Read Novel Full Chapter 509: The Witch Doctor Candidates Who Went to the Kingdom in the Sky for the Trial
Chapter 509: The Witch Doctor Candidates Who Went to the Kingdom in the Sky for the Trial
The Oracle Academy's full name was the Oracle Kingdom Divine Technique Academy.
Academies were rare in the Land of Light and the kingdoms of the winged people. No single family or district could afford to run one.
Even nobles across the winged nations generally hired private tutors instead.
The royal house and the temple had founded the Oracle Kingdom Divine Technique Academy together. Originally, it trained divine servants for the Radiant Temple and admitted no ordinary people. Its founders were a group of ability users who had failed the selection to become sky messengers.
Later, one of the Oracle Kingdom's kings found himself in need of talented people and officials to help collect taxes. The divine technique academy began teaching literature, law, history, and other subjects as well, drawing no small number of noble children.
The divine technique school remained entirely separate from those teaching ordinary subjects. Three enormous round towers of different heights fitted together to form the academy, with the tallest reserved for divine technique knowledge and the training of divine servants.
Flap, flap!
Whoosh, whoosh!
The sky filled with the dense beat of wings as one winged person after another descended from on high.
The winged people alighted atop the three round towers, then descended the broad stairways. Anyone able to land on the tallest tower naturally drew envious looks from the rest.Before long, a bell rang out and the bustle of voices slowly faded.
Teachers' voices drifted from the academy classrooms as they delivered their lessons.
"Rul, author of the Chronicle of the Winged People, divides our history into five periods. They are the Age of Desolation, the Age of the Abyss Calamity, the Age of the Great Migration, the Age of Pioneering, and our present Age of Kingdoms."
"The winged people left no written records from the Age of Desolation. Much of what we know was handed down by word of mouth..."
"The defining events of the Age of the Abyss Calamity were the arrival of the snake people, the fall of the Abyss, and the Abyss War. The King of the Sky Messengers fought the most evil existence of all in a great battle, allowing Yafuan, the hero of the snake people, to seal the Abyss at last."
"As for our present age..."
Through the window, students could be seen ranging in age from nearly grown to children of eight or nine.
Just then, a small figure appeared in the crack of the door and peered inside with one eye.
Little Matafus was not yet old enough for school. Hiding outside, she watched her father teach and listened to him recount the history of the winged people, her eyes full of longing.
Those heroic tales and ancient myths made the world seem truly wonderful to her.
When the lesson ended, her father came out.
"Matafus, wait here a moment. I need to fetch something."
Little Matafus nodded and stood obediently outside.
Students filed from the classroom and followed the passage upward, preparing to fly from the high platform.
Among them were several children only a few years older than little Matafus, who recognized her as the teacher's daughter.
"Hey, it's that Matale girl!"
"The freak who can't fly."
"Quick, look at her wings!"
"They're tiny!"
Strict teachers invariably earned their students' resentment, though few children would ever voice it to a teacher's face.
Little Matafus pressed herself against the wall, drawing in her shoulders and wings as though she could hide how much smaller than normal they were.
"Look, she's going to cry!"
"Those wings are hideous."
"She must be sick. Stay away from her, or we'll catch it too!"
Remembering her great-grandfather's words, little Matafus jerked up her head and glared at them.
She wanted to answer, but fear kept her from uttering a single word.
She could only say the words in her heart.
"I'm not scared!"
"I've got to be brave!"
In truth, little Matafus was terrified. She really was not a very brave child.
Sometimes everyone can see the frightened heart behind a fierce expression.
Little Matafus's show of courage failed to frighten off her tormentors. If anything, they looked even more delighted.
"Don't talk nonsense. The Matale family isn't to be insulted. They were a sky messenger family once." An older child emerging from the classroom warned little Matafus's tormentors. Older children were more practical and more aware of the interests at stake.
"What's there to be afraid of? This is the Oracle Kingdom. The Matale Principality is nothing but a little principality out in the wilds, and she's only from a side branch of the Matale family anyway." Matafus's branch was not that of the current duke. Hers had long since declined into an unremarkable side line.
Even so, the children said no more. They made faces at Matafus and left.
Little Matafus remained rooted to the spot, utterly miserable.
After a while her father came.
Without a word, she followed close behind him and hid at his back.
She seemed afraid to be seen, afraid that someone would notice those tiny wings.
When they reached the top of the round tower, her father lifted her into his arms.
Some distance away, her tormentors stood pointing at her.
Hahahaha!
In her father's arms, she seemed to hear the older children's laughter all over again.
Most children her age could at least fly short distances. Rising or dropping a few dozen meters posed no difficulty, and the stronger ones could already climb several hundred meters in a single burst.
Many parts of winged buildings had no stairs. With no way down by herself, little Matafus had to be carried by her parents whenever she went to such places.
Without her parents, she would struggle to survive in a city of the winged people. Such was the plight of any winged person unable to fly.
Once, high in the sky, her father's arms had felt warm and safe.
Now, however, they made her feel ashamed.
She said in a small voice, "I want to fly on my own."
Her father opened his mouth, but no words came. In the end, he could only sigh.
She did not speak once after they returned home.
Late that night, she quietly climbed to the roof of her family's house and stood there.
Staring down at the paving stones in the street, she drew several deep breaths.
Huff!
Huff!
Her small chest rose and fell, and she looked nervous.
Then she leaped. Her two little wings beat with all their strength as she tried to fly like the other children her age.
The tiny wings could not lift her at all. Instead, she slammed hard into the ground.
Fierce pain shot through her hand. The back of her head struck the ground, leaving her dizzy and reeling.
"Matafus, my daughter!"
A moment later, her parents rushed out and gathered her into their arms.
They carried Matafus to the Medical Fortress, both desperately anxious.
Inside the Medical Fortress, a physician bandaged the injuries on little Matafus's head and hand.
Bundled up so tightly, she looked both sweet and a little funny.
Little Matafus asked the physician quietly, "Can you make me better?"
The physician answered without a moment's thought, "Of course. Your hand will heal in no time. It's nothing to worry about."
Little Matafus lowered her head.
"That's not what I meant."
Her voice grew smaller.
"I meant... my wings."
The physician opened his mouth, seeming to weigh the words, and in the end he did not know what would be best to say.
"Once you're a little older, your wings might grow in properly."
Disappointment washed over little Matafus. Young as she was, she could tell the physician was only trying to comfort her.
Little Matafus left the room and sat beside her mother on a chair outside.
Tears streamed from her eyes. She wanted to lift a hand and wipe them away, but the injured hand was bound up.
She wanted to wail, but fear of stares and laughter reduced her to quiet sobs.
Her mother gathered her close and stroked her hair.
Because of her injuries, little Matafus had to remain at the Medical Fortress for a while. Ointment was applied again and again until the wounds on her hand and head had healed completely.
She stayed with several other sick children while her parents took turns coming to care for her each day.
At night they would gather in secret and whisper together by the light of the moon.
"What are you sick with? How long have you been here?" a short-haired little boy asked the plump boy beside him. His own face was pale, his body little more than skin and bones, and his eyes sunken deep in their sockets.
"They say I've got worms growing in my belly. They make me eat weird stuff every day. I only came the day before yesterday, but I have to come back several times every month because my stomach hurts so bad." The plump boy's fatness was plainly unhealthy, and his belly had swollen to a frightening size.
The plump boy asked the short-haired boy, "What about you? What are you sick with?"
The short-haired boy said, "They say there's poison in my blood. Every few days, they drain some of it out. They say that's the only way to keep me alive. I've been here a whole month."
Their companions included a bald little boy and a girl with twin braided pigtails dressed in enormously oversized clothes.
The bald boy pulled off his hood, revealing a huge scaly rash spread across his head and neck. It was a terrible sight.
"Aah!"
"That's terrifying!"
Having frightened everyone, the bald boy looked thoroughly smug.
"Scary, huh!"
"I've been here six whole months. The useless physicians here haven't got a clue how to treat my sickness. They can't cure me at all."
The bald boy spoke as though his illness were a badge of pride.
Beside him, the pigtailed girl lifted her loose clothing.
"Look at mine. Mine's way scarier than yours."
The skin across the girl's belly had rotted, covered in sores and black patches that gave off a foul stench.
Now the reason for her loose clothes was clear. She was afraid of anything touching her wounds.
Listening to the children compete over their illnesses frightened little Matafus out of her wits.
The Medical Fortress truly was a terrible place. More than anything, she wanted to go home.
Worst of all were the physicians' frightening treatments. As the children described them, little Matafus went white as snow.
The witch doctors of a Medical Fortress could treat little beyond external wounds. They had almost nothing to offer against injuries to the internal organs or strange diseases, and their wildly imagined treatments sounded blood-chilling.
Even so, little Matafus suddenly thought the other children very brave. They faced such terrible things with far more courage than she possessed.
Just then, all the other children turned toward little Matafus.
"What about you?"
The bald boy pointed straight at little Matafus.
"Look at her. She just fell and hurt her hand and head."
Seeming to notice little Matafus's timidity, the pigtailed girl squeezed in front of her with a smile.
"Don't be scared. You'll be out of here in no time."
Matafus nodded and did not dare speak.
The children put their heads together once more and turned to another subject.
The bald boy, who had been there longest, beckoned the others closer and lowered his voice.
"You know what? There's something weird in this Medical Fortress."
The children asked at once, full of curiosity, "What kind of weird thing?"
The bald boy assumed an air of great mystery.
"Someone saw the sky messenger doll here in the Medical Fortress come alive. They say some evil spirit took over its body."
"Every night when it gets late, the evil spirit takes control of the sky messenger doll and flies it back and forth through this fortress, and then it takes somebody's life."
"They say that anyone killed by the evil spirit can never go to the kingdom of the god. They get trapped inside the evil spirit's domain."
Little Matafus was astonished.
"The doll... came alive?"
The bald boy thought little Matafus did not look surprised enough.
"Wait, you've heard about it too?"
The little girl remembered the book that had flown from her hands, seeming for all the world alive. She looked at the others, wanting to tell them.
Timid and full of self-doubt, little Matafus could not force out the words while everyone stared at her.
When it became clear that the little girl would not speak, the bald boy continued.
"They say that anyone killed by the evil spirit can never go to the kingdom of the god. They get trapped inside the evil spirit's domain."
The other children believed none of it. They thought the bald boy was only trying to frighten them.
"That's definitely fake."
"Exactly. You say somebody saw it, so who?"
The bald boy extended a finger and pointed at himself.
"Me. I saw it."
"I even know where the possessed doll is and exactly when it comes out at night."
"I'll take you there. We can see the living sky messenger doll right now."
In a corridor of the Medical Fortress, five children slipped out in secret and moved softly along the wall, terrified of waking anyone else in the fortress.
"Are we really doing this?" The plump boy had grown afraid.
"What, are you scared?" The bald boy walking in front looked back at the others.
"I'm not scared! You're definitely lying." Children never admit defeat. No matter how frightened they are inside, they refuse to admit it.
Little Matafus brought up the rear, one hand resting lightly on the other girl's back.
With no one able to see her, she seemed to find a little courage and finally said what she had wanted to say before.
"Actually, I've seen something that wasn't alive come to life before."
Everyone turned together and spoke as one.
"You saw one?"
Little Matafus nodded.
"Grandpa Ose, my great-grandfather, left me a book. I brought it with me on the airship, and then it suddenly flew away."
"Grandpa Ose was amazing! He did all kinds of incredible things."
"I think that book must have some kind of magical power. It was almost like it was alive."
The other children were suddenly unwilling to be left out.
"You two have both seen one? I want to see it too!"
After that, the children hesitated no longer. They followed the bald boy to an empty attic in the Medical Fortress.
With the proper entrance locked, they squeezed through a narrow hole in the broken wood.
Crowding together, the children peered into the attic.
A high window stood open a crack. Moonlight slanted through it, just bright enough to reveal the attic's interior.
"There's nothing here?" The children looked left and right.
"Shh!" The bald boy held up a finger and knelt down on the floor.
"Wait a little. Don't let it spot us."
The children kept their eyes wide, but drowsiness soon crept over them. Before long, one of them began to snore.
After a while, a light suddenly flickered in the attic.
The bald boy had waited with his full attention fixed. At once, he shoved the drowsy children beside him awake.
Excited, he thrust out a hand and pointed toward the source of the light.
Following his finger, the others saw a glowing shape pass straight through the wall and fly into the attic.
The shape was an exquisite cloth doll. Its wings had been sewn from feathers and dyed white.
Apart from its tiny size, it looked exactly like a sky messenger from legend. Beautifully made, it had been modeled in every detail on the sky messenger statues in the temple.
After circling several times, it finally drifted into the moonlight.
It could not only move but speak, and it began to sing a rhyme every winged child had heard.
"O messenger of the sky, from where have you come?"
"From the radiant temple and the sacred hall I come."
"And where are you bound?"
"Toward the dawn I go, in search of the eternal sun."
A child's voice carried the lovely melody. The doll had belonged to a choir apprentice from the temple who died of illness in this very Medical Fortress, leaving behind nothing else.
Having inherited its owner's emotions and memories, the doll had remained here ever since.
Stunned, the children could not keep from whispering.
"It's true!"
"The doll really is alive!"
"It's so pretty!"
Their voices were barely audible, yet even that small stir seemed to catch the cloth doll's attention.
All at once, it fell motionless and its song ceased.
It turned its head and looked around the attic.
The children saw the cloth doll's eyes shift, gleaming with an uncanny light.
In the empty attic on that silent night, the sight made their skin crawl.
Luckily, the clutter concealed the children from view.
Even so, every child held their breath, terrified that the uncanny living doll would discover them.
The doll sang the rhyme several more times. Somewhere amid the repetitions, it seemed to remember something.
"Oh, that's right. I have to go."
"I have to leave."
With that, the sky messenger doll flew once more into the moonlight.
Dust sparkled in the shaft of moonlight around the sky messenger doll, making it look both holy and uncanny.
Turning in slow circles, it began chanting a long name in a strange tone.
"The Lord of the Divine Form above the Star Realm, the God of Creation of the Spirits of Old Things, the Primordial Mythical Witch Doctors born of the power of creation."
"Gate of the Witch Doctor Kingdom, open before me."
As the name rang out, a strange power stirred, and with it a passage opened.
None of the other children knew what the doll was doing. To them, the whole scene was simply thrilling, something they could boast about for a long time.
Born into a sky messenger family, Matafus suddenly remembered something her father had once told her.
"Is it chanting a divine name?"
"It's calling out to a divine being. That's dangerous."
Recognizing the danger, Matafus spoke up at once.
Matafus had heard her father explain that reaching out in this way was extremely dangerous, no matter what kind of existence answered.
Calling out such an existence's true name meant that the will of the god had already descended upon that place and seen everything within it.
Not every divine being was just, and even the so-called true gods did not necessarily favor the winged people. Divine power was far too dangerous for mortals and never to be touched.
This time, the doll discovered them completely and shouted at them.
"Who's there?"
"Who's spying on me?"
Discovered, the children sprang to their feet and swarmed toward the hole, desperate to squeeze back through.
"Run!"
"It saw us!"
The divine name had already been chanted, however, and the ritual was underway.
The will of the god had descended and seen them. Among those present were even suitable candidates to become witch doctors.
As the Dream Realm entrance opened, a shaft of light appeared and swallowed the children.
One after another, the children fell asleep. Their consciousnesses traveled with the light to a distant world, a kingdom within the Star Realm.
In the Witch Doctor Kingdom of the Star Realm, a great tree towered above the glass-domed jungle and the miniature kingdom. Its wooden door burst open with a roar, spilling one small figure after another from the shifting rainbow light within.
"Aaaah!"
"We're done for!"
"We're going to fall to our deaths!"
Shrill cries rang out as the small figures fell one after another.
Slam!
Behind them, the wooden door snapped shut as suddenly as it had opened.
Little Matafus plunged from the heights. She flailed her arms and beat her wings, but nothing slowed her fall.
From such a height, she felt certain she would be smashed to a pulp.
She struck the ground hard enough to leave her senseless and on the verge of passing out.
Yet the impact was nothing like she had imagined. Her body seemed unusually solid and tough, and the tremendous fall had done her no real harm.
After a while, she heard the others calling her name through the haze in her head.
"Matafus, wake up! Hurry!"
"Matafus, come on, wake up!"
Little Matafus came groggily awake, only to find bone figures ringed all around her, one after another.
The proportions of these bone figures were exaggerated and shrunken, which made them look partly comical and partly horrifying.
She let out a scream, shoved the bone figures aside and ran off into the distance.
As she ran, she discovered that her own body had become a frame of bones. Twisting around, she saw a pair of bone wings behind her, plainly a size too small.
So she discovered that she had become a bone figure too, though she still wore the same little dress as before.
She stopped dead and stared at her body in disbelief.
"I..."
"Why do I look like this?"
Something occurred to little Matafus, and she turned her head to look back at the other bone figures.
A closer look revealed her own companions. Their clothes had not changed at all.
Each of them had a distinctive feature. The short-haired boy, who had been thin as a rack of bones, now glowed inside his chest where his heart should have been.
The plump boy's belly glowed, while a mark shone on the bald boy's head. The pigtailed girl's belly glowed as well, though in a different place from the plump boy's.
"Is that really all of you?"
The bone figures shouted at Matafus together, "Of course it's us!"
The others had awakened before little Matafus and already discovered what had happened to their bodies.
Little Matafus looked around in fear.
"Where are we?"
The children who had become bone figures raised their heads and found themselves inside a strange city. The light in the sky was dim and hazy, and it made everything look grim and terrifying.
Above them loomed an enormous tree and its spreading crown.
The tree defied imagination, a vast pillar that seemed to hold up the sky.
At least, that was how it appeared from their present size and vantage.
Rushhh~
From far away came the sound of water, as though a great river rushed past.
All at once, terrible gazes turned toward them from throughout the gloomy city.
"Someone's here!"
"Something's here!"
"Is it an evil spirit?"
They suddenly remembered what the bald boy had said.
"Every night when it gets late, the evil spirit takes control of the sky messenger doll and flies it back and forth through this fortress, and then it takes somebody's life."
"They say that anyone killed by the evil spirit can never go to the kingdom of the god. They get trapped inside the evil spirit's domain."
It seemed to the children that they might have been trapped inside the evil spirit's domain.
The Witch Doctor Kingdom
Beside the little stream beneath the tree stood six mythical shadows of varying heights, gazing down upon the imp city.
Witch Doctor Torso peered over the edge.
"There seem to be quite a few of them?"
Witch Doctor Right Hand sounded puzzled.
"How did our very first summoning bring in so many?"
Witch Doctor Left Hand had the answer.
"The target brought them with her. They are all gravely ill children from the same place."
Witch Doctor Skull waved a hand.
"Then let them all take the trial together!"
The witch doctors called it a trial, though in truth it hardly qualified.
At most, the consciousness of a suitable target who had crossed the threshold set long ago would be allowed into the imp city for the imps to inspect.
The imps would see whether the two sides took to one another.
The imps themselves could choose whether and how to test a prospective partner.
They would also decide whether to form a contract with that partner in the end.
None of those summoned had crossed over in the flesh. Only their consciousnesses had been called.
The witch doctors' power had also made the vessels to which their consciousnesses were temporarily attached.
Odd as they looked, the running, glowing bone figures suited this strange city full of imps rather well.
"How many do you think the imps will choose?"
"One, perhaps?"
"Far too cautious."
"I say all of them."
"Now that is far too much."
Utterly bewildered, the lucky ones who had been summoned explored the strange city made of the Spirits of Old Things. High above, the divine beings watched their adventure unfold.