The Outer God Needs Warmth – Chapter 1

I suddenly came to my senses.

With the drowsiness of waking up from sleep, the surroundings feel cold.

But when I open my eyes, I can’t see anything in front of me.

I try to move my body, but it doesn’t move.

No, it’s not just that it won’t move – I can’t feel my body at all.

What is this?

I only feel a disconcerting floating sensation and a chilling coldness.

When I try to shout, only a stifling feeling persists without any sound coming out.

Let’s think carefully.

Just until a moment ago, I had come home after working for a long time and opened a bottle of alcohol. So logically speaking, I must have fallen asleep after drinking.

I fell asleep drunk. It’s strangely cold. So is it still early morning?

Am I experiencing sleep paralysis then?

No matter how I think about it, that’s the only explanation.

My hands and feet won’t move and my eyes won’t open – what else could it be if not sleep paralysis?

But there’s an unpleasant chill along with a floating sensation. I only feel like I’m hovering in midair with a strange coldness penetrating deep into my bones.

Is this a dream?

If so, I’ll wake up eventually.

So I waited.

But I couldn’t wake up.

I cursed, I swore, I prayed, I tried everything I could.

But I couldn’t wake up.

I waited until the coldness slowly seeped in and I could no longer remember what warmth felt like.

But I couldn’t wake up.

No matter how long I waited, no matter how much I silently screamed, there was no change in this cold darkness of nothingness.

I waited.

I stayed still.

I couldn’t move in the first place anyway.

Then suddenly I noticed a light.

A bright light and warm heat.

I knew as soon as I saw it. There’s something I want over there.

But I had forgotten.

That I couldn’t move.

That I could only look up motionlessly.

The lights increased one by one.

What I want is right there, but I had to just look up at it.

What my heart desires is up there, what I can’t give up is up there, what I must have is up there.

Now the lights fill the sky above like stars.

Endlessly looking up from beneath the surface, I keep replaying memories from when I was a person – memories that now seem like from so long ago, yet remain painfully vivid in my mind.

I try to imagine the warmth that I can no longer even remember traces of, like a photograph worn out from being looked at too much.

Of course, it’s not like I can actually feel it.

Then one light fell.

Downwards.

Downwards.

Downwards.

Plop.

Past the surface and below.

Finally.

The light illuminated this deep sea, and only then did I barely realize that this wasn’t actually a sea.

Above the surface, beyond that sky.

I know that the shining stars aren’t really shining stars.

There was no sea.

I was the sea.

The lights are lives dying while screaming their last breaths.

Lives that died cursing the world, full of resentment and despair.

As I rolled it around, I received a very faint warmth for the first time in a long while.

It was sweet and delicious, like eating ice cream after only having rice for weeks.

If I didn’t know anything, this would have been enough.

Unfortunately, I know this is a bitter taste.

Because of bad luck, because the world abandoned them, because they did bad things, because the country is bad. Only those who hated someone after falling from their social class, or those who despaired of everything, came to me one by one.

That’s how only lives that have fallen to rock bottom come to me.

As I tasted that light bit by bit, I could see how that life had lived.

Of course, that time is extremely brief, and soon after I suck it in, it disappears.

Then I had to wait a very long time again until the next light fell.

One, two, three, four.

As I was waiting for them to fall intermittently, at some point they stopped falling to me for a very long time.

A very long time.

Since I have no sense of time, I don’t know if it really took a long time, or if not much time had actually passed!

So I decided to reach out to the light that had come close to the surface.

And I touched it.

Huh? That’s strange.

When did I have hands?

No matter how much I think about it, I don’t remember ever being able to move anything like this?

But the desire to feel warmth after so long was greater than those questions.

My hand slowly flowed and touched the light. Of course, it wasn’t easy to go above the surface. Although I had hands, I could only ripple as if there was an invisible wall.

But very slowly, and thinly, I compressed myself like condensing the sea that I am, making myself like a needle, going up, up, up.

And a hand so thin as to be almost invisible compared to the light rose up and touched the light floating just above the surface.

It wasn’t a dead life like before, but a life still living.

A vessel cracked and about to break from despair, but with much warmer heat!

That light grasped my hand.

The life with its own unfortunate past grabbed my hand tightly, asking me to save it.

But I had nothing to give.

What should I do when I have nothing I can do?

Then I saw my thin hand that had crossed over the surface.

Should I give more of myself?

As I pushed myself up, I hit an invisible wall that felt as solid as a real wall, but because of my hand that had pierced through and gone up, I rose upwards.

The light is rejoicing.

It laughs saying an immense power has entered its hand, then soon stops laughing.

And it screams.

Stop. Stop.

But I can’t stop. Because I was just staying still since I couldn’t push up any further.

Bang!

The light shone explosively, then turned black and dyed the surrounding lights equally black. And along with that light itself, other stars far away also fell to me.

Oh.

This is like the moment when primitive humans discovered fire.

What happened?

When I licked the murky fragments, I found that the creature I had given power to had exploded. And in the process, it dragged along other creatures living peacefully. They died, caught up in the explosion. When they die like that, they fall to me.

As a new classification emerged, I could form a few hypotheses.

I seem to be some kind of mass of power. Although I wasn’t like this from the beginning, since I still remember every detail of my memories from when I was once human, even if those memories have now faded.

I guess I was reincarnated or something like that.

But warmth is more important than such things.

This place is full of coldness, comparable to carelessly going out in thin clothes in the middle of winter and standing in line outside for a very long time.

One small light feels like holding a hand warmer in my hand that goes out in 30 minutes.

So I want more warmth.

I would have no regrets if it became hot enough. I want to get rid of this coldness that has seeped deep into my bones.

So I think about how I can get more warmth like this.

The recent explosion.

The vessel that could contain power was a mess to begin with. It’s only natural that it would break if I, like water, was poured into such a vessel.

But the fact that I, having flowed out like that, swept through the surroundings is a very important factor.

Especially the fact that all the lives caught up and killed in the process fell to me.

They were lights quite high up, but weren’t they all living fairly well in their own ways? They had parents, children, or were envisioning a brilliant future, or accumulating wealth by doing slightly bad things.

It has nothing to do with good and evil.

Things like the will to move towards the future, happiness, joy – in short, if they’re living well, they seem to be up there in that high place. Of course, their light is brighter and they have more warmth.

But unlike the height of the lights that I look up at from the bottom, in the world where they lived, they were physically living close to each other.

So when the explosion happened, they got caught up in it and died, and if they touched me even a little, they fell to me. Plop, into the sea that is me.

This can be deduced like this:

If I reach out to a light close to the surface and push myself up to burst it, the light multiplies!

Then it’s the next step. If I create the same result again, I can get more warmth. I decided to try it right away.

As the lights increase, the lights coming closer below the surface are gradually increasing.

The place where I lived was also drowning in despair. The country where I lived had fewer lives born than during world wars or plagues. A world where death surpassed birth.

Thinking about that, more people will despair. As the lights increase, more lights will approach me.

To me.

As they came close to the surface that is me like that, I reached out my hand. When my hand touched a light, I pushed myself in, and without fail, it exploded every time.

Each time, they fell with a patter.

But that was too sporadic. And the amount that fell was small.

Then suddenly it occurred to me.

A black magician making a contract with an evil demon. Something like that.

There were even games about catching demons once, and that kind of thing is very common.

Give power, and let them act as they please.

Since that power is soon me, lives that die because of it are sure to fall to me!

Hmm!

Let’s do it right away!

So I raised it very gently.

Very gently.

Slowly.

Little by little.

Minutely…

Ah.

It all burst.

Lives full of despair have vessels that are in tatters. The lights shining brightly far away are solid, but the lights that have fallen down here could disappear at any moment.

Though they are sweet when licked.

Those who died sudden, violent deaths were even sweeter, so the higher up they are, the more likely they are to have more warmth.

Warmth is sweetness.

So I examined all the countless stars sitting above the endless sea. After all, I have infinite time, and it’s not like I’ll die from lack of warmth.

Of course, I hunted in between when I felt like I was going to die, but I don’t want to be satisfied with just that.

Lend power, eat those who die from that power like rent, and when they die, take it all back.

Unearned income!

I want to hunt automatically, not have to hunt like I do now.

This is how intelligence should be used.

But even pushing in just a little power makes them all burst, so what can I do about this?

I was pondering like that one day.

A thin thread came down from the high sky and touched me.

The other end of the thread was connected to a light high up there. Just as I thought I was being pulled, the moment I grabbed the thread, I was instantly sucked up to that high place.

Huh?

I remember a similar situation.

Don’t tell me, I got hooked?

And for the first time in a long while, it was very noisy around me. It’s so noisy inside and outside that my head hurts. The sensation of blood flowing, heart beating, and all the cells inside moving is really irritating.

I opened my eyes for the first time in a very long time.

I see a pitch-black architectural structure in a style I’ve never seen before. And in front of me, people covered in dark cloth are bowing their heads.

“Oh being from the other side of the dark dimension, full of malice and hunger, waiting for us to despair and fall while starving! The entity of the void has finally descended to this land from the dark and gloomy world!”

I don’t know the language, but I can hear and understand it.

Then it’s a language I know.

I looked down while listening to the sound. I’m sitting naked on a hard stone chair with pale skin. But bright red blood is flowing down my body to the floor.

I can see breasts protruding to some extent, but there’s a hole in the center as if drilled out, with severed blood vessels sticking out.

When I lift my terribly heavy hand and bring it in front of my eyes, I see a hand that must have been very small and soft. Though it’s cold now.

The prostrated people around are chanting spells. It’s a rather simple spell saying ‘Please let me live well,’ but since the rhythm is different from the person speaking in front, that must be the spell.

It’s nice that no interpretation is needed.

Anyway.

A gloomy building, people covered in dark cloth, a girl with her heart ripped out, and me summoned inside.

These are heretics.

“Oh god, hear our wishes! Oh god, hear our wishes! Oh Lord Cruxshibal!”

No, my name isn’t that kind of shitty name.