145 – Gaia (1)
“Dad…”
Lucia, clinging to my arms like a koala hugging a tree, never thinks of falling.
Fortunately, it’s Faust’s body, so there’s no hindrance to movement, but I can’t help but feel uncomfortable.
“…Lucia, can’t you fall a little?”
“no.”
“Yeah, got it…”
Normally, I would have yelled at Lucia for acting so recklessly, but right now, of course, I couldn’t.
It feels like only a few hours have passed, but the outside world says it’s been almost four days.
Since she had never been away from me for that long, it seems that Lucia took this incident as a shock.
“Lucia, this will never happen again. Rest assured.”
“Don’t lie.”
“It’s not a lie.”
“Do you think I wouldn’t know that I just spewed out random words to reassure myself?”
“…”
Look at the daring things.
In the past, even if Lucia noticed my intentions, she wouldn’t have bothered to point out my face, but now it’s really shocking to see that she doesn’t.
What… I still don’t know how to deal with Flora trying to kidnap me again, but it’s true that I can escape when I’m taken back to the debugging space, so I’m not strictly lying, but it’s sad.
“Aren’t Flora and Nero worried anymore?”
“Nero doesn’t know, but don’t even mention that bitch’s name.”
“No… well, I got it.”
Lucia, who was crying while worrying about Flora, is still vivid in her eyes, but Lucia doesn’t really care what happens to Flora now.
Well, because she seduced me to fight right in front of me and even kidnapped me, I was away for 4 days. From Lucia’s point of view, it would be hard to forgive her unless she told her to apologize first.
…Florara.
Come to think of it, I’m really at a loss as to what to do now.
‘The original work I know doesn’t exist anymore.’
The story I know, that is, the story of Noah, the original game, I don’t know since I defeated Cerapia.
No, it’s not that I don’t know exactly, but rather that it wasn’t made.
Of course, Faust was the raid boss after Serafia and had a rough concept, but that’s all, the detailed story wasn’t even created.
In other words, there is a high probability that the knowledge of the original work will not be very helpful in the future. It means that you can no longer use the method of making the crystal of the Demon Godhead and going to defeat Cerapia.
Of course, this isn’t a game, it’s reality, so even if the story wasn’t created at all, it would still happen, so the world wouldn’t suddenly end… Wait a minute.
Destruction is not Because of the life limit.
…Couldn’t there be some connection between the unmade story and the life limit?
‘Let’s not think.’
At any rate, this is just a pointless and mind-bending assumption.
All I have to do now is to somehow solve the life limit.
“…what else?”
As I looked at Irene to ask about Gaia, Irene’s wary gaze and tone wrapped around me.
Hey, it’s been a long time since we’ve seen each other, so why are you here now?
“I want to find Gaia.”
“Gaia-sama?”
“Yes, there is no other way to solve the current crisis in the world.”
“…”
Irene’s mouth was tightly closed.
Do not doubt my words. Since I have nothing to say, it seems more correct to see that I simply cannot speak.
“…If you wanted to find Gaia-sama, you would have found it a long time ago.”
After a short but long period of time, Irene’s barely uttered answer contained so much emotion.
It was to the point that I forgot the fact that I had always said honorifics so as not to offend my heart.
Umm…
“I don’t know either.”
If you look at the same elf, Lena, Lena also shakes her face from side to side and replies that she doesn’t know with a gesture that she doesn’t know.
Write… If this happens, things will get a little twisted.
In the original Noah, the place where the hero first met Gaia was a historic site near the great forest, but meeting Gaia was at the right time and timing. For example, the main character’s perks.
But now, of course, that is impossible.
Gaia woke up once and went back to sleep, and the event where the hero and Gaia could meet, namely the group conversion of the elves, had already happened.
Of course, since it was Gaia who originally helped to crystallize the divine status of the demons, if a similar crisis was deliberately created, Gaia might appear on this side, but of course it is difficult to reproduce a crisis at the level of creating a new divine status.
Gaia hasn’t appeared in the story since.
I tried to use it as an all-purpose key for the development team, leaving it as a story piece for later.
“If you’re looking for that… Gaia, how about going to Belial?”
“Belial?”
“Yes, I said strange things to Irene as if I knew something… Above all, I knew Gaia in many ways, right?”
“Well, like Iris said, it seems like Gaia has a deep bad relationship. He must know something.”
“Ummm…”
Iris and Celestine, who saw me worrying by the side, say.
If Irene doesn’t know… Is there any other way now?
In the original Noah, Gaia and Belial don’t have much to do with each other except for fighting each other in the past, but since this is a reality, not a game, there will be a lot of parts that don’t appear in the story.
For example, Belial knew where Gaia was or something like that.
**********
“Haaa…”
Belial’s deep sighs disturb my ears. As if to openly look at and listen to me, the feelings of sadness are dripping out.
“Since you’ve finally come to the Demon Realm after everything is over, I thought you were going to sleep this time… but you call out another girl’s name, and that’s why she calls her name.”
“…The work is not over yet. We have to solve the life limit.”
“Limit of life… Hmm, wouldn’t it just kill it?”
Belial looks at me as if I’m worried about something like that. It’s as if you’re looking at a person who dares to take the difficult path while leaving the easy path alone.
…Well, this is true for those who have lived in a world where it is natural to kill a life in order not to fill the life limit.
But of course not for me.
A world that can only be maintained if someone dies is terrible and inefficient.
There is one Absolute, and that Absolute periodically wipes out living beings like pruning trees in a forest. What kind of reality and world is this? Isn’t it just a simulator game?
“As expected, you are a mysterious person.”
Seeing my attitude, Belial said that, then smiled and smiled, wondering why it was so funny.
If it was normal, I would have felt a little bad after seeing this treatment, but I couldn’t do that because Belial had a strange energy that couldn’t be.
“The location where Gaia sleeps… must be under the great grove.”
“bottom?”
Belial, who laughed for a long time, soon gave me the answer I wanted to hear.
Under the great grove?
Hmmm… Well, since the place where I first met Gaia was a historical site near the Great Forest, I guessed that it would be somewhere in the Great Forest, but I thought it was the bottom.
“Yes, to be precise, if you dig into the roots of the world tree and keep going underground, it will come out. It’s just a rather big tree that grew enormously with Gaia’s vitality as fertilizer, but the name world tree, which is uselessly brilliant, is given. Isn’t that funny?”
Belial giggles with her mouth covered, as it is so ridiculous that Gaia, who was so strong to match herself, has become only fertilizer for trees.
I really had no idea what the hell was funny about it.
**********
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry…!”
“Infinite punishment for those of us who abandoned Gaia…!”
Clap—slap—!
On the other hand, in the great forest, all sorts of demonic scenes are unfolding.
A whip made of dried vines was struck mercilessly on the bodies of countless elves.
This is not because someone forced it.
The whipped elves were inflicting pain on themselves in order to repent for their sins.
“Deserved punishment for the wicked apostates… ugh…!”
The elves who truly believed in Serapia and abandoned Gaia now know very well what they have done.
If they did not inflict pain on themselves, they would not have the face to face Gaia, so the elves are trying to repent by whipping themselves together.
Of course, this is just a cowardly flight.
This tragedy is happening now because of the idea that if you feel the pain of being flogged, you can escape this sense of guilt.
[Stupid things.]
Most of all, even though Gaia doesn’t want the elves to be whipped like this at all, the elves who don’t want to know the will of the gods just whip themselves by splashing blood in the great forest.
Gaia looked at the elves doing stupid things and let out a deep sigh.
Although all of them are like flies that will soon be swept away, Gaia is not cold-hearted enough to casually watch beings who are strictly like her alter ego do such stupid things.