Brightest Darkness – 1

“So, you were preparing to greet me as splendidly as possible to maintain whatever dignity you had left?”

Nod, nod, nod. The goddess, who introduced herself as Eclipse, nodded vigorously. Though, to be precise, it seemed I had merely overheard her muttering to herself.

Her face was visibly crimson at a glance. Not only her cheeks but even her ears were bright red, and to exaggerate a bit, it looked as if she had smeared tomatoes all over herself.

“Well, I understand the intention, but.”

I sat perched on the chair, propping my chin with my left hand, and tapped the table with my right index finger. Perhaps because it was marble, the sound resonated incredibly well.

In rhythm with the tapping, the goddess’s body also flinched. Her face was about to burst from redness, she was twisting her entire body, and she kept glancing at me, so anyone could see she was embarrassed.

“Don’t you think it’s too late to try and find dignity now?”

“……”

“No, isn’t that right? That lizard bastard utterly destroyed you… Tsk, I wonder if I should even use such an expression. Anyway, your very soul was stripped bare, all the worlds you had were devoured, and there were all sorts of incidents, weren’t there?”

“……”

“Now, even if you try to act dignified and put on airs, pretending to have an atmosphere, have you truly never once considered that it won’t impress me in the slightest?”

My words were undeniable truth. I don’t know the inside story, but judging only by what’s apparent, Eclipse has nothing to say to me, even if she had a hundred mouths, let alone ten.

It was already too late to feel awe now. Perhaps because of that, the goddess sat quietly, unable to even refute.

‘How many things has this woman failed to handle?’

It was fortunate that she at least filled the hole that had been in my abdomen. I lightly touched my stomach, which had returned to normal.

If she had said she couldn’t even restore this with her own power, I would have personally shown her that there’s a bottom beneath the bottom when it came to my trust in the goddess.

When I asked why she didn’t fill it immediately after the fight ended, she claimed she had used up even the little power she had left to create the Radiance. Truly, she was a useless goddess in every conceivable way, right to the end.

“I am sorry, you……”

The goddess offered her apology in a greatly shrunken voice.

“No need for apologies. You’re the one who did something unnecessary. The embarrassment is also yours to bear. There’s no reason for me to accept an apology for that, is there?”

At my words, the goddess’s face, which had seemed to regain a bit of color, turned bright red again.

“I won’t even bother caring why you tried to welcome me in that posture. The goddess-nim considers her body perfect and has no qualms about exposure, so what am I supposed to do about that?”

The very reason for the clothing and common sense of the women in this world being the way they were, was Eclipse, right before my eyes. Because she considered her own body perfect, she had no qualms about exposure.

And in the midst of that, she created humans in her own image and instilled the same common sense as hers, so naturally, such a world was inevitable.

The reason all the women’s figures were so incredible was because they were created in Eclipse’s image, and the reason their clothing was extremely revealing was because the common sense that if one’s figure is unmatched, it should be displayed, was ingrained.

The starting point for all of that was the goddess right before my eyes.

‘She *is* perfect, so I can’t really say anything.’

Honestly, she had every right to be proud. Because the goddess’s body was beyond description by any other word than ‘perfect’.

If she had been even slightly thinner, if she had had even slightly more flesh, if every part of her body had been even slightly more or less pronounced, the adjective ‘perfect’ could not have been attached.

But the goddess achieved that difficult feat. Therefore, even I didn’t particularly want to refute the pride she held in her own body.

“First, you know what I want to ask, right?”

“……Yes, you.”

“Then I’ll hear your answer first. Why you called me not just once, but four times. If you give some absurd answer like ‘because you were an experienced hire and thus more useful,’ I’ll hit you.”

“……Aren’t you getting angry?”

Eclipse fidgeted her hands between her thighs, and asked with a face where she peeked up with her eyes.

“Not right now. I haven’t properly heard the reason yet, have I? If it’s a reason I find utterly unacceptable, then it won’t be too late to get angry starting from then, will it?”

Who knew? Perhaps there was an inevitable reason to summon me here four times. If there was no particular reason, then I’d have a showdown with the goddess.

“Yes. I understand.”

Eclipse opened her mouth with a resolute expression.

First, she began with her past actions, the circumstances of the World-Eater’s birth, and the fact that by the time she realized it, it was already too late.

In that process, twisted beings that gnawed at the world came into existence, and also the fact that to deal with these twisted beings, she dragged souls who had died in accidents from other dimensions and granted them immortality.

Up to this point, it was somewhat understandable. If I had died prematurely in an accident, then, one way or another, it meant giving a second chance to someone who should have already died.

Reincarnating in another world after death is a cliché so commonly used that it’s represented by tropes like the ‘isekai truck’. So, it wasn’t strange at all.

“What about next? Even if Brightest Darkness 1 is understandable, what happened after that?”

“You accepted the mission of immortality and, after continuing your journey, burned your own body to protect the world. However, having experienced countless deaths, your soul was utterly shattered.”

That was a fact the lizard had told me. I gestured for her to continue.

“I tried to transfer your soul to a new body and send you back to your original dimension with that new body, but…… the state of your soul was so severe that it couldn’t withstand interdimensional travel.”

“How severe was it?”

“So much so that even if I moved your body using teleportation, your soul could shatter from the impact.”

“……”

Teleportation, isn’t that what the Popes, Minerva, and Nyx use? If her soul could shatter just by trying to move her body with that, then her condition must have been truly severe.

“So I abandoned the plan and sealed the area where your body lay. So that you could heal your soul yourself while you slept. Once your soul was healed enough to withstand interdimensional travel, I planned to send you back to your original world.”

“Couldn’t the goddess-nim heal it directly? It makes no sense that someone who creates worlds can’t fix a single human soul.”

“Because the types of abilities are different. Even in the world you were in, while you can float hundreds of tons of steel into the sky and build skyscrapers hundreds of meters tall, don’t you still use an umbrella to avoid the rain? My abilities are the same. You can’t compare them as if measuring with a ruler.”

“……”

It was a strange explanation that seemed both unbelievable and yet understandable.

“Then how did I wake up during the Brightest Darkness 2 timeline?”

“It was because of your instincts.”

“Instincts?”

“Yes.”

The goddess nodded again.

“Your utterly shattered soul was somewhat restored while you rested within the seal, but even that had its limits. That’s why you instinctively broke through the seal and awoke.”

“Are you saying the goddess-nim’s own seal was broken? By me?”

“Because I made it so that while one couldn’t enter from the outside, it was easy to leave from the inside. If you couldn’t easily leave from the inside either, it would have been tantamount to me imprisoning you. I didn’t want to do such a thing.”

No wonder the starting location of Brightest Darkness 2 was some isolated house. So that was the seal the goddess had placed.

“Upon awakening, you massacred the twisted beings that had begun to proliferate once more due to the strengthening of its power. And you continued to heal by absorbing their power and adding it to your own soul.”

The story of Brightest Darkness 2 wasn’t like that, I thought.

Indeed, since the original story couldn’t be released as is, some appropriate adaptation would have been necessary when making it into a game. Even in Brightest Darkness 4 alone, the World-Eater’s position is completely different.

“After patching together the world shattered by the rifts, and judging that your soul was sufficiently reinforced, you returned to the sealed location and fell into a deep sleep once more.”

“Couldn’t you have sent me back then?”

“If I had interfered while you were directly healing your soul, it was highly likely that I would have complicated the situation even further. More than anything……”

Eclipse trailed off.

“At that time, the rate at which the world was being taken was beginning to accelerate in earnest. It might have been possible if the situation allowed for no interference, but it was difficult to perform the delicate task of touching a human soul while fully resisting it.”

“So, in the end, you weren’t capable, were you?”

“……Yes.”

The goddess affirmed with a dejected expression.

‘Then I wasn’t even summoned four times in the first place, was I?’

I saw the ending of Brightest Darkness 1, but my soul was too damaged to return, and after some sleep, I woke up and recovered my soul, effectively seeing the ending of Brightest Darkness 2 in the process.

Even after seeing the ending of Brightest Darkness 2, I couldn’t return again because I was fully healing my soul, so naturally, rolling around in the world of Brightest Darkness 3 also didn’t count as being summoned a third time.

I was just unable to go home.

‘……Now that I think about it, Nyx didn’t say I was summoned multiple times either.’

She merely said that I was the protagonist of Brightest Darkness 3. And at the end, she only subtly hinted that I was the protagonist of Brightest Darkness 1 and 2.

It was all just my own premature assumption.

“After a very long time, your soul was perfectly healed. But before I could even send you back to your original world…… an unexpected incident occurred.”

While I was silenced by shock, the goddess continued speaking.

“……It must be the Immortal Centipede.”

“That’s right. The Immortal Centipede broke the seal, encroached upon your body, and even bound your soul to that world.”

“Didn’t you say you made it so that it couldn’t be easily broken from the outside when you created it?”

“Because more than half of my power was taken. Due to that, the seal also weakened along with it. That’s also why the rifts you had completely closed began to reappear.”

Her golden and silver odd eyes, filled with a faint wistfulness, turned towards me.

“However, because you had absorbed countless twisted beings, your soul’s quality was extremely elevated, and you were able to prevent the erosion of your soul by the Immortal Centipede.”

I was inwardly surprised by the fact that there was a separate reason why the protagonist of Brightest Darkness 3 remained conscious even after their body was taken. I had just thought it was ‘because they were the game’s protagonist’.

“Wait. Then couldn’t the goddess-nim have used Requiem to kill that lizard bastard?”

“Because I don’t have what you would call an essence or a soul. Therefore, I cannot use Requiem, a concept that touches upon essence. Just as a fish cannot understand the concept of moving legs, and a human cannot understand the concept of moving fins, so too is it with me.”

Then, conversely, doesn’t that mean the World-Eater, whose essence was half-severed by Requiem, could use it? A sudden chill ran down my spine.

“You used Requiem on your own body to deal with the last Immortal Centipede, and I was barely able to gather what remained unbroken and send you back to your original world. In that process, all your memories of this world sank deep into your mind.”

“Something’s strange. That guy said the goddess-nim ruined me, he said……”

I said up to that point, then closed my mouth. It was because I felt like I understood what had happened. Eclipse, perhaps guessing what I was about to say next, wore a slightly angry expression.

“It’s a cheap wordplay. Because it’s true that you were broken when you first received the mission of immortality. Though not in the second and third instances.”

It was what you’d call a way of speaking that ‘didn’t lie’. He was a cunning bastard to the very end.

“I’m sorry, you. Because of my incompetence… Because of my lack of power, I made you suffer so much. I truly have nothing to say to you……”

Having finished her apology, Eclipse closed her mouth, glancing at me as if she had said all she needed to say, and I quietly organized my thoughts. A cool night breeze blew in from outside the window, clearing my head.

It was absolutely not the case that Eclipse had used me as a pawn four times, as I had thought until now.

In reality, she had only summoned me twice in total: once at the beginning and once now. Even while I was in this world, she had tried somehow to send me back to my original world.

It’s just that all her attempts failed because she lacked the ability.

‘……Is Brightest Darkness 4 all that’s left?’

I inwardly understood the reason why the timeline of Brightest Darkness 1 through 3 was connected, and turned my attention to the next question. The question of why I was summoned again.

And she even went as far as to use the grand bait of a CBT for Brightest Darkness 5.

“……Before I organize my thoughts, I have one more question.”

“Yes, you. What is it?”

“What in the damn world was that blue steam locomotive?”