Chapter 976: Chapter 976: Oh, So That’s What You Wanted to Ask
"So then, is there anything you still need to say now?"
"Mm... I guess it’s just what you already caught me on."
Bell wasn’t deliberately hiding anything. At the moment, his biggest secret was exactly what Freya had already exposed. There really wasn’t anything else he was keeping under wraps.
Still, Freya felt that something was off.
It wasn’t that Bell was intentionally concealing things from them. Rather, he simply wasn’t proactive about bringing things up.
In fact, Freya could more or less understand the subtext behind what Bell had just said.
[He doesn’t lie, but he avoids the key points.]
It was a small trick of wording, but it was also how Bell had always handled things.
When Bell ran into a problem, he wouldn’t take the initiative to explain it. He wouldn’t lie, but he would deliberately sidestep the issue that came up.
As long as no one asked directly, then he wasn’t lying, and he wasn’t hiding anything either. He was just avoiding it.
Freya was confident that this kid had definitely learned some bad habits. This wasn’t "honesty" at all.
That meant that if you wanted Bell to tell the truth, you first had to realize what he was avoiding. Only then could you get an honest answer out of him.
Freya pursed her lips.
Wasn’t this basically a method designed to counter a god’s ability to see through lies?
’So he intended to carry this trait through from the very beginning. He even prepared countermeasures against the gods right from the start.’
That made Freya unsure whether she should call Bell far-sighted or not.
These precautions really did have the gods completely figured out.
After all, gods weren’t hands-on beings. There were plenty of things only a few people knew that even gods might be unaware of. By choosing not to answer proactively and instead evading the question, one could bypass a god’s ability to see through lies.
But right now, Bell’s relationship with them wasn’t that of goddess and adventurer anymore.
Freya grinned and leaned in close to Bell.
"That won’t do, Bell. Deliberately dodging questions and only answering if I bring it up. And besides, we’re not in a goddess–adventurer relationship anymore."
Bell’s cheek twitched. Out of habit, almost unconsciously, he had forgotten that fact.
It was an old habit. After all, when dealing with gods, you had to maintain a certain stance. Otherwise, a god who could see through lies would be terrifying to deal with.
This had always been Bell’s way of handling it. Since gods could see through lies, he simply told the truth.
Of course, more often than not, Bell chose to minimize how much he spoke to gods in the first place. As long as he kept conversations brief and mixed in some suggestive phrasing, he could almost completely avoid being seen through.
But that approach clearly didn’t work on goddesses he already had a substantial relationship with, especially when they were all women he planned to marry in the future.
"Alright. But I really don’t have anything else I’m hiding."
Even though Freya had picked up on it, Bell was genuinely a bit flustered. He truly hadn’t intentionally hidden any major matters from Hestia and the others.
He hadn’t done anything particularly big recently either. Everything was proceeding according to plan. If there was anything he had done quietly, it was pushing the limits of his own mental capacity a bit too hard.
Aside from that, there really wasn’t anything else.
Freya stared seriously into Bell’s eyes and confirmed that he wasn’t lying. Still, she felt something was odd, and instinctively steered the question in a certain direction.
"You said earlier that you’d already given a warning to the ’Miniature World.’ But isn’t the foundation of the world still unfinished? Is it really necessary to act against the ’Miniature World’ this early?"
"That part was actually pretty necessary."
Freya likely wasn’t very familiar with matters concerning the ’Miniature World,’ which was why she felt that such a probing warning wasn’t needed yet.
"Once certain worlds are observed by the ’Miniature World,’ they get pulled into it directly. That’s extremely bad for us, because once the ’Miniature World’ observes a world, the gods of that world basically become nourishment for it."
"That’s something we need to prevent in advance. As for how to ’prevent’ it, the method is to have the two-digit existences inside the ’Miniature World’ block its observation. That’s why my warning was necessary."
"Otherwise, if that thing suddenly has a lapse in judgment and drags the new world we created into it, we’d be in real trouble."
This was done purely as a precaution, to prevent the ’Miniature World’ from making a sudden, disastrous decision. Bell felt that the chances of it having such a lapse were actually quite high, especially under the influence of ’Human History,’ so it was necessary to prepare safeguards ahead of time.
"Other than that, there really isn’t anything else."
After saying this, Bell assured them several times that he truly wasn’t hiding anything.
But Freya immediately spotted the issue.
"Bell, didn’t you say the world hasn’t been created yet?"
That was right. Before the world was created, there was no need to warn the ’Miniature World.’ Only after the world existed would it be necessary to notify the inside of the ’Miniature World,’ to avoid unnecessary interference.
So if Bell had already taken these steps...
Did that mean the world had actually already been created?
"Ah..."
Bell suddenly realized that this was, in fact, something he had kept from them. He gave an awkward laugh, his face clearly showing how embarrassed he was.
"It’s not really that I was hiding it. We just wanted to give the humans and gods of both worlds some time to prepare. They needed time to adapt, and time to gather themselves. That’s why we gave them three months."
"The world’s base structure was actually completed a long time ago by me, Mother-sama, and Miss Ryougi. After all, building a world’s foundation is something Mother-sama and Miss Ryougi are already very used to."
"Also, while we call it a ’world foundation,’ our original plan was to separate different worlds and regions. We wanted to mirror the internal structure of the ’Miniature World,’ creating an outer layer, an inner layer, and a core."
"The so-called ’world foundation’ is just the outermost layer of the world. Since it’s the outer framework, it needs to prioritize vast space. Otherwise, it wouldn’t be possible to construct what goes inside."
"And this outer layer is actually the easiest part to build. So we weren’t entirely honest about our progress there. In truth, it was finished a long time ago."
