Book 10 Chapter 8
To be honest, I was seriously considering the possibility we wouldn’t be able to return to Japan.
“Absolute Noah really scares me sometimes.”
“Don’t be silly, Satori. It’s only a transport plane.”
Yeah, but most people couldn’t summon a big, moss green plane to take them home at will.
The world was at peace.
Even after everything that had happened. Many countries, especially others in the EU, had offered support and the reconstruction of Paris was already underway.
But it didn’t sit right with me.
I had this weird sense of unease, like the global panic had suddenly vanished on someone’s command.
What about the economy? What about food and energy? Or about the military and diplomatic balance? The fact that the meteor shower had stopped could be viewed as fake news on the other side of the planet. They might think their city would be next. It wouldn’t have surprised me if people were buying up all the supplies in the stores or even rioting.
Yet, there was nothing.
The 7 billion people out there were getting up at 8 and arriving at the office for work at 10 just like any other day.
Wasn’t that creepy?
I preferred peace of course, but I couldn’t shake that sense of unease.
It made me think of the world-ending Calamity caused by the spread of moral hazards throughout the population. What if real gods could switch that off at will too?
And if they could switch it off, they could also switch it on.
And who could say they had never done so before? If I hadn’t realized what was going on, I would have been smiling at this peaceful world just like everyone else.
“…”
A girl with wet hair spoke to me from a small screen.
“I’ve taken a shower and eaten some dinner at an east coast hotel, so I was just preparing for bed. I’m glad I didn’t have to travel to the other side of the world like you did, Truth.”
“I’m surprised you could resist eating the airplane food.”
“Are you kidding? I’m not eating that trash as my first food after being rescued. I was dying for an ice-cold soda as well. Some premade frozen food heated in the microwave isn’t my idea of celebrating our survival.”
“What did you eat?”
“A triple monster burger. It’s a burger so huge it costs 70 dollars.”
“Wow, you are living the life, Anastasia.”
“You better believe it. It took me 2 hours to finish. The hotel waiter couldn’t believe it. He thought I had only ordered it to snap a photo for social media.”
And here I was with grilled salmon so thin it might as well have been a flimsy sheet of plastic. She was right. This was no way to celebrate.
But I would be home soon enough.
My biggest concern had actually been having men in black suddenly grab me by the arms and drag me onto the ark. Some ridiculous managers known as gods had just erased an entire planet they didn’t like. And I still didn’t know if JB had been telling the truth. Who would those gods target next for being in their way? My stepmom had created that ark to protect her family, so it was weird she wasn’t insisting on using it now.
But she hadn’t.
I had Maxwell on standby just in case, so I found this odd.
The answer was simpler than I ever could have imagined.
“It wouldn’t work,” said Amatsu Yurina. “If they do decide to intervene, then no ark we make down here in the human world will survive. The gods will preserve only the lives they choose. They won’t even let us struggle against their decision, so they will attack when the time comes.”
It was ironic really.
She had chosen who got to survive on her ark, but now she was one of the ones not chosen to survive.
Or was that the wrong way around?
Maybe she had started struggling so much in the first place because she wasn’t chosen.
“We don’t have enough firepower to fight back. I had hoped to defeat JB so we could gather enough power to rebuild Absolute Noah. Because we currently don’t have enough charisma to gather people. The ark will not function.”
This was unusual.
She didn’t often reveal her weakness like this.
Before, a war with JB had been brewing. She had seen a path to success and had only needed to follow the roadmap she had set up to reach that victory.
But.
No longer.
Demon Lord Lilith had done everything in her power to save humanity from the Calamity, even if that meant only allowing a handful to survive, but now she had lost sight of her map.
Or maybe it was her compass.
“The gods,” I muttered.
They kept the world turning. If they shook their heads, a planet orbiting the sun would vanish in an instant. It would be wiped up as easily as a stain on the table.
“Maxwell.”
“Sure.”
“Do you think they’ll come for us next?”
“That is impossible for me to simulate. I will simply say that god only knows.”
“…”
“But since I cannot predict that crucial detail, I believe I should instead list out the worst case scenario of the possibilities I can think of. As you were involved in the same incident, there is a risk that the gods know of your presence and may interfere with your life in the near future. I cannot provide a specific probability value, but I can say that value is unlikely to be zero.”
These were the ones who caused natural disasters. The ones who harmed our planet based on the turnings of some massive gears us humans couldn’t hope to comprehend.
We weren’t talking about some absurd fantasy. I had already seen glimpses of their influence. It would be silly to assume the Bright Cross hadn’t been thinking of the gods when they took that name. There had been Karen the Valkyrie managing the Colosseum. It was the gods who the Echidna had so loathed for killing her children. I had heard Vampires were created when god cursed someone who broke a taboo. Even JB had partially harnessed divine power to do what they did. Their inability to fully manage Hecate provided a hint of the uncontrolled freedom the gods enjoyed. All of our battles had been connected to the gods in some way.
They had been there all along.
It was a silly discovery, like only now realizing the sun was up there in the sky.
So what was I going to do about it?
What could I do with this newfound information? How could I defend myself if the gods were going to directly attack me?
Defeat them? Run away? Find a compromise? I wasn’t even sure what form victory should take here.
Absolute Noah had accepted the world for what it was and wanted to hide inside their ark. JB had refused to accept the world for what it was, so they wanted a jailbreak from it.
Neither humans nor Archenemies had any way of actually fighting back against the gods.
“Mom, what will they do? What’s their next move?”
“It’s already begun.”
So said Demon Lord Lilith, an especially powerful being who still could not defeat the gods in heaven…and had thus been placed on the side of evil.
Her tone was self-deprecating.
Her face was no different from someone in the face of a natural disaster.
“We are always in the palm of their hand, so there is no beginning and no end. We must forever suffer on the path they have set for us.”
JB had been awful.
I wasn’t going to defend a single thing their cast had done to Paris.
But we had stolen this chance from them.
We had intervened and it was possible their plan would have worked otherwise. We may have wasted the last chance to save all non-divine lives.
So.
“Maxwell.”
“Sure.”
The world was at peace.
Everyone was smiling and no one questioned it.
But here I was questioning it. I had clearly left the path meant for me. Since I was no longer under the gods’ protection, I had to consider the possibility that would happen to me next.
Everything I had worked so hard to build would be toppled by overwhelming force and everyone would smile, applaud, and rejoice. Set the stage right and people’s feelings about things were so easily altered. Look at sports, martial arts, the arrest of a criminal, and even the execution after that. People didn’t always feel pangs of sympathy when they saw someone being attacked. At times, they had the exact opposite reaction.
The same would happen to me.
I refused to become fuel for some tear-jerking story on their schedule.
This wasn’t a fight to protect something as big as humanity or all Archenemies.
This was a fight to protect myself and save the people I cared about even more than my own life.
We had restrained Hel and handed her over to Absolute Noah, but that wasn’t enough.
I would be fighting real gods next time.
By questioning the peace and stability of this world, I must have violated one of their taboos.
There was a power located near the very center of this world.
That power was known as natural disasters.
I didn’t want to even imagine one of them making anyone close to me cry. Not Erika, not Ayumi, not Itou-san, and most of all, not the Class Rep. I wouldn’t let a single one of them be caught by that cruel violence. Natural disasters were caused by the gods. If Hel was right about that, then a disaster environment simulator was essentially a humanmade tool for fighting back against the gods’ decisions. But Maxwell and I weren’t enough. We were up against a group that wouldn’t think twice about using enough power to vanish an entire planet like some kind of magic trick.
In that case.
In that case…
“Run a search for anything JB has left behind. And if possible, for a way of contacting their military simulator Freischutz.”
“A request arrived a moment ago. Although it is almost certainly a trap.”
JB Military Simulator Freischutz has sent a contact request. Will you respond and create a specialized group for this purpose? (y/n)
Warning: JB almost certainly has an ulterior motive here. Risk level: max. Response not recommended. Please show the utmost caution when choosing.
Back to Chapter 7
