Perhaps I had been thinking about it wrong from the very beginning.
Claudia is the city of clouds. A land where clouds pour down the slopes like waterfalls, and lightning strikes down like rain. It is a harsh terrain where foul and murky currents flow instead of milk and honey. Unless one is a vampire with an innate aversion to sunlight, there is no reason to seek it out.
Even in the distant past, when Tyr led the vampires over the mountains, it was not a city but merely a mountain village with a somewhat peculiar natural landscape. Naturally, not many people lived there. Beasts fear lightning, after all.
It was perhaps a blessing that they could establish a village at all, thanks to the lightning keeping the tigers at bay. Had tiger attacks plagued such a grueling land on top of everything else, it would have been utterly uninhabitable.
In any case, out of that fear, lightning became the Lightning God... or so the regressor said, and others believe. But that is likely not the truth.
Rather, it was because the Lightning God foretold the arrival of lightning, making the sudden strikes that claimed lives and property feel less dangerous. People even began to regard the Lightning God with a sense of familiarity.
"...A weather alarm?"
"Yes. It seems we misunderstood the Lightning God. The Lightning God wasn't a being that summoned lightning... but one that came to warn us on days when lightning struck."
A giant that roars with thunder and hurls lightning to the ground. An immensely powerful and divine entity that seemed to warrant the title of a god, but if one were to strip away the context and look purely at what it does...
It's just lightning, isn't it? Lightning naturally makes loud thunder and scatters bolts across the earth.
"Furthermore, seeing it broken like this, it seems it was an artificial construct created by someone. While it's true the other gods were also made by humans, the Lightning God was a being created in a much more literal sense."
"...A god?"
"And a being far more helpful to humans than the other gods. Peru, did the Lightning God always appear on days when lightning struck?"
"...Now that you mention it, the Lightning God was always there on days lightning struck."
"Has lightning ever struck without the Lightning God appearing?"
Peru fumbled through his memories at my question before shaking his head.
"...No. I don't think lightning ever struck before the alarm went off. Unless it was thunder striking in the distance."
"Lightning is a purely natural phenomenon, right? If the Lightning God were truly a capricious god, there should have been times when lightning struck without him appearing. Since that wasn't the case, the Lightning God must have indeed been an alarm. A very high-performance one, at that."
The Lightning God, known all this time to descend and punish humans for stealing lightning, was actually a tool created by humans to detect the approach of lightning in advance.
Peru muttered, having learned this unexpected truth.
"...Who made such a thing?"
"It's written right here. Frang, the Lightning Thief. Someone with a rather grandiose name. Seeing as he even left a signature, he doesn't seem to have intended to hide his identity."
"...I've never heard of him."
"Which means, his identity isn't what's important."
The knowledge was passed on to all of humanity anyway. The knowledge itself isn't a secret. What could be considered a secret is...
"Who hid his identity. At this point in time, that is far more important. Whoever hid it would inevitably know all about the object they hid."
"...Do you know?"
YW9peUx5cktZYXhyU2hzY1VsMkQ0WlQzejhISlpqdElaUExhNW1tbTdXdWNKQ25QY2pVM3lwa21lMWxGR2tseg
"I don't know either, just like Peru, but I do know something else. When something clearly artificial occurs, it's easy to figure out if you think about who reaped the greatest benefit."
I already knew the answer, of course, but I kept the conversation going, pretending not to know for Peru's sake.
"You know the story of the Lightning Thief, right?"
"...Yes."
As a Yeolgukin directly involved, there were stories he couldn't help but know even better. The legend of the Lightning Thief and the Lightning God.
There are many fairy tales in the world about stealing gold and silver treasures from a giant living in a grand palace. However, the story of the Lightning Thief is the only one where a giant made of lightning rides down from the clouds in reality to exact revenge. Fiction cannot triumph over reality. Only the tale of the Lightning Thief that originated in Claudia survived and was passed down to the world.
"But if the Lightning God was actually a lightning alarm, and the Lightning Thief was its creator, this truth cleverly latched onto the existing fairy tale and was distorted. There is only one being that benefited from this process."
"...Who?"
"The Heaven God."
I had suspected as much. Would she really go so far as to reveal her precious title of Thunder Council Leader just to attack me for no reason? There had to be a reason for it.
"When the Lightning Thief stole the lightning, the Lightning God, having had his possession stolen, was granted permission by the Heaven God to punish the humans on earth. Though he suffered a few setbacks at the hands of the Lightning Thief, the captured Thief eventually had a change of heart and returned the lightning. After that, the stories diverge—some say he forgave humanity, others say the Lightning God burned with rage but the Heaven God ordered him to return, so he temporarily withdrew beyond the heavens."
Peru, who had been pondering deeply, asked in return.
"...How is that a benefit?"
"Of course. He made the Lightning God his subordinate without lifting a single finger, so it's naturally a benefit."
"...Huh?"
While Peru paused at my unexpected words, I grunted as I lifted the Lightning God's ribcage and peered inside. I expected to find complex machinery, but I was wrong. The interior was almost entirely hollow. There was a small device inside, but it was only a fraction of the whole. It seemed to drift down slowly; despite its massive volume like a balloon, it weighed very little.
Was the Lightning God really just an alarm? But I could definitely feel something... The true relic that held the clue to the Demon God was...
Was it this.
"The lightning didn't fall from the sky."
If it was just bulky, there would be a reason for that. I reached past the Lightning God's hollow body. If there was anything that could be called skin on the restored, skeletal remains of the Lightning God, it was the wide piece of cloth attached to its back.
"It was sent up from the earth to the sky. Lightning never belonged to the heavens in the first place."
It was a kite.
A toy meant to soar into the sky on the wind, tethered and bound by a string. Hanging from the Lightning God's body was a kite with its string snapped. Though torn and tattered, thanks to the restorative power of the Golden Mirror, its function and form were still clearly recognizable.
The Lightning God was launched from the earth and sent up into the heavens, entrusted with the crucial duty of alerting them when lightning was approaching.
"...The Lightning God, a tool to protect Claudia..."
"It likely wasn't just the Lightning God. The majority of things that make up Claudia are probably useful tools just like it."
"...Why did the Thunder Council Leader try to destroy the Lightning God?"
"Who knows? Because they no longer needed the alarm?"
I answered casually, but Peru nodded in understanding.
"...That's right. After lightning rods were built and thunder mills were installed in Claudia, there was no longer any need to fear the Lightning God."
"Then everything falls into place. Up until now, they feared and revered the Lightning God, so leaving it alone was fine. But if they no longer feared the Lightning God, their reverence for the Heaven God would fade as well, so they must have wanted to dispose of it now."
"...Did the Thunder Council Leader know all of this?"
"I'm not certain about that, but she likely did know."
The Thunder Council Leader herself might not have known. However, as a being whose very values and powers had been entirely observed by the Saint, even if she made rational judgments, she would ultimately act in a way that benefited the Holy Emperor's Court.
"In any case, since this too is a relic of the Demon God, it's clear that someone besides the Thunder Council Leader knew of its existence."
I couldn't feel the lingering grudge from the brink of death like I did from the Golden Mirror or the Grand Master in this relic. It seemed it met a peaceful end. Even if it was the Demon God, it wouldn't have died harboring unfulfilled wishes.
However, this was still a relic. The traces the Demon God left on the world remained within it.
"Fiction reflects reality to some extent as well. The lightning that the Lightning Thief supposedly returned must have referred to this. Otherwise, there would be no reason to say it was returned."
"...Are you going to take it?"
"Depending on the circumstances, I might, but I'm perfectly satisfied just being able to look at it. I don't have any material greed."
"...?"
Don't look at me with such suspicious eyes. Where else would you find someone as devoid of material greed as me? If I wanted money, I would have just sucked up to some nobles and lived a life of luxury.
I just want to catch up to humanity. To the footsteps humans have taken so far ahead while I lost my power.
Now then, let's see. What is it that the Holy Emperor's Court went so far as to return to the heavens to hide? Let's take a look. I reached out my hand toward the relic with a pounding heart.
For a brief moment, it felt as if the world had stopped. An animalistic instinct, separate from my mind reading, sensed a bad omen and seized my senses. In a world stretched infinitely thin, a massive and razor-sharp presence swelled up behind my back.
[I clearly warned you.]
Light flashed.
There was no time to react. I couldn't even react. My misty vision was hazy, there were few people around me, and the weakened Peru was more sluggish than I was. There was no one whose mind I could read in advance.
Still, this was... far too lethal.
I lower my head. A sharp blade comes into view. The handle was nowhere to be seen; the blade merely started from my abdomen, protruding outward.
Wait. It wasn't picked up by my mind reading.
Following that, a burning, searing pain overwhelmed me. It felt as if my insides had been scrubbed raw with sandpaper, and the debris was being poured out through my mouth. The taste of blood filled my mouth.
I tried to grip the blade with my bare hands, but it wouldn't budge. My palms were merely slashed, dripping with blood. As I turned my head in the midst of the excruciating pain, the Thunder Council Leader was staring at me with hollow eyes.
A halo of electrical currents floated above her head, and wings of lightning fluttered behind her back. Manifesting as an angel, the Thunder Council Leader drove the blade in even deeper.