Page 225

Mid Evening - Early Winter : Central Valtivar, Siratha

*Thump* *Thump* *Thump* It had only been half an hour since I got to the God's Abode, and I had found quite a bit already, but I still wasn't sure how to feel about it. -So, are the carvings meant to be four separate stories?-

Walking around the edge of the reincarnation rune, I used my aura to scan the bottom of the wall through the fog, revealing four seemingly independent sets of carvings separated by the four massive entrances.

At the base of each set there was a similar, but distinctly different portrait of a curved section of a planet. -One set of carvings has two wolves, one has a white wolf, one has a black wolf, and one is empty...-

Although I couldn't quite see the carvings above the portraits with my aura from the ground, I could generally tell that each wall shared very similar features while having their own unique differences. -Then I guess it's time to check them out... Let's start with this one...-

Casually changing to my humanoid form and walking up to the wall with the black wolf at its base, I used my aura to push myself into the wall and walked up.

It only took a moment for me to finally get up to the next carving however, as it spanned across the entire section of the wall. -Woah...-

The detail in the carving was honestly ridiculous, with one side showing a massive area with kingdoms, humans, demihumans, elves, and even a forest of treants, and the other showing huge mountains and cities of dragons.

But those two sides remained distinctly separated.

Between them sat a massive dragon that towered into the clouds with its head lowered toward the ground, seemingly lifeless. -I.. recognize that dragon...- Almost immediately, the image of a statue I saw in Bahamut came to mind. -Could that be Bahamut?-

But just as I started to recognize a few inconsistencies, I noticed something on the edge of my aura that wasn't the edge of the carving. -Hm?- Quickly walking over, I came up to three massive carvings of people, with no details on their faces.

The carvings were quite eerie and creepy, but as I tried to examine them a bit closer, I noticed that one of them seemed somewhat familiar. -Could this one be.. Magni?- The armor set I saw in the carving was almost the same one I saw when I fought him.

But I couldn't be certain. -It's not quite identical.. so...-

Quickly making my way above that carving, I came across a similar canvas to the one below, but the dead-looking dragon between the humans and dragons was completely mutilated, with countless humanoids running over its body to attack the dragons, getting massacred in the process.

On the human side of that carving though, there was a distinct figure that stood within the clouds just below the gods, holding onto a large greatsword. -Is that a hero or something?-

Continuing up to the next carving, the figure with the sword was seen fighting the dragons, with a trail of draconic bodies laying behind them, but back on the human side, you could see the humans building a wall where the colossal dragon once rested, with the 'human' gods remaining unchanged.

In the next carving, the man with the sword was seen kneeling on a mountain of dead dragons, missing an arm and covered in injuries, while the other side of the now-built wall showed the humans and gods facing the other direction, paying no mind to the man with the sword. -How cliche...-

But my ability to joke quickly came to a halt as I worked my way up to the final carving.

There were no words that could describe the scene that the carving displayed. There was simply nothing but a pile of rubble, body parts, and a single, perfectly smooth oval floating in the sky.

I was honestly left speechless, not sure what to think about what I just looked through.

-It's telling a story, but.. of what?- From what I could tell, it looked like it was telling a story about history, but at the same time.

.. -Since the great war.. there weren't any big wars between humans and dragons, and both humans and dragons still exist, so. ..-

I continued to wrack my brain for several more minutes after that before deciding to just move on and go to another set of carvings to seek some insight.

But the carvings that stemmed from the adjacent wall, with no wolves, left me even more confused.

In the first carving above the bottom portrait, the humanoids and dragons were once again divided by a massive resting dragon, but there were no humanoid gods to be seen; the canvas simply ended short. -What?-

Thinking I might have been misunderstanding something, I continued upwards until I came across the second carving which was very similar to the other wall as well, with the humans trampling the dead dragon's body and fighting the dragon. But this time there was no 'hero' on the human side.

The canvas above that then showed the human side left as a pile of rubble, with only a handful of survivors, while the dragons stood over them, almost untouched.

The carving above that was the last, showing a new world where dragons and humanoids were partially mixed, but the humans were few in number and looked closer to slaves than free people. -But there's not a panel of the oval destroying everything this time...-

Quickly trying to piece together the countless loose strings I was grasping at, I unknowingly found my way to the wall with both wolves on it and promptly started looking through it.

This time, the carvings of the humans and dragons had no dragon dividing them, and there were six gods on the human side.

The next carving showed the humans once again pushing into the dragon's half of the carving, but this time they were backed by several other dragons. -Is it a revolt?-

But the next set of carvings made that question irrelevant.

On the right side of the carving, there were several dragons that all stood behind one larger dragon, but to the left of that larger dragon was nothing, no gods, humans, or dragons, without even the rubble of a kingdom left. -W..what?-

It took me a minute to try and process what happened, but after several minutes of processing theories, I finally moved up to the last carving on this wall.

But it didn't help my confusion.

Flying above the clouds was the huge dragon from the carving below, but it was completely covered in scars and faced nearly a dozen perfectly identical ovals that matched the one I saw on the black wolf's wall. -But, what.. are they?-

Although there was no carving above the one I was staring at, the ending was self-explanatory. -Could the ovals represent.. the Acardi?- It was a bit of a stretch, but it's what my gut told me. -They just feel so out-of-place in these carvings...-

Continuing to look around and make sure I didn't miss anything, I slowly walked back across the ceiling and down the wall with a conflicted feeling. -Only one wall left... I guess let's hope it gives me some answers...-

But it was worse than the others.

The wall with the white wolf on the bottom, was the wall I vaporized a section of when I used antimatter to launch myself at Magni toward the end of our fight, so I already expected to get very little information from it, but to my surprise, the first panel was somewhat examinable.

But maybe it would have been better if it wasn't.

Although the canvas was extremely similar to the black wolf wall, instead of there being three gods like I expected, there were seven. -W..what?!-

I started getting angry at my confusion but decided to push it to the side for a moment to look closer at the gods themselves.

From what I could tell, the six gods over the humans were the same as those I saw earlier, but the seventh god stood over the dragons and was one I had never seen prior. -Who could this be...-

Although extremely burnt and almost unrecognizable, the general figure of the carving looked female, which gave me an odd thought. -Could this be.. that goddess?-

Not wanting to settle on any conclusion yet, I continued up the wall to see if I could make out any other carvings, but to no avail. -Damn...-

But although that was the last wall I had to look at, I continued across the ceiling toward the very middle of the room. -Something must be there...-

And sure enough, there was.

Starting nearly a hundred meters away from the center of the room was an absolutely colossal carving. -Is this a carving of a dragon?-

After quickly walking around it to get a general idea of what it was, I noticed it was a carving of a colossal dragon curled into a ball, but at the very center of it was a carving of a planet. -A dragon curled around a planet...-

Wild theories immediately started racing through my mind, but that was when I noticed how familiar the dragon carving looked.