To devour a god, the chieftain of the Ignivas family — the Thirty-sixth King of Ignis City, styled the Nascent Dawn, David Day — had made the most thorough of preparations.
First, to wake the Snake God sleeping who-knew-where, the Ignivas family had deliberately turned a blind eye and let a number of poachers slip into the sacred mountain — and though the high-tier mages then sent out a force of hunters after them, their aim was never the capture itself, but the process of the capture.
In the course of a chase, fighting breaks out; the aftershocks of that fighting would ripple through the sacred mountain itself, and wherever that ancient Snake God lay hidden, the fierce commotion would in the end stir him awake.
Second, to weaken the Snake God, the great beasts of the sacred mountain had long since been hunted back, bit by bit, by the mages — penned in their own pastures, or simply made into the furs they wore. A Snake God short of food was sure to be weak, which gave the Ignivas family all the better odds of winning.
As for why they didn't simply assault the sacred mountain and do the thing openly......
Because, of course, the Harvest Festival still had to go on as ever.
Worship of the Snake God had been bone-deep since the Nineteenth Sage King — which meant every year's Harvest Festival was a tidy source of income. In the Snake God's name, the mages enjoyed a great pile of offerings.
And those offerings would, in the end, turn into their power, swell their bellies larger, make their magic stronger.
"The flame that leaps from our palms — what it burns is the fat upon our own bodies."
This was the maxim left behind by the Thirty-third Ignivas chieftain, Sun-Swallower.
All the mages regarded it as the true meaning of magic.
And the Thirty-sixth Ignivas chieftain, the one styled the Nascent Dawn, David Day, was the finest of them all: his frame was the broadest of every mage, his power the mightiest of every mage.
And the honey he ate was, likewise, the most.
Thirty-six great bowls of honey, no less — any other mage present would likely have been stuffed to death before finishing half, but the Nascent Dawn put away all thirty-six without so much as a change in his face.
Look at that bared belly of his and you couldn't even see it rise.
A fearsome appetite and a fearsome power of digestion meant a fearsome power, all the same.
This was precisely why he was King.
And now, as King, David Day had pushed his plan to its final stage. Mammoth after mammoth was being driven out by the mages — by the Ignivas family's records, this was the Snake God's most beloved food, and now they would serve as the bait to lure the Snake God in.
There was nothing left in the mountains that could be called prey; now that the Snake God had woken, then, driven by hunger, it would surely follow the scent of the mammoths — and step straight into their ambush.
Yes — it. Not He.
As core members of the Ignivas family, the mages present, David Day included, no longer revered the Snake God.
"Since it never brought us abundance, then we will take what we want for ourselves."
At a single command, the gathered mages scattered with a roar and melted into the forest.
Look at where they took their stations, and they had already drawn, faintly, a ring around those mammoths.
Out of caution, they would give that Snake God not the slightest chance to eat; only by killing it when it was at its weakest could they be sure of leaving nothing to chance.
Nearly a hundred high-tier mages working in concert could burn even a mountain peak to slag in their rolling flames — but the mightiest of them all was David Day himself. As the mage who could eat the most, and likewise fight the most, the one charged with the main assault could destroy a whole mountain single-handedly.
And now he, too, stood at the very front of the line.
To display his strength, he meant to clash with that Snake God head-on.
"That way, after all, I get to be the one who eats the most."
So David Day thought.
Bringing the other high-tier mages along to hold the rear did guarantee against any slip — but it also meant he'd have to share out the Snake God's flesh and blood. That was a god's flesh and blood; heaven knew how strong it might make a man.
And if it let the other mages eat their way past him in strength, could he go on sitting his throne in peace?
So it had to be him who ate the most, could only be him who ate the most; only so could he keep his place as King.
No — not merely as King.
But as a god.
To gain, in a human body, power on a level with a god — to become a living man-god of this present world.
He would not be content as a mere Thirty-sixth King.
He would become the eternal Sage King of the Ignis people.
"And if, once the hunt is done, anyone really thinks to take a larger share...... then I'll have no choice but to be unkind about it."
The mere thought of what might happen after the god was hunted had him braced to take up arms — even to deal a killing blow.
No one could stand in the way of his road to godhood, not even his own kin of the Ignivas family.
"I hope that, once you've witnessed my strength, you'll understand the gulf between us."
Thinking this, David Day drew a deep breath.
His broad palms were already raised high — the mages' posture of readied attack — and at this moment he could already hear it, the sound of falling trees in the distance.
Tree after tree toppling: this was the sound of the Snake God's advance. By the nearing of it, the Snake God was charging straight toward him!
"Then let me show you! My strength!"
Palms clapped together, and a heaven-swallowing blaze flared up out of nothing!
The surging wave of fire swept all before it; grass and trees turned to charcoal in an instant, and even the rocks were burned to drifting ash. The searing light kindled everything in a single heartbeat, that piercing glare for all the world like a second sun risen from level ground.
And this, too, was the origin of his name.
There may be wrongly given names, but never a wrongly given epithet: the one called the Nascent Dawn already wielded power to rival a second great sun!
Yet just as this second rising sun had risen.
The clear sky overhead suddenly darkened.
"Going to rain?"
David Day instinctively raised his head.
"No matter, though. With my magic flame, even falling rain won't...... hm?"
His gaze froze.
For what had appeared in his sight was no leaden storm-cloud at all.
But a great, vast spread of fine, dense...... snake scales?
"BOOM—"
In an instant, that second great sun was crushed into silence, never to make another sound.
Along with the near-hundred mages, David Day and all, ground down into the earth.
"Eh? Did I just bump into something?"
It was only then that the vast snake-body dipped its head a little and swept its gaze across the surrounding ground.
"Doesn't look like it...... never mind."
Now was not the time to bother over such small things.
Du Yi, long since famished, could see just now only those plump mammoths, near at hand.