Civilization Chronicles: Rise of the Divine Creator

”Yip yip yip!”

With Yuki pawing at his face and yipping in his ear, Lucas naturally couldn’t remain in his pleasant dreamland regardless how tired he felt.

With some annoyance, the young boy stretched and yawned before slowly propping himself up, rubbing his eyes for a moment as he turned to the little fox and grumbled, ”I’m up, I’m up. What’s wrong, Yuki?”

Since he found Yuki, all Lucas had ever seen her do was sleep and eat, eat and sleep. It seemed like as long as she was well fed, she was content to just laze around doing nothing.

There were many times Lucas envied Yuki’s carefreeness, even wishing he could swap places with her once or twice.

Tonight had been no exception, with Lucas, Eris, and Christina all feeding Yuki on separate occasions before she simply passed out with a rounded belly.

When Lucas went to bed with her, he never expected Yuki to wake up first unless the smell of hot food somehow made it to the back room they were sleeping in; but now, while it was still dark out, she was making a huge racket and urging him to get up.

When Lucas’ eyes finally focused and he saw Yuki properly, he immediately realized that she was tensed up and shivering, like she was terrified of something.

Although he hadn’t known Yuki for very long, this odd behaviour naturally caused Lucas to become alert and all the lingering grogginess he was feeling was swiftly blown away. However, before his beast companion could ’say’ anything further to him, something in the air caught Lucas’ attention.

It wasn’t a sense of pressure, or even a sense of danger per-say, but more like an unnatural disturbance, as if something wasn’t quite right with the world around him.

Lucas, now fully awake, began scanning his surroundings, trying to adjust his eyes to the darkness, but even after getting a clear vision of the room he was in, there didn’t seem to be anything out of the ordinary.

Everything was still quiet, with Eris having flipped over at some point but still sprawled out on top of Christina. The extra blankets were all still stacked in their various piles, and only a faint, flickering light from outside was shining down through the window to illuminate the room.

Wait, light? Suddenly, Lucas realized that something was indeed wrong.

It was the middle of a moonless night, and this backroom’s only windows were facing away from the main compound of the manor, so there shouldn’t be any light at all coming from the outside, and certainly not from high up in the sky.

Scooping Yuki up, Lucas quietly crept across the room, making sure not to wake up the girls, and then peered out the narrow window.

What he saw in the sky above wasn’t the pitch-black night he was expecting; rather, it was something he initially couldn’t explain.

In fact, forget about explaining, Lucas could hardly believe his eyes and seriously wondered if he was still asleep and having some kind of strange dream.

Gawking at the sight before him, Lucas flicked Yuki’s head, startling the little kit who immediately protested, yipping loudly before biting the finger which had unjustly struck her.

Feeling the slightly painful prick of teeth on his finger, Lucas concluded he really was awake and what he was seeing was indeed real.

That didn’t make it any easier for the young boy to believe what he was looking at; but eventually, he was forced to acknowledge reality.

Nothing from his current life could possibly have explained what was happening high up above his head, but fortunately for Lucas, he had other sources of knowledge to draw on. Even so, it took him a moment to come up with a possible explanation for what was going on, unconsciously muttering aloud, ”Spatial Tears...”

Indeed, when Lucas looked up, he saw a multitude of swirling, twisting gashes stretched out across the sky, like a giant beast had taken its claws and ripped space itself apart. The tears themselves were darker than night, and were only visible to Lucas because framing them was a kind of aurora-like multicoloured luminescence.

On top of being quite numerous, these gashes were also enormous, some stretching several hundreds of metres across.

Staring at this incredible sight, Lucas thought he saw some kind of foreign scenery beyond the tears, but it was all so faint and blurry that he couldn’t be certain.

It was as awe-inspiring as it was horrifying.

These were undoubtedly Spatial Tears, literal holes in space, but how so many of them had opened so suddenly, and without any prior warning or signs, Lucas couldn’t comprehend.

Wait, that’s wrong, there were many signs! Lucas suddenly realized.

Thinking back on a number of the inexplicable events which had occurred in Redwood Town over the past 8 days, a theory began forming in his head.

The giant explosion, the unusually powerful beasts from regions far removed from the Great Western Forest, the rich Ice Attribute World Qi on the wagon he found Yuki in, all of it was staring to make sense to Lucas, ”That explosion must have somehow ruptured space around here, causing tears to randomly open, connecting the local region to other places around the Blue Sky Continent, possibly around the entire planet!”

It was a fascinating possibility, a phenomenon that under any other circumstances Lucas would be eager to study and learn from, but caught right in the middle of this catastrophe, he knew now was not the time to indulge his curiosity.

”Eris! Tina! Wake up!” Lucas shouted, rushing over to shake the two girls awake.

Their sleep disrupted by this sudden outburst, Eris and Christina both struggled to get up, feeling dazed and disoriented.

”Lucas? What’s wrong?” Eris muttered in a sleepy tone, rubbing her eyes as she tried to shake off her lingering drowsiness.

Christina, on the other hand, seemed slightly more on guard and hurriedly asked, ”Is it beasts? Is the town under attack?”

”No,” Lucas shook his head, his expression extremely dark, ”It’s something much, much worse. Everyone is in grave danger!”

”Grave danger?” Tilting her head, Christina jumped to her feet and began scanning the area with her nascent Soul Sense, ”I don’t sense any...”

Abruptly, Christina choked, the words catching in her throat as a look of absolute shock and confusion filled her face.

Naturally, Eris didn’t miss this and also got to her feet, ”What is it, Sister Tina?”

Christina didn’t answer, though.

Instead, she stared towards the door leading to the rest of the manor, clearly unable to believe what it was she was sensing, and asked haltingly, ”Lucas... are you... is that... am I... imagining that?”

Hearing this nearly incoherent question, Lucas realized that he had been so overwhelmed by what he saw up in the sky, he had forgotten to check his immediate surroundings, so he too released his Soul Sense in the direction Christina was gazing.

An instant later, a look of horror filled the young boy’s face as he raced to the door, kicked it open, and stared out into what should have been a stone corridor.

”What’s going on?” Eris asked anxiously as she chased after her little brother; however, when she got to the now wide-open double doors, she too halted in place, her jaw dropping as low as it could at the impossible sight before her.

”Wha.... Bu... how?” Eris babbled unintelligibly as she stared at the literal forest which stood before her.

Christina, who had also raced over, was equally dumbfounded by this sight, despite already having sensed it a moment ago with her Soul Sense.

While the two girls were stuck trying to figure out where the rest of the manor had gone, and how it was replaced by a thicket of unfamiliar looking trees, Lucas was more concerned about something else, crying out with all his strength, ”Dad! Aunt Helen! Anyone!!”

The young boy’s cries seemed to jolt Christina and Eris out of their daze, and they too began calling out for others.

”Sir Green!”

”Big Sister Grace!”

”Uncle Carl!”

But no matter who they called for, no one replied, as if all of the adults who were supposed to be in the manor had vanished. Seeing how most of the manor itself was gone, that shouldn’t have been too surprising, but right now, none of the three children were thinking very calmly.

Grabbing hold of Lucas, Tina spun him around to face her and asked with no small amount of panic, ”What’s happening? How is this possible!?”

Eris also used her one good hand to grab her little brother, her expression filled with unease. She remained silent, but her need for answers was practically painted across her face.

”There’s no time for this! We need to go! Now!” Lucas shouted in reply, breaking free of their grips and running back into the room to grab Yuki, the Space Bag his Master had gifted him, and his sword.

Hurrying back to the door, Lucas saw both Christina and Eris still standing there stupidly and was about to yell at them again, but when he saw the looks of fear, hesitance, and trepidation on their faces, he realized that just shouting wasn’t going to do any good.

The two of them were just young girls who had been thrust into a seemingly impossible situation, and unlike him, they had absolutely no idea what was happening, so it was only natural for them to freeze up.

Understanding that he had to take charge here, Lucas forced himself to calm down and said in as firm a tone as he could muster, ”I know you’re scared and confused, even I’m not totally sure what’s going on.”

Grabbing hold of Tina and Eris’ hands, Lucas stared them both in the eye and pleaded, ”I’ll do my best to explain what’s going on once we reach somewhere safe, but for now, I need you to trust me!”