“What do you mean?”
Gabriella had not understood what Lartomia had just said.
The Evil God defeated the god of that plane, and then the gods destroyed the world?
At that moment the feeling of a lucid dream returned to Gabriella.
It was as if, the instant her past self and her present self shared the same question, she could move freely inside the dream.
She tried setting her hand on the table, then took it away.
Once she had confirmed there was no problem, she noticed how real the tavern scene was, and how real the noise at her ears.
“Lartomia, could you explain it to me in more detail? Thank you.” Gabriella’s eyes softened, and the earlier strangeness vanished at once.
Lartomia’s eyes widened as well.
As if she had felt Gabriella’s goodwill, she drew her hands out of her cloak.
“Sir, pour a glass of apple wine.”
The owner set the drink in front of Gabriella.
He could not see Gabriella’s body at all, and could not even know she existed.
Lartomia took another sip of milk.
“It’s a long story~”
“That civilization once possessed a risk-forecasting device called the [Doomsday Clock]. It would strike once whenever a crisis of extinction arrived. The moment the Evil God first entered their awareness, the Doomsday Clock struck three times at once.”
“In other words, they used immense computing power, divination, star-reading, so-called mana future-sight, and a whole series of other methods, and discovered that the Evil God’s existence was a threat to the civilization. So Lady [Star God] captured Miss Evil God at once.”
Lartomia’s tone shifted.
“At the time, though, that girl had not yet been called the Evil God. She was called [Shadow] instead.”
“And then?”
“And then Miss Star God lost, just as I told you before. According to the predictions that followed, if Miss Evil God were left alone, the world would be destroyed and eroded by shadow into a plane filled with annihilation.”
“Shadow sensed humanity’s malice, eroded more than half of the human weapon systems, and sealed off the Heavenly Oracle Envoy plan…”
“Then the gods… heh, a few gods who knew one another, sensed Shadow’s existence at the same time and gathered to discuss a countermeasure. Guess what happened after that~?”
There was mockery in Lartomia’s voice, as if she no longer cared how humanity had been destroyed and found the whole thing absurd and laughable instead.
“Using the clues Miss Star God left behind, using humanity’s predictions, and using the gods’ own analysis, the gods judged [Shadow] to be the plane-level crisis that most needed to be resolved first.”
“They destroyed humanity with their own hands. They destroyed the world, and made Shadow accompany them in burial. So in the end, it was the gods who personally destroyed that civilization. Miss Evil God didn’t kill a single person~ Pretty funny, isn’t it? The Evil God now is still alive and kicking.”
Lartomia’s laugh was very light.
Gabriella still remembered that Isabella had been rejected by the gods and had drifted into this world.
Never mind evolving into a true deity—even survival itself was a problem now.
No wonder she had said how dangerous her authority was.
The Evil God Isabella had never spoken of anything that happened on the other plane.
Either way, it had to be a painful memory.
“Still, destroying an entire civilization on prediction alone… they really were stupid enough to make a person laugh.”
After Gabriella and Lartomia reached a kind of agreement, the other girl grew somewhat calmer.
She sighed.
“If they were truly correct, it only proves that gods should never have interfered in human civilization.”
“In the end it all comes down to humanity’s dependence on the Star God. That is why they faced such a hard choice, and why even the destruction itself was tied to the gods.”
“And me? I’m only a pitiful warrior who happened to receive that vast memory.”
Gabriella neither agreed nor disagreed with Lartomia’s view.
She did not know how to refute it, and she felt there was no need to refute it.
At the very least, she also thought that Lartomia, inheritor of a civilization’s relics, was a pitiful child.
She looked at those eyes dimmed by melancholy and at that curled-up body.
Soon Lartomia would set out on her journey again, walking a bewildered snowfield with a life that was nearly eternal.
She truly hated the gods.
There were still a few things, though, that Gabriella wanted to confirm.
“Lartomia, why did you lie to me?”
Gabriella said with a smile.
“You should be someone who came to this world together with the Heavenly Oracle Envoys. You can admit you don’t belong to this plane.”
“It doesn’t make much difference anyway.” Lartomia pursed her lips.
“There’s one more thing I want to ask. Why did you seal yourself inside a sword, Lartomia?”
Lartomia’s pupils widened.
At some point she realized her answers had begun to leave the proper track.
“Wh…?!”
Everything around them was still happening—travelers, merchants, fine wine, and lively noise.
Yet all of it continued in a jarring way, stiff as lines of code that made up a background, enough to raise the hair on one’s skin.
In this world, it was as if only Gabriella had color.
“This is… the second time…”
Lartomia looked at her own hands.
She suddenly remembered that the last time, she had spoken with Gabriella in the same way, inside this illusion.
“Huff, huff… huff…”
She breathed heavily, as if many memories were welling up and turning her stiff body burning hot.
That was right.
Lartomia was not a phantom inside a memory at all.
She was Loli, the name Gabriella herself had given her, a life conceived by chance, about to become her second child.
So rather than saying she was dreaming, this was only a conversation with the soul of Lartomia inside her body.
“Relax, Loli. Relax~ I’m right here. All of this is real.”
Gabriella stroked her head.
Lartomia’s body began to tremble.
She resisted Gabriella’s touch a little, yet found it comfortable, and her body wanted on instinct to accept her and hold her tight.
As Lartomia’s trembling grew more obvious, the scene around them began to “collapse.”
Rather than collapse, it was more that it returned to the original history.
A hole was blasted in the side of the tavern by power.
Outside, a blizzard was falling.
A gale cold as a blade rushed into the tavern, and a few snowflakes landed in Gabriella’s hair.
Beyond the tavern, the figure of a girl walking through the snowstorm was exactly like a single leaf adrift on a boundless snowfield, utterly alone.
She looked at Gabriella with eyes colder than midwinter, turned without the slightest hesitation, and vanished into the endless white like a startled hedgehog.
Gabriella looked for a long time at the apple wine in her hand, already chilled through.