I am God LSLCCF

”What kind of artifact is this even supposed to be? How am I meant to use the thing?” The ceramic figurine turned the dolls over and over for a long while. There was no label, no explanation of any kind, and never once had it heard Xiao mention them before.

Next the ceramic figurine pulled out a great many other things. One artifact was powerful enough to turn someone into an apostle in an instant, though only for a fleeting stretch of time, far too brief to carry it across the Storm Sea, let alone to stand against so powerful an enemy.

There was primordial black mud, all manner of artifacts left over from the previous era, sacred relics of the Nine Great Ritual Temples.

Transcendent materials piled up like a mountain, and relics of saints besides.

With every item it drew out, the ceramic figurine turned over how the thing might be put to use.

But for all that it possessed, not one of them, it seemed, could solve the crisis it now faced.

And there was a bigger problem still. Among so many things were many artifacts it simply had no idea how to use at all.

It was about to keep searching when a great ship came sailing across the water.

Night had fallen by now, yet bonfires blazed aboard that ship, so that it looked for all the world like a lighthouse walking across the sea.

Its speed was unbelievable, less sailing than flight over the waves. In a single instant it crossed from the far edge of the horizon and bore down over the water, driving the glass bottle, and the ceramic figurine along with it, straight under the surface before either could react.

The glass bottle shattered outright, and the ceramic figurine was sent reeling, utterly disoriented.

It was a sailing ship made as a divine artifact, and its name was the Fire Guardians.

It was the Temple of Fire Protectionʼs own trump card, kept at the bottom of the chest and never brought out except in the direst need.

Its appearance here meant one thing. Pontiff Menro had come in person.

Pontiff Menro stood at the bow in a resplendent crown, firelight surging behind him.

A crowd of followers trailed after him, heads bowed low.

Menro swept a sharp gaze across the dark waters, as though hunting for anything out of place upon the sea.

”Word came in during the day. Traces of the monster were found here, and its scent left along two trails, one running south, one running east. Neither of them is old.”

”Something about that does not sit right with me. That monster is very likely still here.”

Menro tapped the shipʼs rail and turned back to the others. ”Those other directions are nothing but the monster trying to confuse us. It is very likely still here.”

The others began at once to murmur their flattery, until Menro raised a hand and cut them short.

”Spare me the useless words. Prepare the ritual, and be quick about it.”

”Let this chance slip away, and it may well flee somewhere else entirely.”

”That monster has hidden itself long enough. This time we shall take it, and offer it up to God.”

Meanwhile, beneath the ship, the ceramic figurine was spinning in circles.

A long while passed before it finally bobbed up from under the water and drifted against the hull.

It wanted nothing more than to curse a blue streak, but the moment it caught the voices from above, a chill of terror shot straight through it.

It swallowed its rage at once and swam off toward the distance.

But it had scarcely covered a few kilometers before the glow of a ritual flared to life somewhere behind it.

This ritual reached farther than any before it, wide enough to sweep dozens of miles of surrounding sea.

There was nowhere left for the ceramic figurine to run.

It saw that light too, and panic seized it at once.

”No good, no good.”

”Nothing for it. Iʼll have to try the Eye of Divine Oracle again.”

At this critical moment the ceramic figurine staked everything once more on the power of the divine artifact, the Eye of Divine Oracle, meaning to beg once again for the guidance of the divine oracle.

In this hour between life and death, it needed one more path to survival pointed out to it.

The trouble was that it had cracked the Eye of Divine Oracle itself the last time it used the thing, and now the artifact only worked some of the time.

Worse still, the Eye of Divine Oracle was unforgiving in what it demanded. Whoever made the offering had to sacrifice a piece of themselves and nothing else, as proof of devotion to the god. Fitting enough, too, for something born of the Abyssʼs evil nature.