 | Name | In the Light, Beneath the Shadow |
| Type (Ingame) | Quest Item | |
| Family | Book, The Byakuyakoku Collection | |
| Rarity |  | |
| Description | A puzzle book for children of ages nine to twelve. As a book from a transitory period, it uses Narukami-style names with Byakuyakoku subscripts. |
Item Story
| Question 1: What walks on four feet in the early morning, two feet during the day, and three feet at night? Answer: A vishap who transforms into a person to attend a ball, then breaks one of its legs and eventually ends up walking with a cane. Sages like this answer the most, and it is the children get it right almost exclusively. For adults, it always smells like a horrible conspiracy when a vishap turns into a human. According to a prophecy of old, the Dragon of Water, the ancient lord of vishaps, will definitely descend in the form of a human. However, for children, the answer to the question indicates the possibility of mutual understanding. But it is not a good idea to make vishaps sound adorable. Though such jokes defang the fear, they also lower the guard of the children. (Dragonheirs of the Depths have evolved to wield the power of other elements and have hence lost their purity. As such, the Dragon of Water will no longer be born from among their ranks.) Question 2: With only one mouth, this being sometimes has four feet, sometimes, two feet, and sometimes, three feet. Though unable to morph into other things, it is able to walk on the earth, swim in the water, and fly in the sky. The more feet it walks on, the feebler it grows. What is this being? Answer: A human. Humans crawl on hands and feet as babies, walk on two legs as adults, and use a cane as elders. The answer is undoubtedly "a human." Question 3: What talks with only one mouth but walks on four and two feet? Answer: Someone raising livestock. This riddle is a very ancient one. In the past, we could only understand the meaning of livestock from reading texts. "Four legs" refers to four-legged animals like the Aux, Hors, and Foreste Bore. After Byakuyakoku fell into the ocean depths, these animals died out within two generations due to a lack of habitable land and food. Since the arrival of Watatsumi Omikami, some of us have returned to the sea's surface to build a home and interact with the people there. Therefore, we have been able to review the names of these animals. According to the Vassal and the Omikami's prophecy, we shall all move back to the sea's surface someday, so it is important to get these names right. Aux means cattle, Hors means horse, and Foreste Bore means forest boar. Question 4: Who are the two sisters who give birth to each other every day? Answer: Day and night, or Whitenight and Evernight. This riddle is easy to understand. It alludes to the succession of day and night, which in Byakuyakoku means the cyclical Whitenight and Evernight under the control of the Dainichi Mikoshi. Though the land was in everlasting night before the Dainichi Mikoshi was built, the light of day that people had seen has remained unchanged. By the way, the two special astronomical phenomena of Byakuyakoku — the mirages and the Sinshades — were at first indiscriminately referred to as Eidolons and seen as the two sides of the same coin. It was not until the arrival of Watatsumi Omikami that the people of Byakuyakoku were able to understand the two phenomena and name them differently. Though the sun did not shine upon Byakuyakoku, the mirages that appeared in Whitenights were named Sunfire Phantasms and those of Evernight, Ghostfire Phantasms. As time went by, both of them came to be referred to as Sunfire Phantasms, for they are essentially the same thing. Question 5: I am the Shadowborn of the Lord of Light. I am a wingless bird that rises from the earth to the sky. Those who shed tears in my presence feel no sorrow in their bosoms. Away with a gentle breeze I fade, and thus ends my fleeting life. Answer: The answer is smoke. Birds are winged creatures, and it is normal that they are not seen in Enkanomiya. Question 6: A father has twelve children, each then giving birth to sixty daughters of different appearances. Of them, thirty are pale and thirty are dark. The whole family, knowing not death, will only fade away. Who is the father? Answer: The answer is the year. The people of Byakuyakoku may find the part about sixty pale or dark granddaughters a bit confusing. But everything will start to make sense once they crack Question 4. There used to be a sequel to this riddle in ancient times. It roughly said that every granddaughter would give birth to twelve descendants, and each of them would then have sixty children. Every such child later would give birth to another sixty, who would go on to have children of their own. This would continue until at last, all the offspring would together give birth to the one and only primordial child — Tokoyo Ookami, the "mother" of fourteen billion years. Watatsumi Omikami forbade people from spreading this riddle. ... Appendix: Historical Figures, Their Traditional Names, and Narukami-Style Renderings Kairos - Tokoyo Ookami ...Eris - Arisu Abrax - Aberaku Charon - Ka... Spartacus - Supada Emma - Ema ... - Koi Antigone, Antigonus - Antei ... ... Erebos - Eboshi Echion - Eki Udaeus - Uda Asclepius - Surepio ... |
Yeah I feel like it should probably be changed but the development was relatively minor and Hoyo pr...