Chapter 65

“Unmarried?”

“No. I was married. Had two kids too.”

“Age?”

“Forty. We struggled with infertility, then had kids later in life. They were adorable enough that putting them in my eyes wouldn’t hurt. Their names were Ricky and Jack. Good names, right?”

Winte sipped his coffee, then said,

“Childhood memories?”

“I remember most of them. The village scenery, the people who lived there, the kids I played with. All of it.”

When he closed his eyes, everything rose up vividly.

When he retraced the past one by one, at some point his mind split in two.

The me on the dormitory rooftop ruminating on experiences from the bizarre world. And the me who’d become a father of two.

The two recognized each other clearly and began chattering about the past as if having a conversation.

Then another Quilbion from a different world would join in and open his mouth, and that’s how hundreds, thousands of Quilbions would chatter inside his head.

It was no different from a bustling marketplace, but somehow it wasn’t confusing.

Thousands of leaves on a tree sway in different directions, but ultimately they’re all derived from one large trunk.

He’d led vastly different lives, but the essence was the same, so it didn’t get muddled. That was the conclusion Quilbion had tentatively reached.

“There are overlaps, but there are also many differences. It’s hard to find regularity.”

“I know.”

Even regarding that place, Winte couldn’t offer help.

He couldn’t speak about what he didn’t know. Winte had told him this was slightly borrowing someone’s words.

“When I return here, I don’t get confused, but when I’m in that place, it’s quite worrying. What if I can’t remember who I was? What if I can’t come to my senses and have to keep living there?”

“There won’t be a problem. You can just live in the place you’ve moved to.”

“You always find it easy to say when it’s someone else’s problem.”

“It’s not my problem, just like you said.”

“You’ll get punished for that. People should speak nicely.”

“Bullshit.”

Quilbion looked at Winte with slightly narrowed eyes. Did that curse just come out of that mouth?

“What?”

“It’s just fascinating since you never cursed before, but suddenly you did.”

“I’ve been with you quite a while. A while by Human Tribe standards, anyway.”

“So you’re saying you got influenced? By me?”

Instead of answering, Winte only smiled.

“Well, it’s not just you who’s changed, Lord Winte.”

His body was pinned to the surface realm, but his mental entity wandered through all sorts of worlds.

One day he came to his senses in the body of a child who couldn’t control their bowels, and another day in the body of a greying gentleman who’d lost his child.

Meeting and parting.

Even if they weren’t originally his life, the sensations and emotions experienced in those places seeped intact into the Quilbion here.

Repeating lifetimes infinitely wasn’t a particularly pleasant thing.

Joy is the shadow of sorrow. The opposite is also true. The two visited in succession like cycling seasons.

If all memories were recorded equally, there’d be no complaints, but the brain recorded phenomena with bias.

It couldn’t be helped.

Because humans are animals.

Animals must avoid danger, and danger is generally closely related to sorrow.

The more it repeated, the more beautiful scenery receded to the background, while stimulating, dangerous, and musty bitter information filled up the gift box called memory.

Quilbion stretched out his legs and brought coffee to his mouth.

“I’m lucky to be insane.”

“Why?”

“If I’d been sane, I couldn’t have endured it. Right now my head is filled with all kinds of atrocious incidents and accidents. If a person kept ruminating on this while living, they’d go mad, but as you know, I’m already broken, right?”

Quilbion held out his cup to Twella sitting beside him on the left. Twella also smiled and clinked her cup.

Clink.

“What will you tell me today?”

“About goblins.”

“Ah, you stopped midway last time.”

When he said last time, it seemed recent, but tracing his memories, it felt like about ten years ago.

What exactly is time?

The more you know it, the less you know.

“Form and Karma. And Form and Fate.”

“You said it before, right? Ah, and Geron said those words. That he’d found his Form and seemed to understand Karma. You remember Geron, right?”

“I remember. He was quite an intelligent entity. Unfortunate that he died.”

“Did you want to catch and dissect him?”

“He wasn’t worth that much.”

Winte looked up at the sky. The sun that had been moving slowly picked up speed, and soon day and night changed with a single blink.

“It’s dizzying.”

He said while watching the flickering sky.

“There’s no proper name, so I’m using the name goblin that’s been passed down among the Human Tribe, but the things born in this place aren’t the goblins you know.”

“That would make sense. You said it was a situation even the great god couldn’t predict.”

The sky that had been rapidly changing suddenly turned pitch black. It was dark enough that even with the naked eye, it was hard to confirm his own fingers.

Light had vanished.

“All sentient beings outside, meaning all life touched by the Designer’s breath, possess Form and Fate.”

“What’s Form and what’s Fate? I heard a bit about Fate before, but it was so vague.”

“Form could be called the basic structure the Designer composed. The something that became the origin of the Human Tribe, the something that became the origin of the Tarin Tribe, the something that became the origin of the Barara Tribe. Those things that became the beginning of all other species can be called Form.”

“Like my distant ancestors, something like that?”

“Simply put, yes.”

“What about Fate?”

A white dot appeared in the black sky.

A stem extended from the dot, and from that stem, another stem separated.

Before long, the sky was filled with white stems.

“Fate is what the Designer placed inside Form. Prosperity, love, cooperation. Or jealousy, hatred, contempt. The supplementary things necessary for building the world are contained within Fate.”

“Like knowledge?”

“A priori knowledge can also be seen as part of Fate. And deep within Fate, another of the Designer’s intentions is hidden.”

Quilbion looked at the sky glowing white and said,

“You said this before, right? That the god hopes we’ll gain complete independence.”

“I did.”

“That intention must be related to independence, right?”

“Figuring that out is your lot’s job. I don’t have Fate to begin with. I’m merely one who enjoys the world you lot have built—I have neither the will nor ability to build the world.”

“You say you have no ability when you possess power like that?”

Quilbion pointed at the sky. The white stems that had spread in all directions like a giant tree’s roots gathered back to a single point and vanished.

“I can intervene to some degree for amusement, for convenience. I can make bolder choices for the sake of coffee. But the world belongs to you lot. That’s a clear fact.”

“The god must love us a lot.”

“How many creators would there be who don’t cherish their creations?”

Quilbion looked down at his cold coffee.

“When I listen to you, Lord Winte, that Designer… seems more human than me.”

“Just because they’re a god doesn’t mean they’re perfect.”

“But they’re a god?”

“If they were truly perfect, there’d be no reason to exist. That being is…… just a very lonely existence who came from far away. They just happen to be extremely good with their hands.”

“Is the god listening to our conversation right now?”

“Probably.”

“I’d get struck by lightning if I cursed, right?”

“Try it. I’m curious about that too.”

“I’ll try it right before I die.”

Slurp—he drank the cold coffee in one gulp.

“I understand that Fate and Form were passed to the various species outside. Then what are the Form and Karma that Geron mentioned?”

“What exactly did Geron say?”

Quilbion traced his memories, then said,

“I’ve found my Form, and I think I understand Karma. He said it like that.”

“He really was a competent entity.”

Winte raised his chin.

A red dot appeared in the black sky this time.

“The surface realm is a domain that’s deviated from the god’s design. Because it’s structurally misaligned, nothing should have been able to be born within it. But something was.”

A stem extended from the red dot like before. The sky was quickly covered with red roots.

“Born regardless of the god’s will. They wandered around inside the surface realm and eventually met you lot.”

A white dot appeared beside the red roots.

The red stems cautiously poked the white dot, then soon enveloped it.

“They consumed your Form and made it their own. The reason the aberrant things called goblins resemble animals, plants, and various other species from your world is because of this.”

He smiled bitterly while recalling the countless goblins in human form.

“I understand Form, but what about Karma? That seems unrelated to us.”

“They took Form but didn’t inherit Fate. Form is structure, so they could understand and steal it, but Fate contains the god’s intentions, so they couldn’t absorb it. Things with only Form and no Fate.”

The red branches that dominated the sky began to dance.

“Then something came into being.”

A blue dot appeared among the red roots.

“Those who weren’t satisfied with Form alone. At the same time, those who read the Fate you lot possess. The first of them probably asked themselves this question.”

Winte continued in a low voice.

“Why were we born?”

Quilbion recalled the goblins. Not the intelligent goblins he’d met at the dormitories, but the thousands, tens of thousands of goblins with only instinct that he’d caught until now.

Only Form, no Fate.

Beings that infinitely repeated only the act of eating.

“If I were a goblin like that, I’d feel like shit. I’d think, what the hell am I?”

Winte nodded.

“They couldn’t completely steal Fate, but the first of them learned about the thing called knowledge embedded within Fate. They investigated. What are those things outside that makes them different from us?”

“Did the goblins find an answer?”

“Should I say they found it, or should I say it was revealed?”

Winte’s eyes narrowed.

“The first of them realized Karma instead of Fate. Those who were born on their own discovered the reason for their own birth.”

The sky split in half.

On the left were red roots, on the right were white roots.

There was a deep chasm in the center where they couldn’t recognize or invade each other, but at some point the red roots penetrated the white roots.

“The subject. The thing that replaces the void. They’re craving your world. Becoming incorporated into the world and then being completely replaced to become its master.”

“……Escaping from the surface realm is impossible though.”

“Impossible?”

Winte was smiling.

“As long as there are exceptions, it’s not impossible. More than anything, you’re also approaching that exception.”

“So what you’re saying is that all the goblins in the surface realm will cross over and kill us?”

Quilbion looked at the green forest spreading beyond the rooftop.

“But I already dealt with all the goblins here. Killed them very cleanly.”

“That would be the case here.”

“Here meaning……”

“The surface realm isn’t any single location. It’s a concept. Not a dimension where the god’s eyes reach, but a split crack. A bizarre place born from there.”

Clack—a sound came. Winte had set his cup down on the saucer.

The sky that had been entangled in red and white regained its blue color.

The sun that had vanished also majestically adorned the sky.

“No one can know when the erosion will begin. But what’s certain is that it will definitely happen someday.”