Episode ①② Compensating for Deficiency by Depleting Surpluses Part 4
Good morning….
Indeed, this is the most fitting greeting upon waking.
“Good morning, world.”
“Ding ding ding~ Congratulations, you have been chosen to save the world, change the world, or destroy the world.”
“There are three options?”
“Of course, the choices are not over yet, An… No, since it’s like this, I should call you this, right? Hmm, ‘Ren?”
The voice was a dynamic female voice, not a genderless one.
But the image…
“Hey, you’re going to be sued for infringement with that image.”
“Heh, isn’t this how the world should look? Oh, and it needs a door.”
And so, a floating stone gate suddenly appeared behind it.
It sat before the gate, without an image.
It was as if a transparent person had been outlined; visible yet seemingly non-existent.
A peculiar state.
“Stop playing around…”
“I’m not playing. Have you seen ‘things’ that have lost their existence after being expelled by the world?”
Like a shadow, completely black, in a human form, but not necessarily human.
Those are the ‘things that do not exist’ expelled by the world, collectively called the non-existent.
In that sense, the world before me seemed to be the exact opposite state of the non-existent.
“I am the world. Existence is determined by me. I truly exist here, but I have no body, no soul, and naturally, no consciousness.”
“Ordinary people wouldn’t understand this concept at all…”
“Are you an ordinary person?”
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“Essentially, I’m still an ordinary person.”
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“That’s right, me too. Essentially, I’m still the world. No matter how much I think, no matter how much I ponder, I am not human, but the world.”
The world is not absolute, but its essence does not change.
Things that change easily are not called essence.
“Hmm~ It’s certainly a bit strange to always be like this. How about you create a character image for me?”
“I’ll create a character image for you?”
“Yes, just like customizing your character’s face at the beginning of a game, create the perfect body you think I should have.”
“Uh, for me to create one… Why this suddenly come to mind?”
“Well, when people die, they put on makeup for their funerals, right? They’re called funeral directors?”
“Ah, ah…”
I naturally knew this well. In fact, I was extremely familiar with it.
Because my mother used to do that job, and I had witnessed the somewhat terrifying yet sacred task up close.
It was a place without smiles.
“I want to leave cleanly, beautifully, and with dignity too.”
“But how could I possibly do such a thing?”
“Why not? This is your dream, your spiritual world, right? You are the master here, not me. You are the master of this ‘world’.”
Is that so?
But I remember that when I was here before, I couldn’t control it freely.
Zi’ai (Kuuga) once told me that after I fell asleep, my dreams would connect here, and this wasn’t a dream, but my heart’s world.
It was a spiritual world that reflected my inner self.
“Perhaps you couldn’t before, but I’m here now. The true world is helping you create it, like enabling creative mode in a game. Whatever you want to build here, you can make it that way.”
“Is that so?”
I tried to imagine myself immersed in the sea.
The next second, my surroundings turned into the ocean.
The sensation was real, I was completely soaked, and the feeling of the water… yes, it was the same as when I was floating in the Sea of Life in Origin.
Ah, but I’m not interested in drowning, and my clothes are all wet, I need to dry them.
In the next instant, I found myself in a sea of fire.
“Wow, this is bad, this is bad, this place is dangerous!”
I carelessly thought of this.
This was a planet that looked like Earth, which I had visited while floating in space. However, no life existed there. The average temperature was 2000 degrees Celsius, and due to the influence of the nearest star, 80% of the surface was covered in magma.
It was a terribly awful place.
No, no, this place is too terrible, it’s making me recall bad memories. Swimming in lava is not exactly a pleasant memory.
“Water one moment, fire the next, a mix of ice and fire? For you, ‘this place’ is the most familiar, isn’t it?”
It snapped its fingers, and the next second, the scene I was in changed again.
This is…
…!”
Stars sparkled all around.
This was the place where I had spent the longest time.
It was also the loneliest time I had experienced.
This is outer space.
Space is not as beautiful as it appears to the naked eye; this is a ‘death space’.
In just ten seconds, the skin swells, and the saliva boils.
The surrounding temperature is -270°, and the water in human tissue evaporates and boils.
Falling into panic, instinctively wanting to breathe, but around me is… Hwang Kong Novel
The atmospheric pressure of the human body becomes unbearable. The atmospheric pressure in the lungs is forced out of the mouth and nostrils.
Unable to withstand the outward impact of the airflow, the lungs collapse.
Death descends.
The only consolation is that if you die in space, due to the vacuum, the corpse will be permanently preserved, becoming the perfect natural corpse repository.
As long as nothing unexpected happens, it can exist forever.
But that’s under the premise of being dead.
I cannot die.
Although Ling weakened my immortality somewhat before, my ‘immortality’ in the ‘past,’ after experiencing the ‘trial of space,’ had reached its peak.
Even if my body were decomposed to an atomic level and evaporated, I could still revive on the spot.
This is [Immortality Resistance].
So even in space, I couldn’t die; I just kept drifting and floating.
Although I occasionally drifted to a lava planet like the one just now, compared to the time I spent floating in space, it was less than a blink of an eye.
In space, there appear to be countless stars, but in reality, it is empty.
The probability of randomly drifting to a planet while floating in space is one in ‘hundreds of trillions of trillions.’
So, in this state, I experienced over ten billion years.
On the verge of madness.
Eternal night with no daytime.
Temperature -270°.
No breathing, no sound, and even more so, no death.
A veritable [Avici Hell], Section 221 out.
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All the suffering in this world will surely have an end, ushering in the end called ‘death’.
And for humans, this is the precious ‘salvation’ system in this world.
But for me, that did not exist.
Gradually, I stopped feeling pain.
Rather, I felt ‘nothing at all’.
Only a vague, unclear consciousness and questions about myself.
[What am I?]
“Yes, what am I?”
The surroundings returned to blankness.
I’m back.
“A world that coincidentally obtained ‘spirit’? …After gaining ‘self,’ I developed various desires… I don’t want to die, I don’t want to disappear, I don’t want to lose myself.”
“But at the same time, I feel that I should disappear, because I am the world.”
“I have nothing to regret, no one will cry for me when I die.”
“Don’t you regret it?”
“I don’t feel regret because I lived freely.”
Lived freely…
“It’s just that the thought of quietly disappearing and no one remembering me makes me feel a little lonely.”
…I see.
I nodded and said to it,
“I will create the perfect body for you.”
