#221

Understand?

“The pain of suffering without knowing anything is merely hardship and adversity. I didn’t want to grant you the blessing of ignorance.”

If I hadn’t skipped, what would I have understood?

That the Fabio I love is merely a replica, and the original is someone else?

“I’ll explain simply and very directly. I wanted to tell you everything I’ve realized. The truth that can be found in the basement of the Main Hall. The content that Order so craved and that the Record hid. The meaning of the Watched Ones, Regression, and The ‘Stars’. All of it.”

“…Everything?”

Fafabio let out a light sigh.

“Though even if I say this, in the end, you won’t remember anything.”

“Why?”

“Because there is a sharp observer outside. No matter what I convey, the content will be erased, and only the memory of having had a strange dream will remain.”

“So this dream itself is a parable?”

“Yes, that’s right. It’s a story I crafted with great care. If you had just read the story to the end, you would have gained many clues. To think you tried to look at the story summary and interpretation first—this is why skip-worms are such pieces of shit….”

“What is the situation outside right now?”

Athanas asked without listening further. No matter how important the contents of this dream were, he could not stay inside for long.

“…Athanas, if I wanted to, I could keep you here forever.”

“And?”

Fafabio stared silently at Athanas.

“…I understand. You must be curious about what happened to ‘your Fabio’ right now. Yes. There’s no way you can focus [unauthorized copy]on a game when your loved one’s fate is [unauthorized copy]unknown. So, I will tell you. You are atop the bell tower. You are having a nightmare immediately after using Regression. Not Read on Read BL Novelseven an hour has passed, and Fabio should be moving according to the dice.”

“What number did the dice roll?”

He hadn’t fixed the time when the number 5 appeared. If so, a different result might have occurred.

Fafabio wrinkled the bridge of his nose and glared at Athanas.

“There’s no way for me to know that. I am merely a fragment that you locked away in the reliquary.”

“If I had used Regression just a bit later….”

“Please, Athanas. Do you really think 5 was the best choice? After ruining it so many times? You can’t even find a way to escape from me, yet all you can think about is meeting ‘Fabio’ right now? What if I manipulate you to kill Fabio? Do you not consider that it might be better for you if you and Fabio were distanced?”

“…Perhaps. But as you said, since I do not know which possibility is better, I can only do my best.”

If Fabio were injured before his eyes, he could use Regression to prevent it.

But what if he were injured or died in a place where Athanas could not help?

Fafabio let out a scream and slammed his head against the screen.

“…So annoying. So annoying. So annoying. Fuck, I’m seriously so pissed off.”

“If this is an explanation that ends within this turn, I will cooperate. I have also long wanted to know what the Record is trying to hide.”

“Ah, yes. Thank you for listening. It is a great honor that you gave me the opportunity to explain. I’m so moved I could almost cry.”

“Wouldn’t it be better to wake up quickly than to face someone you hate so much?”

“Yes, exactly. Fafabio just wants you to fuck off quickly.”

Fafabio rubbed his forehead and took a deep breath.

“Where shall I begin? You know that Fabio is a Watched One, right? Do you know which Othergod he serves?”

“No.”

Fabio had only explained that his Othergod was exceptional.

A being uninterested in collapsing Order or swallowing this world.

“Surely you don’t believe that explanation as it is?”

“…I thought it was a god with a twisted sense of humor, choosing a person and not even providing a proper explanation. A one who gave nothing just to watch them suffer and die in a battle they could never win, is that not it?”

“In the end, it’s not that different. Though the motives are polar opposites.”

Fafabio continued his explanation.

“The name bestowed upon Fabio is the Happy Cult Evangelist. Fabio was chosen by the god of happiness, HappyHappy—ah, that’s a nickname. It’s better not to know the real name. I’ll call him Happy God for short. He was chosen by Happy God, a being considered the weakest and most useless among the Othergods.”

An Othergod who presides over happiness?

How ironic.

How could someone who cannot even make his own ‘Evangelist’ happy be the god of happiness?

“And what Order, Loclem, was searching for is precisely Happy God. Because Happy God was originally the Main God of the Dark Realm.”

Athanas’s thoughts stopped for a moment.

The newly acquired information was so unexpected that he couldn’t form a complete thought.

A moment later, this thought occurred to him:

‘I suppose one can only feel shock when it falls within a certain range of expectation.’

“…More details.”

“Othergods have hometowns too. It might sound funny, but since they aren’t bound by physical bodies, they are more obsessed with their ‘origin’. The place where their essence was completed. Because if the basis that defines them disappears, they will face a conceptual death.”

Happy God.

The god of happiness.

He had never heard of such a god.

“Of course you haven’t. Happy God’s existence was thoroughly erased. In the first place, this land wasn’t even called the Dark Realm. But now, no one can recall the old name.”

“The Main God of this land was the god of happiness?”

“To be precise, he was the god presiding over love and happiness. The name has been erased, so it’s unknown. The god of love and happiness loved and cherished everything that lived. And so, he made a certain choice.”

“What choice?”

“Because of that, those who remember the god of love and happiness disappeared from this land.”

Athanas frowned.

Was that the price for becoming an Othergod?

“…Athanas. If there were a god presiding over every concept you can imagine, which god do you think would be the most powerful?”

Athanas sank into thought for a moment.

“At least not love and happiness.”

“The answer is ‘The End’. Inevitable termination, death, disorder, the state of maximum entropy.”

“…Maximum entropy?”

“Any being with intelligence cannot help but imagine the end. Everything has an end. Because entropy gradually increases. Living is a struggle to avoid tumbling down into a state of being dead. Even gods who enjoy a life close to eternity, unconstrained by form, are not free from ‘the end of all things’.”

“What is entropy?”

“…Search for it if you’re curious.”

[Search: Entropy]

Useless energy, degree of disorder, statistics….

He was trying to understand the page filled with unfamiliar words when the window suddenly displayed a strange symbol and closed.

“…I didn’t actually mean for you to search for it.”

Fafabio glared at Athanas.

“You don’t need to know what entropy is, so just move on for now. Then, the Othergods thought of one method. ‘Complete Union’. What if the Othergod of the End swallowed other Othergods to become one? If that essence changed, could this end be stopped?”

So, did the god of love and happiness become one with the god of termination?

Because he loved everything that lived so much that he did not wish for their end?

“…You still don’t understand Othergods. If one whose essence is ‘Termination’ loves living things, he only leads them toward the end.”

“Then? Was the plan for Termination to deny its own essence and lead itself to death?”

“Killing Termination is completely meaningless. As long as an intelligent being can conceive of the concept of ‘The End’, the god of termination will keep being reborn.”

“Then why….”

“When two gods with completely different essences merge into one, that god falls into madness. Because they cannot even properly recall what they are.”

Fafabio continued in an emotionless tone.

“Termination must exist. However, it had to be in a controllable, docile state. An idiot who has fallen into complete madness, not knowing what he is or what he can do, just standing there drooling. That is precisely….”

“…Happy God?”

“Correct. An unhappy god who wants every single living creature to reach complete happiness, but cannot make anyone happy with his own power. A contradictory, incompetent, and ignorant being. For that dull and foolish thing, this game is repeatedly held. Because while Happy God crushes ants one by one that revive infinitely on the game board, the end of this world is deferred.”

Infinitely reviving ants.

Is that us?

“…And the claim that this is the last game?”

“Of course that’s a lie. This is a practice game, and if they said another practice game would follow, who would participate desperately? They would only try to jump off the game board.”

Athanas felt a bit dizzy.

He knew he had heard a very important secret, but….

“It won’t hit home right now. Because it’s a matter in a domain that you can understand but cannot feel. It’s similar to how you can be angry and sad over the death of one, ten, or a hundred people, but you don’t know what emotion to feel for the death of 10 quadrillion. Humans cannot perceive such astronomical numbers.”

Fafabio prattled on in a calm tone.

“The reason the Dark Realm must be the game board is also because this place is Happy God’s hometown. The things he loved and cherished remain here. That is why Happy God cannot take his eyes off this land, even while unable to remember who he was.”

…Did the forgotten Main God choose this, knowing that those he loved would be violated for eternity in the future?

If he realized this land would be used as a game board.

“Surprisingly, the god of love and happiness knew all of it and chose it. Because he was the god with the essence most different from Termination. He wanted the things he loved to stay alive, even if they suffered. Forever.”

Athanas held his breath for a moment.

The fact that such a being ‘chose’ Fabio meant….

“…What about Order? Who is the one who remained in this land and became the Main God instead? Is he the forgotten god’s lover?”

Upon hearing Athanas’s question, Fafabio made a strange expression.

“Rather than a lover, he’s closer to a pet.”

“…A pet?”

“The symbol of Order is white wings, right? Loclem is actually a white parrot raised by the Main God. The Main God adored the parrot so much that he gave him the position of ‘God of Beauty’.”

Athanas remained silent.

“…Is this some kind of metaphor?”

“No. Well, Loclem probably regarded the Main God as his partner and loved him. Parrots are originally very obsessive toward their owners. If the owner abandons them, they sometimes self-harm by plucking their own feathers. Pitifully, he couldn’t completely forget his owner and ended up with a mental illness.”

“A parrot.”

“Correct. Loclem is a parrot who became the God of Order because, before his owner left, he was told, ‘You must take good care of this place while I’m gone.’ Loclem blindly followed that command, forgetting who he was and why he had to become the Main God of the Dark Realm. This is the full story of the truth that Loclem so desired to know and that the God of Records hid.”