God does nothing. No matter how prideful humans become, there will be no wrath nor judgment. No matter how much humans suffer, or stand at the brink of extinction, there will be no saving grace. God only watches on. Like an audience devoid of emotion and interest.
That’s not a bad way to think about things, though. Should a god, a super-human, or a Warrior of Light appear every time humanity is at stake, and guide them towards the righteous path? How dare they? How could anyone call that an authentic history of humanity? A side character who exists only to be saved by someone superior; is that the sole purpose of humans in this universe?
I defy that notion. Humans have saved themselves out of pickles in the past, and that will be the case in the future. If, one in a million, we find ourselves in a situation we can’t handle, we will ask for help. We will grind our foreheads to the ground and beg for mercy. Of course, whether they will accept our plea or not is another matter entirely.
“Now that you’ve explained it’s like an ODA...”
I scratched my head. Before me wasn’t Sapporo Station. Instead there was an endless field of green grass and a single path. It didn’t look like Japan, but it’s not like I was familiar with every location within my home country. I couldn’t say without a doubt that I was no longer in Japan.
“I mean, I’m sure this is the world in question.”
While I couldn’t confirm it with absolute certainty, I had no reason to doubt it. That beautiful woman (who never called herself a goddess, after all) had no reason to send me anywhere but. I had accepted her request.
It would have been easy to refuse, saying ‘ain’t my problem.’ Even though Japanese people caused the mess, it was not something I was personally responsible for. What’s more, the entities from this world were the ones who summoned them in the first place. It didn’t make any sense to deem my world responsible for the damage. They should have accounted for it. They should have foreseen what kind of actions someone who had lived an oppressed life would take when suddenly given immense power and the ability to affect the destiny of others, as well as what kind of effects those actions would have. Once used in any other way than those specified in the manual, any appliance would be out of warranty. In that analogy, someone being sent to repair the product isn’t protocol. This is basically customer service.
“It all seems pretty stupid.”
“You didn’t take too long to make your decision for someone who feels that way.”
“True. It wasn’t like I was coming up with some grand justification, though. It just sounded like fun. I couldn’t help it.”
A stable job, a wonderful fiancée, a family dear to me... I had no dissatisfaction with any of them. But somewhere deep inside, I felt some adoration for a life different than my own.
“So, I have the same motive as my predecessors. Just in a direction. I guess that means I felt confined, too.”
“Not an easy way of life, is it?”
“You said it. Speaking of...”
I looked over to see the creature I was having a friendly conversation with. It had a body covered in scales of a color somewhere in between blue and green, a long neck, and a horned head. There was a pair of something that resembled wings on its back, and its tail was slapping the ground with some force. One of the staples of fantasy: a dragon. Except this one wasn’t that big; it was as tall as me, at most.
“What are you, anyway?”
“That’s a long story. In short, I am your partner, Eiji.”
“Isn’t that a little too short!?”
My partner was a tiny dragon. There was definitely more explaining to do.
“Tsk.”
“I heard that!”
“That was a dragon’s tonguing. It serves as a starter when breathing fire.”
“Hey! Was that little blurb necessary!? Was it!?”
“For style points. Anyway, I am basically an interface. I know your kind finds it easier to gain and organize information if you’re speaking with someone, face to face.”
The dragon burst out into laughter. Its meticulously aligned fangs scared me a little. In other words, this dragon was here to guide and assist me as I traveled through an unfamiliar world. Why was it a dragon and not a human? For style points, probably.
Well, it’s true that having the beautiful woman I met earlier as my travel companion would not work out in my favor. Traveling with a beautiful woman alone while I have a girlfriend, nay, fiancée? That would spell all sorts of trouble for me. While I have never once considered myself to be an aggressive type, I have as much libido as anyone else. Having a travel companion for whom I could in no conceivable fashion grow feelings toward is a better option to prevent unwanted circumstances, I’m sure.
“I get the gist. What should I call you?”
“I have no name. Call me by any name. Ayano, for example.”
“I don’t want you to share a name with my fiancée...”
“Then something like Zeke is fine.”
“I don’t get the reference... My name isn’t Van...”
“Hm. You get the gist. Were you even born?”
“Actually, yeah. I was pretty much the target audience.”
I was born in 1986, which puts me in middle school around the time. Which doesn’t really matter.
“Which sex are you, by the way?”
“Female.”
“Tiamat, then. Tia for short.”
Tiamat is the name of the dragon god who appears in Mesopotamian mythology. A dragon goddess, actually, so I wasn’t too far off the mark.
“A little thoughtless, don’t you think? What were you going to do if I was a male dragon?”
“Bahamut, I guess.”
“Your knowledge seems to stem from video games rather than mythology, Eiji. Bahamut was only depicted as a dragon for the first time in Dungeons and Dragons.”
“You know a lot of things, don’t you, Tia?”
“I have been implemented with most knowledge presumed to be useful, and most knowledge presumed to be not.”
“Why bother with the latter...?”
“For witty conversation. It would be lonely to traverse a strange world alone.”
“Thank you for your thoughtful concern.”
I chuckled. I didn’t consider myself particularly lacking in social skills, but could I jump right into a crowd of people and engage in conversation in a world where I had no knowledge of their culture or customs? I had to say no. I didn’t even know if we could understand each other. I decided to ask Tiamat about it.
“You can speak with them, no problem. You have also been implemented with the bare essentials of communication tools.”
How reassuring. It seemed that I had been tweaked with on my inter-world journey. There was even a chance I’d been given some broken power.
“Nope. No special abilities for you, Eiji.”
“Dammit! You didn’t even let me ask!”
“Were you even listening to me? Bare. Essentials.”
“...Thanks for the flawless double tap. Can’t I dream a little dream?”
“You are human, after all. Tia-o.”
“A little too much wit, don’t you think?”
It looked like I wasn’t given any special powers out of respect for the god of this land. I guess they would be a little on edge after a bunch of Japanese people with broken powers messed up their world. That makes this god rather human-like, I thought.
“The gods from Earth’s mythology are pretty human-like, too.”
I couldn’t argue with that. In most cases, gods were created by men. Which wasn’t entirely accurate. They were essentially the product of human imagination and faith. That’s why none of them take shapes beyond human imagination, and their characteristics are similar to humans.
“In that sense, the goddess I met was cut-and-dried.”
“That wasn’t a goddess.”
“Oh, really?”
“Something a little more realistic. An Inspector for the Interstellar League of Nations.”
“What part about that is realistic? Huh? Huh?”
“I don’t mind answering, but it will take some time to explain the intricacies.”
“How long?”
“If I were to only use words you can understand, about four years.”
“All right, Tia. Basically a goddess, then.”
“Wise choice of comprehension. Now, it seems we’ve reached our destination while we entertained ourselves with idle chatter.”
Close to the horizon I could see a pretty intimidating gate to a city. The wall that seemed to enclose the entire city was just as intimidating.
“That’s Lishua, the royal capital of the Azur Kingdom.”
“Big city. I wonder if they have some good cuisine.”
I don’t think I’m the only one who first looks forward to food when traveling. When I visit a place for the first time, I want to start off by getting some good food.
“May not be a delicacy for you, Eiji. You can eat rice here,” the dragon said, with half a chuckle.
“They have rice.”
“They do. Silver rice, at that.”
“Silver rice...”
I nearly laughed at Tiamat’s old-fashioned vernacular, when my face stiffened halfway through. In other words, purely white rice. Anyone from modern-day Earth may wonder what the problem is, precisely because they live in the modern day. Even in Japan, commoners mostly ate brown rice until the 1930s. And bam. There’s white rice available in a medieval fantasy world.
“Eiji. Let me repeat. This is a world turned Waya by the Japanese.”