Chapter 496: This Is the Will of the World

Ray arrived at the Radiant Temple, and once again came face to face with Duma.

The valorous eight-winged sky messenger stood before him, clad in armor and cloak, looking every bit a warrior ready for battle at a moment's notice.

She turned slowly to face him, and Ray felt it all at once. She looked just as he himself once had, like a metal puppet.

But her gaze fell on him, and in that instant the look in her eyes shifted back into the Duma he knew.

Only then did Ray come slowly up to stand before her.

"Duma!"

"Have you come to bid me farewell?" Duma asked.

Ray shook his head.

"I'm not going. Not anymore."

Duma did not ask why. She only said, "Oh!"

Then Ray put a question to Duma.

"In the eyes of the winged people you are their god, and the King of Angels. Have you ever really thought about their future?"

Duma turned her eyes on him.

"What is it you mean to say?"

Ray laid his suggestion before her.

"I've walked all the way here, and I've seen what the winged people's domain has become. It feels dead. There's no life in it."

"Out there the world is being turned upside down, and here almost nothing has changed at all. It's time you all accepted the voices from far away, and listened to them."

"We demon spirits are a race made out of monsters. We can join ourselves together into great composite tools. We can become ships, carriages, aircraft, every kind of great device there is. We can reach places ordinary people never could."

"Duma, what would you say to letting the demon spirits into the winged people's domain? All of us living here together, in harmony."

"We can bring you news from far away. And we can carry you out there to see it for yourselves."

Ray had already worked out what lay ahead for the demon spirits. Their very nature had marked out the road their future would take.

A metal-puppet demon spirit could invite a few companions along and become a ship, or a carriage, and travel back and forth across the sea or along the road.

They could choose to become a trading caravan, or simply travel for its own sake, carrying the occasional fellow passenger along the way.

They could invite a kite demon spirit along, just as Ray himself had, and become an aircraft bound for some distant place.

A flame demon spirit could join with a jar demon spirit, and become a manned airship together.

They had all manner of combined forms at their disposal, and could keep whatever company they pleased.

They could choose to become part of civilization and the age itself. They could carry travelers off to distant places. Or they could choose to strike out alone on some far adventure.

Even many years from now, in an age when teleportation gates stood everywhere.

Beings like them would still be needed just the same.

Duma did not refuse outright. She looked at Ray a while, then asked him.

"Ray, do you truly believe that two different races can live side by side in harmony?"

Duma did not much believe it, and her doubt showed plainly enough in the way she had once resolved, without hesitation, to leave for the Land of Light.

Some part of that had been her ruined homeland, and her longing to escape the Abyss, true enough, but part of it had also been the wish to draw a clean line between the snake people and her own. The winged people, already in decline from disaster, could not bear another blow like that one.

Ray nodded.

"I couldn't say about other races. But the demon spirits can, at least, because we're a transcendent race."

"We don't need that much land. We don't need that vast a space to live in. And we don't carry that much desire, either."

"We're a race of travel and adventure."

Ray looked at Duma, the sky messenger before him.

"The demon spirits can never become the protagonists of this world, and we don't long to be, either."

"Why not?" Duma asked.

"Because in the story of our own travels and adventures," Ray said, "we're already the protagonists."

Duma walked through the temple, and looked away toward the other side.

"The winged people have no wish to contend with anyone for the place of protagonist either. All we want is to live well with what is already ours."

"The greatest problem keeping one race from living beside another is never compatibility. It is trust."

She reached the foot of the Altar, and there she suddenly turned her head to look at Ray.

"No one will ever wholly trust another race, because a race stands for no single person. It stands for a whole people."

"However you think, however you act, none of it can change the will of a people."

Ray heard that, and held her gaze.

"If it can't change the will of a people, then... what about the will of the world?"

Duma was startled for a moment.

"What do you mean?"

Ray pointed out at the world beyond.

"Because in the end every individual, every people, even the divine beings high above, all converge beneath the will of the world."

"We change the will of one people, of one race. But by that same measure..."

"We can never change the will of the world."

"Because the world is only so big," Ray said.

"You can't truly wipe another people out, and you can't truly get away from them either."

"One day the ground beneath our feet will have been explored down to its very last corner."

"One day every race will meet upon this same earth, and be bound to one another."

Duma sounded a little bleak.

"Perhaps that will be the coming of the end of the world."

Ray did not see it that way.

"I don't think it's like that at all!"

"There may be conflict. There may be war."

"But in the end every race will be bound together, past all avoiding, and become one whole."

Step by step, Ray came right up to Duma, and held out his hand to her, lifting his head with a smile.

"Since none of it can be avoided, why not start now, and try to accept the other races?"

"Start with the easiest one. Tell everyone. Tell them all."

"That we can all live together, in harmony."

Duma looked at Ray. In this demon spirit apostle with his hair gone impurely white, she seemed to glimpse something she had never seen before, something that could move a heart.

"Why is it you think this way?"

"Because when your eyes rest only on yourself," Ray told her, "only on what is close at hand, all you can ever see is yourself and other people. Only me and him. Only how different everyone is from everyone else."

"But once you see the world for what it truly is, once you look up at that boundless starry sky beyond the world, you'll find another word."

Something shifted in Duma's expression, as though she were asking what word that could be.

Ray pointed at Duma, then pointed at himself.

"Us."

"Beneath this vast sea of stars and the Milky Way, we are the same."

"There is no you and him, because we are together."

"Because we are Wisdom Seeds!"

"Because we were born into the same world!"

"Because we come from the same place!"

"And in the end, we will arrive at the very same destination."

Ray's words echoed quietly through the temple, and yet they carried a feeling of something vast and sweeping.

"However many times we have clashed along the way, however many times we have argued, however many times we have failed to see eye to eye."

"We will become one whole in the end. We will reach the same far shore, the same destination."

"That is the will of the world."

"And that is also... the will of the Creator."

In that instant, Duma truly felt something like a shock run through her.

She stood rooted at the center of the temple for a long while, and the change working across her face was plain to see.

At last her face eased, and after long consideration, she spoke to Ray.

"It is just as you said. The demon spirits will not clash with the winged people over living space. Perhaps your coming will be the turning point of some new change for the winged people."

Ray laughed.

"So?"

"So I can try inviting the demon spirits here," Duma said, "and the winged people will try to live alongside you."

Ray bowed to thank Duma, not only for agreeing to let the demon spirits come, but for taking that first step at all.

---

The Abyss Royal City of the Endless Desert, Before the Demon Spirit Pyramid

The Demon Spirit King and the Demon Spirit Queen brought a snake person and a stone demon down beneath the pyramid, to seek an audience with the God of Demon Spirits, Elena.

Around the snake person's neck hung a key. It was, unmistakably, a Teleportation Gate Key.

He wore a short tunic suited to travel through the desert, and a hat that wrapped his head tightly against the sun.

His face was dark and weathered, yet he looked young, and his eyes were bright.

Across the whole of Ruhe Beast Island, nearly every power was hunting for whoever held a Teleportation Gate Key, and now, of all people, the Demon Spirit King and Queen had found one.

The snake person and his monster companion bowed together, and prostrated themselves before the God of Demon Spirits, Elena.

He looked somewhat nervous. He was, after all, in the presence of a divine being.

"Great God of Demon Spirits, my companion and I both wish to become your believers!"

The God of Demon Spirits, Elena, looked down at them from above. Beneath her soft cloak, two faces, one real and one illusory, layered their gazes together, a weight that pressed down like a mountain.

Beneath her exquisite, metal-wrought hand she gripped a sword named for the Great God.

"I am the god of the demon spirits. You are a snake person. Why have you come to worship me?"

The snake person said, "Because my companion is a monster, and I could feel its desire to become a demon spirit. So I brought it here."

Beneath the hood, the two faces spoke as one.

"You treasure your companion a great deal?"

The snake person answered, "Of course. We have faced any number of dangers together, staked our lives on each other more times than I can count. Without it, I would not be alive today."

Elena said, "And yet it is nothing more than a monster, its wisdom still in chaos. Do you not find it so?"

"And once it holds wisdom of its own, it may no longer be yours to command."

The snake person said, "That is why I came here. I long to speak with it, and only then to set out on the real journey."

"I trust it, just as we once trusted each other with our very lives."

"I wish to offer up the Teleportation Gate Key to you, as proof of our faith, my companion's and my own."

The God of Demon Spirits, Elena, looked at the key hanging from his neck, and something suddenly came to mind.

"A Teleportation Gate. I recall Ray has one."

At this, the Demon Spirit King spoke up, addressing the God of Demon Spirits before Yinsai Temple.

"Yes, Lady Elena!"

"With one more gate, the two could be joined together and opened."

The God of Demon Spirits waved a hand, and light poured out in beam after beam.

Within that light, the snake person's monster companion transformed into a demon spirit, and in the same moment, the pact between demon spirit and snake person was written anew.

The stone demon, once massive and unwieldy, became a puppet with a body shaped like a clay jar. It still looked clumsy, but it had grown far more nimble than before.

The jar demon spirit gave voice to a sound of its own, and the lid atop its head rattled and clattered along with it.

"Thank you, Great God of Monsters and Demon Spirits."

Elena had the Demon Spirit King take the snake person away. From this moment on, he counted as part of the Abyss Royal City, free to enter and leave it as he pleased, or to settle here for good if he chose.

Even as the Demon Spirit King led the snake person off, he set about arranging the construction of the Teleportation Gate at once.

At this, Elena kept the Demon Spirit Queen behind.

She took out a letter, and handed it to her.

"This is a letter Ray sent me!"

"He has already become an Apostle, and he has found an Art of God's Grace that belongs to the demon spirits."

The Demon Spirit Queen was glad for Ray, too.

"He has become an Apostle?"

"How wonderful. He has walked that road all the way through at last."

Once her joy had settled, the Demon Spirit Queen asked, "Where is Ray now?"

Elena said, "He is on the far side of the world, in the winged people's Land of Light."

The Demon Spirit Queen read slowly through the letter Ray had sent. Folded inside it was a special scroll, sealed with the secret of an Art of God's Grace.

This wholly new Art of God's Grace was not only useful to the Demon Spirit Queen. The method it described for combining tools would serve every other demon spirit just as well.

The arrival of this letter would go on to change the whole future of the demon spirits, once and for all.

The Demon Spirit Queen read every word with great care, and at last set the letter down with a sigh of admiration.

"A Demon Spirit Art of God's Grace, and the Myriad Magic Tool as well."

She lifted her head and looked over at Elena.

"With this the demon spirits grow stronger, and now we know which road lies ahead of us."

Ray had given a name to the great composite tool the demon spirits could form, taking themselves as its core and joining other tools onto it. He called it a magic tool.

An Apostle's magic tool, in particular, was called the Myriad Magic Tool.

It stood for the freedom of the demon spirits to combine themselves however they wished, taking on every kind of form imaginable, and it stood, too, for their freedom and their spirit of adventure.

The God of Demon Spirits, Elena, felt proud of Ray as well.

"Ray means to build his own Myriad Magic Tool in the Land of Light, because he discovered a kingdom in the sky there, the floating island."

"I have already had him build an altar. From there he will be able to turn new demon spirits of his own."

"Once the Teleportation Gate is finished, it will connect to the Land of Light, and we will send him everything and everyone he needs to build his Myriad Magic Tool."

The Demon Spirit Queen supported Ray's plan to build a Myriad Magic Tool, of course, but she put a question to Elena all the same.

"What if he truly sets out one day, flies straight toward the sun, and never comes back?"

The Demon Spirit Queen knew well enough how much Elena treasured this student of hers.

"Will you not find it hard to let him go?"

The mythical demon spirit puppet standing before Yinsai Temple looked off toward the distant sun. She found herself recalling what had happened after she told Ray that the thing he chased, the goal he sought, might have been nothing more than an illusion.

Ray had fallen into an unusual despair, back then.

"That, too, is a road he chose for himself. A destination he wishes to reach on his own."

Elena reached out her hand, and the sunlight passed between her metal fingers to fall across her cloak.

"Even if I cannot see him. However far the distance between us."

"So long as I can see this bright sunlight, I can still feel that he is out there."

"Because he must still be somewhere, chasing after the sun, and this very light will have passed through his body once, before it falls beside me now."

---

Land of Light

Ray raised the temple and altar of the God of Demon Spirits in the Desert of the Fallen Sun, a place not merely untouched by human footsteps, but barren of life itself.

A dozen or so stone demons worked at once. They gathered the dense sand together and set it waving through the air like so many strands of noodle, until it fell at last as block after block of solid stone.

Square blocks. Rectangular blocks. Cylindrical blocks.

Every shape of stone imaginable came easily to hand, drawn out by the stone demons' own power.

Slowly, a temple rose up out of the golden sand, and deep within it stood an altar.

The big-head flame demon spirit fired sheet after sheet of glass, while the kite demon spirit hauled the heavy loads, stacking them together or setting them in place within the temple.

For a while, strangely enough, the desolate desert took on the feel of a place bustling with life.

"Why did you choose this place?" asked Duma, who had come along with Ray.

"Because there are plenty of stone demons here," Ray said.

"And more than that, this is the passage that connects to the Avel Peninsula."

Ray stood upon the sand, and looking out over it, found himself thinking suddenly back to the scene at the Abyss Royal City.

He drifted for a moment, then picked the earlier thread of conversation back up.

"Duma, you don't want the Land of Light connected directly to the snake people, but you don't want it entirely cut off from the world either, do you?"

"You just want to keep some distance between you and the snake people, so they can't reach you too easily, while some manner of exchange still stays open."

Ray meant to open a Teleportation Gate in the Land of Light, one that would let the demon spirits of Ruhe Beast Island come here, and let those already here return to the Abyss Royal City as well.

He had promised Duma, though, that for now the Teleportation Gate would only let demon spirits pass through it, and no one else.

At the same time, the two of them had settled a whole set of agreements over the matter, down to how the demon spirit temple would manage its own, and what would be done, and by whom, when problems arose while they lived in the winged people's domain.

Ray pointed out at the Endless Desert, and spoke to Duma.

"In time, the demon spirits could open this passage for you, if that is ever what you want."

"In time, some demon spirit will build a magic tool that can cross this Desert of the Fallen Sun, one that could carry your people over to the other side, and let the people from over there ride it back here as well."

"You could open up exchange, open up trade, without any conflict at all."

"Because between you there would still lie all this great sea of sand."

Duma nodded.

"I hear that things over on Ruhe Beast Island are changing beyond all recognition. I would truly like to know how matters stand there."

Ruhe Beast Island had developed at a breathtaking pace. Hearing the stories that came from over there, Duma felt as though her people and theirs stood in two separate worlds.

Ray laughed.

"Life is really no different from water. Only once it starts to flow can it turn into a river, teeming and alive."

Duma and Ray stood side by side, watching the demon spirit temple rise to completion, and though it was still an empty shell, the two of them walked inside together.

Ray made his way behind the altar, and drew a door out from among his storage tools.

He walked to the far end of the altar, and set the door into the wall.

He fitted the key into its lock, and it let out a sharp, loud click.

The door swung open.

Colored light spilled out from within it, filling the whole temple.

A twisting vortex opened onto the other side of the world, joined to another Teleportation Gate.

Faintly, Ray could make out one figure after another standing on the far side of the door. One of them stepped forward first and came walking toward him.

Rainbow light reflected in Ray's eyes as he watched the figure with anticipation, and he could not keep the excitement from his voice.

"From today, the demon spirits officially join this world."

He watched the shadow draw closer and closer, until it stood before him at last.

"We are..."

"...a race of travel and adventure."

One demon spirit after another came walking in from far away. Ancient metal-puppet demon spirits. Jar demon spirits born of stone demons. Kite demon spirits born of wing demons. Flame demon spirits with great glass heads.

They had come from the Abyss Royal City, and walked into the Land of Light.

Watching this unfold, Ray suddenly said to Duma, "Do you hear that?"

"Hear what?" said Duma.

"There's the sound of water welling up in the desert," Ray said, "flowing here from the other side of the world, flowing into the Desert of the Fallen Sun, flowing into the Land of Light."

Duma shook her head.

"There is no water here that could make a sound like..."

Before she could finish, Duma suddenly fell silent.

For one strange moment, it seemed to her that she truly could hear the sound of water flowing in from somewhere far away.

Vast and sweeping, welling up from beneath the earth, gathering itself into a river.

Flowing, gathering, toward the Land of Light.

One demon spirit after another arrived in the Land of Light, and the temple of the God of Demon Spirits grew lively with their coming.

Little by little, the demon spirits began building magic tools all their own.

The demon spirits made several different kinds of magic tools. Some were aircraft, others airships, and others still vehicles that ran along the ground.

The very first to finish a magic tool was a metal-puppet demon spirit, who built a strange and curious airship.

It looked like some great mechanical fish, one that could fly through the sky. The fish's head and the sides of its body were hot air balloons, and its tail swayed steadily back and forth as it flew.

The demon spirit flew off in their mechanical fish airship toward some distant place, drawing every eye along the way, and carrying the fame of the demon spirits with them wherever they went.

---

Matale Principality, the Capital

That morning, the winged people woke to find a great fish, lively and leaping, flying through the sky above them.

They rushed toward it, only to discover the fish was made of metal.

"What is that?" The winged people of the city cried out in astonishment.

"A fish..." The winged people had never seen a fish so large, let alone one that could fly.

"Is it just me, or does this feel a bit like Mister Ray's aircraft?" The shape was different, but there was something familiar about it all the same.

Ose, of Matale Principality, flew out to meet the strange airship.

"It is a new demon spirit."

The demon spirit stood on the airship, and drew out a letter, all the while preparing to land their very first piece of business.

"Care to hire my airship?"

"A winged person?"

---

Meanwhile, on the other side, in the Abyss Royal City and the Endless Desert, sweeping changes were underway as well.

The demon spirits had learned Ray's method for building magic tools, and one after another, they set out to try it for themselves.

Those with less power and fewer friends built smaller ones. Those with more power and more friends built larger ones.

"Look, this is my aircraft. Doesn't it look sharper than Ray's?" A metal-puppet demon spirit had built a brand-new aircraft, its own body fused into the cockpit, only its head left showing, and it flew about in front of everyone, showing off.

"Sounds like you don't have any friends!" But everyone shook their heads at the sight of a metal puppet building a magic tool meant for just one person.

"A real adventurer always sets out alone, and never needs friends at all," the metal-puppet demon spirit said, thoroughly put out.

Beside the city wall, meanwhile, stood a ship, looking as though it had only just been finished.

Its frame was built of magic gold, and its hull was worked in demon spirit soil, forged into something like porcelain. The decking and inner layers, however, were ordinary wood, cut wherever cost could be spared.

Its sails, though, were made from a transcendent tool, with a kite demon spirit fused right into them.

The ship was not especially large, but its presence was formidable all the same.

This, after all, was a transcendent warship.

Its metal rigging and rope fell in dense ranks, swaying like a nest of serpents.

"A ship, and the sea. That's what adventure is."

"That's a magic tool fit for the brave!"

"This is our magic tool sailing ship. There's no storm out there terrible enough to break it."

The four demon spirits who had built the ship together introduced it to everyone gathered there.

"Wow, now that's impressive," someone marveled.

"Wow, that must have cost a fortune," someone else marveled, in an entirely different tone.

"But this is the desert. The sea is a long way off. How exactly do you plan on getting it there?" While everyone else marveled at the power of this magic sailing ship, someone in the crowd asked the one question that mattered.

For a moment, the whole crowd fell silent.

The four demon spirits who had built the ship went pale as well. While they were building it, they had not, in fact, thought that far ahead.

All at once, something enormous rose up over the city.

At the same time, a voice came carrying through the air from somewhere far off.

"Yours is no good. Take a look at our airship."

This was a combined magic tool built by seven demon spirits together, a wooden boat hanging beneath a hot air balloon shaped like a great shell.

The balloon itself was made entirely of transcendent materials, but by the time they finished it, they found they had no money left. The wooden boat beneath it was built as cheaply as they could manage, though at least they had made it large enough.

It looked formidable all the same.

"A flying ship. Ever seen one before?"

"That ship of yours is far too old. It doesn't belong to this age anymore."

The seven demon spirits stood atop their airship, let out a great laugh at the crowd below, and flew off in a display of triumph.

The barrier in the sky opened a gap, and let them surge up into the clouds.

Below, the demon spirits gazed up at the sky with longing, murmuring among themselves.

"An airship really is the best!"

"Someday I'm going to build a magic tool like that!"

At just that moment, a great metal lizard came crawling out onto the city roads, charging this way and that.

"Whoa!"

"Now that's something."

"The way it just barrels through everything, so bold!"

"I love it."

A fresh wave of excitement swept through, and everyone rushed over to gather around the striking new demon spirit.

The demon spirits were, by nature, a race built for adventure, and the moment their magic tools were finished, not one of them could resist setting off in every direction at once.

"Let's set out to sea, too!"

"Where should we go?"

"Wherever we feel like going."

Some demon spirits chose to set out to sea, to seek adventure and start new lives upon the water.

"I want to go to the Land of Sunrise, by way of the Thunder Marsh." Some demon spirits wanted only to travel slowly, unhurried, sailing their own magic tools, meeting interesting people and finding interesting things to do along the way.

"We're headed for the Avel Peninsula." Some demon spirits chose to go further, drawn by the challenge of it.

"We're going further yet. We'll fly straight over the Desert of the Fallen Sun to see Ray, and prove once and for all that the world is round." They struck out in every direction, following Ray's own footsteps into travel and adventure.

They set out on stories of their own, putting their own lives in motion, seeking a meaning and a destination that belonged to them alone.

Along the way, letter after letter reached Ray, until at last everything they had seen was stamped onto his divine artifact, the Globe.

Little by little, they filled in the outline of the world map for him.