Winter turned to spring, and life began to stir once more.

This year, the northeastern territories of Suinhor experienced an unusual period of stability. The large-scale famines and waves of refugees that had troubled previous years were mostly absent. While pirate activity persisted along the coastal cities, there was now at least some capacity to address the issue.

Over two months ago, the Moonlight Territory, the City of Fire Protection, and Maya Territory were officially renamed Moonlight Province, Fire Protection Province, and Maya Province.

Dozens of other scattered territories, both large and small, were gradually being merged into several larger administrative regions. Osis permitted the minor nobles to keep their lands and most of their original authority. He required only that they temporarily follow the orders of the Governors he appointed and adhere to the kingdom’s laws.

Inside the royal study.

King Osis looked energetic and in high spirits, his condition unusually good. “Summer is almost here. What do the harvest projections look like for this year?”

The Prime Minister presented the figures, placing a document on the desk. “This was just reported today.”

King Osis reviewed the report and nodded with satisfaction. “These results are extraordinary. We owe our thanks to Kurmis for introducing the Brown Ball Vine and to the blessings of the Life Sovereign.”

Food was the cornerstone of everything, even in this extraordinary world.

With food, Suinhor could ensure stability, drive its industries, and support a growing population. This was the only way to nurture more Ability Users.

King Osis stood, paced the study for a moment, and then appeared to reach a decision.

“Approve the Alchemists’ requests. Provide them with everything they need, but do not allow the construction of temples.”

“Permit the Contract Lawyers of the Witch Spirit lineage to enter Suinhor. Let them assist in drafting a new legal code, and ensure they receive the official positions and freedoms they seek.”

This decree was truly groundbreaking and unlike anything that had come before.

The Prime Minister paused in surprise. “The temple…”

What he truly wanted to ask was if the Scarlet Goddess had granted her approval.

Osis, however, told the Prime Minister something else entirely. “Apostle Oran and Sukob sent me a secret letter. They asked that I, along with the Chief Divine Servant of the temple, offer it as a sacrifice to the divine being.”

The Prime Minister immediately rose to his feet and asked in a grave tone, “What are they trying to do?”

Osis raised his hand, gesturing for the Prime Minister to sit back down and remain calm.

“The two of them wish to revise the old laws so that faith is no longer divided by territory but instead becomes a matter of individual free choice.”

“Everyone would have the freedom to choose their faith, and the servants of the gods could move freely to share their teachings.”

The Prime Minister grew agitated at once. “Your Majesty, surely you did not agree?”

Osis shook his head immediately. “How could I agree to such a thing? It is not even within my power to do so. I merely offered the letter as a sacrifice to the divine being, together with the Temple of Fire Protection.”

He paused briefly at that point.

“However, the letter was offered to the divine being, and the divine being gave no response whatsoever.”

The Prime Minister said, “It seems the Goddess has refused.”

Osis replied, “No, my Prime Minister. If the Goddess had refused, it would not have been like this.”

“Based on what the Goddess has previously told me, I can sense that the division of faith will no longer follow the old ways.”

“This is the inevitable course of history.”

The Prime Minister protested, “How could the Goddess agree to such a thing? It would be the same as handing Suinhor over to other divine beings.”

Osis said, “But at the same time, the Executive Nation of Ten Thousand Serpents, the White Tower Alchemy Alliance, the Thunder Kingdom, the Yellow Sand Kingdom, the Wasteland Witch Kingdom, and even lands beyond Ruhe Beast Island will witness a significant rise in the Goddess’s followers.”

“The divine being’s faith will not weaken. Instead, it will grow and spread even further.”

With this change, the Trilobite Symbiotes would no longer be limited to Suinhor. They could step into any nation and begin shaping the future of the entire Snake People civilization.

The benefits and risks of this transformation were not easy to measure immediately, but Osis was confident that the Scarlet Goddess had already thought this through.

Osis concluded, “The gods will undoubtedly forge a new covenant.”

However, his voice carried a hint of hesitation as he added, “It seems the Goddess is waiting for something.”

Osis could not understand why the Goddess would hesitate.

If he were to recover the full memories of his life as a Trilobite Man, he would understand that the Scarlet Goddess was waiting for a pivotal moment, for the complete arrival of a certain existence.

Osis chose not to dwell on this matter further and shifted his attention to the Prime Minister and the officials managing state affairs in the study.

“Has there been any word from the south recently?”

The Prime Minister naturally knew what King Osis was asking. He shook his head.

“There has been no significant news so far.”

Osis furrowed his brow. “That should not be the case. Something is wrong.”

Compared to the eastern and northern territories, whose conditions were gradually improving, the southwestern territories had been mired in one crisis after another.

War, chaos, and famine had set off a chain reaction of problems, and King Osis felt the time had ripened to make his move against the Char Territory, Red Earth Territory, and Delanvos Territory.

All he needed was a reason, a legitimate justification.

However, the justification Osis had been waiting for still had not come.

After lengthy deliberation, Osis finally spoke. “We cannot wait any longer.”

It was not that he was eager to act, but the prolonged silence from the south suggested that the problems there were far worse than he had anticipated. The longer the silence continued, the less he could justify remaining idle.

That same day, Osis went to the Temple of Fire Protection and finalized an agreement with its Chief Divine Servant.

“The three southern territories have turned against the Snake People and the divine being. They must face justice.”

“They are no longer worthy to rule the south. The faithful and my subjects are counting on us to bring salvation.”

At this point, Osis spoke with a solemn and sincere tone.

“With my support, the Temple of Fire Protection can regain the authority to appoint and oversee the Chief Divine Servants of every temple in Suinhor. The Chief of the Temple of Fire Protection will no longer serve as merely the religious leader of Fire Protection Province.”

The Chief of the Temple of Fire Protection finally stood, a newfound brilliance shining in his eyes.

He could not turn down such terms. No other Divine Blessed King in history had ever made such an offer.

This was, at its core, a relinquishment of the Divine Blessed King’s own authority.

Osis understood that the Scarlet Goddess was in the process of separating divine authority from royal authority. He also recognized that the age of the Divine Blessed King was nearing its end, leaving him with no reason to withhold such a promise.

The Chief of the Temple of Fire Protection smiled and openly praised King Osis.

“King Osis, you are a great king.”

King Osis replied, “Everything is for this nation, and for the will of the Goddess.”

The Chief of the Temple of Fire Protection declared, “The Temple of Fire Protection will spare no effort in supporting your plans, King Osis.”

The two of them then laid out their joint strategy against the three southern territories, along with the division of their respective interests.

Though preparations had begun as early as the previous year, it was only now that things were truly set into motion.

As King Osis departed the Temple of Fire Protection, he could not help but let out a breath of relief.

“Suinhor will reach its zenith under my hand, and it will enter a new era.”

Then, without warning, Osis felt a strange sensation and lifted his head to look into the distance.

The setting sun, still lingering on the horizon, vanished in an instant before his eyes.

What happened next defied all logic. The clear sky, bright with daylight, was suddenly replaced by the darkness of night.

The sun was gone, and in its place, the stars appeared. God’s Moon emerged from behind the veil of the world, once again revealing itself to mortal eyes.

“What is happening?”

King Osis was bewildered, struggling to make sense of what had just happened.

As he stood there, a faint memory began to surface in his mind. A second shadow emerged behind him, leaning close as if to whisper something into his ear.

“The Crown of Wisdom.”

“The Race Covenant.”

Atop the Pyramid

Akmanmon stood as the sovereign of his race, receiving the reverence of every ghoul. He lifted his gaze, confronting the immense power radiating from the Source of Wisdom directly.

As God’s Moon and the Crown of Wisdom revealed themselves to him, their names and the essence of their existence etched themselves into his mind, resolving and affirming every question and uncertainty he had ever held.

“Crown of Wisdom.”

“This is… the Root Divine Artifact of the highest order.”

Akmanmon murmured to himself, his eyes glowing faintly as if drawn to the moon, their pupils fading from view.

“What the followers of the God of Knowledge and Truth said is true. What the people of Avel said is also true.”

“We are all descendants of Wisdom, born to the sound of life’s horn.”

After confirming this, Akmanmon did not hesitate for even a moment. He pressed on and declared his oath.

“O supreme Wisdom Authority, O will beyond all others!”

“The ghoul race swears an Eternal Covenant before You, forging an unbreakable pact with the wisdom of all things.”

“We are the race born of death. We were born from the undying will that all living beings yearn for. We spring from the fear of death that grips the hearts of all.”

“We are the embodiment of death itself, with the Cannibal Worm as our spirit and the corpse as our body.”

“We shall forever pursue the power of immortality, drawing to us those who desire the undying.”

“The ghoul race was born from this principle of will and shall forever be bound by it.”

Akmanmon’s oath had essentially transformed the desires of the living that were absorbed by the Silver Insect and the very conditions of the ghouls’ birth into an Eternal Covenant.

These foundations would no longer be as unstable as they had been. They would no longer be vulnerable to disruption, alteration, or corruption by others that could threaten the existence of the entire ghoul race.

Akmanmon had created a permanent and stable foundation for the continued propagation of the ghoul race.

The moment God’s Moon and the Crown of Wisdom appeared, countless beings across the world turned their gaze to the divine moon hidden behind the veil. However, as the initiator of the Crown of Wisdom Covenant, Akmanmon witnessed something entirely different from what anyone else could see.

Akmanmon saw an immense circular gate, radiant with light, slowly opening as it rotated.

What he witnessed next left him in awe.

A great tree emerged from within the radiance, representing all Wisdom Races and every sentient being gifted with thought and consciousness. It grew to fill the entire Source of Wisdom.

Its roots, trunk, branches, and leaves each symbolized one of the four Wisdom Paths, and from them grew four Wisdom Fruits.

Akmanmon looked at the tree, watching its roots extend downward. Beneath them, he saw the countless forms of all living things and the swirling images of every mortal heart and mind.

He realized that all consciousness and thought began here, that everything originated from this place.

“This Crown is the source that granted wisdom to all living beings and bestowed the Eternal Throne upon the gods.”

“Yet they have not achieved true eternity. They have not claimed those Wisdom Fruits.”

In that moment, Akmanmon saw the authority of every god in the mortal world, all of it leading back to this single source. He witnessed countless secrets and the very truth of the world itself.

“Those supreme and almighty gods seem so insignificant under this Crown.”

“They have not yet touched the source or achieved true eternity.”

Yet one question still lingered in Akmanmon’s mind.

“Why is it a crown?”

“And whose great head once bore this Crown?”

To uncover the truth and its secrets was to realize that even greater mysteries awaited beyond. The more Akmanmon learned, the more the unknown seemed to grow alongside it.

The longer he gazed, the deeper his awe and confusion became.

Then, from within the Source of Wisdom, the silhouettes of one race after another began to emerge.

Some were the Wisdom Races that had risen to prominence in the current era. Others were ancient beings that had vanished into obscurity over two hundred and fifty million years ago.

The Source of Wisdom was performing an evaluation, determining whether the ghoul race could genuinely be recognized as a new Wisdom Race.

Akmanmon was unaware of any of this.

All he could see were life forms beyond his comprehension, beings so ancient that their existence defied imagination.

He witnessed the savage wilderness of the primordial age and saw the Trilobite Men striding across the bleak and desolate earth of hundreds of millions of years past, raising city after city that seemed as if they had been crafted by divine hands.

He saw the Ancestral Fish emerge from the primordial ocean and watched as another race, gifted with wisdom, climbed from the bottomless trenches of the deep to build civilizations and rule over the seas.

He saw the Fire Demon race, born within Haru’s crucible, taking to the skies with fiery grace.

Finally, he saw the Snake People, the Winged People, the Abyss Race, and the Lizard People.

Each race appeared before Akmanmon in a grand cycle of succession. Some had vanished with the passing of the ages. Others had risen to prominence as the leading figures of their time. Still others were only now beginning to emerge onto the stage of history.

At last, Akmanmon saw the shadow of the ghouls.

He also saw his own figure standing beneath the Wisdom Divine Tree, engaged in a conversation with himself.

The Source of Wisdom represented the gathering of all spirits in the world.

It was, at the same time, a reflection of himself.

“Wisdom Race: Ghoul. Covenant conditions fulfilled.”

That voice was immense and overwhelming. Akmanmon felt as if he were the one speaking, yet the voice carried a divinity far beyond his own.

The oath he had just spoken transformed into Wisdom Script, embedding itself deep within the Source of Wisdom and imprinting upon its very essence.

A tremendous force descended from the infinite heights above, pressing down upon Akmanmon.

It pressed down upon every ghoul as well.

This was both a shackle and a blessing.

In an instant, Akmanmon sensed a shift within the pyramid, a transformation occurring in the Silver Insect, the Divine Artifact at its core.

The Silver Insect, much like the Abyss itself, served as the central vessel for the entire ghoul race and the foundation of their inheritance.

Now, it carried the weight of the Crown of Wisdom Covenant, along with the binding of the oath that held the ghoul race together.

Akmanmon felt the Covenant Between God and Man within the Silver Insect, which had previously been a formless presence, begin to shift. The countless desires of ghouls yearning for immortality, eternal life, and the simple wish to continue living condensed together and crystallized into a ring of script unlike anything he had ever seen.

Akmanmon realized that this was the covenant.

At that moment, he immediately synchronized the Plague Blood Curse within his own body with the Silver Insect.

What had once been a force resembling a simple curse now began to evolve, and with it, Akmanmon’s own power started to shift.

The words of the Crown of Wisdom Covenant he had just spoken echoed endlessly in his ears.

At first, it was his own voice. Then it became the voices of others. Finally, it transformed into the unified voice of every ghoul.

Akmanmon could feel himself merging with the covenant, becoming both its vessel and an inseparable part of its essence.

“The covenant has reached the Source of Wisdom.”

“So this is what it means to be etched into eternity. But I wonder if it can truly grant me the power of immortality.”

For now, Akmanmon could not yet grasp the form this power would take or whether it would align with his vision.

The force of tens of thousands, the collective yearning of countless souls for immortality and eternal life, gathered around him.

Whether this power could manifest the same miraculous effects as a curse, bending reality through sheer will, was still uncertain.

He had no time to study the changes in his Plague Blood Curse, as a mythology from another realm had already fixed its gaze upon him.

Above, God’s Moon appeared briefly in the sky before gradually fading from view.

By then, true darkness had settled. Dusk was gone, and night had fully arrived.

Akmanmon watched as layers of crimson mist spread across the sky, painting the entire world in shades of red.

A pillar of scarlet light burst forth from the distance, signaling the arrival of a great and powerful will upon the mortal world.

In an instant, a figure traversed the vast land and appeared at the base of the tomb-pyramid Akmanmon had constructed.

“Who?”

Akmanmon turned his gaze immediately. Though he had a strong suspicion of who it might be, the question still slipped from his lips.

As the word left him, a tremendous force swept across the pyramid. The vast host of ghouls below dissolved under the crushing power of that crimson energy, obliterated before they could even cry out.

The ghouls melted into rivers of blood that streamed across the earth, seeping into the ground.

At first, the figure appeared to be a serpent-woman. But as an overwhelming and terrifying will descended upon her, her form began to change. Legs slowly emerged from her body, her hair turned a deep crimson, and her face transformed into something entirely different.

What had been a young maiden now stood as a tall, commanding, and strikingly beautiful woman.

Akmanmon stared at her and recognized her immediately, for her temples were present in every corner of Suinhor, where her image was enshrined.

“The Scarlet Goddess.”

A true divine being had descended before Akmanmon, and in that moment, he bore the full weight of the same pressure that Suero had once faced.

Although it was not her true body that had come, she did not unleash the full force of a god’s power. She also refrained from summoning her Life Demigod form, the one that had annihilated everything in Maya City centuries ago with sheer might.

Yet the pressure Akmanmon endured in that moment was just as overwhelming as standing before her true self.

The one who had once faced her Life Demigod form had been another Demigod. Akmanmon, however, was still far from becoming a true god, separated by countless cycles of reincarnation and accumulation.

Akmanmon had once believed that reaching this stage would allow him to face even a true divine being with composure.

He was calm, that much was true. Yet in this moment, under the weight of her power, he found himself unable to utter a single word.

The moment she appeared, an overwhelming force seized the entire space, locking down his will and silencing him completely.

All he could do was stare with wide eyes, unable to move even a finger.

His voice remained trapped within the confines of his own mind.

“Is this the gap that separates mythology from mortals?”

“In the presence of that Crown, the gods seem so insignificant.”

“And when faced with a true god, I am nothing more than a mere insect.”

The more his fear grew, the deeper his terror became, and the more intensely he longed for something beyond himself.

This was the instinct of all living beings when confronted with death.

The figure started to approach him, one step at a time, and her voice carried to him from the distance.

“A race born of death?”

“The embodiment of death?”

It was clear that the Scarlet Goddess Vivien had heard Akmanmon’s oath.

A field of blood-red chalice flowers began to bloom across the ground, spreading and entwining themselves around the pyramid.

The divine being stepped through the sea of crimson blossoms, her gaze fixed firmly on Akmanmon.

“Let me witness firsthand the kind of immortality this is.”

“Let me uncover who is behind you, orchestrating everything.”

Red Earth Territory

A few miles from Red Earth City, a merchant guided his beast of burden along the road, pulling a cart filled with various goods toward the city.

The cart was stacked with an assortment of items: ceramic dolls, needles and thread, iron pots, knives, books, and other miscellaneous wares.

The merchant had just started his journey when he noticed a group of unsteady, staggering figures rushing toward him from the distance.

He immediately halted the cart and cautiously reached for his weapon.

“Who goes there?”

“What do you want?”

The merchant assumed they were bandits. He swallowed nervously. He had never heard of bandits on this road before.

As the light of dusk dimmed, the merchant squinted, trying to make out their faces. Before he could, the figures lunged at him with the frenzy of creatures possessed.

What came at him were not people. It was a pack of ghouls, freshly risen from their graves.

Ah!

“What are those things?”

By the time the merchant could make out their faces, the ghouls had already knocked him to the ground and were tearing into him with unrelenting hunger.

The merchant flailed his weapon desperately, but it was completely ineffective.

“What is this… ah… help me!”

“Monsters… ugh…”

He thrashed and screamed until his voice was no more.

The ravenous creatures consumed the Snake People merchant entirely, leaving nothing behind, not even the beast of burden. They then staggered away into the fading dusk, destined to either gain awareness or meet their end at the hands of other Snake People.

All that remained was a cart still loaded with goods.

From within the cart, a faint sound broke the silence.

A peculiar ceramic figurine perched on the shelf suddenly stirred. It shoved the other ceramic dolls off the edge with deliberate force, sending them crashing to the ground in pieces.

With great caution, it poked its head out and scanned its surroundings in every direction.

“What kind of monsters were those?”

“They scared me so much. I thought one of those Abyss fellows had tracked me down.”

It was Xiao’s ceramic figurine.

When Xiao had tossed it out, he had mentioned that everything was already arranged. The ceramic figurine, however, could not figure out where or how.

At the very least, things were not going well for it right now.

It was a rat caught in the open, hunted by everyone. Not only were its own former enemies searching for it, but Xiao’s enemies were after it as well.

The greater problem was that each of those enemies was more powerful than the last, an overwhelming and despair-inducing reality.

The ceramic figurine lacked Xiao’s calmness when it came to confronting such terrifying enemies. These past days had been nothing less than a constant state of fear.

Suero and the ghoul race had claimed that exposure to daylight would bring certain death, but compared to the figurine’s situation, that seemed trivial.

If the figurine were to reveal itself to anyone, to step into the light of day, it would face true and inevitable death.

On the other hand, the figurine itself was not especially powerful. However, it carried many of Xiao’s possessions and held records of everything Xiao had ever owned.

To anyone who discovered it, the figurine would be an immense treasure. If someone found it, they would never let it slip away.

In recent days, the ceramic figurine had been pretending to be an ordinary doll, moving from place to place and avoiding attention.

It had recently come up with the idea of sneaking a ride with this merchant and his cart to Red Earth City, planning to find a way to cross the sea from there.

It never imagined it would encounter something like this halfway along the journey.

When the ceramic figurine first spotted the ghouls, it was utterly terrified, certain that some Abyss King had discovered its location and sent forces to capture it.

The ceramic figurine climbed down from the cart, glanced at the merchant’s remains, and spoke with clear disdain.

“Unlucky fool.”

“Completely useless. You could not even manage the simple job of being my ride. What was the point of you?”

The merchant had never realized that a living ceramic puppet was hidden among his wares. Just a few days earlier, while organizing his inventory, he had puzzled over why there seemed to be an extra doll.

After finishing its tirade of curses, the ceramic figurine debated whether to wait for another passing cart or set out for its destination on its own. Before it could decide, something far more astonishing unfolded before its eyes.

God’s Moon appeared in the sky without warning.

The ceramic figurine was in the middle of cursing when it suddenly froze, its painted features contorting into a puzzled expression.

On its belly was a symbol that functioned as its spatial storage tool.

Without hesitation, the ceramic figurine retrieved a telescope from its spatial storage. It swayed back and forth, scanning the surroundings in an attempt to identify the source of the disturbance.

God’s Moon had appeared directly overhead. According to Xiao, this meant that either the Creator God was nearby or someone in the vicinity had made contact with the Crown of Wisdom.

The ceramic figurine concluded it was the latter, as encountering the Creator God was the last thing it wanted.

A villain needed to have the self-awareness of a villain.

“Who is the fool trying to communicate with the Crown of Wisdom?”

“Do they not realize I am here? What if the Creator God notices me?”

“I was hiding so well, and now someone is giving away my position!”

The telescope was a unique tool.

It was capable of detecting supernatural power in the area and automatically gathering information about its source.

Xiao had crafted it himself. While it held little value for someone of Xiao’s level, anything created by the hands of a Myth was bound to be extraordinary.

This single tool alone was enough to show that the ceramic figurine was a walking treasury.

Before long, the ceramic figurine caught sight of Akmanmon, the one responsible for everything. With wide eyes, it watched as the covenant reached its completion.

“That mortal who was always at Suero’s side?”

“This fellow…”

“He really is just like Master said, a lunatic just like Suero.”

“Suero died while staring into God’s Moon, and this fool wants to follow Suero’s path and invoke the Crown of Wisdom Covenant.”

The ceramic figurine did not see itself as a lunatic. It believed it was a rational thinker like Xiao, a lofty being who influenced the hearts of mortals from above.

Or at least, the envoy of such a being.

What it enjoyed most was pushing others to the brink of madness, not losing its own mind.

However, the more the ceramic figurine peered through the telescope, the more it sensed that something was unusual about this fellow’s situation.

The telescope kept collecting information about Akmanmon. While some of it was beyond the ceramic figurine’s understanding, it could vaguely tell that Akmanmon’s actions appeared to follow one of Xiao’s earlier plans.

“He actually succeeded?”

“How did he succeed? The ghouls truly became a race?”

“How did he pass the Crown of Wisdom’s validation?”

“What is he doing? He bound the oath to himself, made himself the vessel of the covenant, and then communed with the Crown of Wisdom.”

“Is that not Master’s work, 《The Crown of Wisdom Covenant and the Path of Race True Divinity》?”

The ceramic figurine had the notebook in its possession. Unable to resist, it touched its spatial storage to check.

“Still here?”

“It has not been stolen?”

“Did this fellow actually stumble upon the answer purely by accident?”

The ceramic figurine suddenly remembered what Xiao had said. When its master had casually thrown it out of the Abyss, he had spoken a single sentence.

“Everything is already in place.“

A look of sudden and grand realization dawned on the ceramic figurine’s face, as though it had understood everything.

“I understand now.”

“This must be part of Master’s plan.”

Xiao’s past exploits were so extraordinary that the ceramic figurine viewed him with near-divine reverence. Scheme after scheme, each seamlessly connected, had convinced the figurine that coincidence was impossible. It firmly believed everything was part of a grand design.

In reality, none of this had been deliberately arranged. However, Xiao’s influence was undeniable.

Every step Akmanmon took was shaped by the knowledge and inspiration he had drawn from Xiao. In hindsight, it was no surprise that their paths would eventually converge.

The distinction lay in the fact that Xiao, the Evil God of Original Sin, operated on an entirely different level.

Xiao had understood all the causes and effects before deducing 《The Crown of Wisdom Covenant and the Path of Race True Divinity》, the second path to True Divinity.

Akmanmon, unable to ascend to a Mythological Throne and lacking the God’s Grace Stone and the Four-Part Secret Technique, had been forced to take the very first steps of this same path out of necessity.

Whether he could walk the path to its end or would become nothing more than a data point in an experiment was uncertain.

To the ceramic figurine, all of this only reinforced the supreme power of the Evil God of Original Sin.

It was so moved by its own devotion that it waved its tiny arms wildly in a frenzy of zealous fervor, crying out at the top of its voice.

“Amazing!”

“Master, even in Your slumber, everything is happening just as You planned! You are the most powerful of all gods!”

The ceramic figurine stood on top of the cart, holding the telescope and shouting at the sky.

Suddenly, the sky turned red.

It quickly swung the telescope around, scanning in the opposite direction.

“Now who is coming?”

It saw a serpent-woman who radiated the power of Life Ability. She was clearly not an ordinary member of the Snake People.

“A Trilobite Symbiote?”

But as it looked more closely, the word “Myth” appeared across the surface of the lens.

“No, wait. Vivien’s will has been placed upon her.”

The ceramic figurine jolted in alarm, quickly retracting its telescope and scrambling back onto the shelf.

It froze in place like a toy doll, but fear gripped it so tightly that it began to tremble uncontrollably, causing the entire shelf to rattle.

Panic overwhelmed it as it dreaded the possibility of being discovered by this divine being.

It muttered incoherently, as if reciting a desperate charm to ward off danger.

“This is bad. Vivien is about to strike.”

“Akmanmon is done for.”

“This fool is just like Suero. No support, no finesse. He is as good as dead.”

Without its great protector, the ceramic figurine was far more timid, its earlier bravado completely gone.

Finally, the crimson glow overhead receded into the distance, and only then did it cautiously peek out again.

It no longer dared to use the telescope to scan the surroundings carelessly.

“No, no, no.”

“Ruhe Beast Island is not a place to remain. It is simply too dangerous here.”

For the ceramic figurine, this continent was undeniably perilous.

The landmass known as Ruhe was teeming with enemies at every turn. The figurine now felt like a rat exposed in the open, relentlessly hunted from all sides.

Every one of those former Abyss Kings and every god who had opposed Xiao could potentially be on its trail.

Although the ceramic figurine had been created by the hands of an Abyss Evil God, it was not truly an Abyss Race creature.

The being that had granted it wisdom and power seemed to be someone else entirely.

This also meant that it did not appear to be particularly intelligent.

“I cannot stay here any longer. I absolutely have to leave.”

“I need to cross the sea.”

“Master’s daughter is said to be on the other continent. They say she has begun her journey toward godhood.”

“I should go find her.”

The ceramic figurine’s eyes brightened with realization. Of course, even without its master, it still had a strong and reliable ally to depend on.

Across the sea, the situation was far more secure than it was here on Ruhe Beast Island. That land was free from the reach of its enemies.

“But why does Master’s daughter avoid all contact with Master?”

“Could it be that she holds a grudge against him as well?”

The ceramic figurine paused to think for a moment before quickly shaking its head.

“No, no.”

“How could that possibly be?”

The painted features on the ceramic figurine’s face shifted into an expression of deep thought. “What kind of grudge could exist between father and daughter? It must just be a case of youthful rebellion.”

“But I, the most loyal envoy of the God of Original Sin, will surely be welcomed and acknowledged. In the Winged People’s lands, I could walk around with confidence.”

This small creature’s every thought centered on finding a powerful figure to shield itself behind.

The ceramic figurine mused, “I hold so many secrets, and among them are quite a few secrets about achieving godhood.”

“If she becomes a god too, then when Master awakens, I will have two great figures to rely on.”

“With two divine masters supporting me, I would like to see who would dare to trouble me then.”

Hehehehe.

Thinking this way, the ceramic figurine let out a wild and wicked cackle.

It felt as though its return to glory was close at hand.

The days of living in constant terror seemed to be over.

But as soon as the laughter escaped its mouth, a tremendous surge of power erupted from the distance.

The Scarlet Goddess had made her move.

The ceramic figurine quickly shrank back, staying completely silent.

It climbed down from the shelf, crept forward with careful steps, then suddenly bolted and disappeared into the shadows.