Chapter 94

“The food has arrived.”

Food was spread abundantly before Veild.

“You’re eating all that?”

“Yes, I must eat it all.”

“You like eating.”

“The original owner of this body likes it.”

Veild was chewing on chunky pieces of meat in his mouth. He even grinned, as if it suited his taste.

Sheryl was the same, and this one too—when you watched them quietly, they were indistinguishable from humans.

“Leaving me aside since I was originally human, why do you all open your eyes in human bodies in this world?”

He asked about a point that had been bothering him since before.

Not only Sheryl, but Veild had also opened his eyes inside a ‘human with the same name.’

“I’m curious about that too. So I came up with a few hypotheses.”

“Hypotheses?”

“Before that, tell me about the other worlds you’ve experienced, Quil. Ah, you called them cracks, right?”

“Winte and I call them cracks. But has my nickname become permanently Quil?”

“Yes. It’s comfortable and nice that way.”

“If you’re comfortable with it.”

After shrugging his shoulders, he moved the stir-fried vegetables onto his plate. They’d melted down halfway, so he couldn’t tell what kind of vegetables they were.

The taste was quite good.

While eating food, he talked about what he’d seen while crossing back and forth through cracks.

A world where pigs set up workshops and lived diligently, a world where a picky goat controlled banks all over the world, a world where metal objects weren’t permitted to humans.

“They’re similar yet different worlds.”

“There were places covered in machines I’d never seen before in my life. I couldn’t create those with my imagination.”

“After coming to this place, I became certain too. This isn’t a place created by someone’s imagination. It’s a world that truly exists somewhere.”

“Then why do you exist as a human rather than a goblin?”

“Because our intent reaches toward humans—that’s my self-serving interpretation. Since there’s no way to know the real answer anyway.”

That was true.

This place was a world even god couldn’t figure out.

Whether another god who created this place exists, or whether it’s a world where the absence of god is taken for granted—even that was unknown.

Holy power exists here, and there are sects that worship god, but no one had ever encountered the actual being.

If god exists and manages the world he created, he wouldn’t tolerate the intervention of foreign substances.

But though he’d wandered through countless cracks, no omnipotent god had ever appeared to deliver divine punishment.

“An omnipotent god probably doesn’t exist in this place. If one exists, it means they have no interest in us, so there’s no need to worry about it. Either way, it’s best not to keep god in mind.”

Veild seemed to think the same way.

“Structurally, Sheryl and I are bound together, and you all share many things with Sheryl. That’s why you can intervene in the cracks where I exist.”

“It seems so. Before you appeared, Quil, we didn’t even know these kinds of places existed. Teacher would have been the happiest about it. He hates things that bore him.”

“That old man isn’t quite sane either.”

Veild laughed quietly.

“To me, this place is like a playground. A joyful place. It made me realize that the world is this beautiful.”

“It would be really nice if you could live here with Sheryl in this beautiful world. Right?”

“Yes. This place is good too, but honestly, I’d be satisfied as long as I can be with her, wherever it is. Even if it were inside a blazing furnace, I could smile if she were beside me.”

Sheryl wouldn’t be smiling though.

Quilbion didn’t want to fathom the emotions of two goblins who would become lovers.

The important thing was that Veild craved Sheryl.

“We’ll need to share a lot of things.”

“Depending on the situation.”

“Why? We’re friends now.”

“We’re friends. But you seem like a slightly dangerous friend.”

“Me? To you guys?”

Quilbion smirked.

“I’d die with a finger flick—how am I so dangerous?”

“Quil is special. That’s why Sheryl shows interest in you. Teacher is the same way. And being special calls forth unexpected phenomena. Like this crack.”

“Here is similar to a playground, as you said. You can have fun playing, but there’s nothing to take away. At best, we can only share memories.”

Quilbion tried moving his nark. He smiled while demonstrating sorcery that didn’t lead to phenomenon induction.

“I can’t even use sorcery here.”

“You’ll be able to use it soon.”

“You seem to know me better than I know myself.”

“Because I can see it. The seed inside you.”

“That damned seed. What the hell is the seed anyway?”

“It’s a gift from god. That’s why we don’t have it. But… Quil’s seed seems to have greatly deviated from god’s intentions. Even Teacher wouldn’t have been able to confirm this properly. Teacher is skilled in all things, but when it comes to nark, he can’t keep up with our understanding.”

Winte had said the same thing. That awakening sorcery is difficult.

“Will I be able to beat you guys down if enough time passes?”

“I don’t know. Your specialness doesn’t necessarily mean strength.”

“That’s disappointing. I need power.”

“Power to kill us?”

“I’ll kill you guys and clean up strange things while I’m at it.”

They smiled at each other while exchanging warm conversation. Was there something that connected crazy bastards to each other? It was quite an enjoyable conversation.

The shop door opened. A small child ran toward the counter while giggling, then stumbled and fell.

It was in front of Veild.

The fallen child raised his head, his eyes brimming with tears, on the verge of crying.

“Here.”

Veild pulled out a small horse figurine carved from wood. The child looked at the toy with a face that seemed about to cry.

“If you don’t cry, I’ll give it to you.”

The child stood up bravely and received the toy.

It was unexpected. An action more human than humans. The woman beside the counter bowed her head toward Veild. She seemed to be the mother.

“You like children.”

“No.”

“Really? I thought you liked them.”

“If they cry, it’s noisy. Then I’d have to kill them, but I thought you wouldn’t like that, so I resolved it as a second-best option. Because we’re friends.”

His appetite completely disappeared.

Either way, it was still a goblin. If things went wrong with Sheryl, he’d turn a city into a wasteland while claiming he’d been rejected.

“I support your love. I’ll definitely make sure you two get together.”

“That’s reassuring. I don’t need anything else as long as I have Sheryl.”

Veild pushed the plates of food to the edge of the table.

“Could you put that in the center?”

Quilbion placed his own plate in the center of the table.

“Earlier I said I’d thought up some hypotheses.”

“You did.”

Veild placed the leftover bread on the plate. A piece of bread about a palm’s length.

“This is the world.”

“This bread?”

“Yes. And.”

Veild’s finger moved. Each time his index finger twitched, the bread was sliced thinly.

Quilbion lifted up one thinly sliced piece of bread. It was so thin that he could see Veild sitting across from him through it.

“This is a crack?”

“Yes. From the fact that they share a similar form, there’s a possibility that the world where we truly exist is the progenitor of everything. Of course, it could be the opposite.”

“Then who made this bread?”

“An outside god. That’s what I think.”

“An outside god?”

Veild’s gaze left the plate and swept across the table, and further, across the entire restaurant.

“Even this vast place we call the world might just be a plate on a dining table. And even those intelligent beings who realized the world by looking at that plate—to beings of a higher conceptual level, they’d look like dust.”

“Like how Winte and you all see humans. That’s a plausible story. No, this might be the truth.”

Veild picked up several slices of bread, dunked them deeply in melted butter, and brought them to his mouth.

“Of course, even this way of thinking is the limit of an intelligent being trapped in this world. We can only talk about things we can imagine.”

“What we can’t imagine can’t be spoken. Winte said something similar.”

“Teacher said the Designer was a guest from a distant place.”

Quilbion nodded.

“A god above god. Then a god above that. Wow, what are we really?”

“Dust, I suppose. Me and Quil both.”

He didn’t want to shift from fatalism to skepticism. Both were equally shitty.

Quilbion rinsed his mouth with water and spoke.

“Dust should just live hard in the way dust lives.”

“I think the same way.”

“You for Sheryl’s sake, me for the sake of rest.”

He stood up from his chair.

“We’ve talked enough, and if you release me, I’d like to return to reality.”

“Please be a bit patient about returning. Until the Sheryl here opens her eyes. The longer time spent in the crack, the more I can feel her changing.”

“Is there a possibility she’ll become a docile good sheep?”

“……I’m not sure about that.”

“Of course not.”

Where would a tyrant go?

Quilbion gestured to Veild.

“We should pay.”

“Quil is a shameless human.”

“I told you I have no money. And this hospitality is like a down payment.”

“Fine. I’ll consider it a down payment. Including those clothes.”

Veild pointed at the clothes.

“You’re too meticulous.”

Shaking his head, he came out of the shop.

He’d become entangled with two goblins.

Looking at how things were going, he’d probably encounter the remaining two at some point as well.

“Veild.”

He called out to the goblin who’d finished paying and come out.

“Yes.”

“Sheryl, Veild. And you said it was Corsa, right? The one who taught you how to trap me.”

“That’s right, Corsa.”

“What’s that Corsa’s personality like? Can we communicate like Sheryl and you?”

“Ah… that’s concerning.”

Veild looked up at the sky. It was a gaze that looked far away.

“You should be careful.”

“Why? Do they have a foul personality? Will they try to kill me right away upon meeting?”

“It seems they’re already visited your main body. And this is… jealousy. Corsa is jealous of you, Quil.”

“Jealousy? Why? They’re never even met me, so why are they jealous?”

Veild smiled with his eyes.

“Corsa loves Winte. They want to possess him. More than anyone, they want to devour him. But that Winte cherishes Quil, so they must want to kill you.”

“Fucking hell.”

Quilbion scratched his head irritably. How is there not a single normal one? Couldn’t they have a gentlemanly conversation with manners?

“Wait. They saw my main body?”

“Yes.”

“That means they came after pinpointing my location, right? Sheryl said it would be difficult to find.”

“Corsa made the core of the barrier. If they try hard to find you, they can. Opening it is also easy for them.”

“You all share things with each other, right?”

“Yes.”

Veild looked down at his own hands while speaking.

“But we don’t share everything. If you deliberately hide something, you might not get caught. I do that.”

Veild made a deep smile.

“But Corsa seems to really dislike you, Quil. They’re precisely showing us the barrier’s location. It must mean ‘let’s go eat Quil.'”

The situation he’d been worried about had come to pass.

Quilbion felt his mouth go dry and spoke.

“Will he come?”

“No. At least Sheryl and I won’t go.”

“Corsa will keep attacking, and what about the remaining one?”

“I’m not sure about them either. The emotions occasionally transmitted from them—they seems quite happy.”

“Happy? Then that’s fortunate. They probably won’t care about someone like me.”

“That’s also uncertain.”

It was an uncomfortably ominous statement.