episode_0084

Noah watched Jolmi being moved to the duty room, then followed Jolmi out of the conference room.

“Just a moment, I’ll check on Jolmi’s condition and be back. Everyone is exchanging greetings.”

After Noah left, the people remaining in the conference room exchanged greetings and then scattered for their own tasks.

“Come to think of it, Pia hasn’t come?”

Walking down a corridor without windows, Lian thought about Pia’s absence and then the scene came to mind.

“Ugh… I feel so embarrassed. I really should apologize when I see her next. Oh, could it be that she’s avoiding me because of that incident?”

As Lian pondered over Pia’s absence and the incident where Pia had made a mistake in the corridor, Pia, the subject of his thoughts, was in a dark room with all the lights turned off.

“Lian, Lian has returned. He really has returned.”

She knelt with her hands clasped as if in prayer, murmuring in a voice full of joy.

Her eyes flashed dangerously, “Ah, finally my salvation…”

Due to past trauma and the cruel magic of the dark wizard, which had shattered her mind, Pia had attached the existence of “Lian” to herself, and she held blind emotions towards Lian.

Emotions that went beyond the scope of ordinary affection or love.

“Worship”

“Dedication”

“Adoration”

Lian had become a divine existence to Pia. The belief, which was more than enough to be called madness, was directly influencing Pia.

The ring on Lian’s left hand, which he was half-forgetting, began to slowly shine and draw geometric patterns, much like roots spreading from a plant. It was a very slow but definite change.

However, Lian was unaware of this.

“Lian, Lord Lian…”

As Piya’s fanaticism deepened, it was a problem that would eventually be noticed, but it couldn’t be known right away. In other words, it meant that there was no one who could stop Piya’s fanaticism.

In this way, without Lian knowing, the seed of ‘religion’ was planted.

***

“Wow, traitor!”

Can I be this calm? The next day, when I had spent an uneasy day, a man who had stumbled over a banana peel and been called a “traitor” was revealed.

The nest was overturned. It was so shocking that a traitor was in a position that only truly trustworthy people could hold.

Afterward, there was a large-scale purge within the organization.

It was not difficult to identify ordinary members, but it was difficult to find a traitor among the leaders.

I joined the search for the traitor because I claimed to have a gut feeling about finding the traitor. Fortunately, we could not find any more traitors among the leaders.

“This isn’t omnipotent.”

If the opponent does not threaten me, it won’t activate, so there might still be a hidden traitor. Noah said that was enough, but I still felt uneasy.

“If it’s a threat enough to bring down the organization, then the power will work.”

Recalling the Debiatan, which was no different from hell, I pushed aside my anxiety.

Once the traitor issue was resolved, a peaceful daily life awaited me. Everyone seemed busy going somewhere, but there were no injured people coming back.

“If I ever need to go to the temple, let’s ask for healing.”

While I was rolling around in the arena, the children suffered small and big wounds. Someone lost a finger, and someone else got a wound that made them limp for the rest of their lives.

Fortunately, the wounds were not irreparable, so with the miraculous power called “healing,” they were supposed to recover as before if used properly. I started saving money for that day.

…Actually, I hardly left the headquarters building, so there wasn’t really anywhere to spend money.

I could go out, but I had to take at least 10 members with me to get permission to go out.

Capturing 10 Nest members who had taken over the western area and wandering around with them was uncomfortable for any country, so they didn’t leave the headquarters.

In a word… it was boring!

“Ugh… The driver coming to pick up Iris is still far from reaching Cardisan.”

However, it wasn’t as simple as shouting to escape Cardisan. Nest was settling down in Cardisan faithfully. Perhaps they didn’t know that this might be the safest state right now. The evidence was my boredom.

Jess left his seat to receive education similar to other children, and Iris left to learn swordsmanship from Noah.

There was no one to play with!

“What should I do… Huh?”

Lying on the sofa, staring blankly into the room, something sparkling caught my eye. Getting up from the sofa and approaching the sparkling thing, there was a black gem-like fragment on the floor.

“Oh? This…”

It was the gem fragment I saw in the Nest restaurant’s underground warehouse.

“It should have been in the bag, right?”

Picking up the gem with doubt and turning it around.

Ouch.

“Oops.”

My finger was cut by the edge of the gem, and blood began to trickle down. As the blood touched the gem.

“…Huh?”

My vision blurred in an instant, and my ears began to feel stuffy. The moment I felt my body swaying, everything in front of my eyes turned black.

***

“Ugh…”

I opened my eyes, holding my throbbing head.

“Where is this…”

A hazy, descending white fog, a ground made of something unidentifiable. I was lying alone in a place where nothing was visible.

I got up from my seat, looking around. Nothing was visible because of the fog.

“Noah? Iris? Jess?”

I called the children’s names randomly, but there was no answer.

“Is it because of that gem that you moved?”

Thinking so, he scratched the back of his head.

“Hmm, first -… Gargantua.”

As he muttered to himself, a bright impact erupted from the back of his hand, summoning the dark sword.

“Where are the enemies!?”

“Oh, there are no enemies, but I felt like we were moving to a dangerous place.”

“A dangerous place… seems like a place suitable for me!”

The mention of a dangerous place meant that fearsome enemies might appear, and he chattered away. Listening to the sword’s chatter with one ear and letting it out with the other, he began to move forward.

***

There was someone quietly watching Rian. It looked as if the darkness had gathered, emitting a thin woman’s voice.

“Hehehe, foolish Asterias. You probably didn’t expect to lose the only lion.”

Asterias was the name of the bird accompanying the god of the dark fantasy world and the god of the comic world. He thought of Rian as the last lion left in the world that was destroying him.

This was because of the mark of the god engraved on Rian’s left hand. The trace of the god, carved to seek help from the temple, ironically attracted the foreign god, and the foreign god naturally regarded Rian as something like a saint or a lion of the god.

“Walking through the infinite mist, you’ll eventually go crazy. Hehehe!”

As he imagined Rian, who would eventually go mad walking with the fog, he couldn’t contain his ecstasy and shivered.

And so, a day passed.

“…Indeed, he’s a lion of the god. Other things would have gone mad already.”

Seeing Rian, who seemed to have no mental abnormalities, he sighed softly.

And so, a day passed.

“Ha, if there was something with this level of mental strength, it should have been mine. Tsk, what a waste.”

Seeing Rian, who had been walking for two whole days, he was greatly impressed.

And so, a day passed.

“…Is it a dragon? Did the dragon polymorph? No, no. Dragons wouldn’t carry something like a dark sword…”

Watching Lian walking in the same space for three days, it began to deny reality.

So a day passed.

“What on earth is that? Why, why isn’t it going crazy yet? Why?”

It began to feel confused by the unbelievable reality.

So another day passed.

“….”

Seeing the endlessly repeating scene, it remained silent with a blank face.

So another day passed.

“….? ….? …?”

Countless hooks came to mind. It started referring to Lian as ‘something’ rather than a human from this point on.

So “another” day passed.

“….Uh..?”

It stared blankly at Lian, then realized its existence was wavering.

The fog’s tomb, existing to shatter the intellect of sentient beings, was a place where an ordinary sentient being would go insane within a day, but it had never stayed this long before.

“Ugh, can’t…can’t…”

Being a sentient being, it could lose its mind at any moment, and that fact was proven.

It wanted to close off the space and escape this dreadful place immediately, but it couldn’t as it wished.

“Six, twenty-six?”

It finally realized that control over this space had shifted to something else.

“Oh.”

It realized that in this misty world, there couldn’t be a Tyrannosaurus or a two-legged elephant, nor a girl handing out flyers.

From the moment Lian entered this space, the fog’s tomb began to erode into a comedy filter, and now it had become Lian’s world.

Because of that, I came to think that those strange things (the girl who hands out flyers) were originally part of the foggy grave. It’s because the world itself is twisted.

“Ah, eye drops!”

Feeling a sense of crisis, it began to fly towards where Lian was. Lian looked up and gazed at “it.”

The dark lump that was ominously trembling suddenly turned into… a meteor shower and crashed onto the ground.

Kwaaaah!

And then the world was destroyed? It was a perfect gag-like ending.

And Lian woke up from the dog dream.

“…It’s been a long time since I had a dog dream… Hmph.”

Today, for some reason, as I raised my heavy eyelids, my throat felt too scratchy. As I cleared my throat and looked around, I was on the bed.