Calling the Divine Messenger's True Name

Dawn was breaking, and the early sun had only just risen above the sea's horizon.

Up onto the beach crawled a lone figure in a wretched state, a Bone Book clutched tight in his hand, his eyes fixed on distant Tito Town.

"Unbelievable."

"They are all dead."

The whole party had set out from far away for this mission, and in the end he alone had come through it alive.

Trilobite men could survive underwater, but the collapsing ground had crushed every one of the others or sealed them in. By the look of it, there was no way out for any of them.

Even he had barely escaped from inside. Senior priest or not, he could not withstand the force of the collapsing earth.

His palm brushed over the words on the Bone Book, and the tense, pent-up feeling in him eased all at once.

"Thank goodness."

"I brought the Bone Book out."

No matter how many had died, so long as this thing could be brought out, it had all been worth it.

He ran hard with the Bone Book, as though someone were waiting for him somewhere in the distance.

But halfway there, he suddenly stopped.

Something complicated moved in his eyes, and then it steadied again at once.

In that brief instant, he made a decision.

He drew out a bone tablet and looked quickly through what was written on it.

There were few words on the tablet, and it did not take him long to read them through. At last he understood what secret the great poet Tito had truly left behind.

Sudden understanding broke across his face, and with it a shock beyond words.

"So that is it!"

"This is the secret the great poet left behind. There truly is a dream spirit that can make any wish come true."

He untied the cord that bound the Bone Book, slipped the final bone tablet out from among its pages, and then tied it shut again.

The leader made his way along the coast until he came to a stretch of reef rock.

Behind the reef stood a tall trilobite man, his carapace pure white and unblemished, a Ruhe brand upon his forehead shaped like an eye.

Everything about him marked him as no ordinary figure.

If he was not the king himself, he was at the very least some prince. No one else could possibly bear a brand that commanded a Ruhe Beast.

The leader came before him, knelt in humility, and offered up the Bone Book.

"Your Highness, this is the very Bone Book the great poet Tito left behind!"

"For two hundred years it has slept beneath the Tito family's castle, and today at last it has come back into the world."

"And now, it belongs to us, to the Volcano Kingdom."

The prince could not wait. He took the Bone Book, and after a single glance, he spoke, his voice thick with excitement.

"So those from the Tito family's side branch spoke true. The great poet really did leave behind the Final Chapter."

"Hahahaha!"

"A secret the Star Luo Kingdom could not keep, a thing it could never possess, now belongs to my Volcano Kingdom."

The four great houses of the Royal Bloodline were Xilong, Samo, Sele and Hosen, and their names meant, in that order, starlight, desert, ocean and volcano. They stood for all that was finest and mightiest in the world, and they were King Redlichia's blessing upon his children, and his wish for them.

The kingdoms they had founded were, in turn, the Star Luo Kingdom, the Samo Kingdom, the Sele Kingdom, and the Volcano Kingdom.

And these men who had posed as a caravan of the Samo Kingdom were, in truth, soldiers of the Volcano Kingdom's Hosen family.

Their leader in particular was more than a soldier. He was a priest of a side branch of the royal line.

The Prince of the Volcano Kingdom asked him, "Why did you make so much noise? Did I not tell you that in all things you were to be careful?"

"Where are the others?"

The leader answered, "They are all dead."

The prince asked again, "Are you certain they are all dead?"

The leader said, "Certain."

The prince nodded. "Not perfect. But you have brought back the Bone Book the great poet left behind, and that is good enough!"

"Your mission is complete. Glory and reward will surely await you on your return."

With that, the prince began to put the Bone Book away.

In that same instant, the bone whip in his hand lashed out without warning, striking at the caravan leader.

The caravan leader's reflexes were lightning-fast. He swung the Ruhe Sword and knocked the whip aside.

His blade turned in a single stroke, flinging out a blossom of steel that swept aside three bone spears thrusting at him from behind.

It was his mastery of battle, and the wariness he had held ready all along, that saved his life.

The caravan leader turned and ran. He did not dare say a single word, let alone ask a question or hurl a curse.

Under orders, he had slaughtered Saint Tito's family with his own hands, and he had long suspected that no good end awaited him for it.

Watching him flee into the distance, the Prince of the Volcano Kingdom could no longer afford to worry about being exposed. He activated his wisdom ability at once, pressing a finger to the space between his brows.

Buzzzz~

The ground rose and buckled without pause, and it was plain that something monstrous and colossal was moving beneath the surface.

He had, of all things, summoned a Ruhe Beast outright.

Over all these years, the several strongest forms of the Ruhe Beast, and the methods for breeding them, had gradually settled into fixed shape in the hands of each Royal Bloodline family. The Volcano Kingdom, set amid a land of volcanoes and desert, excelled above all at breeding Ruhe Beasts in the Burrowing Demon Worm form.

The caravan leader ran on wildly, but before he had gone even a few hundred meters, he heard movement behind him.

He looked back at the ground heaving upward and the beast closing fast, and despair spread across his face.

He had never imagined the prince would dare bring a Ruhe Beast this close to the God-Descended City, and keep it hidden right nearby.

There was no way he could outrun a Ruhe Beast. If he wanted to live now, there was only one thing left to try.

He dropped to his knees and began to recite the secret he had only just seen, the one the great poet Tito had left behind all those years ago. It was the true name of a mighty Divine Messenger who had once stood at God Yinsai's side.

The great poet Tito had written, in his Final Chapter, that to chant the Divine Messenger's true name was to reach her will.

And through it, to touch the very domain of the divine.

"Guardian of God's Garden, Divine Messenger of the Dream Kingdom."

"O dream spirit named Hope, in all devotion I beg you to answer my prayer."

"Hila!"

As he cried out that name in odd syllables and an odd cadence, an eerie ripple passed through the air.

No one could truly hear the sound of that name. It was less a sound wave shouted aloud than a kind of resonance, a tremor inside consciousness itself.

But so far no answer had come.

The Ruhe Beast had already arrived. Tendrils like whiskers burst up from the ground and coiled around him, hoisting him high into the air.

Their monstrous strength twisted about him, and in an instant his legs were crushed and wrung together like a braid.

Blood welled up ceaselessly from his mouth, and yet his eyes held no resentment, no unwillingness to accept it.

Perhaps, from the very beginning, he had already sensed how this would end for him.

He looked at the Ruhe Beast crawling up out of the earth, and at the prince standing atop its head.

"I thought I could take hold of the legendary Final Chapter of the great poet Tito, and change the age with its power."

"Even if it meant slaughtering a saint's family, at least I would have accomplished something great."

"Rather than let a pack of fat worms squat on this god-given treasure, better to use it to accomplish the great thing no one before me ever could."

"A pity."

"The end has come so quickly."

The prince looked at him coldly. "Do you think you are a king?"

"A lowborn scion of a side branch. To guard the royal line is your mission."

"Glory belongs to the king, always. Accomplishment belongs to the king, always. What has any of it to do with you?"

The leader began to laugh. Then, abruptly, he spoke.

"Your Highness, this power we gained by such means, is it truly permitted by God?"

"Perhaps that is exactly why I have reaped this bitter end."

"But it is fated. You will never have it either."

The instant the words left him, the Ruhe Beast's tendril pierced straight through his chest.

The prince killed the leader not merely because he did not want it known that he had ordered the slaughter of Saint Tito's family, but even more because he did not want anyone else to learn that the great poet's Final Chapter now lay in his hands.

It was over.

There was no Volcano Kingdom coveting the god-given treasures of Saint Tito's family. There was only a Samo Kingdom caravan, greedy for the Tito family's wealth, that had slaughtered every last one of them.

But there was one thing the prince had not foreseen. The leader was dead, and yet his final voice had carried on beyond him.

Along that dreamlike starlight, it traveled on and reached the Spirit Realm.

At the same time, it laid the secret within the great poet Tito's Bone Book bare in full, before the eyes of all.