The Outer God Needs Warmth – Chapter 7

I’m not sleeping!

Even though I’m wearing pajamas, curled up with eyes closed, and most sensory signals aren’t entering my brain.

Huh?

Is this sleeping?

But to say that, I’m clearly awake. Even if the information received by Rebecca Rolfe’s body is reduced, out of hundreds of screens, only five or six senses are turned off.

My state is stranger than I thought.

I’m lying down, breathing evenly. But I’m looking around from above. It’s a third-person view.

I’ve been watching from the beginning, but when the girl is awake, I’m immersed as if playing a computer game.

Now it’s detached like when you’ve moved away from the computer to take a break while gaming. I’m looking at the woman called Joanna Smith with a sense of looking at the phone next to me, not the computer.

I’m learning about myself little by little too.

I know I’m strange, but well.

Rather, isn’t it that my functions have increased?

Becoming smarter, having a handsome or pretty face, things like that.

It’s something most people experience if they’re reincarnated. Of course, I’ve only seen it in fictional works, but don’t creative works need parts that can give catharsis compared to reality?

But this is reality for me.

It’s reality, but terribly lacks a sense of reality. The only reality for me is this coldness.

So I want more warmth.

While I was thinking like that, Hieronymus entered the room. He’s approaching me stealthily, hesitating as if exploring a sleeping wild animal.

It might be fun to get up and shout loudly, but that would be crossing the line.

The body I’m in could become a mess again with him thinking, ‘Ack, you’ve finally shown your true colors!’

I just rejected the warmth presented right in front of my eyes. I lack warmth.

But I can endure the cold a little more.

The time I spent just enduring, unable to do anything while looking up at the light, is helpful at times like this.

Where did I see it?

They say both hunting and farming require patience.

Hunting. You closely observe the creature you want to catch, find their path, and ambush them there. Then catch them. But more than half the time you fail. Then you start again.

Farming. You pour a very long time of labor into eating what you’ll eat. You plant seeds and barely harvest the fruits by preventing countless threats until they grow. But their life and death depend on the heavens.

Not only patience but luck is needed too.

To reduce that, a lot of information is needed too.

For now, I should hold my breath and gather.

By the way, is he just going to leave after confirming I’m asleep? I might have reconsidered if he took some other action.

It can’t be helped.

Let’s say we’re just using each other.

Meanwhile, far away, Joanna Smith is standing in some room.

She’s feeling awkward looking at her blue hands. No, seeing her repeatedly bending and stretching one finger in particular, she seems to be marveling at the return of a finger that was gone.

She’s looking curiously at herself reflected in a very old mirror in front of her. Through her eyes, I’m looking at her herself.

It feels like looking at a picture within a picture within a picture.

Judging by the drag marks on the floor, she didn’t look in the mirror originally. Thinking of her appearance in her memories, she might not have wanted to see.

But now it’s different.

Joanna is rejoicing while looking at her changed appearance. And occasionally she starts to call something but stops.

Huh?

Unfortunately, since I can’t clearly know what she’s thinking, I don’t know what she wants to say.

It’s possible to guess what she’s thinking by looking at the words that come out of her mouth, her gaze and actions, and the state of her body. It’s also called cold reading.

Cold reading is guessing what the other person is thinking by observing unconscious bodily actions. It’s a technique used not only by pseudo-religions but also by businesspeople.

Often, people with good social skills unconsciously use this technique. It’s just that it’s been classified into easily understandable language.

Joanna soon recited one sentence.

It’s the order Hieronymus just gave.

Become a warrior of faith, and take care of the one who blessed you.

Hmm. It’s simple.

Moreover, the motivation is clear.

Unless you’re completely oblivious, it’s not difficult to know how this woman thinks about me.

Faith, worship.

People can fall in unpredictable ways in such aspects, but for now, it’s like that.

She’s focusing on the latter part. But what’s really important is in front. They put out delicious bait and make you work.

Until now, that delicious bait was just the blessing of a non-existent god, but now she’s physically enjoyed the blessing.

So she chooses the profession of warrior of faith who can kill people for faith.

Looking at just this situation, it’s exactly the same as ancient assassin groups. They feed hallucinogenic substances to show pleasure, and if you follow orders, you can reach this garden of pleasure. Then you become an assassin who doesn’t fear death and goes to kill the target.

It’s okay if you die yourself. Because you’ll go to the garden of pleasure.

Moreover, the surrounding environment is structured to fundamentally block other thoughts. It’s a structure that makes it difficult to doubt that garden of pleasure and the person giving orders.

There are people around who think exactly the same, and even covering faces with masks has become daily life, so deep relationships can’t be formed.

So they crave connections with higher-ups even more. The only individuality there is in the patterns on the masks and clothes worn.

To gain individuality, you have no choice but to show even stronger loyalty!

Hahaha.

It’s really a terrible pseudo-religion. But since I’ve decided to use this place as a feeding ground, I should adapt.

Before judging good and evil, don’t I need to survive first?

And soon, she put on a mask and clothes like rags that could cover her to the hair tips, then moved to the place where warriors of faith are trained.

She knows without anyone telling her.

Because she has cleaned this entire underground lair. Thanks to that, I’ve also obtained a complete map of this lair.

Hehe.

My goodness, I know all the secret places too.

People ignored her, calling her a shabby old woman. An existence in this world that can be completely ignored whether present or not, like looking at a cleaning robot.

Thanks to that, she knows all areas. You know what? She even knows the escape routes. Because those routes need maintenance and repair too.

She repairs the light sources on the escape routes and checks if there are any collapsed areas.

Of course, originally she couldn’t do this job. There are people who should be in charge of doing this job properly. But that person is also someone of high rank in this pseudo-religion. So.

They don’t want to do menial tasks.

Isn’t this part what’s called human error? There’s also a saying that the biggest enemy of security devices is not how sophisticated the security device is, but the person using it.

I rummaged through Joanna’s memories a bit while walking.

I wonder what Hieronymus, who disappeared between the views of Joanna and me, is doing, but as long as I can’t see him, I focus on this.

Meanwhile, Joanna arrived at a place full of people called warriors of faith. It’s surprisingly quite noisy.

In that space, there are also those who were above in the place where I was summoned earlier. I can see armor neatly lined up on one side.

And a person in an instructor-like position is angrily whipping people who are taking difficult postures in a line wearing only underwear in front of the well-organized armor.

Listening to what he’s saying, he’s spouting words about creating danger in the place where the leader is, or firing without orders, so it’s collective responsibility.

But if you listen carefully, he’s just afraid that the responsibility for the failure might come to him. I don’t know if Joanna knows this, but Joanna seems used to this scene as there’s no ripple in her heart.

She’s seen it often in her memories too.

Of course, she doesn’t sympathize with those being abused either. Because when that instructor is gone, they abuse the people below them.

So Joanna also quickly fled to another place in such situations, reading the atmosphere.

She is an unfortunate and abused human.

Therefore, she is an evil person.

Goodness is something that people living happy lives can naturally do, but it’s a luxury for people living hellish lives.

That’s why when an unfortunate person does good, that goodness has great value. Because it’s a miracle.

At least there’s no one with such a miracle here.

Now evil people talk to each other.

Joanna explained first. She’s trying to become a warrior of faith as Hieronymus ordered. At those words, a hint of jealousy and doubt faintly settles on the expression of the man who’s the instructor. Then he looks here and there trying to figure out who she is.

Of course, he can’t recognize her.

The instructor asked for her name, and even when Joanna says her name, he doesn’t know.

Because she has never said her name even once. The Joanna until now was no different from an NPC standing in the middle of the road while playing a game without any quests.

The instructor, judging Joanna to be a new person, introduced himself. Of course, Joanna knew who the instructor was.

And he called one of the people he was whipping with the whip.

While saying he needs to judge her skills first, the instructor urges Joanna to fight.

Joanna accepted it with a strangely comfortable mind.

Isn’t there no special power except for her body being recovered and her skin turning dark purple? I’ve been watching through her eyes all along, but she hasn’t acted like she’s suddenly become superhuman and experimenting with that power.

While I’m wondering, the instructor is wondering, and the opponent in front is wondering.

The man acting as the instructor shouted start.

At the same time, a man who dug into the blind spot of Joanna’s view kicked her head with his foot.

Crash

The mask breaks.

It should hurt, but there’s no reaction of contracting in fear from Joanna’s body. She accepts it so calmly as if it doesn’t hurt at all.

She doesn’t even put her hand on the hit area.

And then another foot comes flying. But Joanna’s eyes stare at the opponent. No, a little below the opponent’s gaze.

For a very brief moment, her gaze touches the incoming foot and then falls away. And without looking anymore, she blocks it with her hand.

An enormous impact touches her hand and there’s a sensation of her wrist being crushed, but strangely there’s no pain. Rather, along with the sensation of it growing back, she grabs the opponent’s foot and pulls it towards herself while stabbing the warrior of faith’s chest with her other hand.

It’s not the heart.

Physically, she aimed for the heart, but it looks like she missed slightly to the side or just stabbed the center.

But I can see.

She aimed for where the light is.

And when her hand touched the light, warmth reached me.

He, hehe.

This is the true taste of auto-hunting!

To think I’d get warmth without doing anything, oh my!

There’s Joanna saying it’s nothing while wiping blood, the instructor who’s shocked, and warriors aiming weapons at Joanna, but that doesn’t matter!

Aha.

I’ve finally learned a new method.

A method I can use.

If possible, I’d like to pour myself more indiscriminately. I need to negotiate with Hieronymus who calmly intervened as if he had been watching that place from the beginning.

I need warmth.