“Damn it! I never asked for this!”
The curse was out of my mouth before I could catch it.
Goosebumps swept down my whole body as the situation fully hit me. Apparently, without my consent or even the decency of a heads-up, I’d been declared the goddamned chairman of the ‘Anything Is Possible’ lunatic cult. No ceremony, no warning, definitely no "Hey just checking, you good with this?"
Does he think I'd be crazy enough to agree to a deal like that?
We’d be signing our own death warrant.
Handing over a finger would be one thing. But giving away a complete copy of Pandomonium’s Trait? That’s not just a loss, that’s an outright catastrophe waiting to happen. A future where every last one of Mother God’s units would be running wild with Restoration, wreaking havoc everywhere they went?
The Curse of Nellos.
It had to be Players. Who else would use a curse so perfectly designed for this exact situation?
The Emergency Rescue System lets players roam freely while everyone else is incapacitated. It was a glaring oversight on my part. And now it was coming back to bite us.
Casimir instinctively drew and nocked an arrow before she realized what she was doing. The movement felt as natural as breathing, and those crimson eyes provided perfect targets.
"I exist... to help you—"
Casimir's hands moved before the creature could finish, wrenching its jaw from its skull. Yet even as the mandible hung loose, the voice persisted.
Callister, who had been quietly listening, suddenly spoke up.
"I can handle it!"
"Handle what?" I asked, my brow furrowing.
He gestured toward the piles of holy flesh. "These things are still mindless because they don't have memories of consuming anyone living yet. They haven't gained self-awareness.
So they're all just running on instinct now?
How many people received Colomba's healing blessing?
And what happens when the maggots start feeding on people who can't move? Can't resist? Can't even open their mouths to scream?
Oh, this is bad. This is so much worse than I thought.
Except for my Callister, every Holy Flesh Container unit is connected to the others.
Calling it a “connection,” though, doesn’t really do it justice. It’s less like a connection and more like a single living organism, split across thousands of bodies.
…What does that smile mean?
I almost asked. Almost. But I didn’t. Because if he said something like, “Oh, this is your third life, by the way”—yeah, no. I genuinely didn’t think I could survive hearing it.
“I could tell you. But what good would that information do you right now?”
“……”
I forced myself breathe.
House Lizard had a point. Say I learned Oblivion's true name this second, then what? What exactly was I going to do with it?
It wasn’t Athanas. It was me.
Past “me” had completely lost it. Just rambling, not even hearing the insane things coming out of his mouth.
Get used to killing me?
You said that to someone with Retrograde?
Was he out of his mind?
…Well. Yeah. Obviously.
“Of course… they’re all me.”
When I said that, House Lizard strolled over to the shelves and grabbed a book off one of them. He brought it to the desk, held it by the spine, and gave it a good shake. Pages came loose and drifted down onto the wooden surface.