= What, did it die?
= It would be proper to call it “activity suspended,” Inspector. It was already dead.
= Seems the drop height is higher than we thought. Let’s bring proper equipment, then deploy the next slave.
The creator god who was devoured by an outsider.
When, after long ages, he opened his eyes at some stimulus from outside,
what fell closest to that piece of flesh
was a creation he had once made with all his love—
[Slave Restraint for Mine Excavation]
[Brave Ougar]
—his creation,
now hideously warped by pain and resentment.
—Ah.
At the moment its activity was suspended,
the Ougar before its eyes probably couldn’t think anything,
but from that twisted expression,
the slab of flesh could feel one emotion.
—If it would be ~Nоvеl𝕚ght~ like this, I wish... I had never been born.
The creation begotten by the slab of flesh—
his child—
regretted having been born into this world at all.
—Ah... ah.
If only
that had been all.
Fallen though it was,
this was a god who had once created a world.
At the moment it woke from its long sleep,
even though it was buried in the deep, near the inner core,
it could still “look down” on its world.
—Aaaaah...
There,
the harmonious world it had dreamed of did not exist.
The races had joined their strength,
used the mana overflowing through the world,
and were supposed to blossom into one of the greatest civilizations of magi in all the cosmos, but—
what filled that world now was...
a superb civilization of magi, yes,
but in essence, something altogether different.
= Go! Number 13! Kill it!
= What’s this? Number 13—wasn’t it the champion of the arena? Why is it moving so sluggishly?
= I hear the one it’s fighting now—Number 7—was born to the same mother as Number 13. Is that why?
The Ougar, turned into a slave,
savagely tormented,
ordered to kill its own sibling.
= Tsk...
= What is it, Doctor?
= The slave’s computation capacity seems degraded. What used to take thirty seconds now takes forty.
= Hm. At its age, it seems time for disposal.
= These things perform best up to five years old... If this research succeeds, I’ll place a massive order for the younger ones.
The Entilor, who with their wise minds were supposed to lead civilization down the right path—
hideously modified and reduced to mere calculators.
And beyond them—
children set loose as quarry for sport and hunted for amusement;
children used for vile desires too ugly to put into words;
children whose bodies had already reached death, yet who felt death’s pain intact,
forced to live as slaves not only through their lives but even after death.
And—
= Your Majesty! Success!
= Hm? You mean...
= As you commanded, we can now open the gate to another world!
= Oooh... good. As soon as preparations are ready, open the gate and send slave-soldiers to bring back more slaves...
Using those suffering slaves,
they stacked up their civilization,
mocked those tormented children and exploited them—
the Dwarven.
—Ah, aaaaah...
The instant it took all of that in at a glance,
the slab of flesh understood.
The civilization of magi raised on the surface—
though brilliant—was not what it had intended.
‘There was no harmony.’
What stood there was
pain and exploitation,
a loathsome civilization piled up by persecution and oppression.
A world so twisted it was hard to look at even for a moment
was squatting atop the land it had created.
—It hurts.
Pain.
The instant it saw that,
the last emotions it had felt before death,
long pressed down during its sleep,
were kindled anew.
—Why!!!!!!!
Lamentation.
Its world was meant to be completed in beauty.
But through outside intervention,
its children were grotesquely twisted,
and made a world filled only with loathsomeness and pain.
—Why did you eat me!!!!
Resentment.
The god who had been lord of the world—
the fallen remnant—
unleashed the hatred and rage that had piled up.
Then—
= Hm... this presence, what in—!
= E-everyone evacuaaa—!
the first to be touched by that fury
were the Dwarven people who were mining and researching in the underground mine.
Fallen though it was, this had been a god who created a world,
the very being who had created them.
The moment the creator’s heaped-up will bored into their heads—
= Urk...
= S-save...
the feeble Dwarven
could do nothing but meet death on the spot, without so much as a proper breath.
The thick emotion drove every living thing in the mine to death in an instant,
and filled that wide space.
—It huuurts...!!!
The priesthood hadn’t seen the god’s being,
but they had inferred its existence.
They regarded this mountain range as the god’s gift,
and deemed its defilement a blasphemy,
so that even if the god raged, that rage would not spread beyond the range,
they laid a thick seal of—
[Orichalcum for Sealing]
However—
though the priests may have succeeded in inferring the god’s existence,
= Hoo.
= How was it, Bishop?
= A very good slave... Next time, bring prettier ones. As always, I’ve no preference for male or female...
they paid no mind to the other children created by the god.
Seeing all that,
the god showed not even a hint of restraint.
Fwaaaaaaaaaaaam—
The seal the priests had arranged—
for all their devotion—could not hold back the god’s rage in the least.
It was a seal meant to prevent even a fistful of air from passing,
but the dense will passed through its gaps without difficulty.
The rage that filled the underground mine
pierced the seal and spread to the surface.
The will that left the underground mine and stretched across the surface
blanketed the entire world in the blink of an eye.
In the end—
in barely a day...
no, not even an hour—
‘That vast civilization was annihilated...’
Every race upon the surface
met death without a single exception.
A world that perished in an instant,
without ever imagining they would die.
And—
inside a mine that sat within that world...
—Ah, it hurts.
—Just... kill me...
Even though they had been wracked with pain to the point of brain-death by that overpowering will,
they were left in a state where they could not even die as they wished.
[Slave Restraint]
[Not only does it control other living beings, it even includes the function of forcibly maintaining life to prevent the loss of valuable labor—truly a great invention.]
[By forcibly maintaining the reason and senses of a dominated subject even after it reaches death, permanent and efficient labor has become possible—labor that even death cannot stop.]
[There was once a remark that the pain felt by a slave on the verge of death was a bit serious... but why should a slave’s pain matter!]
Buried beneath the pain of dying
and the god’s excruciatingly painful will,
they simply, silently
kept carrying out the tasks assigned to them as slaves.
A perished world to which no one would come.
In its depths, in a dark underground mine where not a single ray of light reached—
—Screee—
only the screams born of savage pain
continued to echo.
For a span close to eternity,
they repeated labor devoid of any meaning.
In a grotesquely long agony, as even their reason withered away,
there was only one thing they could do.
Only—
to pray.
‘Someone, please.’
They knew it was impossible,
but still—someone, please—
come to this place, to end their pain.
****
“...Huff!”
When all the memories ended
and I returned to reality—
‘...Huff, huff.’
I barely held down my trembling body
and looked down at my two hands.
The omnipotence that had filled me,
the pain I’d felt at the brink of death—none of it was there.
But
that was by no means good.
If anything—
I couldn’t help but realize:
‘I am... an unbearably small being.’
The memories I had just experienced—
and the current me—
the gulf between them.
A god so great it looked simply omnipotent to me as it surveyed the world—
even that was devoured by something.
Humans feel awe when they face what is too vast.
Thrown into majestic nature—
people say that within that grandeur, even all their cares become trivial.
But that talk,
thinking of it now, was half a lie.
When you face something too vast,
you do feel awe—
‘but that’s only, like, nature-level.’
Throw a naked body into space—
a breadth so wide you wonder if it even has an end,
a world so vast you can’t take it in at a glance, into which you’re cast alone—
the feeling people have then is not awe.
‘Fear.’
A god who had been like vast nature
was eaten by an outside being.
And I am far smaller than even that nature—
a being less than a speck of dust.
Before that cosmic power,
I... could only tremble in fear and be eaten,
without any resistance at all.
‘Even that god ended up like that...’
The fear of extinction and death,
which I had kept trying to forget,
rose again.
As the blue-lit giant that shone of its own accord—
as the omnipotence I’d felt in that giant’s body vanished,
I wrapped my own body—so puny by comparison—in my arms.
“Ghh.”
I rolled for a good while,
driving the fear out.
If it could be called a mercy,
that fear subsided rather quickly.
—It hurts it hurts it hurts it hurts.
The great slab of flesh before my eyes—
the will it sent was trying to push even the fear out of my head.
Tchhk—
From my eyes,
something hot spilled.
‘It hurts.’
One of the emotions it was exhaling—
pain.
That wasn’t merely
the pain suffered before death,
the pain of being eaten.
Greater than that was—
‘The pain of the mind.’
Krrrk...
The dense will exhaled by the flesh.
Even that will alone had already started to make me feel a bit unhinged,
and then I’d gone and experienced the memory directly.
‘It hurts... like hell.’
The painful emotions it suffered,
their remnants were still tormenting me.
But—
‘Steady.’
Fortunately,
this wasn’t my first time with something like this.
‘I’m not some great god like that.’
My own children—
the world I made—
the pain born of its ruin—
‘That pain isn’t mine.’
Huff...
Huff.
Experiencing being someone other than myself—
though it wasn’t long—
“Damn...”
to separate Morzan and me, I kept my body curled up,
took deep breaths, and cleared my head.
Thanks to doing my utmost
to put my mind in order—
“...Ah.”
there was one thing
I could realize.
“So that’s... what it was.”
I had no clear proof,
but a near-certain intuition
flashed through my head.
‘The reason [Divine Power] led me here.’
Among my stats, the one whose nature I understood least—
[Divine Power].
For some reason,
this stat kept trying to lead me down here.
At first, I had no idea why.
Even up to the moment I stood before that slab of flesh, it remained a question,
but now I knew.
‘[Divine Power]... was trying to tell me.’
One of the biggest questions
I’d always had.
Not just me—
the greatest question for every human still alive on Earth now—
a maddening grievance and fury.
‘Where is the god...?’
In a world where ruin had come,
where had the god gone?
“I thought... there was no god on Earth.”
Every other world had a god.
I’d seen about two exceptions:
Dwe Morzan—
and Earth.
But—
Dwe Morzan hadn’t been an exception.
Down here—fallen though it was—
there was a being who had been the god of a world.
A clear godhead had created them,
and cherished them besides.
Having experienced that god’s memories,
I couldn’t help but realize.
“Ha-ha...”
Even Dwe Morzan had a god—
so why did Earth have none?
The answer to that
was in the memory I’d just seen.
“It’s strange that exceptions would exist if every world has a god.”
I’d thought there was no god on Earth,
but that was a ridiculous conjecture.
To be precise—
‘It was half right, half wrong.’
Why,
unlike the other worlds, did Earth have no god?
Why
were we abandoned by a god and made to suffer ruin?
At last, I had the answer to that question.
That there is no god—that part is right.
But that it “never existed”—
that is wrong.
“It suffered the same fate...!”
Krrrk...
The anger filling my body,
resonating with the slab of flesh’s will, squeezed tears of blood from my eyes.
I clenched my teeth hard enough to shatter them,
and deep in the underground mine,
before the remains of a god that had died, I let out a scream no one could hear.
“Just like this thing...!”
Once,
there had surely been a god on Earth as well.
It cherished Earth’s living beings,
and in the sudden ruin,
it was the very god that should have protected us—
“It met the same fate...!”
Devoured—
by someone.
