The Returning Nightmare

At the Deep Sea Abyss, the old king arrived astride his Ruhe Beast, his crown upon his head.

Here, in this very place, he had watched his grandfather, King Yesael, die in the Battle of Lost Wisdom Kingship. The power born of the Sun Cup Flower had devoured the second King of Wisdom whole.

He had been so strong. So utterly perfect.

He had been King Redlichia's most beloved descendant, he had been the one who discovered the Origin Site, the hero of an epic myth.

In the end, even he could not stand against the power of fate.

Yet now he, Yesael's own grandson and heir to the throne, had come to borrow strength from those very sinners.

Shame surfaced suddenly on Eli's face, and he even wanted to turn and walk away.

But the moment he thought of those who had betrayed him, those who had betrayed the Yesael family, his retreating steps stopped short.

His gaze, uncertain at first, hardened little by little into iron resolve.

"King Yesael, I have no wish to do this."

"But if I do not, I lose everything, and the Yesael family loses everything with me."

"I will not resign myself to it."

"I will make those who defy the will of the king pay the price. And those who dared covet the throne of the Yesael family and steal it away, I will make them know it."

"We are the masters of Yinsai, and no one else."

Wooo! The Ruhe Beast let out a desolate roar.

Then it plunged with a great crash into the water, falling toward the dark and bottomless deep.

"Sinful people, heed my call, and come before me!"

"I release you from the bottomless abyss, and I give back to you the wisdom you once lost."

"You will be bound by my will, and you will fight for me."

The intent of wisdom ability pierced the deep sea, echoing through the ocean's depths, until it reached into the mind of every living being that could hear its words.

Splash, splash! Even at the bottom of the sea, the faint sound of the tide could still be heard.

Bloop, bloop! A sudden dense stream of bubbles surged up from below, sweeping past the Ruhe Beast and King Eli.

After the bubbles came the monsters, packed close and countless, surging out of the Deep Sea Abyss.

The sinful people, once driven back into the Abyss by King Yesael, had appeared once more.

Monsters ringed Eli on every side, yet in fear of the Ruhe Beast's power none dared draw near.

The sinful people made no attempt to hide their fear of this mythical beast that had slaughtered them in ages past. The memory of that fear, and of that death, lay carved deep in their blood.

A shrill sound tore through the waves, and a tentacle a hundred meters long coiled around the tall leader at the head of the sinful people, dragging them before King Eli.

King Eli reached out a hand and pressed it against their head.

"Bestowing of Power."

Once more the royal family's secret divine technique appeared, though this time its target was, strangely enough, one of the sinful people.

Born of the Yesael family, an ability user by birth, his own bloodline already ran thick and strong. To share out a portion of it now cost him nothing at all.

Such a thin trace of bloodline could not so much as awaken wisdom ability, but for the sinful people it was different. The blood of wisdom returned to them once more.

And because of that one line from God, "Too loud! Silence!" they could never again open their mouths to speak, not for all eternity.

But they had broken free once more of an existence as mindless as an insect's, a fern's, a fish's, and become a people who possessed wisdom again.

And now that they had regained both wisdom and language, they could communicate through the tentacles atop their heads.

One massive monster after another climbed up onto the Ruhe Beast, prostrating themselves at Eli's feet in a show of submission.

"Hahaha!"

"I said it before. I have not lost yet."

Every trace of despair had been swept from Eli, and nothing filled his eyes now but hatred and fury.

"Kill that woman. Spare no cost. She must die."

"That kingdom is mine. That throne belongs to the Yesael family."

"No one may sit upon it in my place."

The God-Descended City

A person stood atop a stone platform, shouting down from the height.

"We are all trilobite men who walked out of the God-Given Land! Our ancestors all once dwelled in the realm of the divine, and swore their oath gazing up at the divine's own hall!"

"At the dawn of life, we were all one and the same!"

"We are all of us children under God's protection!"

Their voice was raw from shouting, and they thrust out a hand.

"King Yesael offended the divine being, and he lost the kingship and the crown that God had granted him! It was his own tyranny that brought the divine's punishment down, and it has nothing to do with us!"

"We are free, and we are God's people too!"

Below the crude, simple platform, the crowd pressed close on every side.

Countless voices answered the words of the one on the high platform, and the crowd, caught up in their excitement, thrust out their arms and cried out along with them.

Some of them were commoners of low birth, some were slaves, some were craftsmen.

But they all had one thing in common. They were worshippers of Queen Star.

Those who followed and worshipped Star could be found throughout the God-Descended City. Some worshipped the queen's own personal charisma, some because she wished to reform the law, and some because of her mercy.

"Reform the law! Free the slaves!"

Among the crowd, naturally, there were no few who opposed them, furious in the extreme, even calling on the city guards to seize and scatter the gathering.

"Nonsense!"

"You're talking nonsense!"

"You're sinners who blaspheme the divine being, the descendants of sinners!"

Shoving. Blows exchanged.

Chaos erupted.

In a distant alley, a few nobles watched it all.

"The time has come."

"Queen Star has three Ruhe Beasts. One sits at the Sky Temple under the god-servant priest's command, and the handler of another has already agreed to our terms."

"And when that tyrant comes back, we... hm... what do we do then?"

"So what if he comes back? Do you imagine this is still the age when King Yesael held the royal authority of Wisdom?"

"The royal authority of Wisdom is lost and gone, and the glory of the Yesael family is no longer what it was."

One could own several Ruhe Beasts, yet could not command several at once. Even mastering the precise handling of a single Ruhe Beast in battle was no easy thing in ordinary times.

This was especially true when different territories needed to be held at once, when a portion of one's ability had to be divided and spread thin.

That night, monstrous shapes, packed thick and countless, crawled up out of the sea and advanced upon the God-Descended City.

They had no legs of their own, and could not remain on land for long.

But their powerful lower bodies, like a lobster's, could plant themselves upright on the ground, and their arms served for more than crawling, carrying a deadly force whenever they swung them.

Rumble!

A massive monster burst up out of the central lake, letting out a screeching roar.

Huge waves surged outward from the center, and a heavy rain began to fall across the area.

At the same moment, the whole city was jolted awake.

A voice rang out at once from within the royal palace. In the very instant the crisis broke, Queen Star had reacted with astonishing speed.

"Hold it back."

Star's Ruhe Beast moved to block the other, locking together with it in a grapple.

The two terrible monsters broke into violent combat within the city's lake, then little by little sank beneath the water.

The earth shook and roared, and no few buildings near the central lake came crashing down.

And in the darkness beyond the God-Descended City, terrible monsters pressed ceaselessly closer, surging forward in attack, their powerful tails launching them in a single leap straight onto the tops of walls several meters high.

The God-Descended City's guardians panicked at once. They recognized this kind of monster.

"It's the sinful people!"

"Hold them back!"

"Hold them back, drive them down, don't let them break into the city!"

The canal that King Yesael himself had once dug, running straight down to the lake beneath the sea, had now become their beachhead for striking at the God-Descended City.

Step by step, Eli walked up onto the shore, looking out at this royal capital he knew so well.

"Yinsai, your master has returned."