
Ray nodded.
"Not just a Gravity Stone. A very large one, at that. Otherwise, it couldn't have called to the Gravity Stone here from so vast a distance."
Ray looked up at the sky, his eyes full of longing and curiosity.
"If I'm not mistaken, it's that floating island I saw before. That kingdom in the sky."
"Right at this very moment, it's directly above our heads."
Number Three spoke up too.
"That's the place you want to fly up to, then fly on out beyond the world."
Ray nodded.
"For more than two years now I've been watching that floating island. I even asked a friend of mine on Ruhe Beast Island to help me use this fragment to track down exactly where it is, and when it passes over the Land of Light and Ruhe Beast Island."
"For instance, just now the Gravity Stone drifted up and to the right, and factoring in the strength of the pull, I can work out that it should be right about here, directly above this spot."
Ray pointed to a place on the Globe, speaking with total certainty.
Then, he drew his finger back.
"With these two fragments of Gravity Stone, and with my compass, I've gathered no small amount of data on it."
"By my calculations, that floating island circles this whole world once, every so often."
Ray looked at Number Two and Number Three.
"Its path only proves it further. The ground beneath our feet is a sphere."
With that, Ray gave the Globe beside him a spin.
Compared to before, the blank spaces on the Globe had grown fewer, and the map itself had grown finer and more detailed.
Error was, little by little, growing rarer, and the unknown was, little by little, turning into the known.
Just then, an arrow appeared on its surface, circling the whole world around and around.
Ray cradled his Globe in his hands, and went on.
"Only, its path isn't always the same one. Because of that, I have no way at all to predict exactly where it will pass next."
"Even a prediction can only give a rough position. There's no way to know for certain exactly where it will pass."
"So I haven't had a single chance to lay eyes on it again, not since that first time."
"But from the path I've since worked out, I've found that every so often, it's certain to pass over one particular place."
Ray marked a point on the Globe, right where the arrow's circling path crossed itself again and again.
Number Two and Number Three looked it over. It was a perfectly ordinary place.
"Why would it pass over here?"
Ray shook his head.
"I don't know that either."
"But going by its path and its pattern of movement."
"The next time it passes over here should be in about nine months."
"That's the only thing we can predict with any real certainty, the one stable path it holds to."
"At the speed of the Sun's Wing, and with our prediction of its route ahead of time, we should have one chance, when the time comes, to board that kingdom in the sky."
That point sat right above the sea, west of the Land of Light.
Which was to say, right above the very island that had, long ago, become the floating island.
Number Three did not follow half of what Ray had said, but they understood well enough that they would be setting off again in nine months, and it made them glad.
"We get to set off again!"
Number Two, though, felt nothing much of anything.
"Off to find that floating island? Fly up to that island in the sky?"
The kite drifted through the dim chamber.
"Sounds pretty nice, actually."
Of the three of them, Ray was easily the most excited, perhaps because he simply liked to put things into words.
"That's right. That island up there is sure to hold some secret to reaching beyond the sky."
"Because it was very likely built out of Gravity Stone and Floating Stone both."
"I'd even guess it's an island flying straight toward the outer sky itself, some colossal aircraft, built by a god."
"Only once we reach it will we ever know the true secret of the world beyond the sky, only then will we see the truth of it with our own eyes."
Ray reached out a hand, and turned his Globe.
"We have nine months to finish building the Sun's Wing."
While Ray had been watching his Gravity Stone, the floating island had, indeed, been passing directly above the Land of Light.
It swept across the high heavens at an unimaginable speed, swept over the earth and the sea below.
Inside the Floating Island
Hila sat at the island's edge, her feet dangling out over an endless drop.
Behind her, a colorful hot air balloon boat had settled down amid a sea of golden flowers, along with a heavy stone monument and a delicate little pavilion.
Beside Hila sat the Mythology Spirit Vellen, dressed in heavy robes, watching the earth turn along with her.
Her golden hair stirred though there was no wind, and her gaze drifted gently over the sea of cloud and the earth below.
"Look. What a beautiful world."
The Mythology Spirit Vellen suddenly reached out a hand, pointing down below, as though trying to say something.
The glass dome of Vellen's helmet was like a mirror, reflecting the beautiful world below, and faintly reflecting the profile of Hila's face as well.
Hila seemed to catch the sense of Vellen's words.
"Yes. We have passed by this place once again."
After that, neither of them spoke for a while.
And yet a silence like this felt, somehow, deeply pleasant.
She thought that sitting quietly like this, watching the world turn beneath her feet, was truly a beautiful and peaceful thing, beyond compare.
She glanced back over her shoulder. In the pavilion, Shelly was still whispering away with her mushroom people.
She was speaking, in truth, with the Ruhe Great Gods.
Hila called out, "Shelly!"
Shelly looked over, rose to her feet, and came toward Hila.
Curious, Hila asked her, "Shelly, what have you been saying to them lately?"
She had never before seen Shelly take such an interest in her own servants, talking with them the whole day through.
Shelly told Hila, "I'm teaching Big Fireworks how to get stronger!"
That caught Hila's interest.
"And how exactly are they growing stronger?"
Shelly told Hila, "It's devouring the power of the earth's core. Devouring the power of this very planet's core."
Hila had never imagined that while she sat gazing down at this beautiful world from the sky, Shelly, behind her, had been having her own servant devour the planet's very core.
Hila asked Shelly, "If it eats the earth's core, will that not cause trouble?"
Shelly spread her small hands.
"It's fine. Because once Big Fireworks finishes devouring the core completely, it will just become the core."
Hila felt herself relax.
"It seems God really was right. The Authority of Life is the world itself."
As she said this, Shelly scratched at her head, looking a little embarrassed.
"Though Big Fireworks did just tell me it's eaten a bit too much."
Confusion showed in Hila's eyes.
"What happens when it eats too much?"
Shelly waved her small hands.
"When it eats too much, it just has to spit some back up. That makes more little fireworks, and more little fireworks means more Floating Stones!"
Just then, something changed inside the mushroom people's glass tank.
Hila and Shelly pressed close against the glass tank together, their eyes turning to the world within.