At All Costs

Outside the God-Descended City lay that same hidden stretch of reef and shingle as before.

Before the Ruhe Beast, the prince of the Volcano Kingdom knelt on the ground as if awaiting someone's descent.

The great poet's Final Chapter lay in his hands, and his heart bled.

If he could, he would gladly have traded everything he had for that single final page.

Without that final page, everything he had taken before it counted for nothing. He had done all the work only to place the prize in another man's hands.

His hatred for the man who had betrayed him ran bone-deep. If not for that man, he would have carried the glory and everything else home to the Volcano Kingdom long ago, rather than remaining here at such risk.

The long wait ended when the Ruhe Beast, still in its burrowing worm form, suddenly began to writhe. Its flesh split, squeezing out eye after eye. The eyeballs rolled and swiveled until they finally fixed on the prince. Then the dull, witless creature opened its mouth and spoke.

"A divine technique!"

"Consciousness Projection!"

At first, the voice sounded thick and strange. Gradually, it became the hoarse voice of a middle-aged trilobite man.

From the capital of the Volcano Kingdom thousands of miles away, the king had projected his will here to reach his son.

Still kneeling on the ground, the prince told his father everything that had happened on his journey.

Neither joy nor anger sounded in the king of the Volcano Kingdom's voice. It held only authority and command.

"Spare no cost."

"Should the need arise, I shall send the kingdom's other Ruhe Beast to aid you. Every agent we have in the God-Descended City shall answer to your command."

"Weishi, you know what it means to us, to every trilobite man, and to Yinsai itself."

"Without fail. You will take possession of that final bone tablet. Do you hear me?"

The king of the Volcano Kingdom spoke with uncompromising severity. His tone was exacting.

Weishi meant history. Ordinarily, only royal houses and great nobles dared assume so grand a name.

Prince Weishi had clearly grown accustomed to his father's severity long ago. He held himself to the very same standard.

"My king, I shall return victorious."

"Everything belongs to the victor alone. Only the victor is worthy of cheers and glory."

The king of the Volcano Kingdom sounded satisfied. "I shall await your triumphant return in the royal capital."

Once the conversation with his father ended, Prince Weishi went straight into the God-Descended City to arrange the next step of his plan.

In a commoner's house beside the canal Yesael had dug long ago, the prince of the Volcano Kingdom assembled his kingdom's people and hidden agents from across the God-Descended City. Several were merchants, several were officials and nobles, and one was a mid-ranking officer in the city guard.

"Watch the lord of the God-Descended City. Watch every move made within these walls."

"At the same time, search inside the city and beyond it. Use every means at your disposal to find one thing."

The others huddled together, murmuring among themselves. "Your Highness, what exactly are we searching for?"

The prince of the Volcano Kingdom gave no direct answer. He merely drew out one of the bone tablets of Tito's Travelogue and spoke.

"Find an ancient bone tablet identical to this one."

"Every ancient inscribed bone tablet found of late, whether inside the God-Descended City or beyond it, is to be investigated. Every last one."

Tito Town

The young craftsman Stan reached the edge of town with a heavy basket on his back, packed with inscribed stone slabs and bone tablets.

There he found the entire town sealed off. Soldiers surrounded Tito Town on every side, allowing no one to enter.

Stan meant stone slab. The name alone made it clear that his father must have earned a living carving inscriptions into stone. Once grown, Stan had taken up the same trade.

Moreover, Stan's full name should have been Stan Tito. He too was descended from the Tito family.

Commoners among the trilobite men, however, had no family names. Only true nobles were permitted them.

Across the Tito family's several-hundred-year history, only a few descendants had ever inherited a title. The rest had gradually fallen into the common ranks, no longer nobles but craftsmen who depended on the Tito family for their livelihood.

"What happened?"

The young craftsman clearly knew nothing of the slaughter inside Tito Town. Each month, he carried his finished carvings here on his back for delivery.

An old man outside the town told him what had happened. Stan went rigid. "They... they all died?"

"So there's no one to take my work now?"

The old man nodded. "All gone. Nobody's in charge anymore, so there's no sense hauling your work out here."

"Take your things to the market in the God-Descended City and sell them there! You'll fetch a good price for them, far better than you ever got here."

With his livelihood at stake, the young craftsman had no choice but to shoulder his basket and hurry toward the God-Descended City.

Halfway there, the craftsman spotted a length of dried, withered rope.

A little farther on, his foot sank into the sand and sent him sprawling, dislodging a bone tablet from the ground at the same time.

"What's this?"

The bone tablet was clearly old and weathered by years. As a tablet carver himself, his interest stirred at once. He picked it up and put it away.

The craftsman carried the bone tablet into the market of the God-Descended City. After laying out his own carved copies of the Yinsai Epic and the Hymn of the King of Wisdom for sale, he picked up the tablet he had found and examined it.

He held it up to the sun and read the inscription one character at a time.

After all, he had no mental power. Unlike those who possessed wisdom ability, he could not sweep his eyes over something once and commit it all to memory.

The years had blurred the writing on the bone tablet, though it remained faintly legible.

"A Divine Messenger? What's that?"

"Did somebody just make up this myth?"

"What character is this?"

The young craftsman was a descendant of the Tito family and knew how to read. Only this one character was unknown to him.

Strangely, the character seemed to have its very pronunciation carved into it.

The instant he laid eyes on it, a sound rang directly through the craftsman's consciousness.

"Hiwang?"

"Hian?"

"Hila?"

Every reading felt wrong. "No, none of those. It should sound something like..."

As he prepared to voice that strange syllable, the sound reached his throat and would not come out.

It was as though this name had never been one a mortal could speak. It belonged to a...

Only someone with wisdom ability could speak this name, using the tremor of power within their mythical blood.

Stan sensed at once that something was amiss.

That feeling alone told him the object in his hands was anything but ordinary, making him all the more eager to decipher its writing.

A group of men roamed the market, deliberately stopping at every stall that sold bone goods as though searching for something.

One stopped before the craftsman Stan and saw the young man holding something to the sunlight, studying its inscription.

"Wh-where did you get that?"

Without waiting for an answer, he blurted, "How much do you want for it?"

The young craftsman shoved the bone tablet into his basket. "It's not for sale!"

The man gave a signal with his eyes, and the others around him closed in.

Stan caught the signal. Abandoning his goods on the spot, he turned and ran.

"Stop right there!"

"Grab him, he's a thief!"

"Catch him!"

Through the chase and scuffle, Stan fled to the very edge of the market.

Elsewhere, word had already reached Prince Weishi of the Volcano Kingdom, and he was racing toward the scene. He called on his mental power for speed, climbing and leaping from house to house until he had crossed nearly half the God-Descended City as if drifting through the air.

He no longer had any thought to spare for who might see him.

"Hand it over!"

With a divine technique, he sent several stones hurtling at Stan. Each carried enough force to kill him with a single hit.

At that moment, a surge of mental power pressed in from the opposite direction, forming a barrier before Stan.

The stones hurtled back the way they had come.

Another trilobite man now stood atop the wall. He too was a senior priest.

The commotion had also drawn the attention of the God-Descended City's Yinsai Temple high priest.

Ever since the Kingdom of God appeared mirrored in the sky, everyone in the God-Descended City, high and low, had been as taut as a bowstring. The slightest disturbance could set them on edge.

"Prince Weishi Hosen of the Volcano Kingdom himself. I never imagined Your Highness would come to the God-Descended City."

"I saw Your Highness once, when the Sky Temple priest corps visited the Volcano Kingdom as envoys."

The man's recognition did not surprise Weishi Hosen. Anyone who rose to become high priest of the Yinsai Temple in the God-Descended City was bound to wield influence within the royal family. There were only so many illustrious royal houses across the four great kingdoms, so it would have been stranger if the two had not known one another.

Yet he showed no courtesy in return. He attacked at once with a divine technique, aiming to kill.

With a sweep of his arm, he sent bone spear after bone spear driving toward the other man.

"Kill!"

The high priest of the Yinsai Temple refused to yield. He leapt down from his height, placed himself between Stan and the attack, and took the initiative to meet Prince Weishi in battle.

Two senior priests had come to blows over a single bone tablet.

And more were still hurrying toward the place.