Only God
Chapter 58 - 54: God... Where Are You?

Chapter 58: Chapter 54: God... Where Are You?

For the long-lived Logos people, a hundred years passed in the blink of an eye between day and night.

The Kingdom finally welcomed prosperity once again, after having endured the hardships of early land reclamation and animal domestication.

The wheat, once limited to a small corner, expanded across every inch of fertile soil after the Logos people began slash-and-burn agriculture. The wild boars, numbering a mere seventeen decades ago, bred and multiplied under domestication, growing to several hundred in number. Besides wild boars, the Logos people also tamed mouflons and bison.

Although these animals were often temperamental, the Logos people, relying on their strong bodies and keen senses, would subdue them with bare hands when they went berserk, disciplining them with punches and kicks. Over time, the mouflons and bison gradually grew docile under the fists and feet of the Logos people and eventually submitted.

Even though the Kingdom was never short of Hunters, many Logos people no longer lived by hunting and gathering but relied on agriculture and animal husbandry instead, resulting in a continuous increase in population amidst the abundance.

Because of this, a greater division of labor slowly emerged within Logos civilization, with occupations such as leather craftsmen, farmers, grinding artisans, and millers progressively coming into existence over the century.

It could be said that everything within the Logos Kingdom was thriving.

King Yarlessto watched the development of the Kingdom and felt a deep pride and satisfaction for these great achievements.

After settling down, King Yarlessto, who had not forgotten his identity as a Priest, would often return to the Pattern Garden to tirelessly repeat the prophecies of the past to the fellow Priests.

According to the rules once established by Prophet Al, only Priests were allowed to depict anything related to God.

Therefore, in order to spread the stories of God to everyone, the Priests bore the important mission of proclaiming the divine prophecies through paintings.

However, with this process came new problems.

As life grew affluent, many Logos people began to proactively invite the Priests of the Pattern Garden to their homes to paint, asking them to illustrate the prophecies and stories of God on their walls.

At first, the Priests could manage, but as time went on, the number of murals they were expected to create kept growing, exceeding the Priests’ capacity.

King Yarlessto heard the Priests’ complaints many times. They were weary, and some advised the King, begging him to issue a decree that would prohibit the Priests from painting murals for others.

But Yarlessto had always been enlightened, seldom resorting to strict prohibitions, instead striving to find a good solution.

King Yarlessto paced back and forth in the Pattern Garden, lost in thought. Occasionally, he examined the murals in the garden and looked up at the intermittent brilliance atop the high mountains.

Perhaps it was a flash of Spirit Light, or perhaps it was divine guidance.

Yarlessto recalled how, in his youth, he had simplified murals.

"Simplify them, these murals, these fixed images need to be simplified!"

King Yarlessto walked to a mural, and said excitedly to himself:

"Simplify! Look at this painting’s mountain, there is no need to draw it so repetitively, just smear ashes back and forth three times, and the mountain emerges. Look at the sheep in this painting, if you draw them as two overlapping circles, then outline the horns, people will know it’s a sheep!"

As King Yarlessto muttered to himself in the Pattern Garden, the Priests began a vigorous campaign of simplifying their illustrations.

At the beginning of the invention of "writing," no one realized that it was "writing" and not imagery.

However, as time went on, civilization developed,

people would eventually come to understand from one symbol after another.

Those were writing.

Born of painting, they had the great power to transmit an entire civilization down through the ages, remaining uncorrupted even over long periods of time.

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The late Prophet Al had heard from God on the mountaintop that his two children, Yarlessto and Dertulian, were to establish great Kingdoms.

At that time, Prophet Al still followed his brother, Sapo King, and thus he kept this prophecy deeply secret, never telling a soul.

So, when the Elders of the tribe recalled how the Prophet’s sons came to the throne,

the first thing they remembered was the frenzied shouting of Sapo King.

"Al, Al! Al has come back, his child is to be King! The dreams have all come true! The new God, the dreams have all come true!"

The Elder sages felt that this crazed speech referred to Yarlessto’s accession to the throne.

Therefore, they often overlooked another person.

That was Prophet Al’s second son—Dertulian.

Dertulian arrived alone at the foot of the high mountain, lifted his head, and gazed up at the summit disappearing into the clouds.

A desolate cold wind blew around him, and clusters of snowflakes struck Dertulian’s face.

Since the Sapo King and his father Al passed away, Dertulian, as a hunter, fell silent.

The former was the king he greatly admired; Dertulian had witnessed the Sapo King’s majestic hunting of mammoths in his youth, and the latter was his father, who meticulously taught him, consoled his spirit, and raised him to adulthood.

The departure of either was a severe blow to Dertulian.

So he became silent, with the solitary aspects of his personality magnified by time.

And due to the transformation of the Logos Kingdom, with the emergence of agriculture and husbandry, the Logos people no longer relied so much on hunting.

The once thriving community of hunters rapidly declined, either voluntarily or involuntarily becoming farmers, craftsmen, shepherds...

Dertulian watched the transformation unfold.

He always remembered he was a hunter, once the most outstanding one in the entire kingdom.

But all that had vanished with the wind.

Wheat, sheep, domestic pigs... all stripped away and destroyed the hunter’s significance bit by bit.

This flourishing civilization no longer needed them to exert all their strength and throw spears time and time again to kill large wild beasts in bloody combat.

Dertulian became lost.

He felt as though he was gradually being estranged from the kingdom, like a withered leaf in the woods being replaced by new ones.

Thus, Dertulian came to the foot of this high mountain.

"Father, you once climbed this high mountain."

Dertulian murmured, peering toward that gleam of light,

"Then you received God’s selection."

Dertulian looked up to where the summit was and began to slowly ascend.

The Prophet’s second son harbored a deep-seated hope.

If only he could climb to the summit of the high mountain, just like his father, to receive God’s selection.

Dertulian crossed through the barrier of wind and snow and, amid harsh and dangerous conditions, finally climbed to the summit.

The Prophet’s second son looked around, his facial muscles involuntarily trembling.

God was not on top of the mountain.

Dertulian walked forward, having circled the summit several times, seeing neither deity nor divine sign.

On this cold summit, the only notable thing was a branch, flickering with light.

Dertulian had never seen such a tall branch, as high as two people, resembling both a sapling and not a sapling.

He approached the branch and discovered that aside from the flashing, elusive light, there was no other anomaly.

"God... where are you?"

Dertulian stared at the empty summit, dazedly murmuring.

The Prophet’s successor who had climbed the high mountain found no trace of God.

He did not yet understand why God left, nor what the departure of God meant.

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