“Dad, what is that?”
Above the Red Line, in the Lunarian settlement, the Lunarians were holding one of their tribal sacrificial ceremonies.
Below the altar, a short-haired boy watched the adults’ actions in confusion. It was the young Barro.
“We can control flames, we can soar through the sky, and that is our sacred relic, a gift from the heavens…”
His father’s words from childhood remained etched in his mind. That stone-like tablet was what the sacred relic needed; it had once been a part of Him.
The Lunarians worshipped the sacred relic and searched for the plates, while the sacred relic bestowed blessings upon them, allowing them to live better lives.
This was the pact our ancestors had reached. Our ability to stand here today was deeply tied to that power.
“The chief and the others have searched nearby for a long time, but they haven’t found anything. Barro, you’ll have to work hard in the future.”
“Is Mom able to make flames dance because of this too?”
“That’s right. If you want everyone to live better lives and become stronger yourself, you need to grow up quickly.”
“Mm.”
“Victory goes to Barro!”
Several years later, during the Lunarians’ coming-of-age ceremony, Barro stood in the arena gasping for breath. He had just defeated his final opponent and become the most outstanding among his generation.
“Barro, are you sure this is the place?”
“I’m sure. I hope the sacred relic will grant me luck. I’ll use my own eyes to search this world.”
The coming-of-age ceremony was not judged solely by age, but also by growth in strength.
Even if someone was still a bit too young, as long as the Lunarians believed they could stand on their own and no longer required the tribe’s protection, they would be given tattoos, signifying that they had become qualified warriors.
The method of judgment was combat ability. Different tattoos held different meanings, and those who ranked highly earned unique choices.
It was precisely because of his victory at the ceremony that he earned the right to tattoo the symbol of Thousand Arms near his left eye. Among the current Lunarians, this was the symbol they revered the most.
Several more years passed, and as he grew older, Barro became one of the new generation’s candidates for tribal chief.
Their method of selection was not based on bloodline inheritance, but on “divine selection.”
To put it simply, they fought before Arceus in its egg form. The strongest became chief, while the wisest became prophets and priests, together leading the tribe forward.
Some time later—
“Barro, from today onward, you are the chief.”
“The flames shall illuminate the darkness. I will lead you all forward!”
Back then, Barro was in high spirits, confident that he could lead the tribe toward a brighter future. But misfortune befell them during his generation.
“Chief, we failed.”
“Yes, we failed. But the Lunarians’ bloodline cannot end here. Lloyd, how are the arrangements?”
“The young people and children have mostly evacuated separately already. The squad escorting the sacred relic is hidden among them as well. I’ll personally lead the decoy squad and make sure all those b*stards chase after us instead.”
“I’m sorry.”
“What’s there to apologize for? Someone has to die here. Compared to those youngsters, it’s better for old geezers like us who’ve already lived long enough to stay behind.
Even though I hate that b*stard Bardek, he’s got more knowledge in his head, so let him lead the young ones away. Besides, all of us are injured anyway. We probably wouldn’t make it out alive.”
Lloyd said it very casually, as if he had never cared about death at all. Elderly wounded soldiers staying behind to cover the retreat sounded cruel, but it was the plan most beneficial for the continuation of the tribe.
“It’s just that we probably can’t hold them off for long. Who knows if those little ones can fly fast enough.”
“Leave that to me. As long as I’m still alive, those b*stards won’t get past me. I’ve already received a response from the sacred relic. He has lent me that final portion of power.”
Blazing flames wrapped around Barro’s body as he became the first to charge toward the flag he despised so deeply.
He slaughtered and battled on. The Flame Plate granted him power far beyond normal, but the Arceus of that time was not the Arceus of the present. Still unhatched, he could control his own power, but that did not mean others could.
During the battle, Barro long lost track of time, and he exceeded the combat duration Arceus had warned him about when lending him the plate.
To Arceus, the Flame Plate was like a warm jade, but to outsiders in its activated state, it was a furnace.
Barro fought until the very last moment, using his own life to delay the enemy before him.
And the price he paid was everything he had.
But precisely because of that, the Flame Plate preserved a fragment of Barro’s soul, allowing the present-day Arceus to trace his origin and resurrect him once more through the remnants left within the Flame Plate.
This was also the second of the only two cases Arceus had spoken of. Barro, who borrowed the power of the Flame Plate, and Shayna, who borrowed the power of the Sky Plate, were the only two people in the world permitted by Arceus to wield his exclusive power.
“Eight hundred years… what an unimaginably long span of time…”
The sky was still the same sky, but everything Barro once knew had long since disappeared. Everything in this era felt utterly unfamiliar to him. Even Shayna, a fellow tribesman sharing the same bloodline, gave him a strange feeling.
Having a descendant from eight hundred years in the future standing before him and speaking about the future was an incredibly bizarre sensation.
“Did I succeed after that?”
“Chief Barro of that era fought the enemies in a bloody battle for several days before dying in combat.”
“That’s quite a simple description. But for someone to still remember my name eight hundred years later and leave behind even a single sentence… that’s already rare enough.
What happened afterward? The Lunarians now… are they doing well?”
“Including you, Senior, there are ten still alive.”
“Ten?”
Barro was first stunned, then an overwhelming sense of powerlessness rose within him. The so-called Tribe of Gods had now dwindled to only ten people. To him, it felt deeply ironic.
“Originally, only two remained. Just like you, Senior, most of the others were revived through Lord Sacred Beast’s power.”
Listening to Shayna’s explanation, Barro became increasingly unsure of what his struggles back then had even amounted to. Only two survivors remained, there was hardly any difference between that and total extinction.
From prosperity to decline, from near extinction to revival, Barro received far too much information from Shayna, so much that he could barely process it all.
His memories were still frozen at the moment he exhausted his strength. In Barro’s perception, only a few minutes had passed, yet several centuries had already passed in the outside world.
Even Shayna herself did not know exactly what had happened during those hundreds of years. She only understood the past of her people through legends passed down from generation to generation. Most of what she recounted was the history of the Lunarians’ decline, until Arceus’s awakening finally brought a turning point.
Hearing about the helplessness during the tribe’s decline, the frustration of being hunted by the World Government, and the fury caused by the human experiments, Barro’s emotions were in complete turmoil.
Shayna did not go into detail about the events after Arceus’s revival, because she had already seen Arceus step forward, and silently retreated to the side.
“It has been a long time, Barro. This is not our first meeting either, if you still remember.”
“It remains vivid in my memory. Just as you said, the hundreds of years between us feel like mere minutes to me. The moment you lent me your power feels as though it happened yesterday.”
Back then, Barro had prayed to Arceus for power, and Arceus had projected his voice directly into his heart. This was not their first communication, but it was their first formal meeting.
During those years, Arceus had not been asleep the entire time either. It was simply that every time he awakened, the faces around him had already changed to a completely new group.
“History may forget you. Those in power may try to erase you. But I remember you all. The process was not smooth, but the Lunarians are ushering in their rebirth. I will ignite this race’s former glory once again.
Now… go and see your new homeland first.”
This place had been the site of Barro’s final battle, which was why Arceus had come here to resurrect him.
However, this was not their ancient homeland. Their battle back then had not been confined to one location, but had shifted constantly across different battlefields.
Now that Barro had been revived, remaining here held no meaning, and the group returned to Genesis once more. But before leaving, Barro turned back to take one more look at the land.
After returning to Genesis, the people aboard the ship watched this male Lunarian with varying degrees of curiosity. Yet Barro paid them little attention. In his eyes, he and these ordinary humans would never have much interaction.
After Shayna returned to the control room, only Arceus and Barro remained at the bow of the ship.
“You look a bit different from what I imagined, but it is truly wonderful that you could be revived and recover so much of your power. It’s a pity… if we had found these things sooner, perhaps the outcome would have been different.”
Barro possessed his own unwavering faith in Arceus. In terms of time, he truly belonged to the very first generation of believers, because he was the first person to experience a fragment of Arceus’s divine power.
No matter what form Arceus took, it would never change his place in Barro’s heart.
“What has already happened cannot be changed. People yearn for the future precisely because it is filled with uncertainty. But some outcomes will never change.
You will witness the Lunarians’ revival.
For now, adapt to this new world first. I’m rather curious about the events of your era. What exactly happened back then?”
During that period, Arceus had often been asleep. But things were different now, so naturally he wanted to ask properly.
“That’s a very long story. But there’s one thing, I don’t want to simply sit back and watch the revival.
You may not know this, but when the war first broke out, we had a saying: as long as even one Lunarian remains alive, we will never give up resisting.
No matter what, I was once the chief. Just standing by and watching… that’s truly difficult for me.
Perhaps I wasn’t the strongest chief in history, but I still want to contribute something. At the very least, I want these descendants to know that we fought as well.
Their ancestors were no cowards.”
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