"Seems like that sweet tongue of yours failed you this time, huh?"
The voice, laced with cold mockery, calmly echoed atop a bridge made of white crystalline gems.
Along it walked many races, all united by one fact: In one way or another, they possessed wings, with very few exceptions.
And speaking of exceptions, it came from the one who had voiced the mockery, along with a panther that sat on the bridge railing, licking the golden dust from its fur.
"You were the one who pushed me into it in the first place."
Void blamed, annoyed, as Ryuk grinned in mockery.
"Would have been interesting finding you fused with someone who would only see you as a fancy Void Panther."
"Wonder what race they could be off. Maybe a flying monkey..." Ryuk said.
"Ah! A flying monkey. That’s ridiculous," Void said, but then froze in the next moment as a voice blasted into his ears.
"Excuse me!?"
Void’s tongue halted on his lips as he looked forward, finding a figure staring hatefully at him.
It was a lady with lanky limbs and dirty brown hair, the kind that could only be found on a monkey, hovering in the air with two wings that rapidly flapped.
"Oops... bad timing..." he said, scratching the back of his head with an awkward gaze.
The monkey lady hmphed in annoyance before flying off, but not without delivering a solid tail slash that slammed into Void’s nose, leaving him hugging his nose with both paws.
"Ouch. That must have hurt," Ryuk said from the side, looking at him with a knowing smile of mockery.
"I’ll be the death of you one day. You’ll see,"
Void said with a huff, jumping off the railing and walking along the bridge with the others.
Ryuk followed behind, his eyes quietly taking in the surroundings.
They had finally passed through the gates and entered the Celestial Wingo Realm.
And truly, he had to admit, it was a truly celestial space.
It was the only place Ryuk had ever seen where the world floated in the air instead of resting on land.
There was zero earth in sight.
The majority of the buildings were on clouds, hovering up and down rhythmically.
Even the floors beneath which the various races walked had no earth between them.
A world where the winged races lived amongst the skies. It was nothing short of amazing.
But seeing the place filled to the brim with various experts and races, he knew his aim here might be slightly difficult, as he was trying to find one person out of the possible hundreds of millions of races here.
"If there’s one place Isha can be... it’ll most likely be a place that snows..."
"Or a dungeon..." Void added, watching in satisfaction as Ryuk’s expression plummeted.
"Where does it snow around here?" he asked, as Void looked at him with a raised eyebrow.
"You really think I’m the best person to answer that? I literally just came in less than an hour ago, you blonkhead!" Void cursed.
"I wasn’t asking you, you lecherous bastard!" Ryuk cursed in return as they both walked off the bridge.
They landed on an expandable ground on the lower levels where various stalls lay, and it didn’t take long for Ryuk to find what he needed.
A map store.
__________
The one behind it was a truly peculiar figure.
The first thing that came to Ryuk’s head was a lizard.
He was scaly green, with a reptilian head half-hidden by the round hat he wore, his fingers tapping around a cup with green juice.
"Hello?" he greeted as the head shifted slightly in reply.
"I wanted to ask if you can direct me to a place where it snows around here..." he asked the man, who finally shifted his hat up.
"So it really is directions you want, hmm?" he asked.
Now his face could be seen, and it did look like a lizard’s, though it retained humanoid traits.
"I have something special for you then..."
The Map Seller said, rising to pilfer through the shelves on the walls behind him before he brought out a wrapped scroll.
On it were the words: Snow Wingo.
"It doesn’t just hold the locations where it snows around here, but the clearest path to each of them from here onwards," he said, placing the scroll halfway down the table.
"Oh, thank you very much for your generosity..." Ryuk said, his hands reaching for the map, only to be tapped away.
"Nothing comes for free in this world, Pacho. 2,000 Wingos for the map," he called out.
Ryuk had no idea exactly how much a Wingo cost, or whether 2,000 was a rip-off, but he reached forward a moment later, bringing out a crystal.
One, flaming red, with green flames flickering within its depths.
"I found this stone in the farthest middle of a special world, split apart by a powerful battle," he said, as the expert’s eyes flickered.
His hands reached out in a flash, grabbing at the crystals, studying them carefully, before his eyes widened in shock.
But that almost seemed like an illusion as he immediately returned to his normal mysterious aura.
"This gem will sell for 1,000 Wingos. Bring one more, and I’ll give you the map," he said.
In the next moment, a second green gem appeared in Ryuk’s hands.
The map seller immediately snatched it once more, keeping it close to his pouch before grabbing the map and passing it to Ryuk, saying,
"You’re a nice man, Pacho."
_______
"Tsk. I’m sure in your little mind, you think being called nice is a compliment. But I can tell, your blonkhead was obviously ripped off."
Void’s voice, dripping with mockery, echoed from the side, where Ryuk held up the map with a furrowed brow.
"I have, like, 700,000 of that same gem, so it’s fine?" He said, and the cat’s jaw fell.
He had no idea what that gem was, but studying from that map seller’s expression, it seemed valuable.
But Ryuk was never the one to gather treasures.
"How’d you even come by that?" Void asked.
"I said it, a fight that split a world apart. Something told me the green gems were special, so I mined them all," Ryuk mused.
He had indeed found these gems in the world of Gione, where he had faced the 2nd Calamity, the demon of dreams.
After the battle, Gione had been split in two, and his eyes had caught those green gems.
He had, of course, thought them nothing but stones, but the system had told him to keep them, and that was how he had gotten them.
"If there’s a place Isha ought to be, then for sure it has to be here," Ryuk said, pointing to a place on the map.
"Where?"
"Frost Scalio."