I looked at the smartwatch again.
After that bizarre quest telling me to die popped up, the smartwatch had gone dead again.
Thinking about it, a lot of things didn’t add up if this device was something the Moirai had made.
The smartwatch gave me quests.
And within those quests, it gave me all sorts of hints. About what would happen in the future, and what I needed to watch out for.
Because of that trait of “knowing the future,” I’d been fooled for a moment. It fit very well with the Moirai’s abilities.
But if I thought about it properly, that trait didn’t resemble the Moirai.
It resembled me.
‘Stories I’d already experienced in the game. I already knew most of the quest content I saw on the smartwatch.’
For me, who had first encountered this world in the form of a game, the smartwatch’s contents always carried a strong sense of déjà vu.
Some quests were completely identical to when I’d played as Aster in the game. A prime example was the quest “Assault,” where Elysia had monsters attack Constel.
In other words, the information I knew from the game and the information the smartwatch held had been similar. Up to that point.
But after I’d resolved the Manggot War, the smartwatch had almost completely stopped.
‘If it had really been made just to guide me, the rewards I got were way too powerful.’
The rewards from the smartwatch were worth risking my life for. Especially Workshop Weaving; that one was huge.
The quests judged how much I’d accomplished and handed out rewards on their own.
If the Moirai had made this system, it wouldn’t be able to produce anything beyond their own abilities.
Yet the Moirai were panicking right now. Trapped in my Workshop.
If what they said was true, they were being done in by magic they themselves had created.
“Who taught you that kind of bluffing, Moirai?”
“Y-you...... wretch......!”
The three goddesses glared at me, but couldn’t muster any real rebuttal.
Right. They weren’t the owners of the smartwatch.
If anything, if there was an owner, it would be the giants. The “game” created so someone who would be summoned could experience this world in advance. The “smartwatch” prepared to be a support, holding that information, once he was summoned. Those two had been a set.
‘In that case, the point when the Moirai hacked it would’ve been after the Manggot War ended.’
When the Manggot War ended, the smartwatch’s alert had gone off.
Telling me the World Quest “Aetius” had been completed.
And when I left the continent of Falind, the World Quest “Agoris” had begun.
Just twice.
Other than those two alerts, this smartwatch had been dead.
‘In other words, only the “World Quests” weren’t dead.’
By that time, the Moirai had probably already succeeded in hacking this thing. Strictly speaking, it wasn’t so much hacking as somehow forcing its functions to stop.
With just one exception: the “World Quests.”
Whether that was because the World Quests were a deeper, higher concept they couldn’t hack, or because the giants had anticipated the Moirai’s meddling.
Either way, thanks to that, I’d gotten a big hint.
“Moirai. Give it up now. This is my domain.”
“Don’t be so arrogant!”
The Moirai shouted, not cowed in the least.
“Just because this is the inside of grand magic, do you think that means your victory is assured?!”
“We are goddesses of fate!”
“A mere conceptual space like this of yours—we can break it as much as we want!”
Right after they spoke, the three goddesses stirred up mana. Their lips moved rapidly as they chanted.
‘......Almost like a harmony.’
Their chanting was very strange. Each one was clearly just reciting words, but when the three voices overlapped, it sounded like harmony.
Any word, even if you don’t intend to give it pitch, still has sound. Those sounds overlapped and turned into harmony.
Harmony of speech. Rather than pleasing to the ear, it had something oddly entertaining about it.
Triple-Structured Formula Deployment
Spatial Magic
Hatch
In the meantime, the Moirai finished their chant.
Between the three goddesses, something woven from magic was created.
It radiated a very bright light......
‘A pickaxe?’
It was too dazzling to make out exactly, but to my eyes, its shape looked closest to a pickaxe.
I thought they might attack me with that—
Fwoooosh─!!
But the pickaxe suddenly shot up into the air.
SCRAAAAAPE!
“......!”
Then it rammed deeply into the ceiling of my Workshop.
It had left a scratch on my Workshop, which had never taken damage even once.
I checked the Workshop’s blueprints via Weaving magic.
‘......It’s not that my Workshop itself has been damaged. That pickaxe is purely for the purpose of breaking this space—in other words, the lockdown.’
It wasn’t damaging the Workshop itself, but rather one of its additional properties. Because this grand magic was a concept made manifest in reality, it had the property that nothing could escape—and the pickaxe was meant to break that.
Thud, thud-thud.
The pickaxe dug in deeper and deeper, and eventually light from outside the Workshop began to leak in.
I was honestly surprised.
‘So I can’t just rely on trapping gods inside the Workshop and calling it done.’
As soon as light started leaking in, the Moirai found my position.
They looked at me and shouted.
“Do you see now?! A mere magic of yours, we can break it anytime we please!”
Saying that, the Moirai quickly fled. The hole was already wide enough for the three goddesses to escape.
By the time they finally got out of the Workshop—
Swoosh─
Squelch─
“Ghh...... ugh.......”
Each of the three goddesses was skewered by one of my spears, which I’d positioned all around.
They collapsed into sitting positions in their various postures.
“Hm.”
I blinked once, then slowly floated upward.
Still impaled on the spears, the three of them glared at me with pained faces.
I looked at them and spoke.
“Yeah. It is impressive. It really is.”
The quality and level of the magic they were showing were certainly astonishing. Their magic had far exceeded my expectations—making a world of their own to go back and forth from, being able to break someone else’s space.
But it was so, so incredibly naïve.
“You really have never actually fought in your lives, have you.”
“Fron...... dier......!”
Eyes full of resentment.
I waved my hand.
Squelch─!
The spears slid out of their bodies, dragging all sorts of things out from within.
Then, as I swung my hand again—
Thud!
They were impaled once more.
“Aaagh, aaaaaaaghhh!!”
“I’m glad you can feel pain.”
On top of that, they had no resistance to pain whatsoever.
They were gods. And not just any gods, but fairly high-ranking ones who dealt with fate. So unlike humans, they should have been able to withstand attacks of this level just fine. In fact, despite being pierced through like this, there was no sign of death.
But separate from that, maybe they weren’t used to pain at all, because they were utterly at a loss from the agony.
“You’ve always known every future, always seen fate, so you never even needed to set foot in the realm of combat. And even if you happened to have no choice but to fight, the moment you already knew in advance how your opponent would move, the fight was easy.”
Like when they fought Selena just now.
Until she swallowed my mana crystal, Selena had been under the Moirai’s fate.
They’d been reading every future, so there was no way her attacks would hit. They’d already have prepared countermeasures for everything. At least for fights like that, they’d be very used to it. For anything under their fate, they were absolutely able to respond.
But they’d never had a fight that wasn’t like that. From the start, they couldn’t.
“How is it, Moirai.”
I stepped closer to them and bent my knees.
“Not knowing is pretty scary, isn’t it?”
“Frondier...... Frondier!!!”
Aura rode on the Moirai’s shout. The proof of their fury.
The spears I’d skewered them with weren’t fired randomly; they were interwoven so that the goddesses couldn’t move. If they wanted to move, they’d have to pull them out completely, or else accept that their bodies would be shredded and just move anyway.
If they were truly gods, either option should have been within their capabilities.
If they weren’t such crybabies.
“Lord Frondier.”
Just then, Selena came up beside me.
“Do you intend to torture them?”
She asked. Cleverly pitching her voice at just the right volume. Loud enough to reach me, and just loud enough to reach the Moirai’s ears as well.
“No.”
But I shook my head.
“We don’t have time.”
I hadn’t expected to run into them here.
I needed to find Atjie’s soul right away, and I’d already spent a lot of time.
“I’ll just have to kill them.”
I stood up.
The Moirai, still seated on the ground, looked up at me with their faces gone pale.
“Y-you, you’re going to kill us?”
“You can’t kill us. We are gods. You don’t have any means to do that.”
The Moirai spoke. That, because they were gods, they couldn’t die.
“If that’s true, then why those faces?”
“......!”
“It’s true I don’t know how to kill you. But you’re feeling pain right now, aren’t you.”
If you truly lived no matter what was done to you, there’d be no need for you to feel pain.
They were tasting a level of pain they couldn’t even hide.
Maybe a simple human attack really wouldn’t work—but I was different.
‘......The mana of the Nine Worlds. Is it because of that.’
I raised my hand. Mana surged over my palm.
“Then shall we try it, Moirai.”
“Ah.......”
“You said I couldn’t kill you, didn’t you. In that case, you don’t have anything to worry about.”
I stepped closer to them.
“From here on, I’m going to put my mana into you, one world at a time.”
“......!”
“When mana from a different world enters a body, it turns into a deadly poison and runs wild. I’ve tasted it myself.”
Pielot had experienced it too. When mana from the Demon Realm had entered his body, he’d barely survived by vomiting it back out as his own aura.
“I wonder how it’ll be for you.”
“......!”
I approached the Moirai on the far right first.
I pushed one world’s worth of the mana I possessed into her.
“───Ah.”
Her eyes flew wide—
“Gah! AaaaaaaAAAAAAAHHHH!!!”
And she let out the loudest scream yet.
Honestly, it was so loud I wanted to cover my ears.
“Does it hurt a lot?”
I asked, but all I heard back was screaming. I wasn’t sure she could even hear my question.
Well, it wasn’t like I’d expected an answer to begin with.
“As expected, this alone doesn’t kill you. You really are goddesses of fate. You were right—you’re probably not something I can kill.”
At my words, the Moirai on the right just kept screaming.
The other two simply stared at me with frozen faces.
“Then next.”
I withdrew the mana, then drew out mana again.
From a different world.
“Second.”
I shoved it once more into the goddess who was going mad.
“Ah......!”
Her scream stopped at that instant.
But the only thing that stopped was the screaming; her whole body convulsed. Her shoulders and face trembled, and tears streamed down.
Blood began to form around her lips.
I hadn’t inflicted a wound. Her mouth had just been forced open so wide from her pain that it ripped the corners on its own.
“Hm. Still, it’s nice that it got quieter.”
I nodded. Two injections, and the screaming turned into silence. Good to know.
“W-wait!”
Just then, the Moirai in the center spoke.
“What do you want?! I’ll tell you anything I can! Th-that’s right! You wanted information, didn’t you?! I am a goddess of fate! I can give you whatever you need most. If you have any questions, anything at all—”
The Moirai in the center was noisy.
So I shoved in two worlds’ worth of mana.
“Ghh......!”
The result was the same as with the Moirai on the right.
Now there were two goddesses raging madly and one left frozen.
The math was nice and simple.
“Didn’t you hear what I said?”
I spoke to the Moirai on the left.
“I’m not doing this # Nоvеlight # to torture you. I’m looking for how I can most effectively kill gods like you. You could say I’m giving my all to research. Don’t get in the way.”
“......Y-you, you insane, insane bastard......!”
The Moirai on the left chattered her teeth.
Ah. Come to think of it, “teeth” was supposed to refer to an animal’s, not a human’s.
......The Moirai’s teeth chattered.
“You’re scared? But it’s not pain you’re afraid of. Right?”
“......!”
“You’re afraid of unknown pain. Because you’ve never experienced not knowing.”
At my words, the Moirai’s face went ashen and she tried to pull her body back. Of course, that meant her spear-pierced body hurt all the more, but I felt a determination in her to move however she could.
If that resolve had shown itself just three minutes earlier, it might have done her some good.
“Fr-Frondier! If you kill me, humanity will be in danger!”
“Oh?”
“The ‘World of Salvation’ that separates gods and humans! We’re the ones who created it! So if we die—”
“The World of Salvation disappears, and the wall separating gods and humans vanishes. That it?”
“Th-that’s right! If that happens, gods will be able to go to the human world without even the process of descending!”
I see.
This was probably the “information” the Moirai in the center had meant to use for negotiation.
Right now, she was using it not as a trade, but as a threat.
“Because of you, countless people will die! Frondier, it’ll be your sin!”
“......Hah.”
I laughed.
“I’m just curious about one thing. In the first place, why did you block that off?”
“......!”
“You put up that wall because you were afraid humans and the giants who resist the gods would really kill you, didn’t you.”
“N-no! Do you not understand? No matter what happens, gods will kill countless hum—”
“Yeah, it’s my sin.”
I nodded.
“The sin of not being able to stand gods toying with humans and starting a war. The sin of dragging countless humans into the threat of death. It all lies with me.”
As I spoke, I looked at Selena.
“That’s why I came to hell.”
Silently, Selena nodded.
I nodded back, then looked at the Moirai again.
“Moirai, did you forget? I’m a demon now. What do you think a demon’s role is? Do I really have to be the one to teach that to gods?”
“......Ah, aaah......!”
I raised my right hand and cupped the Moirai’s face. My thumb covered one of her eyes.
“What are you so worried about. You said I didn’t have any way to kill you.”
“Ah, aaah! Get it off! Get that hand off me! Go away! I said go!!”
Creak, craaack!
The Moirai’s body made an odd sound. The sound of her spear-pierced body twisting to try to escape.
Come to think of it, this was the one who’d grabbed Selena by the throat.
I tilted my head and met the Moirai’s gaze.
“The two beside you have had my mana invade them twice. And just like you said, they’re still alive.”
At that, the Moirai whose face I held rolled her eye sideways. She was looking at the other two goddesses.
The two whose mouths were opened in torn, soundless screams as their bodies convulsed. Blood now flowed not just from their lips but from their eyes, noses, and ears as well.
After staring at them, the Moirai slowly rolled her eyes back to me.
Her face was vacant.
“Just endure nine times.”
Then I’ll let you live.
