"Don't go mistaking me for some kind of god. I've no interest in accepting this worship, either."
Once the most basic communication was possible, Du Yi said this as a matter of course.
Over these days together, after all, Du Yi had seen it clearly: this savage seemed to hold a strange sort of reverence for him. Being worshipped as a god might not, in itself, be a bad thing—but Du Yi had not the slightest interest in playing some god-pretending game with a pack of savages.
He only wanted the information he needed.
Excess emotion would, if anything, obstruct communication and distort the facts.
"Never mind all that—tell me more about yourselves. About how you came up, about your magic...... I want to know your history, your culture, and roughly what this world looks like in your eyes."
Seeing the savage still in a bit of a daze, Du Yi simply gave him another flick of the tail.
Luckily, the savage's reflexes were quick enough that Du Yi's second raised tail dropped back to the ground.
And as the savage, trembling, began to recount, Du Yi gained a little more understanding of this strange world.
According to this savage named Lightbringer, their fire-family had watched the way he kindled his fire, and only thus had they grasped the power of fire magic. After that, on the strength of the flame, they had hacked their way through every obstacle, beaten down countless fierce beasts, and found firm footing in this dangerous world.
"This......"
Hearing this, Du Yi was, for a moment, at a loss for what to say.
He really hadn't expected that his crudest, most primitive trick of striking stones to make fire could have such an enormous influence on these savages.
As for the principles of the magic, Lightbringer couldn't explain those clearly. In Lightbringer's telling there seemed to be some strange theory—something about stone dust on the hands, and a fierce collision, drawing forth the power of a god—but Du Yi understood perfectly well how combustion came about, which left him completely unable to make sense of just what Lightbringer was on about.
And with no hands and no feet, he had no way to try it himself, either.
"I'll think of something later—first I'll get hold of some of this stone dust he keeps mentioning."
Du Yi set the puzzle aside for the moment; the topics to come, after all, were more important.
This savage named Lightbringer went on to tell of their history.
The history of these savages could be called a history of pioneering, and as he spoke of it, Lightbringer's face was full of pride—from the age of the forebears, scraping out survival under the hunting fangs of fierce beasts, to the conquest of the ferocious sabertooths, and on to the conquest of the even mightier mammoths, Lightbringer's eyes truly seemed to hold a light as he told it.
In the course of this pioneering, those who'd mastered the power of flame played an immense part. They were called "mages"—as the name suggests, those who wield magic. As the foremost fighting force among these savages, they were forever charging at the very front, hurling fireball after fireball at those venom...... those vermin and fierce beasts.
"You can just say venomous snakes and beasts. I really don't mind that sort of thing."
Catching the stumble in Lightbringer's words, Du Yi shook his head.
And after pulling his neck in a little, Lightbringer went on.
On the strength of their overwhelming might, they had built their own village—though called a village, it actually held a population of close to ten thousand, which in Du Yi's eyes already made it about the size of a small town. They had even tamed the dread sabertooths, and herded mammoths as livestock; plain to see, they were set to flourish on and on.
Until the beast tide came down upon them.
"Ah, this."
Listening to Lightbringer's account of the beast tide, Du Yi was a long while lost for words.
Reckon up the timing, and this so-called beast tide had been exactly when he set out to find these savages. And when Lightbringer began to describe the vast Snake God his father had seen, Du Yi gradually connected it to the august figure he himself had cut at the time.
He'd never imagined that his simple wish to bring a few hearty dishes over could become a nightmare the savage chieftain couldn't shake off even unto death.
"Those things—you've eaten them yourself, these past days."
Du Yi thought a moment, then added a line.
"So you ought to understand. I meant no harm back then."
"Yes......"
Recalling those dishes, fit to be called the rarest of delicacies, Lightbringer couldn't hold back a sigh.
In this moment, Lightbringer suddenly understood, a little, why the Snake God before him was so insistent on communicating well.
What the Snake God had shown was plainly goodwill—yet his father had died of it, and the cause of it all was nothing more than that his father had misunderstood the Snake God's meaning.
"No wonder the Snake God said that to me...... if I still clung to that reverence for a god, I'd very likely twist His meaning under some mistaken understanding, too."
In this moment, Lightbringer felt he understood the deeper intent of this Snake God.
Yes—the Snake God. Even though the Snake God had declared He would not accept worship, that did nothing to stop Lightbringer from still revering Him as a god.
"After all, this very life of mine was saved by Him."
At the thought, Lightbringer couldn't help recalling, too, how well the Snake God had treated him over this time.
Since the Snake God had treated him so, he had no reason at all to hold back any information.
As the Nineteenth chieftain of the Ignivas family, he knew everything about the village, and now he laid it all out without reserve—including the village's many secrets, the location of the magic-stone mine, even his own three illegitimate sons; nothing did he hide.
"But as for an understanding of the world...... that, we don't have."
Reaching this point, Lightbringer lowered his head in shame.
All along, the tribe's focus had been on growth. They had battled the heavens and fought the earth, they had multiplied and thrived—but the one thing they'd forgotten was to explore the world itself.
So much so that, when the Snake God asked, he could say nothing at all beyond a little local geography.
"It's fine. Explore it slowly and you'll come to know it. It's not as if this is the only time we'll talk."
Du Yi comforted Lightbringer.
This made Lightbringer's head snap up.
"You mean to say......"
"Didn't you just tell me yourself? You're the chieftain of those people, aren't you?"
So Du Yi said.
"Being away from your post too long is never a good thing. Now that the misunderstanding's cleared up, you ought to head back...... and if you explore and turn up anything I don't know about, just remember to come and tell me."
"This......"
Even after this time spent together, in which Lightbringer had come to know something of the Snake God's temperament, he had still never imagined that this Snake God would be so very easy to deal with.
But as a chieftain, he, too, realized something in this moment.
And so god and man made their covenant.