Chapter 498: Big Fireworks and the Floating Sons

Ruhe Beast Island

At the southeastern edge of Ruhe Beast Island, a colossal volcano rose out of the earth.

Its crater reared toward the sky like some enormous chimney, forever coughing up billow after billow of black smoke.

A strange and terrible field of force hung about the crater, one that bent the light itself. It twisted the color of the air into block after block of shifting hue, then welded them together without the slightest regard for how violently they clashed.

That much could be seen. Deeper down, in places no ordinary eye could ever reach, an even more terrible sight was unfolding.

At this very moment, the true body of the Lava God had rooted itself between the crust and the mantle, driving countless tendrils down through every crack and fissure until its power reached the planet's core itself.

It was drawing out the power held within it.

It was still a long, long way from the day the Mother of Life had spoken of, the day the core would be devoured whole and the Lava God would take its place.

But for the living beings who made their home upon this planet, what was happening now was already terrifying enough.

It was like a parasite latched onto this planet, stealing the planet's strength to make itself strong.

In fact, this was not unique to the Lava God. The other great gods were all the same.

The Lava God obeyed the Mother of Life's will and drew upon the power of the core, but there was a limit to how much of that power it could devour, and the sheer, indigestible mass of the core's strength left it restless and unsettled.

That unrest showed on the outside. All at once the Lava Mountain in the Forbidden Zone of Death belched out an enormous cloud of black smoke, one that all but blotted out the sun and swallowed the sky whole.

---

Limestone City

Out beyond the Volcano Forest, the people here were the first to notice that something had gone wrong, and none noticed sooner than the divine servants of the Harvest Temple.

"Hurry it up!"

"Get out there and see what in the world is going on!"

"How could it just change like this, all of a sudden?"

Mounted on all manner of magical beasts, the beast knights raced toward the Volcano Forest. Even from a great distance they could feel the earth itself trembling as the volcano let out a deafening roar.

Rumble!

When they reached the depths of the Volcano Forest and stood atop the mountain's peak, their eyes pierced the roiling black smoke the Lava Mountain was pouring out, and they saw terrible red light blasting up from the crater, like blade after blade of light tearing across the heavens.

That keen-edged red light sliced clean through the earth around the volcano, through the ocean beyond it, and through the very clouds hanging in the sky.

Just the faintest trace of its power leaking out was enough to douse every beast knight there in a cold, sobering shock.

It left every mind gone cold and every palm chilled to ice.

"Is this... is it going to erupt?"

One after another, the beast knights stared at that terrible "great chimney" and at the red light churning ceaselessly out from within the sky-blotting black smoke. Their bodies shook like sieves, utterly beyond their own control.

Their pupils had blown wide open, and in them, like in a mirror, hung the reflected shadow of that world-ending volcano.

---

Maya Province, Green Field County

In a mysterious castle built amid the wilderness, not far at all from the Lava Mountain, stood the headquarters of the Salvation Society of the Calamity of Destruction.

Judging by the name alone, it sounded like a gathering place for madmen, and outsiders did, in fact, think exactly that.

But anyone who actually drew close to them would find that, for all the foreboding filling these people's hearts, calling them madmen went somewhat too far.

The doomsday claims they made were not without their own grounds, after all.

The Salvation Society of the Calamity of Destruction was a body of believers devoted to the Ruhe Great God, but compared with the Moon Sanctum, which shared that same devotion, they had nothing like its rigid, legion-like organization.

Set beside the Starlight Ascetic Order, on the other hand, they did have something of a religious atmosphere about them.

In truth, they were closer to a band of fervent scholars, drawn together by curiosity to probe the secrets of the Lava Mountain, and precisely because they understood the terrible power that mountain held, they believed the world was fated to perish beneath it.

Naturally, most people had no wish to believe claims so terrible and so absurd.

Inside the castle, a great crowd of snake people draped in mysterious robes had gathered, some coiled and seated, some standing and watching the platform ahead, and some even wound about the pillars.

All of them were listening to a very young man give a speech. In his hand he held a thick volume full of illustrations of every kind of volcano, and he waved a hand as he spoke, his voice raised.

"Beneath the very ground we stand upon there lies, in truth, heat without end."

"Deep beneath the earth burn flames that never cease, and most of what we call volcanoes are in fact nothing more than ordinary mountains."

"But what lies beneath them runs down into the deepest layers of the earth. From time to time the flame in those depths surges up and out through them, and that terrible heat melts the very stone. So are made the volcanoes we see, and the sight of their eruption."

The man went on, laying out the sights they had seen and the data they had gathered over the years, the research and exploration into every small and mid-sized volcano across the land and even beneath the sea.

At last, the subject came around to the one place unlike any other, the Lava Mountain.

"The Lava Mountain alone is different."

"It is the largest volcano in all this world, and the chief outlet of that endless flame beneath the ground."

"But the Great Lava God raised its own kingdom upon it, and with its own hands sealed that outlet and locked it fast."

"Only, the flame beneath the earth cannot be held back. The power it gathers finds no release, and so it grows ever more violent."

"One day, that flame in the depths of the earth, a flame enough to burn this whole world to nothing, will surely break through the ground and bring the end of days upon this world, and destroy it utterly."

"That is the Calamity of Destruction!"

"That is the coming of the end of days."

The man's shouting had grown frantic, and he did look something like the madman the rumors made him out to be.

Just then, someone below raised a question.

"Then what are we supposed to do?"

The man raised the book in his hand high overhead, its cover bearing the very image of the Lava Mountain.

"This is the founding purpose of the Salvation Society, and the reason every one of us has gathered here."

Outsiders called them the Calamity of Destruction, but they called themselves the Salvation Society. Their full name was the Salvation Society of the Calamity of Destruction.

"Before the end of days descends, we shall find a way to save this world. We shall save this world."

"We shall find the Child of Destiny of whom the legends speak, and open a channel to the Great Lava God."

"When that day comes, we shall know the secrets buried deep in the earth's own layers, we shall know the very hour the end of days will come, and from the Great God itself we shall receive the true path of salvation."

The moment his voice fell silent, a cry of alarm suddenly rang out from outside.

A group of people came bursting in, shouting at everyone inside.

"The volcano's going to erupt!" He came charging in and went sprawling flat on the ground.

"The volcano... is... is going to erupt!" He scrambled back to his feet and cried out again, his voice shaking.

"Quick... quick, get out of here, now!" He hauled hard at the person beside him, glancing toward the door, as though desperate to make them flee.

"Which volcano?" Those inside sprang to their feet at once, asking over one another.

"The Lava Mountain!" the man who had rushed in cried, his voice sharp and piercing.

"The Lava Mountain in the Forbidden Zone of Death!" Afraid the people around him had not understood, he repeated himself in a rush.

The man giving the speech onstage froze for an instant. Not in his wildest imaginings had he thought the very thing he predicted would arrive so soon.

"Destruction..."

"...calamity?"

What was happening to the Lava Mountain could no longer be called a mere eruption. Within the Salvation Society, they had a name all their own for it, the Calamity of Destruction.

The book slipped from the man's hands and fell to the floor, his eyes filled with disbelief.

"It's not possible... it's not possible..."

"How could it happen so fast?"

"How could it happen so fast?"

The man bolted down off the stage, and the snake people below scrambled hastily out of his way, jostling into one another, their faces stricken with confusion.

He rushed to the doorway, then suddenly spun around to look back at the others.

"If this is the Calamity of Destruction, then it is already too late to run."

"However far you run, can you run clear beyond the world itself?"

The members of the Salvation Society of the Calamity of Destruction set out at once, making for the Lava Mountain.

More than twenty of them departed aboard three wing demons, flying swiftly across the land.

They had not been flying long before they saw the change in the Lava Mountain for themselves. The black smoke that had once hung only above the volcano itself now blanketed the whole of the Volcano Forest, and had begun swallowing up part of the sky over Green Field County as well.

Within that boundless black smoke, red firelight churned and surged.

The danger it radiated was absolute.

Astride his wing demon, the man who had just been giving the speech stared at the black smoke that had swallowed the whole of his sight, and at the firelight surging and straining to break loose.

"It's really... it's really about to erupt." In that moment, he knew it for certain.

"The Calamity of Destruction?" The others could hardly believe it.

"The end of the world?" More and more of them seemed to believe that this truly was the doomsday they had foretold.

"But we still, we still don't know anything at all. We don't even know what the power of the earth's core actually is. We haven't found the path of salvation yet, or the Child of Destiny. Is it all going to end just like this?" The others followed behind the man, unable to stop tears from welling in their eyes.

"Look, that's the firelight out of the deep earth, the fire of the Calamity of Destruction that burns the mortal world to ash?" They stared in terror at that ever-spreading "black smoke," at the world-ending fire flickering in and out of sight, gathering itself to strike.

But for some reason, beneath their frightened voices there seemed to run some faint thread of anticipation, and even something close to being moved.

Perhaps it was because every intelligent being carried within it some seed of self-destruction. Perhaps it was because the doomsday sight and the power before them were simply too overwhelming, drawing the heart, against its own will, into longing for that very power that would destroy the world.

Or perhaps it was simply because everything they had prophesied was, in this very moment, about to be proven true at last.

From atop their wing demons, every one of them stared out into the distance in fear, their eyes fixed and unmoving even as their bodies pressed instinctively closer together.

It was as though they were waiting for the final moment to arrive.

At last, the firelight at the edge of the sky gathered to the point it could hold no longer, and burst forth into a dazzling light that stained the whole world red.

In that critical instant, every eye watching the Lava Mountain could not help but close, in part because the light was simply too blinding, and in part because none of them dared look directly upon the moment "the end of the world" arrived.

Just then the Lava God, having "eaten too much," made a sound once again.

It was the very sound a mortal might make after overeating, a belch.

Burp!

But to mortal ears, that sound landed like the roar of the whole world collapsing and caving in.

RUMBLE!

Along with the Ruhe Great God's belch, shafts of light shot up toward the heavens one after another, becoming pillars of red light hurled into the sky.

What followed was not a volcanic eruption at all, but wave after wave of a shrill, piercing whistle tearing through the air.

Screech!

Screech!

The sound was piercing beyond bearing, and everyone present clapped their hands over their ears at once.

At the same time, they opened their eyes and looked out toward the edge of the sky.

There at the edge of the sky, pillar after pillar of red light was shooting up out of the crater into the heavens, one after another without end.

Every burst of firelight brought with it a blinding red glow that lit up the whole world, and that same shrill whistle tearing the air.

The firelight tore through the black smoke and pierced straight through the clouds.

Then, high above in the heavens, it burst apart.

Boom!

Boom!

It looked, for all the world, like firework after firework going off.

With every burst of firelight, ripple after ripple spread outward across the sky.

That "fireworks" display bloomed across the heavens into sheet after sheet of strange, brilliant red cloud.

Having waited half the day, already braced for death and for the end of everything, the members of the Salvation Society now stood with their mouths hanging open, staring at the Lava Mountain as it went on setting off "fireworks" without end.

"...What?" The fireworks before their eyes were simply too beautiful, but no amount of beauty could hold back the confusion rising in their hearts.

"What is this?" The sight before them bore no resemblance to a volcanic eruption at all. It was every bit as stunning, and yet far more radiant and dreamlike than any eruption could ever be.

"This is the Calamity of Destruction?" And yet it was utterly unlike the doomsday they had pictured in their minds, in every single way.

"They'll fall back down, won't they?" They watched "firework" after "firework" go shooting up into the sky one after another, but not a single one of them ever seemed to fall.

Little by little, they stopped caring whether that firelight shooting into the sky would ever come down at all.

The dazzling, radiant fireworks had already seized every last bit of their attention.

Screech!

Boom!

Screech!

Boom, boom!

The colossal volcano at the edge of the sky was unleashing fireworks the likes of which had never been seen, streak after streak of dense, flowing fire racing up from the earth into the heavens, beautiful enough to steal the breath away.

If this truly was the end of the world, then even death had become something like a beautiful, radiant epic poem.

They had waited nearly the whole day through, and in the end their doomsday never came at all. What came instead was the sky-covering black smoke, slowly drawing itself back in.

The Lava God, done belching at last, drew its power back in and slowly sank once more into its long slumber.

The sky cleared once again.

The members of the Salvation Society raised their eyes to the heavens and saw nothing but layer upon layer of red cloud filling the whole sky, as though flame itself were flowing across it, all of it set off by the sun going down at the edge of the world.

But as the sun sank fully below the horizon, a truly stunning sight appeared.

On one side of the sky hung daylight's flowing fire, burning cloud filling the whole horizon.

Beneath that cloud stretched a twilight that would never end.

On the other side lay the quiet of night, the vast Milky Way.

Together they split the sky clean in two, letting day and night stand side by side in the very same heavens.

The doomsday they feared, and yet in some corner of their hearts longed for, had never come at all. Every scream, every wail, everything they had just done now felt like nothing so much as a farce.

"Hahahaha!"

"Perhaps this was only a joke the divine being played on us."

The man who had given the speech stared at the strange sight in the sky, and could not help laughing as he spoke to the others behind him.

His laughter seemed to break the awkward tension hanging over them.

The others let out long breaths of relief. However certain they were that the end would come one day, none of them had truly wanted everything to end so abruptly.

"Then what in the world was that?" they all asked, unable to help themselves, staring at the daylight fire and the red cloud filling the sky.

"That is not cloud. Those are the divine being's own dependents." The man who had given the speech had already sensed something.

The Lava God's offspring had shot up into the sky, and something about it seemed to spark a thought in the man's mind.

"Could it be that the path of salvation lies in the sky itself?"

That daylight fire and cloud were the Lava God's own offspring, and its dependents as well.

They were called the Floating Sons.

As the dazzling display of fireworks came to its end, the red cloud and daylight fire at last drifted off into the distance, watched by every eye there.

Carrying their never-ending twilight with them, they receded little by little, vanishing at the edge of the sky.

---

The Floating Island

High above the heavens, Hila and Shelly sat at the edge of the floating island, pressed close together against the glass tank, watching what lay within.

They watched the dazzling fireworks come surging up out of the Lava Mountain, shooting thick and fast into the sky, then bursting apart high above into cluster after cluster of red cloud.

The spirit was genuinely dazzled by the sight.

"So they truly are setting off fireworks!"

Shelly, meanwhile, was so delighted she bounced right up, both eyes pressed flat against the glass wall of the tank.

Void's Mold Mother sat at the island's edge, her soft, pliant neck and head wrapped in Shelly's arms, not daring to move an inch.

To Shelly, Void's Mold Mother seemed less like a living thing and more like her own soft little rag doll.

Only once the fireworks had finally burned themselves out did Shelly let go of Void's Mold Mother, throwing her hands up in excitement and romping through the Cup of Desire's sea of flowers, shouting at the top of her voice.

"Big Fireworks!"

"Big Fireworks!"

Before long, Shelly had pulled a crumpled sheet of paper out from the spirit's hot air balloon boat, a rainbow lollipop clutched in her right hand.

It was the very wish list Shelly had drawn up for their journey, back when they first set out.

Lollipop between her teeth, Shelly picked up a pen and struck out the line she had once written after "set off fireworks," then ticked it off and wrote a note of review.

Set off fireworks (God wouldn't allow it, so the great Lady Shelly herself had to spend her own precious cleverness and wisdom on it, and got it finished in a very poor and shabby way).

The floating island wheeled slowly through the sky, drawing gradually nearer to Ruhe Beast Island.

Just then, layer upon layer of red cloud came drifting in from the distance.

The floating island already rode at a tremendous height, one where clouds were a rare sight.

Clouds could hardly climb so high at all.

But the Floating Sons were different. They dwelled, for the most part, at heights between ten thousand and a hundred thousand meters, clouds above the clouds themselves.

Standing atop the floating island, Shelly waved out toward the distance, and at once the floating island turned and made for the red cloud the fireworks had finally become.

"Look, quick!"

"They're coming over here!"

But just then, the witch doctors were scared half out of their wits.

A mortal might see nothing more than red cloud, but they could sense exactly what it truly was.

Sheet after sheet of that red cloud and daylight fire gave off a heat, a transcendent flame, beyond anything an ordinary person could have imagined.

"This will not do!"

"We cannot let them come any closer."

"They will burn the whole floating island to nothing."

With so many Floating Sons closing in at once, even the witch doctors could not withstand it.

These Floating Sons were, in truth, endlessly releasing heat and flame, and the cooler they grew, the closer to the ground they drew.

In the end, the Floating Sons would fall to earth completely.

They would return to the earth once more, carrying back to the Ruhe Great God the Floating Stone they had at last become.

Shelly, standing at the island's edge, had only just finished setting off her fireworks, and had pulled a rainbow lollipop from the hot air balloon boat to reward herself.

But just then, a sky-covering wave of fire came rolling in from the distance, and the lollipop in her hand, barely two licks in, melted away on the spot.

"Ah!"

"My lollipop melted!"

Shelly's delighted expression twisted in an instant, brow and nose scrunching together, giving her the look of a little tiger cub.

Displeased!

Furious!

Even so, upset as she looked, she was still terribly cute.

But the instant that expression appeared, the Floating Sons howling in from the distance scattered in every direction and fled without a trace.

Yet the Lava God seemed to know its mistress well. The moment Shelly's floating island passed above Ruhe Beast Island, it brought out a gift at once and sent it to her, in the form of fireworks.

A single streak of light tore through heaven and earth alike, bursting up out of the Lava Mountain below and hurtling straight toward the floating island.

It was an oversized Floating Stone, a full meter in length.

Boom!

Screech!

If the earlier fireworks had still looked something like fireworks, this looked far more like a cannonball.

No, that wasn't right either. This was more like a missile.

In that instant, every witch doctor, as one, struck the very pose and expression that had become Mythology Spirit Vellen's own signature.

They clutched their heads all together, faces frozen in horror.

All that was missing was a pair of feet stamping side to side, and a body swaying along with them.

The Lava God shared its mistress's very temperament, doing whatever crossed its mind the moment it crossed it, and never once sparing a thought for the consequences.

The instant it saw Shelly and the others coming, off went the fireworks, without so much as a glance at whether the floating island could actually withstand it.

A mythical Floating Stone this size, wrapped in a terrible field of force that warped the very sky, thrown by the Lava God's own hand. Who could possibly catch a thing like that?

Never mind striking the floating island directly. Even a graze would be too much.

The whole island would twist itself into a knot.

Shelly hadn't given any of that a moment's thought. All she saw was another "firework" flying up from the ground, straight toward her.

"Whoa!"

Just as Hila made ready to reach out and catch that "gift" herself, both of them caught sight of a shadow. Neither had seen when it appeared, but it stood now just outside the glass-domed garden at the island's highest point.

He looked at the firework hurtling toward the floating island, and reached out a hand.

The firework that had come streaking in like a "missile" simply vanished, and reappeared instead amid the sea of flowers around the Blood Mist Cup.

Its light had dimmed, and even the terrible warping field of force around it had vanished, sealed away.

It settled quietly at the center of the garden, swallowed up by the red flowers, looking for all the world like nothing more than an ordinary, unremarkable stone.

A black slide came sweeping in from the distance, and Shelly's shadow dropped down right in front of the glass-domed garden.

The moment she landed, Shelly bellowed toward Yin Shen at the top of her lungs.

"God!"

Bursting with pride and eager to show off, she said, "You missed it just now! So many big fireworks, and they were so, so pretty!"

Shelly pulled a face at Yin Shen.

"Bleh, You didn't see it, did You? That was the prettiest big fireworks in the whole world."

"Can't be helped. And whose fault is that, when You sleep in every single day?"

Yin Shen's voice came from just outside the glass-domed garden.

"I saw it."

Puzzled, Shelly ran over to stand by His leg.

Curiosity was written all over her little head.

"God, where did You see it?"

Yin Shen answered, "I saw it from the moon."

Shelly was suddenly consumed with envy.

"Aw!"

"That's so unfair! I want to go watch from the moon too!"

Standing amid the blossoms, in the floating sea of flowers beneath the starlight, Yin Shen watched the sunset twilight glow at the edge of the sky.

"What beautiful burning clouds."

Shelly said happily, "Right? Even the clouds the fireworks left behind are so pretty!"

Just then, Hila came walking over as well, the witch doctors in tow, and on every one of their faces was written the sheer relief of having survived.

Life at Shelly's side was, quite simply, as harrowing as riding a roller coaster every single day.

Hila called out Yin Shen's name.

"God, You have returned."

Yin Shen turned His head and nodded.

"I have returned."

As Hila passed by the Blood Mist Cup garden, she caught sight of the massive Floating Stone that had just come flying up, this one far bigger than the last.

But a Floating Stone this large left even Hila at a loss for what to do with it.

"Shelly, what are you going to do with a chunk of Floating Stone this big?"