"Although I never said I was going to marry...?" Kaito tried to protest, but Gid did not give him the chance.
"My wife told me. Are you saying my wife is lying?" Gid asked as he slightly increased the pressure.
"Of course not" Kaito immediately gave in.
"Good" Gid nodded in satisfaction. "Don't worry, whether for your sake or theirs, I would never force them to marry, but even if you didn't, the conditions wouldn't change for you.
In fact, I would never have even let you try something like that if you weren't Motion. The ability of omnipresence allows you to control the empire even better than I can."
'Looks like somehow it's already been decided that I'll marry them?'
[It's not like you mind anyway.]
'And what would you know?'
[Lust: 80%.]
'Wait, wasn't it lower last time?' Kaito complained. 'And why can you still check that if I rejected the reward?'
[Those are fluctuating values. Your anger right now isn't the same as it would be if your entire family were killed. But your lust usually stays around 80% under normal circumstances.
Besides, something as simple as checking your own body is easy for me. I simply copied the function from the previous reward.]
'You can do that kind of thing?' Yuuji asked in surprise.
[Only with basic things.]
"You know, I like that you speak to me as an equal, without feeling inferior, while still acknowledging me as someone above you. That's a difficult combination to find even in my countless years of life" Gid interrupted him. "Even so, don't you think it's rather rude to ignore me and start talking to a system inside your head?"
"Uh... sorry?" Kaito wasn't sure what to say. He had gotten so used to talking to his system and treating it like another person that he had forgotten other people wouldn't see it that way.
"You're lucky. I was just about to talk about something related to that anyway, so I don't mind. It even gives me a chance to bring up the topic, hahaha" Gid laughed.
'I can't tell if that's sarcasm or if he's serious' Kaito thought. He was genuinely having trouble understanding the person sitting in front of him.
"So, about the story from earlier, the one about the three gods and four demons, what did you think?"
'What kind of question is that?' Kaito wondered.
Those were real events, yet Gid was asking as if he were asking what he thought of a movie.
"...Enlightening" he finally replied.
"Good, good." Gid smiled again before suddenly turning serious. "It's all a lie."
"...What?" Kaito stared in shock, no longer understanding what was going on.
"Well, not exactly a lie. It would be more accurate to say it isn't natural. It depends on how real you consider something that was orchestrated by someone else."
"Orchestrated by someone else? We're talking about the very origin of existence, that's..."
"In this universe" Gid interrupted him. "The existence of 'this' universe."
"So you're saying everything was artificially created by people from another universe?"
"More or less. While it was created by beings from another universe, I'm not talking about the kind of universes you visit through the Tower of Worlds. I'm talking about a higher universe, a layer above ours, where everyone can create and destroy worlds as easily as if they were writing a story."
'Wait, is he talking about my original world?' Kaito realized.
"I don't really know what their objective was when they created us, but since then there has been no interference from them. So either they don't care about us, or they're already dead. It's pointless to think about, just like bacteria grown in a laboratory don't wonder why they were created.
The problem is their other creation. You can call them: The Administrators.
As far as I understand, those higher beings created every existing universe and then created something to manage them efficiently. It's an interconnected System linking all universes together, and to accomplish that, it exists outside our reality.
The job of those beings is simply to maintain the balance between universes without interfering. It's like someone making sure a game doesn't have bugs. They simply manage things, nothing more.
But lately they've been overstepping their authority. And that puts this universe in danger."
'This... sounds like another major problem?' Kaito realized that this world had accumulated far more problems than he had originally thought.
"Of course. You know them by another name. The Gaia System."
"Huh? No, I mean..." Kaito's brain froze for a second. Just a moment ago he thought a completely new problem had appeared, and now it turned out to be something familiar. "So the Gaia System is a problem?"
"It is a problem for this universe" Gid clarified.
"You know about the situation outside, don't you? This is the only universe with life left."
"Wait! I didn't know that" Kaito reacted immediately.
"Hm? So they didn't even tell you that part. It seems they're not very honest" Gid laughed mockingly. "Yes, we're the last universe.
And that threat is now hanging over us because of them.
The Administrators' job is simple. They manage universes, make sure they're functioning properly, and if something happens, they ensure the survival of the others.
However, when someone absorbed the origin of a world, the very thing used to create it, and began seeking even more power, what did they do? They tried to save the people. Instead of prioritizing eliminating the threat and protecting all the other universes, they wasted time saving the souls of the dead and preserving as much divinity as possible to rebuild that universe, time the threat used to escape to another universe.
Then, in that universe, it did exactly the same thing. Using unknown methods, it absorbed the origin once again. When the Administrators noticed, they repeated exactly the same process as before.
And in the end, they simply repeated that cycle over and over again. Because of their stupidity, only we remain.
They tried everything to save people, believing they could deal with the threat afterward. By the time they realized their mistake, the threat had already surpassed them in power.
How powerful do you think the Administrators are? After absorbing so much divinity from all the destroyed universes, they should be capable of fighting the threat on equal footing. But they don't, because they're convinced that divinity will be needed to rebuild all those worlds after the threat is neutralized.
Naive thoughts from idiotic idealists."
'So the threat is whatever is absorbing divinity, and the ones he calls the Administrators are the beings behind the Gaia System' Kaito pieced together in his mind to better understand everything. 'And the reason the Administrators can't defeat the threat is because they let it grow too much. At this point, defeating it with their own strength is impossible. They would need to use divinity, something that would later prevent them from restoring those fallen universes.'
'So they're just a bunch of naive fools?' Kaito thought.
But he quickly dismissed the idea.
From what he understood, the beings now called the Administrators, a very fitting name, already had a plan to deal with that threat.
And that plan involved treating the entire universe as if it were the story of a protagonist's rise to defeat evil.
'But that protagonist will also need to use fragments of divinity to grow, won't they? That doesn't make sense. Besides, couldn't they simply use the divinity to fight and then recover it afterward? More importantly, if they defeat the threat, they'll end up with even more divinity than before.' The more Kaito thought about it, the more questions he had.
In the end, he could only ask Gid, carefully rephrasing everything so he could ask what he wanted to know without revealing what he couldn't reveal.
But Gid didn't know either. He had already told Kaito everything he knew.
Learning more would only be possible if Gid himself were one of the Administrators. The only reason he knew all this was because, now that this was the last remaining universe, they had become very active here.
"But if this is the last universe left, shouldn't they be attacking here?" Kaito asked.
"What do you think my job is? Every universe has a special barrier separating it from the others. My job is to deal with anyone who tries to enter. I haven't had a single day off in over ten thousand years. That's why I need a successor before I die" Gid said with a helpless sigh.
"I don't think the Administrators are that simple. I think they might have..."
"Tsk, attacking again." Gid interrupted him halfway through, stood up, and disappeared the very next second, leaving behind nothing but a shockwave of sound and wind that ruffled Kaito's hair.
"A taste of my own medicine" Kaito muttered as he fixed his hair with one hand.
Even though no one else was there anymore, Kaito simply remained seated, looking out over the land beyond the castle from the balcony.
There was far too much information to process, and lately he felt like everyone loved dropping information bombs on him as if it were nothing.
...
"Alright, dear, see you later." Sephie gave Kaito a farewell kiss, then kissed Lala as well.
"Take good care of my little girl. Nana and Momo might come visit you later" Sephie smiled.
"Huh?! Why?" Nana reacted immediately.
"Big sis, remember to take care of yourself until the pregnancy" Momo joked as she also said goodbye.
After hearing the strange farewells from both sisters, the two of them disappeared from the place.
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+15 chapters in advance on Patreon.
p-atreon.com/IAMME26
(just delete the hyphen)
80 power stones = 1 extra chapter (cumulative)