Chapter 416 - A look at the sky

Sofia went around the room blindly waving her gloved hand around to bring back all the things which weren’t there. Slowly but surely the not-so-clean bedroom came back to life. It was messy in a different way compared to Anna’s room. While the supposed Goddess’ room was just a bit lived in, this one was something else entirely, littered with opened books, ink covered papers, and maps.

Lots and lots of maps.

I think a certain someone liked exploration a bit too much for their own good.

And a world!

Sitting proudly on a pedestal in the center of the bedroom was a spinny round ball covered in green and blue which Sofia instantly recognized after bringing it back from semi existence, it was their planet, she had seen it from space, and she had to say, this was a very accurate-looking replica.

Puts my bone sculptures to shame.

It even has some relief for the mountains!

“Holy shit, so much detail!”

This is a masterpiece if I’ve ever seen one. I’m keeping this.

Sofia spent a good thirty seconds looking around searching for the human continent, she eventually found it, tiny as it was, thanks to the gigantic red desert above it.

“I already knew but calling it a continent was really narcissistic of us, heh. It would be generous to even call it a peninsula… Humans used to occupy like sixty percent of this entire world? Really?! And now we’re on that tiny bit of land? That’s insane to think about… What could have happened to– Oh, right. There was that thing about a big war. Erredis doesn’t want to talk about it, though.”

Well, whatever, it’s got nothing to do with me.

Sofia stored the globe and turned her attention to the many maps displayed on the walls and stacked on the shelves.

I’m so taking all of this.

Some maps were of precise locations, such as a map of the red desert, or a layout map of some castles or caves, while some maps were broad layouts of entire continents. Everything was labeled in Draconic, but Sofia could thankfully read that well by now, even without Mr Scribe’s translations. Of course Sofia grabbed every map for herself after looking at them once. Out of the bunch, three maps in particular stood out.

One of them was a map named ‘tracking the sky mirage’, with paths and instructions to find a supposed mysterious place drifting through the planet’s sky. This reminds me of a story about a sky castle dungeon or something. I don’t remember any details though, but I’m pretty sure I’ve heard about something like this before…

The second one was labeled ‘Cathedral of the Holy Lich’.

“Hoy now. Holy necromancy is my thing. Don’t go around copying me… This might be where some of my skills come from, though. Things like “Heal Undead”? The spell itself was created from my broken keywords, but perhaps the magic in particular was already a thing, just like the others. I’ll have to go check this out at some point, if it’s still standing three thousand years later… I’ll ask Richard when I report about the eye. If someone knows about another Lich it would be him.”

Didn’t he say he was the oldest Lich around, thought? Maybe that Holy Lich died somehow. It’s strange that it’s called a Lich at all, actually, should it not just be their name? I wouldn’t name my house ‘The Saintomancer’s abode’...

It seemed the place was particularly large as the ‘map’ was actually a stack of maps, one for each level of the Cathedral.

Out of curiosity, Sofia counted the pages before storing them.

Fifty eight floors. I don’t know if calling it a cathedral is right anymore… Either it’s a huge tower or it’s an underground complex, but it can’t just be a ‘Cathedral’ unless it’s the size of the Moonlit Castle.

Last but not least was the map Sofia kept for the end as it was the most exciting. It was a huge one, taller than herself and taking up an entire wall.

‘The Crossroads’

It was a map of the solar system. There was a representation of every planet, their orbits and their moons, all going around the gigantic sun.

Not to scale.

Sofia was surprised to see so many planets drawn out, considering she had traveled space herself and only seen two. Some of them looked to be particularly large, too, so it was probably not that hard to spot them.

I guess I never looked hard enough.

The names were all written in Draconic, inside of a small box on the side with cute smaller depictions of the planets next to them.

No name for the moons it seems.

“It goes from the furthest from the sun to the closest… First is Stebron. It’s quite a bit bigger than our planet, it’s got debris rings like Cerberus. It’s purple, I guess… Is it completely covered in purplish clouds? It does kind of look like clouds… Hard to tell from a drawing.”

Sofia went down to the second name on the list, which was for a very small planet, the second smallest in the solar system, in fact, which looked like a little yellow ball, named Avross.

It’s named after the old diviner Dragon?

Maybe he was the one who discovered it with his divination or something? It is a Draconic map after all, not all that surprising that it would use Dragon names. Is Stebron the name of an old Dragon too?

It must be hard to spot considering how small and far it is. Stebron is further away but it’s huge.

Next was Cerberus Beta, which was not all that surprising, on the map, it looked like in the other room’s image, a round ball of ice with debris rings and three moons.

The next line was where Sofia had to stop.

Cerberus Alpha, you say?

Heheh. I see. I see.

[Additional rewards task :  α ]

“It’s not drawn out on the map at all but it has its name in the legend. It has to be the black sun, right? That makes things a bit clearer. I don’t know how you’re supposed to figure these things out normally, but I got a nice shortcut. Still, it’s not actually on the map so it’s not making things that easy, but at least I know what I’m looking for.”

Next in line was Arssovax. Sofia felt like this was for sure another Dragon’s name, and it was by far the largest planet, more than twice the size of Stebron, dwarfing all the other planets in the solar system. Just like Stebron, it had a cloudy appearance with cloud streaks and two big spiraling vortexes next to each other. The ‘clouds’ had two main colors mixing together, a deep and a pale blue.

This was not only the biggest planet, but also the ‘closest’ to the inhabited world, which made it hard to believe Sofia had never seen it, that was until one looked at its orbit. It was actually too big to fit on the map so it was in a small graph drawn out next to the planet itself. The truth of this planet was that it was going around the sun in a gargantuan elliptical orbit, and the closest it ever came to the sun was on a path between the main planet and Cerberus beta.

“Most of the time it’s just drifting out in space, very far from everything. I wonder how that works when it comes close. Does it cover half the sky?”

Finally, the next line was the so-far unnamed planet everyone lived on. It actually had a name in the legend, a combination of two words in Draconic, ‘velia’, being the color green, and ‘adren’, meaning plains or vast expanse: Veliadren.

“Veliadren...“ Sofia read out loud.

“So the planet does have a name after all. It’s cute. I like it, it is a bit sad to think most people do not even know about it.”

The two moons are drawn out but of course they are unlabelled…

Wait, Velia is green. Phillip is the Green chromatic Dragon, and his daughter’s name is ‘Lina’. Never noticed this but it would make sense if Lina was a nickname and her real name was Velia-something. Velia, lina… Maybe I’m just making shit up, though. I shouldn’t really be spending time wondering about Draconic naming conventions.

Four planets left on the map… And five names.

The four remaining planets, all closer to the sun than Veliadren, were also all significantly smaller, at most as big as Cerberus Beta, which was itself less than half the size of Veliadren. They were neatly aligned with the biggest of the four being closer to Veliadren and the smallest closest to the sun.

First was a black and red ball just named ‘Foundry’, not even in draconic, just foundry.

It’s a hot planet, I guess?

Next was a white planet named Sactanum. Followed by a smaller brown planet named Zenikiln, and lastly, a very tiny round dark-gray planet, not a tenth of Veliadren’s size, and orbiting very close to the sun, was labeled ‘Cecless’.

That was it for the planets, but there was a last entry on the legend, which had no drawing, just a question mark. Its name was: ‘Tiangou’.