The sun blazed overhead.
The rainy season had just ended, and the islanders had finally finished sowing. Now they had some time to relax.
Ned finally had some free time, too, and could help his wife look after their child.
But.
His wife, Yami, immediately refused.
"Oh, Ned, I don't want you looking after the baby."
"I'd be grateful if he came out of your care unharmed."
"Last time, you put him in a tree and fell asleep underneath it. He cried up there for ages, and you slept so deeply you didn't even stir."
Yami held the baby with a resentful look and continued to grumble.
"Besides, I've never seen a father compete with his child over a slingshot. You're a father now. Can't you act a little more mature?"
Faced with such a merciless accusation,
Ned could only give an awkward, slightly guilty laugh.
Of course.
What his wife said was true.
Sometimes he really was a bit neglectful as a father.
Even though he had become a father,
the things he'd always been like deep down hadn't changed one bit.
"I'll go find some vines in the woods and weave a bigger basket. It'll be easier to carry the baby that way."
Using that as an excuse, Ned fled from his still-scolding wife.
He went into the woods.
Then he slowly stepped onto the familiar patch of grass, where a faint blue haze drifted in the air.
Here in the dense woods,
it was very cool.
Mosquitoes and other insects couldn't bother this sacred place, either.
Any that dared fly in would immediately be infected by the Rot Spirit Mycelium floating in the air and become servants of the Divine Envoy.
All kinds of dead insects—or insects in the process of turning into Rot Spirits—lay scattered across the ground.
The quiet, cool scent of decaying things always soothed him and made him feel at peace.
And so,
Ned found himself lying down before he knew it.
Even though he'd promised to weave his wife a new basket.
"I'll take a little nap first. I can get to work tonight."
Ned looked at the midday sun shining through the trees and couldn't help yawning.
He still had things to do, of course.
But after thinking it over,
he decided to sleep first.
The midday sun was simply too hot to put him in the mood for anything.
So he planned to nap in the woods and sleep until night before worrying about the rest.
Ned closed his eyes, and his consciousness slowly grew hazy.
A faint blue haze drifted through the darkness.
It reminded him of when he was a child.
Ever since he was little,
he'd always liked to sleep beside the Rot Spirit Flower.
It made him feel incredibly safe as he slept.
As peaceful as if he were dead.
Ned fell asleep.
In his dream, he found himself in that same pale blue forest.
A hazy mist surrounded the entire forest.
It was as if he were the only one there.
Just then,
he suddenly saw the figure of a child in the mist.
"Who are you?"
Ned asked instinctively.
He could vaguely sense that the other's presence was familiar.
But for some reason, he couldn't make out who it was.
The child didn't answer.
Instead, the child quietly opened a palm in the haze.
"Is there something you want to give me?"
Ned crouched down curiously.
A pale blue glow appeared in the child's small hand.
It seemed to possess a strange magic, beckoning him to touch it.
Without thinking, he took the child's pale hand in his own.
In an instant, the pale blue haze flowed from the child's palm onto him.
At that very moment,
he suddenly realized
that all the haze before him had vanished.
He raised his head without thinking.
A pair of beautiful, pale blue eyes gazed at him.
The moment their eyes met,
he saw, reflected in those pale blue eyes,
a world.
It was a distant, dark world, scattered with countless sparkling colors.
Like an endless starry sky.
And at the far end of that starry sky,
a towering figure beyond the power of words stood in the distance.
Behind that distant figure, an extraordinarily strange, gentle light—unlike anything he had ever seen—slowly radiated outward.
It wasn't the light of the sun or the moon.
Nor was it any kind of light found in the world.
It was every color in the world.
All light had miraculously converged and condensed there.
At last, the flowing colors became Infinite Color, surpassing even the stars.
And yet,
those colors, which contained everything in the world, quietly became a cloak. It draped gently over the shoulders of that great, indistinct figure, its flowing colors billowing behind them.
Beneath the brilliant radiance endlessly emanating from that towering figure,
even the darkness seemed to submit, gradually turning unreal.
And so,
Ned fell to his knees, beyond his control.
As if he had been compelled to bow before that figure.
His body trembled uncontrollably. Beneath that radiance, he could almost feel his will crumbling away.
Because
a mortal, glimpsing a fragment of a god's true form through the eyes of the Divine Envoy, could not control the trembling of his soul.
Amid that trembling,
he finally understood.
He knew
that in this world,
only one being could match the great figure at the end of the starry sky.
"God!"
Ned trembled and shuddered with terror, yet couldn't help calling out in ecstatic joy.
He understood what the figure reflected in those eyes was.
He also realized who the child before him was.
But before he could say anything else,
the brilliant light swallowed him.
His soul felt a sharp pain.
At the same time,
a silvery, bell-like whisper sounded in his ear, revealing the power that was about to descend upon him.
As the most important knowledge slowly entered his mind,
the endless radiance
gradually faded away.
After an unknown length of time,
Ned jolted awake.
He sat up,
gasping for breath.
Then he suddenly felt that there was something strange in his hand.
Ned hurriedly looked down at his palm.
A short staff shaped like a stone flower
lay there, perfectly still.
When he saw that the thing from his dream was truly in his hand,
his heart seemed to stop right then.
"A gift from the Divine Envoy?"
Ned still couldn't believe it.
Like a stone statue, he sat dazed on the grass for a long time.
He recalled everything from the dream.
Only when a Rot Spirit Insect crawled past his eyes
did Ned come back to his senses.
In the end, he couldn't suppress his desire.
Hesitantly, he raised the staff.
Then he drove it into his palm.
The Rot Spirit Flower in his dream had taught him how to use this gift.
After a sharp sting,
a drop of blood sank into the staff.
At that instant,
countless unfamiliar sensations flooded into Ned's mind—
the faint vibrations of the ant nest underground.
A Giant Cockroach laying eggs thirty paces away.
And, much farther off, an overwhelmingly strong, sour, corrosive stench.
He flung the staff away in a panic.
The sensations vanished at once.
"This feeling... it's as if... I've become an insect."
Ned marveled at the sensation of seeming to transform into an insect. An indescribable, jarring strangeness spread through his whole body.
But for some reason,
he picked up the staff again as if in a daze.
As he kept experiencing the power,
he quickly grew accustomed to it.
It was as if he were naturally suited to it.
Then, without thinking, he pressed his head against the grass and, using a strange, unfamiliar organ that shouldn't have existed in his body, sent out a signal like an insect.
Rustling sounds came from the undergrowth.
Several rotting centipedes slowly crawled over and gathered at his feet.
Ned saw this and struggled to contain his excitement.
He held out a finger.
"Go over there!"
He pointed toward the woods on the other side.
Those centipedes were just like his soldiers.
With their nimble legs, they all changed direction at once and scurried toward the depths of the woods, following the direction of his finger.
Even after they had completely disappeared from Ned's sight,
Ned could still sense them.
Those insects were doing things according to his commands.
"Although I can't see them, I can sense that they're there, just like my own hands and feet."
Ned stroked his chest, feeling his heart pounding wildly, and breathed a little faster.
His initial disbelief had given way to doubt.
Finally,
a strange excitement surged through him.
Just like that,
he became like a mischievous child who had gotten his favorite toy,
immersed in this wondrous new discovery.
He experimented with it from noon until night, unable to tear himself away.
He soon figured out one thing:
controlling three insects was nowhere near his limit.
The smaller the insect,
the farther away he could command it.
At his limit,
he could probably order seven or eight little bugs to carry out his commands a hundred meters away.
This powerful ability to control Rot Spirit Insects
was a gift of power from the Messenger of the Gods.
Ned was so excited that he was wide awake.
He immediately pulled on his hemp clothes and dashed out of the bushes.
He wanted to share the amazing news with his younger brother and father.
But to his surprise, the rotten centipedes were following right on his heels, giving him a huge scare.
"Don't follow me. Go back, quickly."
In the end, he had to issue another command with his staff before he could finally drive the Centipede Rot Spirits away for the time being.
Letting out a sigh of relief, he immediately ran toward the cave.
But his pace gradually slowed.
Then he began to walk.
Finally,
he paced back and forth in front of the cave, a trace of indecision showing on his face.
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