Chapter 503: The Divine Kingdom Standing in the Star Realm

The runic rings of light had become a colossal Star Gate, and two slender streaks of light shot through the ring's very center.

The floating island, that domain of the witch doctors, and the Myriad Magic Tool called the Sun's Wing pressed on one just behind the other. They drew on the Star Realm Gate's power to drive their speed to its very limit, pulling steadily farther from the ground.

Fifty thousand meters. A hundred thousand.

Higher and higher.

Inside the Sun's Wing's control room, the three of them stood before the glass window, watching the city below shrink until they could no longer see it at all. Even the once-boundless Volcano Forest and the Lava Mountain that had towered into the clouds had become nothing more than a patch on the earth, a piece in a mosaic of color.

As they climbed higher and higher, the sky they saw slowly darkened.

In the end, it became an endless, fathomless dark.

It was not the dark of looking up at a night sky. It was a black so hollow it left the heart uneasy, a color no one could ever feel while standing on the earth. By now they had already passed beyond what anyone would ordinarily call the sky.

Right then, Number Two drifted past the other two and suddenly spoke up.

"How come you two are floating too?"

Ray and Number Three had been staring blankly at the earth below. Only then did they notice that their heels had drifted bit by bit off the floor, their bodies rising slowly into the air without their even realizing it.

They had not used any power at all, and yet there they were, faintly floating in midair.

Ray looked at the world below the glass window and murmured to himself.

"The power of the Gravity Stone."

"This is the Law of Gravity."

Ray looked at Number Two and Number Three and spoke, unable to keep the excitement from his voice.

"I guessed right after all. This world draws everything to itself, and that's what creates the whole environment we live in."

"And it's this very force that keeps us from ever breaking free of the earth's pull. But now that we're gradually leaving this world behind, the earth's law is growing weaker and weaker on us."

The answer Ray had once only guessed at was now unfolding before his eyes, bit by bit, and he felt both joy and utter astonishment at once.

"Ray, are you saying there's a huge Gravity Stone buried deep inside the world?" Number Three asked.

Ray shook his head.

"Gravity is just a law. It probably has no shape of its own at all, but a Gravity Stone gives that law's power a real, physical form."

"It's like how wind already exists in this world on its own, but plenty of tools can still draw on the power of wind."

"The wind's strength is dying out up here," Number Two said.

"There's almost nothing left of it outside, and the air's fading away too. Good thing the Sun's Wing is sealed, so it's still normal in here for now."

"It's freezing out there. Frost's built up in some spots already," Number Three added.

"I'm cranking up the furnace."

The power furnace chamber let out a booming roar, flames leaping up, carrying heat to every corner of the craft.

At the same time, swarms of maintenance dolls raced through the chambers and corridors, calling out without pause.

"Warning!"

"Warning!"

"Warning!"

The unrelenting acceleration put the Sun's Wing under tremendous strain, and it shuddered as though it might come apart at any moment.

The inside of the craft had also begun turning hostile to ordinary life, problems of every kind cropping up one after another. Ray had never once considered that side of things from the very start.

It hardly mattered.

There was no ordinary life aboard this vast craft to begin with.

At last, they left the topmost ring of the Star Realm Gate behind.

But the Sun's Wing did not stop. It kept on climbing higher.

A hundred and twenty thousand meters.

A hundred and thirty thousand.

Racing toward ever greater heights.

Their ultimate destination was the space five hundred kilometers above the earth.

Ray watched it all, and two lines rose unbidden in his mind.

"We're leaving the world behind."

"Or maybe, the world is leaving us behind."

Number Three watched the scene, watched the floating island guiding their way ahead, and could not help but say, "Where are They even going?"

Number Two seemed thoroughly delighted. She spread her arms wide, just like the two wings of a kite.

"We're flying so high, aren't we?"

"No kite has ever flown this high before."

The three of them floated side by side in the air.

They felt that ultimate speed piercing through the vault of the sky, felt the freedom of shaking off the earth's pull, and the stillness in the depths of that dark starry sky.

Right then, something stirred and burned inside all three of them that no words could capture.

In that same moment, a fierce warning suddenly rang out in Ray's heart.

It came with no sign at all. It felt as though a hand had seized his heart in an iron grip, and for one instant Ray could not breathe.

He had a vague sense that something bad was about to happen.

Ray immediately began checking everything, watching for the slightest movement around them.

"What's going on?"

All at once, the color drained from Ray's face.

He seemed to have sensed something.

Number Two and Number Three watched him press himself against the window one moment and scan every direction the next, until at last he simply froze where he stood.

Number Two called out his name.

"Ray?"

Number Three scratched the back of his head and asked, "What's wrong?"

Ray lifted his head, his expression turning deadly serious.

He told Number Two and Number Three, "Our connection to Lady Elena seems to be going hazy. It keeps cutting in and out."

Ray knew this was one of the most obvious traits of mythical power. Anywhere the Dream Realm's influence could reach, if someone prayed to their god, that god could answer no matter the distance, and send across a portion of their own power at the same time.

And yet here he was, her Divine Blessed One, and now he could not reach his god at all.

Something like this could only mean one of two things. Either this place lay beyond the Dream Realm's reach entirely, or else something here was blocking its power outright.

But compared to the second explanation, Ray thought the first was far more likely.

As far as Ray knew, there was almost nothing in this world capable of blocking the Dream Realm's power at all.

So it had to be that the Dream Realm's influence simply reached its border right here. This was the very limit of the mortal world, and beyond it lay another world entirely.

Ray reached for his storage item at once with his free hand, a ring he wore on his right.

All manner of his belongings were kept inside it, above all his miracle tool aircraft.

He meant to open the ring and pull something out from within.

But when his hand closed over it, the ring did nothing at all beyond giving off a glow.

Understanding crossed Ray's face.

"Just as I thought."

The storage item simply would not open, not in a place like this.

It still gave off its miraculous glow, but he could no longer reach the Storage Spirit Realm, or Saint Raphael, at all.

Ray managed a bitter smile and looked at Number Two and Number Three.

"This really is beyond the world!"

Number Three still looked a little lost.

"What does that mean?"

Number Two, who had been drifting this way and that the whole time, finally went still, and said to Number Three, "We're Demon Spirits. If we go past the farthest edge of Lady Elena's power, we die."

That was exactly why Ray's face had gone so grim.

"That's right. 'Demon Spirit' is made of two words, demon and spirit."

"The demon comes from the monster race. The spirit's power belongs to the Pyramid."

"Our power comes from the Demon Spirit Pyramid. Our wisdom and our very minds were given to us by it."

Ray looked up toward the heights above, his hand clenching tight without his meaning it to.

"And right now, we're about to reach that limit."

"That might be..."

"The very end of the world."

The Demon Spirits were an extraordinary race, unlike any other.

Their bodies were eternal. Once a life reached its limit, the light of its consciousness would simply fade away, and the Demon Spirit Pyramid would grant it a new one.

Precisely because the light of their consciousness came from the Demon Spirit Pyramid, the moment they passed beyond its reach, their power would simply dissolve away, and their bodies would rot along with it.

Ray looked up at the sky, his eyes full of longing he could not let go of.

He suddenly understood that this was where his journey ended for now. No matter how close the world beyond the sky might seem, close enough almost to touch, it stood as impossible to cross as a chasm between heaven and earth.

"So a dream has an end after all."

When Ray said those words, a fierce reluctance ran through him.

They had already come this far.

He had passed through the gate to the Star Realm. He had seen the Supreme Divine Beings on their way to the sea of stars. He had reached heights no one had ever reached before.

One step further, and it was another world entirely.

When he turned back around, he was smiling as he spoke to Number Two and Number Three all the same.

"We've uncovered another secret, haven't we?"

"Not even Lady Elena knew this. The Dream's reach has a limit. It has a border too."

Number Three's voice was a flat drone.

"So what now? Our storage items won't even open. Is there any way at all for us to fix this?"

"Ray," Number Two said.

"Do we keep flying?"

Ray shook his head, his mind finally made up.

"Let's disengage the Sun's Wing!"

"We're going back inside the world."

Even Number Three looked utterly stunned.

"Disengage it?"

Number Two looked at Ray with an emotion rare for her, a sadness that showed plainly in her eyes.

"Do we really have to go that far?"

Ray nodded.

"We can't get anything out of our storage items. This is the only option left."

"We're going too fast now. There's no way to stop."

"And besides, we can use the force of the disengagement itself to slow our acceleration."

"This still isn't beyond the world yet. If we time it right, we can get back down to the earth."

In that one brief instant, Ray had already worked out exactly what to do.

But the words had barely left his mouth when something went wrong with Number Three.

All at once, Number Three's body began turning to sand, drifting away grain by grain into dust.

Number Three stared at his own body in shock.

"What's happening?"

Something had gone wrong with Number Two too. Her skin split open along thread after thread, just like fabric coming apart at the seams.

She held out both hands, her clear, transparent eyes fixed on her own fingers, and made a confused sound.

"My hand. It's torn."

Right then, her body looked as though it had been stitched together from some fine fabric of Divine Weave, and now it was splitting open along every seam.

Looked at more closely, though, she seemed more like a broken porcelain doll.

Ray, though, simply froze.

This sight was so much like that old memory, of himself breaking through the darkness and flying toward the sky, only to turn to a mass of rotted metal and come falling back out of it.

The sight also proved beyond any doubt that they had just reached the very edge of the mortal world.

Here, every last bit of ritual power simply failed.

"Demon Spirit Domain!"

In that critical instant, Ray moved at once.

The mechanical core of his Mythical Organ blazed with light, and just barely managed to stabilize the changes overtaking Number Two and Number Three.

Without Elena's Demon Spirit Pyramid, Ray, as an apostle, could still just barely borrow a thread of mythical power on his own.

But a method like this drew directly on Ray's own source power.

Even for an apostle like Ray, this was no solution he could sustain for long, let alone while carrying two other people with him.

Ray got the words out in a rush.

"There's no time..."

Right then, Number Two spoke.

"Ray, you're an apostle."

"You can still keep flying. At the very least you'd get to see what the high heavens actually look like. With your power, you're bound to find a way."

"You might even get to see a Supreme God."

"Don't worry about us. Just leave us behind."

Number Two understood exactly how badly Ray wanted to follow that kingdom of the heavens beyond the world.

Even if it cost him his life, he would not hesitate.

If he was choosing to give it up right now, that was more than anything because of her and Number Three.

Ray shook his head.

"Forget it!"

Ray turned his head as though he meant to take one last look at the world beyond the sky, but in the end he forced himself to stop.

"Making it this far this time is already enough."

"We got to see the gate to the world beyond the sky. We reached the true edge of the world. We watched the Supreme Divine Beings make their journey beyond the sky with our own eyes."

"We've already gained so much. We already know so much more."

"Next time!"

Ray burst out laughing, as though none of it had discouraged him in the least.

"No matter how many times we fail, we'll set out again."

"Just like always."

"Next time, we'll be ready for it, better than ever."

Number Two was still saying something.

"Didn't you say you were a phantom chasing a dream a hundred million years old?"

"You said you were a..."

Ray cut Number Two off and finished the line himself.

"A primordial wandering spirit, chasing the sky and the sun."

Ray looked at Number Two, and at Number Three, in dead earnest, and said it slowly, one word at a time.

"But that was before."

Ray floated in the air and took hold of them both.

"I want adventure. I want to go far away. I want to see what the sun really looks like."

"But more than that."

"I want it with you two."

With their lives hanging by a thread, Ray no longer hesitated for even a moment.

Under the surge of his power, in an instant, the entire Sun's Wing disengaged in full flight.

Ray had thought it through with perfect clarity.

Once the Sun's Wing disengaged, it would fall, and once it did, he could still find some way to recover it later.

But if he let it keep climbing like this, there would never be any getting it back at all.

In an instant, a fierce shockwave of spiritual energy rang out through the sky, bursting at the same time into a blaze of flame.

The Flame Demon Spirit's transcendent flame surged out through every pipe and seam on every side, then died away again just as fast.

No real sound came with it.

Or if there was one, it was too faint, too small for anyone far off to catch without listening closely.

The Myriad Magic Tool, the Sun's Wing, tore itself apart, breaking in the end into three main pieces, the bird head, the body, and the wings. Everything else shattered into a dense cloud of fragments scattering into the starry sky.

As Ray let the Sun's Wing disengage, he was still driving the power furnace to spray flame up into the sky.

He called on the very limit of his own strength, pouring every bit of it upward.

Even so, the momentum carrying them toward the world beyond the sky did not fully stop.

Ray gripped Number Two and Number Three tightly with both hands, and the three of them huddled together inside the mechanical head and its control room, torn loose from the rest. The force of the blast hurled them far, far off in another direction.

They tumbled wildly through the sky, slamming again and again against the walls of the control room.

Somewhere in the middle of it all, Ray turned into a metal puppet, Number Two turned back into a kite, and Number Three turned back into a big-headed glass man filled with fire.

The three of them looked more than a little battered, but none of them was seriously hurt.

At last, the force that had flung them loose slowly faded away.

But even then, they did not simply drop straight out of the sky. Instead, they circled the world through the heavens.

Descending as they circled, falling as they circled.

The kite drifted up to the window and looked out at the world beyond.

"Feels like we're circling the whole world."

The metal puppet knocked against the edge as they spun.

"It's fine. We're going down."

Going down meant they were growing safer by the moment.

No telling how much time passed before they finally began falling out of the sky in earnest.

"Aah!"

"It's shaking so much!"

"We're about to land. We got lucky, looks like we're coming down over the sea."

They braced themselves inside the mechanical bird's head, while that broken metal skull spun wildly through the sky.

The huge mechanical head scraped against air that was growing steadily thicker, until its shell turned scorching hot and even began giving off flame outright.

It cut across the sky like a falling star, plunging down toward the depths of the sea.

Number Three called on his own power at once, drawing in the flame.

"We're on fire."

Number Two seemed to have no idea what fear even was, and flitted happily through the wrecked control room.

"We're like a shooting star!"

Ray, meanwhile, held his Globe tight in his hands.

Right then, the sun rose in the distance too.

That fathomless dark vanished completely, and the sun's light and the clear sky brought with them a sense of safety words could not quite capture.

The three of them, sheltering inside the mechanical bird's head, punched through layer after layer of white cloud, feeling the searing heat of the air rushing past and the violent shaking all around them.

Right then, Number Two spotted something below through the window.

"Ray, look, quick."

Ray and Number Three crowded in at once and found a vast stretch of strange scarlet cloud below.

"That weird red cloud again."

Number Three, more than a little tense, let out a shout.

"Get out of the way!"

"Get out of the way!"

The Star Realm Gate had long since dissolved away, and swarms of Floating Sons, their task complete, had scattered off in every direction.

What now stood before them was a single Floating Son, left behind alone.

For some reason, though, it had ended up at far too low an altitude.

The two of them were about to collide when Number Two suddenly whipped up a burst of cold air, turning it into a howling gale that blew, without pause, straight into that red burning cloud.

Number Two had only meant to blow it out of their way, but something else happened that she never expected.

The Floating Son had dropped to this altitude carrying a searing heat that had already reached a critical threshold, which was exactly why it had ended up here alone in the first place.

Whoosh!

The cold air Number Two had stirred up helped carry the Floating Son through the very last step of its transformation.

The Floating Son went through a violent change, its scarlet cloud rolling itself together in the wind.

Its huge form, once a great red cloud, began to collapse in on itself.

Growing smaller and smaller.

In the end it became a single ball of fire, and fell toward the earth alongside Ray and the other two.

Boom!

Crash!

Enormous waves rose over the sea as the three of them and the Floating Son crashed down into the ocean together.

The Floating Son sank into the sea, and its flame went out for good.

At the same time, down in the depths of the seabed, it began drawing in power from beneath the earth, and its form began to reshape itself.

By the time it rose to the surface again, it no longer looked anything like a red cloud or a streak of daylight fire.

Instead, it had become a colossal beast, carrying a great mass of boulders on its back.

Only its upper half broke the surface of the water, so that it looked like nothing so much as a giant reef, or a small island.

Ray recognized exactly what it was, and that was precisely why he looked so utterly astonished.

"Is this..."

"A dependent of the Lava God?"

Ray had never imagined that the red cloud they had seen before would fall into the water and turn into an offspring of the Lava God, the very sort every sailor on the open sea spoke of in dread.

But right then, that terrifying beast suddenly drew closer to them.

Then something drifted out from within its body, an object radiating light and formidable power, and settled down right in front of Number Two.

It seemed to be a gift of thanks, for Number Two's help carrying it through the last step of its transformation.

Number Two looked a little puzzled, but she seemed to grasp the gist of it.

"For me?"

It was a small white stone.

But the instant Number Two took hold of it, everything around them lifted into the air, flung upward all at once.

Luckily, Ray thrust out a huge hand made of mental power and caught hold of them.

Ray grabbed the kite's string, and took the white stone for himself as well.

In an instant, Ray himself lifted off the ground too.

The mechanical head beneath his feet, the countless beads of water all around them, rose right along with him.

Ray suddenly understood something.

Wasn't this exactly the power behind the Floating Stone that Lomier could never stop thinking about?

A stone whose power ran opposite to the Gravity Stone, a stone that could push back against the earth's binding pull.

"A Floating Stone?"

"This is a Floating Stone?"

Ray, utterly astonished, turned it over and over in his hands for a long while.

"So this really is a Floating Stone. And this is how it comes to be."

Once the Floating Son that had fallen into the sea finished delivering its gift, it turned and left.

Ray watched its shape grow smaller in the distance.

"The Gravity Stone comes from the Ruhe Great God, the Star of Death. And the Floating Stone is born from the power of the Lava God. Both of them, in the end, are gifts of the divine."

Number Three sat slumped atop the mechanical head, looking thoroughly done with everything.

"Our Sun's Wing is gone."

Number Two floated in the air, her voice sounding as though she could not care less.

"Heavy losses."

Ray raised that small Floating Stone high, and burst out laughing.

"Heavy losses, sure. But we gained plenty too."

"Never mind everything else. What we just went through alone is more than anyone else could ever imagine."

"This one stone alone is enough to build a brand new Sun's Wing. A far stronger one than before."

---

High Above the Heavens, the Floating Island's Edge

The witch doctors' Divine Kingdom surged along in front, and the Sun's Wing behind it had not only skipped paying for its ticket, it had ridden on no small share of that kingdom's own advantage as well.

Yin Shen kept his head tilted upward the whole time, gazing at the starry sky above.

Beside him, Shelly glared down below instead.

Watching that fellow who hadn't paid for a ticket and still wanted to fly beyond the sky.

Her look was venomous, her nose scrunched up.

"Hmph~"

A thoroughly displeased sound came out of her mouth.

Hila had told her it did not matter. She was the Ruler of Life, after all, and needed to keep up a proper divine image.

But the more she thought about holding her tongue, the angrier it made her, and the more she thought about letting it go, the more cheated she felt.

Aside from where Yin Shen was concerned, she had never once let herself be shortchanged.

She had gone to no end of trouble to get her hands on a Floating Stone this size and turn it into the Star Realm Gate, and the very first time she used it, someone was already trying to dodge the fare. That would not do at all.

Shelly looked at that mechanical tool, turning it over in her mind.

"Once they're up here!"

"Should I confiscate their big mechanical bird, seize the very tool of the crime?"

"Or should I just make them pay the fare after the fact?"

Shelly made up her mind at once.

"I'll make them pay the fare first, and if that's not enough, I'll confiscate their big mechanical bird."

But she thought it over a moment more.

"No, just paying the fare isn't enough. I need to double the punishment."

"Make them pay the fare first, and once they've paid, confiscate their big mechanical bird anyway."

Shelly nodded.

Yes, that was exactly how it should be.

But right at that moment, Shelly's glare seemed almost capable of casting a curse all on its own.

Beneath the Life Sovereign's burning stare, the mechanical tool trailing behind them suddenly began shuddering and rocking violently, until at last it burst into a blaze of flame and fell away.

"Huh!"

Shelly, baffled, let her small mouth fall open into a round O.

She broke into a grin, looked over at God Yinsai beside her, and pointed down below.

"God, the fare-dodger fell!"

There was, quite plainly, some real glee at another's misfortune in it.

She turned her head and found the witch doctors watching her, trading looks among themselves, looks that seemed to say.

See? The fare-dodger got what was coming to him.

"What's that look supposed to mean?"

Shelly glared at all six witch doctors, and they snapped upright at once, not daring to let so much as a flicker cross their eyes again.

But Shelly had already seen straight through them. A little cleverness like that was worth nothing at all before the Great Life Sovereign.

"You lot didn't keep proper watch when you opened the gate, so you're the ones paying their fare."

The witch doctors broke out in cold sweat.

"But... did they not just fall?"

"So this time, no fine," Shelly said.

The witch doctors did not dare say another word. So there had been a fine coming, after all.

The floating island kept climbing, its speed gradually slowing.

In the end, it came to rest at a height five hundred kilometers above the ground, reaching its intended orbit.

By now, what lay beneath their feet was no longer the earth, but a vast, deep blue planet.

The witch doctors gazed at the fathomless starry sky, words of pure excitement echoing deep within them.

"We have entered the Star Realm."

"Our Divine Kingdom is now... the Star Realm Divine Kingdom."