The Rise of the Black Plain

Minos and those two fish followed that mollusk through that area full of items of the most varied kinds, all marked for their antiquity, easily seen in the appearance of their components.

Some items were cracked, and some had lost part of their coloring or were browned.

Minos and those two looked at various artifacts as they swam after the creature.

Minos was breathing through the gills he had artificially generated in his neck. At the same time, his eyes looked different than usual, which was necessary for him to see normally underwater.

'These beings have assembled an incredible collection...' He looked in the direction of where the mollusk was taking them and saw half a wing, something he knew the origin of.

When the mollusk stopped near that wing, it began to speak. "Here are most of the terrestrial items related to the Spiritual Church.

This wing you are looking at, human, belongs to a descendant of the founding family of the Spiritual Church. It belongs to a half-breed of human and seraphim."

"Uh?" The two fish exclaimed in surprise, for they did not know that real seraphim existed.

All they knew about these beings were related to the Spiritual Church and how they worshiped the figure of the seraphim. But they had always thought this image was nothing more than a creation of humans, something they had used to create a cult.

At no time had these creatures thought that seraphim existed in the more than 10,000 years of their existence!

For them, apart from the invention of the mind, techniques that created the characteristics of such seraphim were the most anyone could see of such beings.

That mollusk, a being who also loved history and curiosities, saw the reaction of these two and explained. "In the remote past, seraphim existed in the Divine Continent. But due to a war that we don't know the reasons why it started, they were forced to migrate to the Central Continent.

Millions of years later, the race of seraphim met their end as they faced the Ocean Calamity 6 million years ago."

The Oceanic Calamity referred to a period when the first God of the Spiritual World appeared.

As Henricus Longus had told Minos, he was not the first God but the first human to achieve the 11th stage. Before him, elves and some beast races had already achieved this feat.

In particular, the first being to reach the 11th stage had been a member of the Sky Whale race, the most powerful in this world.

When that being was about to advance to level 100, it and its tribe had indicted a war with the dragons and kilims of the Beast Continent over Divine-grade medicine. Such a war devastated much of the Spiritual World and ended many weaker races, as was the case with the seraphim.

Seraphim were powerful and talented, but their strongest members at that time were only high-level Spiritual Sages because of the delay they suffered in their progress when migrating from the Divine Continent to the Central Continent.

"Luckily, some seraphim disregarded the law of their tribe and mixed their genes with that of humans, generating a race of hybrids." That mollusk continued. "One of these hybrids of human and seraphim created the Spiritual Church to cultivate his mother figure and gather faith power.

The Spiritual World experts of the time had just discovered the possibility of getting stronger through this...

In a few hundred thousand years, the descendant of that half-breed has reached level 100.

Anyway, this wing belongs to the grandfather of this Supreme Pontiff who became the first God of the Spiritual Church. The owner of that wing was one of the last half-breeds that still had characteristics of the seraphim.

After him, the wings disappeared from their lineage, and currently, it can only be seen through the soul technique that the high-level members of the Church use."

Minos listened to this story with interest, even though he already knew a good part of it.

Meanwhile, those two fish were surprised by all these amazing revelations.

"I didn't expect that..."

"Hmm, it's shocking how much stuff we don't know." Randall agreed with Sapphire.

Minos then asked. "Why is that wing here? Didn't the Spiritual Church ever try to buy it?"

The mollusk guided people around and answered questions from visitors willing to pay the entrance fee. So he said. "They bought that wing from us in the past. But soon after, they went through a troublesome time with Sky Whales...

For superstitious reasons, they gave up keeping that item with them."

"So that was it..."

The mollusk looked at Minos and indicated. "The items to the right of that wing are in chronological order. If you swim in that direction, you will find newer and newer items.

The item you are looking for should be further ahead. Maximillian Flamen is from the time of Pope Maximus, so anything related to him and the floating island abandoned by the Church will be over there." It indicated.

Minos then moved in the direction indicated, quickly arriving near where some ancient items of varied types were floating in the water.

There was a large, sharp sword with large blades and a large pommel, the kind that few humans could use. It was very rusty and had a half-moon symbol on it.

Another item was a small locked chest, of which no one knew what was inside due to the absence of the proper key to open this high-level grade-4 item.

In addition to these two, there were two more items from the same period as those Spiritual Church men. One was a small vial with a dark liquid inside it. The other was a torn golden cloak, which had a powerful aura about it, the strongest among all those items.

'That must have been from Pope Maximus.' Minos swallowed his saliva as he realized the powerful aura left by a God, the only one capable of leaving a 'footprint' capable of being noticed after so long.

"That was Pope Maximus' cloak when he faced a level 99 Sky Whale. Even though he was already a God then, he suffered some injuries from that creature."

"Is that really possible?" Sapphire questioned. "And what happened after that?"

"Pope Maximus killed it. The oil generated from the blubber of that whale was used to light the streets of the capital of the Evergreen Empire for a whole century after that."

While those two were muttering things among themselves, Minos had his eyes on three of those four items but felt the least impressive of all was the one he should pick up.

...