Chapter 75

“A few.”

Winte twitched his eyebrows before speaking.

“The ones I encountered long ago numbered five in total. One of them must have become Sheryl.”

“There are five of those monstrous things? This is insane.”

“I can’t say whether there are still five now. They may have devoured each other to elevate their status. Or perhaps goblins born in other surface realms awakened to Karma and gained Form, rising to their level. The variables are numerous.”

“You’re awfully calm about this. If those damned things cross over, everything will end.”

“It’ll change, not end. Remember what I told you? Their Karma is to integrate themselves into the world. They force their way in and take over. Once they’ve replaced you lot, the world will keep turning normally. It might even be no different from now. The apex predator will simply change.”

“After we’re all dead, it’ll be your turn. They’ll come at you determined to chew you down to the fingernails, and you’re fine with that?”

“Death. That wouldn’t be so bad either.”

It didn’t seem like a joke. Winte would truly offer up his body when the time came to die.

Perhaps he’d even watch with detachment to see what death was like, then smile just as he entered Sheryl’s mouth.

Discussing human affairs with an existence that viewed humans as insects was foolish.

“You won’t just sit back completely though, right?”

“If you need my help, I’ll help. Indirectly, of course. Passing on my knowledge to you now is part of that. I favor fairness, after all.”

“How about taking direct action? That would be more exciting.”

“Do you really want that? If you do, I can oblige. If the me submerged down there were to move, something quite entertaining would unfold for you lot.”

The moment Winte’s words ended, his sixth sense shrieked. It was a sense of crisis and alarm he’d never experienced before.

Every bit of moisture in his body evaporated. The despair he’d felt when first encountering Sheryl couldn’t even compare.

This was truly the end.

An overwhelming terminus that defied imagination.

Quilbion spoke with a rotten smile.

“Absolutely, absolutely do not move. We’ll handle things on our own.”

“A wise choice.”

“Winte, you’re truly a monster beyond imagination.”

“That’s right. I was designed as such an existence. Blame the Designer if you must.”

“The Designer has no sense of discretion. Giving you such absurd power and then just standing back with folded arms.”

“There are restraints. The power to control me exists. And the ability to reset things even if I turn the world upside down has also been granted to that friend.”

Friend?

Ah, right. He’d said there was one.

“You said dragons were unique, didn’t you?”

“I exist alone. Within my knowledge, anyway.”

“Then that friend isn’t a dragon.”

“Correct.”

“Not human either, I assume. Since you treat us like insects.”

“I only used insects as a metaphor—I don’t look down on you lot quite that much. At least we can communicate.”

“Well, fine then. Who is this friend of yours?”

Winte shrugged as if he already knew everything.

“If you’re thinking of asking that friend for help, you’d better abandon the idea. That one’s even more apathetic than me. Though…… meeting someone might change that.”

Asking further about this ‘friend’ seemed unlikely to yield answers.

Quilbion scratched his head vigorously.

“I don’t want much, you know.”

“I know your personality. If you’d had many desires, you wouldn’t have stayed so docile when you were sold off.”

“Right. I adapt well. I’m good at accommodating others too. Groveling with a smile? I’m better at that than anyone. So right now I’m only thinking about one thing.”

Quilbion looked up at the blackened sky.

“When will Sheryl and those monsters invade?”

“I can’t say.”

“It’s definitely not happening right now, though. If it were possible, those lunatics would have burst out of the surface realm and gone on a rampage. I can tell from their eyes. They’re starving.”

As Winte said, the invasion would happen eventually.

The sorcery pulling humans into the surface realm. The horrifying amount of nark plastered across the sky-barrier.

Someday they would create the perfect passage connecting the surface realm and reality, then burst out and slaughter everything.

They would become the new masters of a world piled with corpses, and in that world, at least humans would not survive.

A future that would arrive someday.

“If I could just extract Twella, that deficient friend, and toss her outside…… and if the goblins would stay quiet until she lives out her days and closes her eyes.”

“The rest isn’t your concern?”

Quilbion chuckled.

“I’m not human either, you know. I’m similar to you. If it doesn’t harm me, why should I work myself to death?”

“That’s a rational way of thinking. I don’t know when you’ll die, but once Twella gets outside, she’ll live an ordinary life and die. She spent everything to save you. Her nark, and the eyes that glimpsed destiny.”

“……Who asked her to save me.”

“You did. I remember you asking to be saved.”

Winte said.

Quilbion bit down on his molars. Crunch—his teeth ground down and dug into his gums.

“I can’t live with debts. So I’ll rescue that frustrating girl. That’ll settle my debt, and I’ll go outside, live out my lifespan, and die cleanly.”

“You’ve already deviated from the Designer’s design. The nark that should only exist within the surface realm might survive outside and lead you to eternal life.”

“Don’t say such horrifying things. My goal is to live moderately and die.”

“Goals usually aren’t achieved and tend to flow in strange directions. If you end up living eternally, make me some coffee.”

Winte smiled contentedly while rocking the chair suspended in midair back and forth.

Eternal life.

It was a nauseating phrase.

A life with only meetings and no farewells was hell in itself.

Quilbion had absolutely no intention of living in hell.

When the time came, everything had to end.

That was better for mental health.

“Tell me more about sorcery. How to use it, what I need to do to use it more efficiently. Ah!”

He looked up at Winte and asked.

“Don’t you have any powerful sorcery? Something that kills everything in one shot.”

“Powerful sorcery. Being powerful means containing strong Karma. And only goblins of Green Form or higher can create such things.”

The bookshelf filled with sorcery books appeared again.

“Unfortunately, I don’t have any such sorcery. Secret transmissions are extremely difficult to obtain. Only a peculiar few among goblins awaken to Karma yet fixate on other things. Those special ones left behind those books.”

“There are goblins who desire things other than invasion?”

He pulled out a sorcery book and asked while opening it.

It was filled with incomprehensible characters. How was he supposed to read this again?

“What Al Terua told you about goblins—that was fairly accurate information.”

“I recall hearing they resembled humans. If that’s true, then……”

“Just as you’re thinking, there are goblins who channel their desires in other directions. I haven’t seen them myself, but there must certainly be goblins who cherish and love you lot.”

“I’d rather they didn’t exist.”

“So you can kill them without guilt?”

“Do I even have any conscience left?”

Winte, who’d been staring at him, nodded his head vigorously.

“If you’d truly wanted to become a monster, you wouldn’t care about things like Twella. You’ve clearly stepped one foot away from humanity. You recognize it yourself and say with your own mouth that you’re not human. But the very fact that you keep mentioning it means there’s room left. You say you’re not human, but you want to be human.”

“Right, you understand well. Since you can read people’s insides so well, surely you know the important things needed to solve problems.”

He opened the sorcery book with its bizarre characters and held it out to Winte.

“What is this script? Is it something only goblins use?”

“Not goblins plural—only the goblin who created it uses those characters.”

“A single goblin created an entire writing system?”

“That must have been that one’s desire. I’ve said repeatedly that I don’t know everything. I don’t know the detailed circumstances behind that collection either.”

“Collection, you say. I didn’t ask something important.”

He pulled out several more sorcery books and held them in his hand, shaking them.

“Where did you get all these?”

“I barely gathered them while traveling through surface realms. The roles I’ve created number well over ten thousand. Organizing and storing all their memories has been arduous work even for me.”

So he’d done something like what happened with Al Terua over ten thousand times. And he remembered it all?

As expected, this was a monster that shouldn’t be understood.

“If you’d just killed all those monsters when you first discovered them, there’d be no problem.”

“Once they’ve emerged, this situation was inevitable. Even if I’d killed the ones I’d nurtured in advance, nothing would have changed. The ones who’d awakened to Karma on their own in other realms would have appeared.”

“That’s just a hypothesis.”

“Right, an enjoyable hypothesis. The world where destiny has been destroyed has now entered an unpredictable state. How exciting and delightful is that? You should smile too.”

He clicked his tongue and flipped through another sorcery book.

Each one was a continuous series of incomprehensible patterns, characters, dots, and lines.

“Why do these lunatics all do their own thing? Can’t they think about convenience? If they’re going to share sorcery to grow stronger, they should create a common format. This is completely unreadable.”

“The act of leaving it behind is the goal itself. They’re satisfied with that. Passing it on to someone? They probably never even considered such a thing.”

He examined all eighty volumes of sorcery books. Except for the first book where the centipede had been sprouting, everything else was an incomprehensible festival of patterns.

“Sitpin Yellow Form art. That one had proper characters.”

“The great Sitpin.”

For the word ‘great’ to come from Winte’s mouth was surprising.

“Sitpin is, well, something like the spiritual teacher of goblins.”

“Spiritual teacher?”

“Quite a few goblins awakened to different desires after being influenced by that goblin. The books remaining there—you can say most of the goblins who left them were influenced by Sitpin.”

“Judging by how well you know about it, you must have met Sitpin too?”

“Of course! An extremely pleasant fellow. Even after realizing he was born within an error, he wasn’t shaken in the slightest. Unwavering conviction. That was Sitpin’s symbol.”

Winte descended from the sky and stood right beside him. Winte speaking of Sitpin smiled like a delighted child.

“Among all goblins, that one understood nark best. Sorcery, incantations, spells. To me, Sitpin was no different from a teacher.”

The goblin who taught Winte sorcery.

It was certainly no ordinary existence.

“Where can I meet that goblin?”

“I can’t say now. In your time reckoning, I met Sitpin about 600 years ago.”

Six hundred years.

A staggeringly distant number.

“The world’s been in this state for at least 600 years, and during all that time the Designer……”

“Time is merely a concept for measuring change. And to that being, time holds no great meaning. What matters is whether something can happen or has happened. Once it’s happened, even the Designer cannot intervene. That’s what letting go means.”

Trying to understand would only crush his skull, so he let it pass through one ear. Thinking ‘the Designer is dead’ would be most comfortable.

“That sky-barrier—you said Sheryl created it?”

“It was created by Sheryl and the other four together.”

“Is a surface realm something goblins created, like some kind of world?”

“This place is special. It was born from the intersection of dozens of coincidences and inevitabilities. Surface realms can be generated, but it’s never easy. That’s why most surface realms spontaneously emerge at some unobserved point.”

“And within those spontaneously generated surface realms, nark comes to exist, and goblins are naturally born while nibbling away at that nark?”

“Exactly.”

“They’re like rats. I had a storage room where rats weren’t visible to the eye, but the sound of them scampering around was loud as thunder. If you neglect them just because you can’t see them, they multiply like crazy at some point.”

Quilbion gave a sour smile.

“I want to clean it all up. Really.”

“That would be difficult.”

“It’s a wish, just a wish. Not saying I’ll actually do it.”

Quilbion sat down on the sorcery books and asked.

“Whatever the case, I need to increase my sorcery first before I can see any path forward, right? Give me a hint. What should I do now?”