The Comet That Orbits the Sun, and the Teleportation Divine Servant

The Star of Death rose without pause.

A hundred kilometers. A thousand kilometers.

It tore up through the atmosphere the whole way, driving deep into the endless dark of the universe.

By now the earth's gravity had grown steadily weaker on it as well. That pull would never drag it back down to the ground again. It could already move freely through the space beyond the sky.

In this moment the Star of Death at last began to turn, angling off in another direction, racing on its way.

Hmmmm~

Ring after ring of pulsing light radiated from the Star of Death, together with a low hum that only the mind could ever perceive.

One after another, fully grown Children of the Star of Death broke free from it, glittering with brilliant light as they flew on in its wake.

Right after, dense swarms of blazing meteors were born, turning to starlight and trailing along at the very back.

Its form, too, began to change.

The undulating mountains shaped like a five-pointed star and the spherical body itself became a head, and behind it trailed swarms of fully grown Children of the Star of Death, with dense clouds of young ones like starlight and streaming fire.

Their light joined and merged together, stretching longer and longer as they raced onward.

In the end it became one long, vast arc of light.

The Star of Death pressed onward like this, until at last it arrived above Ruhe Beast Island.

At once it lowered itself, drawing close to the earth, close to Ruhe Beast Island.

Close, and yet that closeness was still up in the boundless heavens. Even so, the whole of Ruhe Beast Island was already changing violently at the Star of Death's arrival.

West Coast, Coastland Witch Kingdom

In the Land of Light it was still broad day, but on Ruhe Beast Island, night was already beginning to fall.

The witch kingdom's fishermen, the sailors aboard merchant ships in the harbor, and the dockworkers on the wharves were the first to feel the change.

The Star of Death's approach drew the sea's waters upward, and the clearest sign of it was the great tidal waves.

Just as night was about to fall, the fishermen had already dragged their boats up onto the shore and started for home. One fishing family after another was carrying boats and tending nets when a wild wind rose over the sea, wave after towering wave, violent beyond compare.

"Tide's coming in!" The fishermen by the sea watched the waves and realized these swells were far too large.

"Why's the tide running this high today?" The fishermen, at a loss, watched the storm and the surging waves, and told themselves it was fortunate, at least, that the tide had come in this late.

"Huge waves, huge waves are coming in!" Down at the harbor, everything was chaos. The waves crashed against the dock with a deafening roar, the tide surging higher and higher, and the ships moored there rocked from side to side, groaning and creaking under the strain.

"Get all of it out of here, quick, don't leave any of it behind!" a snake person on the dock bellowed. But the words had barely left his mouth when a streak of dazzling starlight appeared at the far edge of the night sky.

It was a clear night, with hardly a cloud in the sky.

So they saw it plainly. High in the boundless sky, at the very center of the Milky Way that stretched across the heavens, a colossal shape had appeared, radiant with light.

No one could tell how far this being hung above the earth, though its height seemed to have broken past the clouds, past the very edge of the world as they knew it, standing level with the stars themselves.

And yet its size dwarfed any star by far, trailing a dazzling arc of white light across the sky.

"Look at the size of that star!" On the docks, workers soaked through by spray from the crashing waves rose to their feet one after another, staring at the colossal shape in the heavens, all thought of moving cargo forgotten.

"That's a star?" They had no idea what it was, could not make out its true form. All they could see was the dazzling arc of light splitting the sky, and the leading edge of the Star of Death blazing across the night.

"You ever seen a star that big?" The snake people on the docks might not have known how to read, but even they could tell that whatever this was, it was certainly no star.

"Wait, is that the moon?" someone wondered aloud, struck by a sudden thought.

"Since when does the moon look like that? And anyway, isn't the moon right over there?" The others stared at him, dumbfounded, and someone else pointed off in another direction, where the moon's pale shape could still be seen hanging at the edge of the sky.

"Still, that strange star really is beautiful!" None of them knew what it was, but not one of them could help staring at it, because it really was far too beautiful.

Looking up at the heavens from the earth below, the sea of stars seemed a great dome capping the earth, and that arc of light a crack torn open in the dome itself, spilling light in from outside the world.

It was no ordinary meteor. It would not fall. It was only passing through this world.

Splash!

All at once a great wave crashed in over everyone on the dock who had been staring up at the heavens, leaving them drenched like drowned rats.

Only then did they finally come to their senses, and go back to moving the cargo.

But they had moved only half of it when a new stir began overhead once more.

Streak after streak of light fell from the heavens, crossing the sky in ragged succession, streaming from west to east.

In a single instant they vanished at the far edge of the sky, moving too fast for anyone to even risk a blink.

"Look, quick!"

"It's a meteor!"

"So many meteors!"

"One after another!"

It was the Star of Death crossing the curtain of the sky, casting its Children of the Star of Death down into the mortal world.

Beams of light fell one after another from outer space, tearing through the atmosphere, through the clouds, crashing down onto the earth below.

It was not only the people of the Coastland Witch Kingdom who could see this. So could the people of the Wasteland Witch Kingdom, and those of the Royal Court of Ten Thousand Serpents, and the tribes of the Fire Demon Marsh.

Thousands upon thousands lifted their heads to the sky, watching light streak past again and again, as though the heavens themselves had begun to rain.

It was the most spectacular meteor shower any of them had ever seen.

Every so often, another meteor could be seen falling from the sky.

Like rain, it went on falling the whole night through.

Most of the places where the Children of the Star of Death fell were empty wilderness. Some landed in the Coastland Witch Kingdom, some in the Wasteland Witch Kingdom, and some flew all the way to the Royal Court of Ten Thousand Serpents, even as far as the borders of Suinhor.

But more of them than anywhere else came down across the barren Highland Wasteland.

Above the Wasteland

The instant the meteor shower began, a group of people were already moving, racing off in every direction, racing toward wherever the meteors fell.

Before long, a band of them had reached a stretch of flat highland deep in the interior.

Every one of them was an ability user of the Starlight Ascetic Order.

"It is god, our god has come again!" The moment that colossal shape appeared in the boundless heavens, they knew it at once for the deity they worshipped.

"It is the Great God, Star of Death. Look, it is there in the heavens, it is there among the stars, it is the most radiant star of them all." Tears filled the eyes of the Starlight Ascetic Order's ascetics. No one else could understand the collapse of spirit they had suffered, watching the Star Night Mountain Range recede into the distance.

"Our god never left us at all. It has only risen into the heavens, gone home to its own domain." The ascetics cheered up at the sky, bowing low in worship before that towering star.

"A star belongs among the sea of stars. This is the true face of the Great God, Star of Death. This is its true form at last." They chased after the falling meteors' trails like people possessed.

Not far away, a Child of the Star of Death had only just fallen from the heavens a thousand miles distant, and had not yet fully burrowed down beneath the earth.

The ability user leading the group leapt down at once from his flying magic carpet, streaking like a bolt of light to stand before the fallen Child of the Star of Death.

He held aloft in his hand something like a metal eyeball, and threw himself prostrate on the ground, crying out at the top of his voice.

It was the Ruhe Imprint he had once received from the hands of the Earth Witch, a Ruhe Imprint that belonged to the Star of Death.

"O dependents of the Great God, Star of Death!"

"We are the god's faithful in the mortal world, seekers after starlight and the night sea."

"We follow after the Great God's footsteps, and we long for the god's regard."

The Child of the Star of Death seemed to sense something too, sensed the Ruhe Imprint of the Star of Death.

It stopped.

It hovered high in the air, starlight sparking and bursting across its whole body, seeming to look the mortal below up and down.

Gradually, more and more believers in the Great God, Star of Death, arrived.

Beneath the night sky, crowds of snake person ability users worshipped the starry sky, worshipped the strange, sparking meteor-light far above.

Crack crack crack crack!

The Child of the Star of Death drifted before the leader holding up the metal eyeball, and a single spark broke free from its body, falling to land right before him.

Then it spun in a few slow circles through the air, and at last burrowed down into the depths of the earth.

Not a trace of it could be seen again.

"What is this?"

The leader of the Starlight Ascetic Order came before the "spark," meaning to pick the thing up.

But to his surprise, that tiny fragment felt like an entire boulder. He strained at it for a long while and could not budge it at all.

Still, he could tell that the weight was not in the fragment itself. It was in the force field radiating out from it.

The leader, overcome with excitement, lifted the spark, the fragment, with his spiritual power.

"This is the power of the Great God, Star of Death."

"A gift bestowed upon us by the god's own dependents."

Everyone let out a cheer. It was the first time any of them had ever laid hands on the power of the Great God, Star of Death.

As dawn drew near, the Star of Death at last began slowly to rise.

That dazzling white arc of light, suspended out beyond the sky, trailed its long tail at last, carrying its dependents away from the mortal world, away from this world entirely.

It broke free of the earth and receded into the distance, passing on into the universe.

It did not circle the earth at all. It circled the sun.

It could no longer even be called a meteor now, but a comet.

But decades from now, it would come again.

When that time came, it would meet this world once more, and everyone would again be able to witness its towering form high in the heavens, to see that vast arc of light stretching across the sky.

Along its way, it would leave Children of the Star of Death scattered in its wake.

Every year, these Children of the Star of Death would cross paths with the earth along its orbit, so that every single year, new Children of the Star of Death would come racing toward Ruhe Beast Island, becoming a meteor shower that came once a year.

The Land of Light

Deep in the lush green forest, the cries of beasts sounded now and again.

Partway up a hillside strewn with wreckage, Lomier, both wings broken, finally began to stir. He called on a sky messenger's radiant divine technique to heal the wounds across his body.

"Healing technique!"

"Healing technique!"

"Healing technique!"

Lomier poured divine technique after divine technique into his own body, and little by little his wings could be seen mending, returning to normal.

The wounds that had bled without end slowly closed over as well, leaving only the blood staining his clothes behind.

But Lomier's eyes never fully recovered their sight. Whatever was affecting his vision, it seemed, was more than a simple injury to the eyes themselves. Only after nearly a full day had passed could he make out even blurred, indistinct shapes.

Still, at least he could see something now. His spiritual power could also sense his surroundings, and in finer detail too, but its range fell short.

Without the reach of his own eyes, everything had become deeply inconvenient.

For most ability users, neither spiritual power nor a pair of eyes could really do without the other.

After making his preparations, Lomier returned once more to the coastline.

He looked out at the sea, muttering to himself.

"The Great God?"

"The Great God..."

"This should not be the name of any one god. It must be a title, borne by a certain kind of deity."

"And now that I think on it, I believe I have heard this name before."

Lying on the ground for a full day had given Lomier plenty of time to set his own tangled feelings in order, to set in order the whole strange adventure he had just lived through.

The thing that occupied his thoughts longest, naturally, was that single term, the Great God.

"It was in a story from long, long ago, in the records of that one disaster and the legend around it."

"A snake person named Yafuan, and another named Nia, once borrowed the power of a deity called the Great God."

"So what I saw must be that same being, the one that bears the name of the Great God."

Lomier had not come back here just to turn these thoughts over.

He had also, at the very moment he witnessed the birth of that star, seen scraps of starlight falling from the sky.

It must be power left behind by the Great God, Star of Death.

Lomier had come back to find whatever had fallen from the sky.

But he had circled over the sea again and again, searching for a long while, and had found nothing that had fallen.

Unlike that meteor before.

This time, what had fallen down was far too small, truly nothing more than starlight given shape, and it lay hidden deep beneath the sea.

Sensing its power out over the open sea was, in truth, no easy thing.

Without that sense to guide him, finding it across such a vast, empty sea was next to impossible.

Still, Lomier did not give up. He was determined to find what had fallen. He circled the sea's surface again and again, and one day, at last, his search bore fruit.

He sensed something strange among the creatures of a certain stretch of sea, and searching carefully, finally found what he had been looking for.

Wrapped head to foot in a sphere of light, he pushed down into the depths of the sea, though he could not hold that state for long, and could only reach the shallower waters.

He reached out a hand and scooped up a handful of sand.

The instant he closed his hand around it, his body and his shield of light began to shake and stagger, but instead of alarm, Lomier felt only delight.

"A Gravity Stone!"

"It is real. A true Gravity Stone."

"This is the power of that meteor."

Only, the Gravity Stone he had found was tiny, no bigger than a single grain of rice.

Even so, the enormous gravity it exerted on Lomier still made flight difficult for him, third-rank sky messenger though he was. He rose slowly and unsteadily from the sea, stopping and starting all the way back to the coastline.

By the time he made it, Lomier was gasping for breath.

But exhaustion could not dampen the joy in his heart.

Light glowed in his hand, cradling that rice-sized Gravity Stone, and he studied the light it gave off closely, his eyes brimming with joy and wonder.

"A Gravity Stone."

"This is the power of that star, the power that makes a star."

"The power to rise into the heavens, the power to break free of the earth and soar through the dome of the sky."

All at once, he remembered what the mythic witch doctors had said, though Lomier still had no idea what those six mythic shadows he had met were truly called.

"So you mean to raise a mountain into the sky with a Gravity Stone?"

"Then it is a Floating Stone you ought to be looking for."

"No, that is not right. A Gravity Stone is needed as well."

"A Floating Stone's force field warps gravity and cancels it away entirely, and yet a place with no gravity at all will not serve either. So a Gravity Stone is needed still, to make the gravity and hold it steady."

"The god has said that the two are, in truth, one and the same power. Neither can do without the other."

Lomier closed his hand and sank into deep thought.

"No, that is not right. This is still not enough."

"So there is another kind of stone as well, a stone they call a Floating Stone?"

"This stone can only produce a pulling force, while that other stone, going by its name alone, should hold the power to make a thing float in the air."

"Judging by what those divine beings said, the two must be two faces of a single power."

"Only by finding both, and joining the two together, would you have the power that makes a star, and a divine kingdom of stars."

Lomier believed what those divine beings had told him, certain they had to be right, even though he did not understand the principle behind it.

He was deeply grateful to them. If they had not stepped in, he might well have died beneath those barren, starlit ridges.

He thought they must be kind and righteous divine beings, their fame perhaps spreading far and wide across some other continent.

After resting for a while, Lomier did not go on hunting for more Gravity Stones. Such a vast stretch of sea was far too much for him to search alone, and he decided to carry the one stone he had and set out for home.

He had not found the meteor itself, but the Gravity Stone alone was enough for him to return and report his mission fulfilled.

But having witnessed the sight of that star rising into the heavens, having witnessed the birth of a star, he was no longer simply a sky messenger who had come with a task and a purpose in mind.

He wanted to do something himself now, too.

"King of the Sky Messengers, Lady Duma!"

"One day, you too shall become a being as great as that, and lead us to dwell in a divine kingdom of light that is our own."

The god Lomier worshipped was Duma, the King of the Sky Messengers who had built the entirely new Sacred Mountain of Light.

As for the names of the Lord of Radiance, Xia, and Melde, the former King of the Sky Messengers, those belonged to a bygone age, names slowly forgotten across the passing of several hundred years.

In truth, they had become something of a taboo.

Melde had brought the winged people too much suffering, and the god Xia had long since fallen into the Abyss and become an evil god. Most sky messengers did not fully know the truth of what had happened, and those who did had no wish to speak of it.

As they saw it, Duma alone was their true savior.

Only Duma was their new radiance.

On the flight home, Lomier turned things over in his mind as he flew.

"That demon spirit."

"A dependent of a god from some foreign land. He may know something. He may even be able to help us find a Floating Stone."

On his way back, Lomier was bound to pass through the Matale Principality again, and he decided he would go and see him once more.

Ruhe Beast Island

Ever since the God of Alchemy and Desire had issued a divine oracle calling on every alchemist to seek out whoever held a Teleportation Gate Key, word had slowly begun spreading across the whole of Ruhe Beast Island about the Door Nymph and the Teleportation Gate.

To the Door Nymph, Rosa, all of this was distressing, because hardly anyone even knew her name.

What was more, she had given mortals the keys, yet almost none of them could actually build a door.

As a result, the Door Nymph's spirit realm had made no progress at all, not for a long while.

But mortals were almost mad with longing to learn the name of even a single messenger of the Divine Kingdom of Creation.

Even the name of the most ordinary, lowest-ranked Letter Nymph was enough to become the foundation of some temple. At the very least, when praying beneath a Rainbow Tree, one needed to know whose name to chant to set the ritual in motion, unless one happened to be someone touched by fortune.

Never mind a nymph who could conjure up a teleportation gate.

"The Miracle Temple and the God of Desire and Alchemy are searching for whoever holds a certain special key." The various temples were the first to get word of it. They had all lately sent people to preach in the Land of Sunrise, so naturally they noticed such a thing.

"A key? What key?" The moment the great temples heard, they were, understandably, utterly baffled.

"That is surely no ordinary key. Send someone to look into it at once." But if a divine being was searching for it, it could not possibly be anything ordinary, and every great temple raised its attention at once.

"They say it is a key bestowed by the Door Nymph of the Divine Kingdom of Creation." Word soon came back from far away.

"The Door Nymph. Has any one of you ever heard of her?" Everyone was asking after the Door Nymph and searching out her past.

"The most famous Letter Nymph is Lady Florrie. The strongest Storage Nymph is Lady Saint Raphael. But... a Door Nymph? We have never once heard of any being called by that name." But they found that no name of a Door Nymph had ever come up before.

"They say whoever holds that key can open a Teleportation Gate, and that with a Teleportation Gate, distance counts for nothing. You may go anywhere at all." More and more word kept arriving from the Land of Sunrise.

The instant the news broke, every transcendent power across the continent was thrown into an uproar.

Not just the Miracle Temple.

Every other temple, every kingdom, every transcendent power large and small, wanted the power of a Teleportation Gate just as badly.

The Teleportation Gate Key itself could not be taken by force, but the person who held it could be won over.

For a time, the entire world was searching for whoever held a Teleportation Gate Key.

White Tower Alchemy Alliance

A village somewhere in the Golden Province suddenly found itself host to crowds of divine servants.

Before long, even an apostle of the God of Desire and Alchemy came in person.

A matter like this hardly called for someone like Oran, but he wanted to see for himself just what this legendary Teleportation Gate Key actually looked like.

The one who had received the key was an ordinary boy, with nothing about him that seemed the least bit remarkable.

Though, a boy like this was usually the sort who liked to dream.

He stood now in front of his own little hut, utterly bewildered, watching the divine servants prostrate themselves on the ground, welcoming Oran's arrival as though welcoming a divine being.

The boy bowed low and humbly, and asked, trembling, of the being before him who held God's Form.

"Are you a god?"

Oran shook his head. At least for now, he had not yet become a divine being.

"My name is Oran. I imagine you have heard it before."

The boy had, of course, heard the name, but to him, that name was as good as a divine being's.

Oran looked at the key hanging around the boy's neck, sensing the aura of a miracle item about it.

"So this is the Teleportation Gate Key. Sure enough, it gives off that power and presence that belong to the dream spirits and the Messengers of Creation alone."

Oran drew his gaze away from the key, and smiled at the boy.

"Did you see the Door Nymph?"

The boy looked back at him blankly. He had received the key, but had no idea at all how to use it.

He had dreamed of a nymph, but did not know what sort of being she truly was.

"I don't know."

"I just had a dream. All I can barely remember is that it was a very beautiful dream."

"There was a beautiful goddess. She's the one who gave me this key."

He grasped the key hanging around his neck, grasped it tight.

"Then I woke up, and it was already in my hand."

In mortal eyes, anyone who held God's Form was taken for a god, and a village boy like this naturally could not tell a nymph from a god, just as he had failed a moment ago to tell an apostle from a god.

He had heard that nymphs wore wreaths of flowers on their heads, but did not even know what a flower looked like.

Oran laughed.

"That was no god. That was a nymph."

"A nymph took your dream, and gave you a key in return, a key that opens on any distance at all."

Oran looked at him and asked.

"Would you be willing to become a teleportation divine servant of the Miracle Temple?"

The boy's eyes went wide, and he asked, unable to believe it.

"A divine servant?"

"I could really be a divine servant too?"

The words were barely out of his mouth before he was nodding, unable to wait.

"I'm willing."

"Of course I'm willing."

Oran nodded.

"Then from this day on, you are a servant of the God of Desire and Alchemy."

Still, the boy could not help asking one more thing.

"But, um, what does a teleportation divine servant actually do?"

Oran said, "One who joins the world to the places far away from it."