Ch.234Chapter 234. The Prophet’s Decision

“It’s dangerous for you to be here.”

I took a careful step toward her.

Worried that I might ruin something in my joy at finding her.

I cautiously closed the distance between us, concerned about any obstacles that might prevent me from taking her away.

“Monsters are swarming everywhere. Even the Demon Lord’s army is targeting this place…”

No, hadn’t I already detected many such troublemakers before coming here?

Everything in this land was telling me not to take her away.

If I allowed such disasters to continue unchecked, even the group I had barely managed to keep together might collapse.

“Danger will soon come to this place too.”

Despite that, I wanted to take her with me.

This reality where the sky was splitting open and monsters swarmed everywhere…

It constantly compelled me not to leave her isolated at the center of it all.

“So…”

“I know.”

Yet she stubbornly remained at her post.

Still sitting with her back turned to me, only her resolute voice aimed at me escaped her lips.

“That everything in this place will soon become barren wasteland, and that the survivors will spread throughout the world as an even greater calamity… I’ve already foreseen it.”

“…Irie.”

“Everything that exists in this land will become an uncontrollable danger later. Even if there are survivors, their advance will never stop until the last person remains.”

My footsteps had stopped and my breathing had stiffened.

In the silence that formed, she looked up at the light-emitting sky and spoke in a light voice.

“If those calamities perish along with this land… the few who escape can rebuild civilization stably, and eventually regain peace in the distant future.”

But why?

Why did the atmosphere feel colder than ever, despite feeling weightless?

“Your presence would make that task impossible.”

Her hands rested on her neatly gathered knees.

Taking a composed posture that somehow seemed dignified, she soon issued a warning to me.

“So please go back.”

Without even meeting my eyes, just a mechanical attitude focused solely on her mission.

“You need to be the center of the coming era.”

That was the entirety of the answer I received after coming here at great risk.

As if she was already prepared for what would come next.

“…It’s not just one.”

But that too must be an act.

With a divine being scheduled to descend upon this land, a human who foresaw that future couldn’t possibly remain completely cold.

“It wasn’t just one. The outer gods trying to interfere with this world… weren’t just your ancestor.”

To lead her away, I tried to explain the possibility I had considered before coming here.

That the era of nothingness the prince desired wouldn’t unfold just from the God of Destruction descending to this land and perishing along with the Demon Lord.

“Before coming here, I saw the past when a country was destroyed. People grotesquely transformed by a plague caused by outer god interference… and another outer god that turned them into the dead and erased them without a trace.”

Evidence that multiple outer gods had contacted this world.

Something I could be certain of just by reflecting on the path I had traveled.

“It might not end just by summoning the God of Destruction. If that’s really the case, your sacrifice here…!”

“Indeed.”

Before my desperate request could finish, she began stroking the crystal orb resting on her knees.

“You’re truly acting exactly as I prophesied. From beginning to end.”

“…Irie.”

“Hyoseong.”

She already knew this situation would come.

In the silence that formed with this realization, she asked a question to me as I grew tense.

“You said the outer gods interfering with this world aren’t just one, right?”

I couldn’t bring myself to cut off her words.

I knew I couldn’t take her away just by being forceful. To persuade her, I would need to listen to everything she said and then present valid reasons.

“Yes, that’s right…”

“Then do you know what purpose they have in interfering with this world?”

But what came back to me was something I hadn’t known until now.

As I fell silent at her question, she began putting strength into the hand stroking the crystal orb.

“It’s not just this world.”

With a flash of light, images began to appear all around us…

Like holograms, they were mostly scenes preserved from some moment in the past, like photographs or murals.

I could tell because they showed humans encountering parts of outer gods’ bodies, just like what I had seen in ancient Briton.

Following that, people gathered around something that had fallen from the sky, and others who awakened power by directly consuming it.

“Including the world you were in, there has been intervention by great beings we weren’t aware of in all places where intelligent life exists in the universe.”

I immediately understood. These images depicted the past when outer gods intervened in this world.

And she knew more about the outer gods than what I had discovered.

“And their reasons are all different. For those who traverse the universe, the planets we live on are, metaphorically speaking, like ant colonies found along a path.”

“…Ant colonies?”

“Anyone can easily imagine it without explanation. The difference between how a child and an adult react when they find an ant colony.”

Yes, anyone would have done it at least once.

Pressing to death the ants digging holes in the corner of a playground, or pouring water into their nests—disregarding life as a pastime.

But that’s just a phase.

Adults who have been taught guilt and responsibility either feel disgust at such actions or respond with indifference, focused on their own circumstances.

“The differences aren’t just between adults and children. A researcher would observe, while someone seeking food would feed them, wait for them to grow, and then intervene at a set time to harvest. Some might find meaning in pure observation.”

Beyond that, each outer god wants to interfere with this world for their own reasons…

Though these are just examples, I could immediately understand from what perspective they viewed this world.

Just as humans can exert absolute power over an ant colony, they too believe they can manipulate this world at will according to their intentions.

“And to someone else, an ant colony ecosystem might be considered worth preserving in itself.”

Conversely, there would be those who aim to protect it.

Having revealed this, she waved her hand in front of the crystal orb, and the screens floating around began to be consumed by darkness.

“Long ago, there was a being who gathered cosmic dust and constructed a planet.”

In that darkness, a flash of light gradually began to appear, and in the place where that light disappeared, land, sky, and sea expanded their territories…

And life slowly began to be born between them.

“Whether their purpose was a mission or a pastime… whatever it was, in our terms, they would rightfully be called a creator god.”

As time passed, the evolving life forms gradually became plants and beasts, eventually spreading throughout the entire world.

And among them, sporadically exerting their presence, were enormous life forms. Transcendent beings that could rightfully be called small worlds in themselves.

“In the process of cultivating the world, this creator god also created those who would help with their work. A tragic race born with the purpose of nurturing the world, but losing their sense of mission over generations and disappearing after living empty lives…”

Dragons.

Beings who directly inherited the power of the planet’s creator and contributed to forming parts of the world.

“And with the disappearance of those called parts of the world, cracks in the world’s order were inevitable.”

As these beings turned to dust and disappeared across the world, intelligent beings gradually began to take their place.

At first cooperating and expanding their influence, at some point they began to oppose each other, and finally came to compete for supremacy…

In the chaos that formed, they remained unaware that beings they couldn’t perceive were interfering.

“…The outer gods recognize the existence of this world through such cracks and interfere with it. Each with inconsistent purposes, without anyone’s awareness.”

With malice, or as a pastime, or for their own benefit…

Regardless of the weight or morality of their purposes, their influence would never be light.

Before these enormous beings traversing the universe, those living in this world would be no more than insects swarming in an ant colony.

“The God of Destruction…”

Then must a world receiving such interference simply be destroyed?

“My distant ancestor was born with the calling of destruction to organize worlds that were breaking down.”

No, if someone recognized it was breaking down, there would naturally be those who wanted to protect it.

Irie was revealing that her ancestor was a being with such a role.

“Why they awakened such a mission is something we humans cannot know. Whether it’s because of cosmic flow, or because they received orders from a being so distant that even I, who inherited their blood, cannot perceive…”

From a single world to the universe.

Despite uttering a story that was increasingly beyond human comprehension, her attitude showed not even a tremor.

She simply quietly handled the power emitted by the crystal orb, wanting only to convey what she knew.

“But what’s important is that they received the role of restoring broken worlds. Using the power to exclude things that shouldn’t exist in this world due to other outer gods’ interventions.”

“And they always wondered. Their only calling was destruction… There was no clear standard for how much they should intervene to restore the balance of the world they were meant to protect.”

A massive crater in the middle of a planet… followed by a half-destroyed planet, and scenes of it scattering like dust.

“Is proper destruction completely erasing places where outer gods have intervened? Or focusing on places they’ve identified…?”

Following these traces of anguish appeared a meteor that split a planet’s atmosphere and landed on the ground.

“Thousands of years ago, they descended to this land to determine that.”

When the meteor split open, what appeared was a woman who looked like the humans who discovered it.

None other than a woman who looked exactly like the Irie I knew…

The moment her distant ancestor, as she called them, descended to this land was being shown before me.

“They thought if they judged the world from the same perspective as the people living in it, they could establish some standard for their mission.”

This woman took the hand of the man who discovered her and began living a human life, starting with him.

To directly find out what she should destroy and how far that range should extend.

“And they finally reached a conclusion.”

After this process, she ascended and disappeared from this world.

Leaving only a child who inherited her blood in the arms of her companion who had stayed by her side until the end.

“That truly, it should be the natives living in that world, not themselves looking down on the world, who determine what shouldn’t exist in that world.”

That child grew into an adult, bonded with another, and had children…

This repeated over thousands of years as they grew into a clan, until at some point they disappeared, leaving only one person.

“The Haven clan was created for this purpose. Descendants with the mission of conveying the ideal future they dream of on behalf of this world, adding to their judgment.”

At the end of the continuous images, one person took form, identical to the one before me.

“And after a long time, I, Irie Haven, inherited their mission.”

With this realization, the light disappeared, and the world’s appearance began to emerge again in its place.

A crimson sky and flashes bursting through the cracks.

And beneath it, beings who had inherited concepts from other worlds, waging bloody wars, destroying and burning.

“As a member of this world, with the calling to determine what should be protected and what should be excluded… the coordinate for the ‘purification’ to come.”

I could feel it just by looking down at that scene.

Those things should never exist in this world.

Having foreseen this, she had taken her position here and planned to perish with them.

“…Hyoseong.”

As I realized this, she called to me.

“I want the world you live in to be whole.”

The decisive reason for this decision, along with her calling, was because of her direct bond with her companion.

“As much as I love you, that feeling grows stronger… I feel my determination growing that I shouldn’t run away from my innate mission.”

Love. The most intense emotion humans feel.

Therefore, she felt desperation, and through it awakened a calling that could be fueled by that emotion.

“But Irie can’t be there.”

Realizing that this emotion was the same, I felt resentment toward her for the first time in this moment.

Unlike me, who was prepared to abandon principles because of love.

She was trying to abandon her own happiness because she felt love.

“You’ve become part of my world, but you’re trying to leave my side and distort my world.”

What does it matter that she’s a descendant of the God of Destruction, or what the flow of the universe is?

According to her, we are nothing but cosmic dust to them.

Why must we, who are mere dust, bear the consequences of what they’ve done and sacrifice ourselves to solve those problems?

“Why, when we love each other… do you say we can’t be together?”

Why must my companion be the one foreseen for such a future?

With such resentment, my halted footsteps began to move again, and soon my arms began to embrace her from behind.

“Hyoseong.”

“No.”

“Let me go, Hyoseong.”

“I can’t. It’s impossible…!”

Even as the sky collapsed and blood storms raged across the land.

Even as everything in this world taught me I must leave her, my hands couldn’t let go of her.

“When I can hold you like this right now…”

Just embracing her made me feel my heart pounding fiercely.

“When I know you’re afraid, how can you tell me to leave alone?”

A future where I would never feel that pounding again seemed more frightening than dying here.

“…If you don’t go back, the people we’ve gathered will scatter like this empire.”

Despite having reason to find me frustrating or angry, Irie quietly raised her hand and spoke in a pitying voice.

At the touch of her hand on my chest, I could clearly feel her heart pounding.

As if teaching me that she too feared the future to come and felt intense feelings for me.

“There are people who remember me.”

I felt my mind gradually becoming buried in this desperate compromise she uttered, unable to ignore such emotions.

“Even if I disappear, there are people who remember me. People who will follow in my footsteps…”

That I don’t necessarily need to fulfill her chosen mission as a savior.

That what I’ve accomplished so far might be enough—a thought reinforced by the warmth I felt in my arms at this moment.

“So, if we can’t go together, let’s just stay here together…”

“Then what about our child?”

At those words, my body trembled.

As the warmth I felt rapidly cooled and my body stiffened, her hand took mine and pulled it toward her stomach.

“Are you saying our child should share that fate too?”

“Irie, your stomach…”

The stomach that had been swollen when I last saw it was now completely empty.

Feeling momentarily dazed, my lips stiffened, and then the corners began to turn upward.

“Ah, yes. You’ve already given birth… Our child has already been born? While I was gone, safely…”

“…”

That can’t be right.

As I tried to convince myself that everything must be fine, she maintained her silence.

“…Irie.”

I asked her with difficulty, my throat tightening.

“Where is our child?”

****

-Waaah!!

A sudden cry erupted just as they barely returned to the ark.

Garam’s gaze, noticing this, began to turn toward the woman he had brought.

“The, the housekeeper’s child…”

Vivian Platonis.

A person her family, whom she had parted with before coming here, cherished as much as her own companion.

“I just remembered. When riots broke out in the imperial city and it was dangerous… The child needed to be protected in a safe place.”

As the baby in her arms began to cry, the attention of everyone around focused on them.

A newborn in terrible condition, covered in blood and amniotic fluid, with torn organs.

Despite this, Vivian trembled as she held the breathing child, struggling to organize her confused thoughts.

“So, she entrusted it to me. Said it was the housekeeper’s child… isolated in a space where time had stopped, and told me to take it out when we reached a safe place.”

To ensure the child’s complete safety by reading the possibility that she would definitely survive and join them, and by entrusting the child to her…

No, that was just the surface reason.

“…Irie.”

Tashian, belatedly guessing her intention, looked up at the top of the distant imperial city with mixed feelings.

“Did you really have no choice but to do this?”

****

“…Hyoseong.”

Irie gradually smiled before me as I froze upon hearing the news.

The joy felt from that smile was certainly no illusion.

“If both of us remain here, that child will have to live alone.”

“That child is someone we both should love more than each other.”

“One of us must stay by that child’s side, who has to live in this kind of world.”

She, as a prophet, must have known long ago that a human who chose selfishness over principles would have no choice but to accept these words.