Chapter 357: Gods and Laughter
As for the so-called chaotic stars, Ruger quickly came to understand them: a scattering of Islands, large and small, strewn across a stretch of sea. Just like the names of the various Grotto Cities, people of the Cavern World always named things with such words, with things from the heavens woven into them. Thus, this sea was called the Chaotic Star Sea. To the people of the Cavern World, the sky and stars might exist only in ancient texts.
Whenever Ruger saw or heard anything related to stars, he thought of these things.
—Only wizards can walk upon the surface.
Could that really be true?
Ruger looked at the man beside him, whose beard connected to his chest hair. Clearly, it was not. He was no longer the little dog-headed man who had never encountered a formal wizard.
Or perhaps that saying had an expiration date. And perhaps "wizard" referred to all formal wizards; ordinary people called them all wizards, but among wizards themselves, it did not necessarily mean a First-Ring wizard.
This saying had circulated through the Cavern World for who knew how many years.
It had inspired countless ignorant youths. Beginning with curiosity and yearning, they had longed to become wizards. Even after they came to understand more, gained power, and lost themselves, those words remained the starting point in their hearts, like a wondrous dream.
Perhaps at some point in time, becoming a wizard truly had been enough to walk upon the surface.
Just as the wizard world developed, everything changed with time.
But to know the true face of everything—whether knowledge and truth, or the true face of the Cavern World—one still had to become a wizard, and a powerful one at that. So that saying could now be changed: only