“Heuk, haah, haah.”
The priestess gasped wildly.
After taking a breath, the priestess shouted:
“You’re very strong-willed to come up here!”
That is what I want to say.
The priestess, who I thought would go back after getting separated far away, was still chasing me.
The priestess was trembling in her arms and legs and she was far behind but she was still chasing me.
“It’s okay, you can go back now.”
The priestess’s job was finished by guiding me to get out of the crowded streets easily and explaining the Church of Hope.
It was enough.
But that priestess didn’t seem to think so.
“You can’t do that!”
She cried out.
It’s a bitter voice.
It was understandable.
The stairs to the sage’s shrine were now becoming like rock cliffs.
Honestly, it was too weird to call it a staircase.
Is there a stairway where one hangs on a rope and climbs up against it like a cliff?
As you climb higher, the wind gets stronger.
Naturally, we couldn’t even hear each other’s voices well.
It was an irrelevant problem for me, but the priestess was screaming loudly.
Of course, her throat was as hoarse as it could be.
“As a guide, I have an obligation to accompany you to the end……!”
Be nice, be nice.
I felt like I was looking at someone in the past.
“She’s gonna die like that.”
Seregia muttered from the side.
It wasn’t a very sad voice.
She was just muttering about what would happen soon.
I couldn’t help but ask the God of Hope.
What are you doing to foster such a Spartan priestess on such a peaceful planet?
[That’s the doctrine.]
“To accompany me to the end?”
It was an absurd doctrine.
[No, to survive until the end.]
To survive.
She’ll be short-lived keeping that doctrine.
[I’m not talking about her life.]
Tsk, and I had no choice but to click my tongue.
The priestess was now at her limit.
Her trembling lips were telling me that her body was exhausted.
She stopped occasionally and didn’t make any movements, indicating that her body was preparing.
That wasn’t a pause for a break.
Because of excessive pain, fatigue, and fear, her brain is eagerly secreting hormones.
When the human body faces a limit, it does not squeeze the last force to overcome it.
Instead, it anesthetizes itself as if preparing for death.
I watched her for a while and reached out to the priestess.
Even after seeing my extended hand, the priestess did not react for a while.
It was only after I waved my hand like a float in front of a fish, and then the priestess’ eyes accurately recognized my hand.
“Grab on. I’ll pull you up.”
“…Thank you!”
In the meantime, the priestess tried to express her gratitude with a bright smile.
Then she raised her hand and held mine.
There was no strength in her grasp.
She was moist with sweat.
I was a little uncomfortable.
I grabbed her hand and raised it.
Halfway.
The priestess’ hand was held forward.
Naturally, the priestess moved away from the ropes and from the sides of the cliffs.
She was just stuck in my hand.
“Ex, excu…….”
The priestess looked at me with confused eyes.
Her black pupils spoke of many feelings.
I’m a little sorry.
Even so, I hoped she learned from this opportunity.
Her own plight.
I let go of my hand.
The priestess, who had no strength in her grasp already, began to fall.
The priestess could not even scream properly.
She just kept looking at me as she fell.
There would have been nothing to look at other than me.
She kept falling, focusing on the hand that let go of her.
Tak.
By flicking a finger, I moved the priestess in front of the temple of the God of Hope.
The priestess rolled over on the street in front of the temple and looked around in confusion.
After a while, she figured out where she was, and she lost strength and laid down on the street.
People wandering around the temple recognized her and began to support her.
She will be fine.
Although her muscle pain would be serious.
After drinking a potion and resting for a few days she would probably be healthy again.
[Hehehehe, very good.]
And the God of Hope was happy.
Extremely so.
It was enough that I could feel his emotions.
“What? The fear and despair that the priestess felt while falling, and your existence that came to mind at that moment?”
[Yes, it would have been nice if she fell to the bottom.]
The bastard.
This guy’s believers should also know this.
[The falling human is always conscious. Oh, I’m falling from this point. They had already foreseen death when they started to fall, but there is the illusion that comes to mind at the last minute of the end. Maybe they can survive this. Like this. Oh, that’s really good.]
This is the problem.
God does not care about the well-being of each human being.
[If they only moved a little further away. A little bit more…….]
It wasn’t even worth answering.
I ignored it and quietly started to climb the stairs again.
This path, which was called a stairway but should truthfully be called a murder rock climbing course, was entwined with magic.
It was much further than looking up from the street, and it was rough.
The sage up there was said to care about even the little things of each individual.
Of course.
If they can overcome this stairway, they will be one of the best superhumans on this planet.
I heard that the only things that the sage went ahead and solved were related to preventing a crisis or disaster on the continent, and so on.
Nevertheless, he was building a false reputation of treating all people equally and solving all worries.
He was at an ambiguous level of a deity standing at the boundary between a superhuman and a god.
I had a good understanding of the nature of gods.
Indeed, he deserved to be called a sage.
“In that sense, the God of Order is an ideal god.”
It is literally an ideal god.
While imposing minimal rules on the gods, it has little involvement in mortals.
No matter how much I thought about it, the farther away God was from humans, the better.
God is never beneficial.
Although it may seem indispensable for the world, God is absolutely not beneficial to ordinary intellectuals who make up the majority of the world.
At least it was the case for all the gods I saw and experienced in this world.
Deities are bound to be extreme, and the moment you force them on your own believers. The believers’ lives begin to crumble.
It was a little bit better for a world where many gods were mixed like this planet so that God couldn’t force anything on the believers.
“The God of Order will try to become a transcendent god.”
[Transcendent God? That’s a plausible expression.]
The God of Order, who has nearly become a transcendent god, will surely impose his order on the world.
As the God of Slowness in the past tried.
[The God of Order has revealed that he has an ego.]
By my provocation.
No matter how much I thought about it, there was no reason to just let the provocation pass.
The God of Order deliberately showed the world that he had an ego.
That means he has confidence.
[That means there’s not much time left.]
It was exciting.
It’s a staircase that solves your worries.
As I climbed, I could clearly see what I had to do in the future.
Soon I was able to climb all the stairs.
There was no priestess who was delaying me, so it was very quick.
At the end of the stairs was a well-established shrine.
This is the Tower of Dragon Ball’s Korin*…….
There were some strange things.
Of course, it was annoying that the interior and landscape conditions were like in a famous cartoon.
There was something more strange than that.
There were guards here, who made it ambiguous whether this was a temple or a storage warehouse.
And all the guards wearing strangely designed armor stood still.
I got closer and looked.
The guards were fine.
There was no sign of being enchanted, nor were they rigid.
They just stopped.
Soon I could see what had happened to the guards.
Time confinement.
They were stuck in time.
The power of the God of Slowness that slows down all worlds except his own self.
It was an overwhelming power to the extent that it seemed like the power of the God of Slowness almost devoured the world of the past.
These guards were overpowered by that power.
Even in a state of deformation.
Time confinement applies to all of the world, leaving only one’s own self as an exception.
However, the time confinement unfolded here was only applied to the guards, not the world.
The guards were trapped in an infinitely slow world.
They were just looking ahead and standing on the lookout without thinking, but from the outside, the guards were completely stationary.
Of course, the guards were the hands of the sage.
They are the servants of a god.
The powers of other gods cannot be applied in this way to those under the power of a god.
They can’t do that…….
“Things beyond common sense keep happening.”
It was already a few times today.
What day is it?
“Did the God of Slowness intervene?”
[No. Rather than being the God of Slowness, um…….]
The God of Hope stopped talking while trying to explain something.
The God of Hope did not open his mouth.
He flutters all day, but when it really matters, he doesn’t help.
I ignored the guards and entered the temple.
And I could face the sage.
Like the guards outside, the sage looked bizarre.
He was turned into a stone.
That’s absurd.
I came to this place by pursuing the power of the sage I encountered in the Pantheon.
So I could be sure.
That stone is the sage.
Should I say it is dead or alive?
It wasn’t just the appearance of a stone.
The sage was literally a stone.
No reason, no self, nothing left.
It was the same as Earth, with divinity, but no ego.
“Huh.”
If it had been dead, I would have just let it go.
God wasn’t completely immortal.
But for a god to be a stone.
Let’s organize the thoughts.
The next question is how the sage ended up like that right now.
The purpose of the one who made the sage a stone was of utmost importance.
“It’s probably because of me.”
[I think so.]
Rather than an unidentified being who suddenly had a grudge against the sage, he made the sage into stone today and enshrined it here.
It was better to think that it had something to do with me, who was pursuing the sage.
[Rather than someone turning the sage who fled to this place into a stone it was more correct to assume that the sage was brought here after getting turned into stone. As far as I know, that stone has a base on several planets. This place is rather small.]
I thought so too.
Originally, I thought that the sage, who became a stone, remembered the God of Sky, and fled here.
If someone intentionally put the sage here.
It can be said that it encouraged a collision between me and the God of Sky.
Inevitably, the conflict that the God of Order would respond to.
Who is it?
I understand the nature of the God of Sky and me.
A being who can intercept the sage by intervening between the Pantheon and my conflict.
In addition, being able to encourage this situation by using a technique that I do not understand.
Do you want me to notice?
Or did you think I wouldn’t notice?
If so.
“You seem to be looking at me as an idiot.”
*
“How are you?”
The answer did not come back.
There is just calm tranquility.
Kirikiri did not wait for an answer.
Answers that don’t come back right away don’t come back forever.
The god who proves time talks like that.
“I guess it’s worth it. Good luck. Nice to see you after a long time, too.”
Kirikiri said ‘hng’ and sniffed.
The room of the God of Slowness was a strange place.
Even after visiting several times, she felt that way.
“It’s time.”
[You came to steal my power again.]
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