Chương 4: The Shadow of Destiny (I)

Without taking his hand, Nerez let his gaze drift between Aren and Vilkie for a few moments.

"Hey, young ones, are you two dating?"

"Young ones?"

"W-we're just childhood friends!" Vilkie replied, her cheeks turning red.

"What's the difference?"

"I think there's a pretty big difference..." Aren said, scratching his head.

"I see... Well, now I'm jealous."

"What? What do you mean?"

"I mean I don't want to go with you two. I have no interest in being a third wheel, and the whole thing reminds me of my curse."

"You wouldn't be a third wheel at all!" Vilkie insisted, now red all the way to the tips of her ears.

"What curse are you talking about?" Aren asked.

"The curse from that dem... from the Goddess of Fate. Among other things, I'm doomed never to find a partner..." Faced with their baffled looks, Nerez covered his face with both hands to hold back his tears. I knew that if you were still a virgin at thirty, you'd become a wizard, but nobody told me that by one hundred thousand I might end up as a god…!

"Why would anyone curse you like that?" Vilkie asked, tilting her head.

"I'd like to know that myself!" Nerez exclaimed.

"Still, you can relax, Nereziel. I'm sure gods can't directly control the fate of other gods, not even gods of fate," Aren said with a smile.

"In other words, all you have to do is be chosen as a god."

"But a goddess of fate, you say... gods of fate are unbelievably powerful, and they were already extremely rare to begin with," Vilkie added thoughtfully.

"I don't think anyone had heard of one even before I was born." Nerez turned to them, eyes wide.

"You're serious?"

"Mm? What?"

"There are no more gods of fate...?" I mean, the fact that there had once been more than one, just as I had suspected, was bad enough... but if there are none left...

"Well, I can't say for certain..." Vilkie explained.

"The only thing I can say is that at least we don't know of any."

"Oh, this is a gift from the gods! A gift from Zorovan? It doesn't matter whose it is! What a magical day! Of course I was planning to face her sooner or later... In my first hundred lives, revenge was all I could think about... But if she doesn't even exist anymore, so much the better!" Aren and Vilkie exchanged confused looks as they listened to the monologue unfolding in front of them. Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

"Does that mean you no longer have a problem with joining my faction?" Aren finally asked.

"Not at all. That's a completely separate issue. Besides, I'm strictly single-player."

"Pla-yar? What's that?" Vilkie asked curiously."'Player,' and it's not important... Look, I have nothing against you (well, a little; you make me jealous), but I want to keep a low profile, okay? The Goddess of Fate might be gone, but I still want nothing to do with gods in general anymore. I want a quiet life!"

"Mmm, only the most powerful gods can have domains of their own and decide who gets in and who doesn't..." Aren said, crossing his arms as he thought.

"But that's exactly my goal. Nereziel, if you join me, I promise you a territory of your own within my domain, where you can do whatever you want, including living like a hermit."

"First of all, call me Nerez.

'Nereziel' gives me the creeps..." Nerez sighed, though he was clearly paying a bit more attention now.

"But why are you two so interested in me? Because of that whole Efe... that gate thing? Zorovan said it was a coincidence, didn't he? So don't mind me."

"Your aura isn't normal," Vilkie explained.

"It's unbelievably dense, almost dark, like a multitude trapped within a single soul."

"Dark...? The Sacred Darkness?" Nerez murmured to himself.

"Vilkie and I share a common ancestor, the founder of my clan, an Absolute God who rules over Light." An Absolute God... like Zorovan's granddaughter? The one who's also the Goddess of Life?

"And I hadn't mentioned it before, but Vilkie's family is a cadet branch of mine, which is why she's here assisting me," Aren went on.

"We both inherited that ability to see beyond what is normal, something tied to the domain of Light." Nerez checked his Godscript and saw that, indeed, [Gift of Light] appeared in both of their trait lists.

"So besides being elite and childhood friends, you're cousins or something too... hmm... I see..."

"We are not dating! And we're not even really cousins... the clan was founded tens of thousands of years ago."

"Haha, well, once you said you'd lived a thousand lives, everything started to make sense. In theory, even a human could gather a tremendous amount of spiritual energy that way," Aren explained.

"Though forgive me for asking... How is that even possible?"

"Right when I'd just added that to my list of things I shouldn't reveal lightly... were you listening?"

"Yes, sorry..." Vilkie replied.

"We wanted to talk to you earlier, but you seemed busy..."

"Ah, that Odren guy."

"Odrian..." Aren corrected.

"And I'm sorry. We didn't mean to spy on you."

"Well, whatever. Since you already heard it, there's no point hiding it now... The Goddess of Fate didn't just curse me never to find a partner. That was the least of it." Nerez crossed his arms and closed his eyes.

"The real curse was condemning me to reincarnate over and over without losing my memory, and always into a different world." Aren and Vilkie were visibly stunned. All they could do was look at each other, unsure how to react.

"To reincarnate even once without help is already extraordinary," Aren affirmed at last.

"But to do it more than a thousand times..." Vilkie added, bringing a hand to her mouth.

"Ah, but don't be fooled if your Godscripts list it as a blessing! It is very clearly the worst curse of all!"

"I'm sorry, I can only see your name..." Vilkie said, embarrassed.

"Same here. I know it's a bit bold of me to invite you into my faction when your spiritual energy might even be greater than mine," Aren said.

"But strength isn't everything. I promise you won't regret it."

"I see... I still don't really understand how this whole Godscript thing works, but then I guess you're not normally meant to see more than the name... And you still haven't given up on trying to make me join you?!"

"More importantly..." Aren's expression turned serious.

"Reincarnating is one thing, but doing it across different worlds..." He glanced at Vilkie again, and she gave a faint nod.

"That should be impossible. Every world has its own river of death, so to speak," she said.

"Spiritual energy is washed in those rivers, and with it, memories. In theory, you could be reborn in your original world with both your memories and your spiritual energy intact, but for a soul to move from one world to another on its own, it would have to cross the Silver Sea..."

"All rivers of death eventually flow into the Silver Sea, but reaching it is considered true death," Aren explained.

"Even the souls of gods return to their pure state there. In that place, all souls are equal."

"Silver Sea... Silver Sea... You mean the sea of souls?"

"I suppose? It is a sea of souls, after all. But it's known as the Silver Sea because that's the color of souls in their pure state... just like your hair," Vilkie replied.

"My hair? What are you talking about?"