Chương 177: Chapter 175: Should any of us become gods?

I go back to Ash.

"I think it's pretty clear that we have to go down the dark tunnel," I say.

"But we might end up coming back here after, I don't know. I just know we should try the dark tunnel first."

"Why?"

"Because that's the only one I caught any sign of Amanda on." Ash nods.

"All right then. We'll head down that tunnel first thing." Dinner is pleasant, but kind of quiet. We've all had a long day, and we're all kind of recovering. I end up meditating for a while to get my mana to fully recharge. It might have done so overnight, but I want to be certain. My health is full, and my stamina will fill up on its own pretty quickly. I recast Shell just to make sure it's at peak efficiency. I do make it a point to tell Vincent that I appreciate his contributions.

"Those spells you cast on the rock eater really made a difference," I tell him.

"It's really great to have you as part of the team."

"Thank you," he says, giving me a little bit of a confused look. It's like he's scanning for sarcasm or for hidden meaning. I just give him as honest a smile as I can until he internalizes the compliment. He does seem to sit a bit straighter, and I notice a little bit later that he's got this gentle smile on the corners of his mouth. It makes me think I did the right thing. After dinner, everyone but me beds down. It's probably crowded in the tent, but I'm sure they don't mind being all close and cuddly.

I stand outside the tent, somewhere that lets me keep an eye on all three tunnels leading into this chamber. I don't think anything is going to happen during my watch. It's normally pretty dull. But you never know. I feel like nothing may ever happen, except that one time when we decide not to bother with having someone on watch. When we do that, that's the time we'll get attacked. So I stand guard as a kind of insurance against that karmic backlash. I don't mind it.

It gives me time to think about the day, and to think about what's coming next. We're going to make it to the top of this mountain. I'm sure of it. Even though the monsters keep getting more and more powerful, even though they're becoming more numerous, I'm still confident we can get through all of them. Nothing would shake my confidence short of evidence that Amanda was killed. If she dies doing this, then I might worry.

But as long as she's still using stealth to make her way up, as long as she's still going, I'm convinced we can make it. Which means we really are going to have to make some decisions. We're going to have to decide if we want to allow Amanda to become a god. We might not actually get that choice; she might become a god before we get to her. But we should be ready to make it in case we get a chance to have an impact on the decision. Should we allow her to become a god, if we can? Should I allow Ash to become one?

What about the others? I don't know if Gigi and Vincent want to be gods. They seem to be wrestling with the decision themselves. But if they both lean in that direction, should I try to stop them? Will El and I be able to stop them? Do we even want to? I'm not sure. I'm reasonably certain I don't want to be a god. There is that nagging doubt, that voice whispering that I should, just to see what it's like. Whispering that I've earned it, that I deserve it.

It's weird to have a little nefarious voice whisper positive and supportive things. I'm used to the little voices telling me that I don't deserve it, that I suck, that I'm terrible and only deserve suffering. I'm not used to the voice telling me I deserve to be a fucking god. It's a weird experience. I have to decide if I'm going to try to stop anyone from becoming a god. I have to know if that's even my place, or if it's a good idea. So let's consider it. I do get a say in it.

I'm here, I'm helping, and I'm getting to the top of the mountain. So I do get a say. I am part of this journey. Even if it's just Amanda on her own, I feel like I should get a little bit of a say in the decision. Maybe I'm just asserting myself where I don't belong. Maybe I'm just being a misogynist, thinking that somehow as a man I get to make this decision. But I don't think it's just because of the gender I was assigned at birth. I think there's more to it than that.

I think that I get to decide because I'm a part of the process. I'm the one who really discovered the death cycle, at least in so far as the five of us are concerned. I may not have much of a leg to stand on when it comes to Amanda, but I definitely get to say something about Ash. I introduced her to Wrax, I got her through the death cycle. I convinced her to do it, and I've been with her every step of the way. So let's focus on whether or not I want to let her become a god. What does it harm me?

Whenever you're deciding on whether or not to let someone else do something, that's one of the questions you have to ask. Does it harm me? Does it affect me at all, really? I mean, on the one hand, I'll lose my friend. She'll go on to bigger and better things, and I'll probably be staying behind. That's not a reason to stop her; we should support our friends and help them succeed, not hold them back because it's more comfortable. But does her becoming a god actually hurt me? Reading on this site?

This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original. I don't think it does. I don't think she's going to make broad sweeping changes to the world that will change the way the world works. I'm not even sure she'll be able to if she wanted. She'll go on and become a god, maybe work a few miracles, maybe just try to keep the balance of the world. It will definitely take her some time to get settled, to get used to her power, and to figure out what she can do.

That might take years, decades, even centuries. I might not be around to be effected. That's not a reason to ignore it, though. The world will continue on without me, but it's my responsibility as a citizen of this world to make sure that the world continues in as positive a manner as possible. This isn't a question of whether or not to recycle. This is a question of whether or not to let someone become a god. It won't harm me, I don't think. I'm relatively confident that it won't. So it passes that hurdle.

But there are so many others. Will it harm her? Will getting this extra power hurt my friend? It's probably not something reversible, so I have to really have her best interests in mind. Will she like immortality? Will she still have free will? What will it mean to be a god? Like so many other things in this life, I don't have enough information to be sure. I don't know what it will mean, or what it will do to her. I don't know if it will turn her into a primordial force and eliminate her personhood.

I don't know if it will allow her to maintain her humanity in some small way. Maybe she'll be like the old gods, before the Judaeo-christian god came into being. She won't be perfect. She might still be human, with flaws and foibles. That would be ideal. That would mean she probably still has free will. Though she might have less than before. I don't think Amanda would go through with this if it meant that her consciousness would disappear.

If it meant that she would stop existing as she knows it, that she wouldn't be a person anymore, I don't think she'd do it. She seemed too proud of herself, too determined in her cleverness to accept something like that. So I think I can safely assume that it won't happen that way. I can assume that Ash will become a god more like Apollo or Loki and less like Jehovah. So I don't think it would be bad for her. Would it be bad for my friends? No; having a god on our side can only be helpful.

Unless she ends up as a trickster god and decides to fuck with us for no reason. But let's not dwell on that. Ash becoming a god wouldn't be bad for us. Would it be bad for the world? There are already five gods. I don't see how one more would unbalance things too much. And if it would, then Amanda is already going to be unbalancing it, and another god or three wouldn't make much of a difference. But the fact that there are multiple gods means no one god rules supreme.

No one has ultimate power or can act unilaterally without the consent of the other gods. They must keep each other in check, to at least some extent. If they didn't, we'd see a lot more evidence of their involvement. We'd see all kinds of things that they have done, that they are doing, to alter the world around them. And the world seems to follow a lot of rules. Maybe the gods have to follow the rules, too. No one god has infinite power. If you had unlimited power, there would be no need to have more than one god.

Omnipotence means that there only ever needs to be one. More than one would mean that you weren't omnipotent, because you couldn't prevent the other god from doing things. You couldn't control them, so you wouldn't be omnipotent. So Ash won't be all powerful. Neither will Amanda. They will probably become gods of certain things. They'll have domains that they control, or at least influence. Maybe priests will pray to them. Maybe they'll have clerics.

I don't know about religion in this world; I never bothered to learn. Religion doesn't play that big a part in my life. Though I suppose now it kind of will. It will have to. I'll know these gods. Even Amanda. I've met her, I've talked to her, I've fought by her side. I know these new gods, if that's what they become. So I won't be working on faith. I'll be working on knowledge. Can you have religion when you know for a fact that the god exists and what they are like? Maybe.

At the very least, I can't ever call myself an atheist again. I may not know what the gods are doing, but I know that they exist. Will Ash make the world a worse place? I truly believe she will do her best. I don't think she'll do anything bad on purpose. There might be some hiccups as she learns to control her power, but I think she'll do what's right in the end. I don't think she'll become an evil god. I know she worries about that, worries that her demon heritage will push her over to the side of evil.

But I know Ash. I know her as a person, and I don't think she would ever do that. I do have faith in that, at least. I have faith in her. I think she'll probably pick some aspect of the world to try to promote. Probably something like knightly virtue. She'll be all about helping people, about fighting monsters and saving the innocent. Vincent would be all about expanding magic. I think he'd probably ignore the world more or less while he just explored what he could do with magic.

He might not even stick to this world. That's something that I have to keep in mind. Gods are going to be on a much bigger scale than I've ever been able to comfortably comprehend. There are millions of galaxies out there. Trillions of planets. Maybe they won't stay here. Maybe they'll go to another planet and start over again. Maybe there are other gods that they'll have to contend with outside of this system. I don't know. And honestly, that's kind of tempting.

I mean, what if godhood is just ascension to the next plane of existence? What if it's just another world full of adventure and exploration? Maybe being a god would allow me to see the universe. I might not run out of things to do or places to see. I might never run out of new experiences to have. Immortality might be doable. It's terrifying, to be sure. But maybe I should do it anyway. Maybe I should do it scared.