“You are all perverts! Are you gonna try to deny it? Who went around making babies with humans? Whose yuri exploits got so out of hand that they actually tried out a virgin birth? Who was it, huh?”
In response, a number of ladies put on innocent expressions and looked off in some other direction.
“I swear, the only thing you people are good for is complaining…” grumbled the girl.
“Whatever. Keep explaining,” said Renya.
“Huh? No quip? No witty jab at me?” asked the girl in surprise.
“Nah. How you introduce yourself is your choice, after all. You’re God, right? So, which god? The Jesus one? The Buddha one? Or the eye for an eye one?”
“Please. Don’t liken me to their lot. They’re the result of people’s overactive imaginations,” said the girl with an irritated grimace. “I, on the other hand, am simply me. No more, no less. I created all, I guide all, and I rule over all.”
“Wow, I think I’m about to pass out from amazement. So, why’d the creator of all things decide to grace Random Creation A with her godly presence?”
Renya’s sarcastic tone did not go unnoticed, earning him a scowl from the girl.
“You don’t believe me, do you? Fine, whatever. To answer your question though, I do of course have a very good reason for appearing before you. You see, I have a favor to ask of you.”
“What’s that got to do with being reincarnated into another world?”
In a complete attitude reversal, the girl looked up at Renya with an almost jarringly meek expression and said, “Actually, that is my favor. You see, there’s a particular world I’d like you to go to.”
“And why exactly does it have to be me?” asked Renya. It was, in his opinion, the obvious follow-up question. Reasons were important, after all. It wasn’t like he was the protagonist of one of those cheesy “you are the chosen one” scenarios.
“Because you are the chosen one!”
“All right, that’s it.”
“I lied. I’m so sorry. Please don’t hit me.”
Seeing Renya’s dark glare and the threatening gesture he made with his fist, the girl immediately backtracked and began apologizing profusely, lowering her head again and again. This was met with another round of applause from the crowd.
“Damn it, what is it with you people? Do you have a problem with me or something?” screamed the girl at her onlookers, the majority of whom nodded deeply in affirmation.
They did, Renya figured, have a problem with her. In fact, judging by their reactions, it seemed like they had built up a fairly sizeable repository of such problems. The sight caused the girl to fall to her knees, her expression defeated.
“Okay, just… just go away please. I can’t handle you people anymore. I’ll explain the rest myself. It’ll be faster that way. And it might let me keep a little bit of my sanity.”
Slightly surprised by how little it took to make God herself throw in the towel, Renya watched the ladies around him wave and smile at him. Slowly, they disappeared without a trace. It was a peculiar sight — one that made him question whether or not this was even reality. After all, having people literally vanish into thin air before one’s eyes tended to make them doubt such things. Just then, he noticed a row of words appearing out of the corner of his eye.
《 Notification: You gained the blessing of the angels. 》
Renya raised an eyebrow, wondering what the message meant. However, seeing that the girl had somehow managed to get back on her feet, he redirected his attention towards her.
“Okay, so, uh,” said the girl. “What I said wasn’t entirely a lie. I mean, the part about being the chosen one was, but the rest of it was sort of true. You can’t just pick some random person off the street, hurl them across the boundary of a world, and expect them to continue to exist in the new one. It doesn’t work like that.”
“In other words, I happen to be someone who can withstand crossing that boundary?”
“That’s right. Other conditions included being reasonably well-built, in good health, ideologically sound without any deviant beliefs, and free of any lingering regrets in the original world. You happened to meet all my criteria.”
Renya considered pointing out that “lived long and prospered” and “lingering regrets” were fundamentally contradictory, but ultimately decided to keep quiet.
“Are you sure I’m ideologically okay?” asked Renya. He was about to mention how he just sent God flying with a kick, but the girl stopped him with a shake of her head.
“While I certainly didn’t anticipate you jamming your foot into my face, it’s not really a problem either. There’s no shortage of atheists out there, and the fact that I look like a little girl didn’t seem to arouse you in any way when you kicked me. Plus, it’s not a bad thing to support gender equality.”
“For future reference, you mind telling me what kind of beliefs are not okay?”
“In short, rape, pillage, and burn, I suppose,” said the girl, who proceeded to laugh in a stereotypical villain-like fashion. Had she spiked her hair and painted her face white, it would have been a pretty good impression of a certain musician who claimed to be a demon.
“So, what exactly do you want me to do after I cross over into the other world?”
“Huh? Nothing, really,” said the girl with a blank look.
Renya drove his fist into her head. There was a dull thud. She wordlessly crumpled into a squat with her hands covering the point of impact.
“Dead people aren’t your toys. Don’t bother us for no good reason.”
“Judging from your tone, you seem to have come to terms with being dead surprisingly quickly.”
“I’d been alive for almost a century. That’s plenty. I don’t remember a damn thing about it, but if I had to guess, I’d say I had enough.”
“I admit that it’s pretty harsh to ask someone who just got done with the whole thing to embark on another journey of life, but please bear with me. There’s a favor I’d like to ask of you.”
“Didn’t you just say there was nothing for me to do?” demanded Renya.
From her hunched position on the ground, the girl looked up and was just about to nod when she noticed Renya’s tightly-curled fist. She shuffled backward a few steps before continuing.
“I don’t need you to do anything once you’re there, but I do need you to go! The point is in getting you across, okay? Good? Please don’t hit me.”
“I demand an explanation.”
“The reason is that the world I’m trying to get you to go to has a Resource deficiency.”
The girl’s terse explanation went straight over Renya’s head, but he gave her a look that urged her to keep talking.
“There’s not much else to say about the reason. I mean, that’s all there is to it… Uh, let’s see here,” murmured the girl. She scrunched up her face into a frown, as though contemplating something. Then, she threw her arms outwards. As if on cue, a semi-transparent window opened up right in front of Renya’s eyes. He stared at it in surprise. The girl quickly flicked her hand, and the window then displayed a map.
Renya was certain he had never seen a map like it before. He did not know the scale, so there was no way for him to tell how big anything was, but the landmass he saw was roughly in the shape of a four-leafed clover. Each of the leaves were positioned neatly in the cardinal directions.
“So can I assume that the top is north?”
“No worries. This map was drawn with the common knowledge of your world in mind, so you can safely assume the top of the map is north.”
“I see. I don’t think I’ve ever seen somewhere that looked like this on a map. What is this place?”
“The people who live there refer this land as the Eldorean continent. It’s the only landmass in this world that I want you to live in. To give you some sense of scale… you see how it’s shaped like a four-leafed clover? Assume one of those leaves is more or less the size of Eurasia.”
“Wait, what?”
Renya did a double take and looked at the map more seriously. Assuming the girl was telling the truth, this continent must be gigantic. It would have a horizontal distance the equivalent of two Eurasias put side by side.
“That’s insane!”
“Well, them’s the facts, so take it or leave it, I guess.”
“How big is the planet, then?! With a continent that big, it could probably fit a bunch of Earths inside!”
“Oh, it’s not a planet.”
“What?”
The girl opened a separate window and showed it to Renya. Displayed in vivid colors was a blanket of mist and a colossal waterfall the size of which dwarfed anything he had ever seen.
“Do you see it?” asked the girl. “So, how things work in this world is that all of the water and land — the world itself, essentially — sits on top of a big round tub and all along its edge are waterfalls, past which is a deep plunge into nothingness.”
The girl finished up her explanation with a perfectly serious expression. For five whole minutes, Renya remained speechless. Then, after the bewilderment wore off, he yelled:
“Are you freaking kidding me?! How backward do you have to be to believe that about the world? That’s from, like, the Dark Ages!”
“Such a belief would certainly be primitive on Earth. Not to mention entirely wrong. In this world, however, it’s reality. So, if you kept going in the same direction, you wouldn’t eventually end up where you started. You’d just fall off the edge into oblivion.”
“Is the one who created this world stupid or something?” muttered Renya. It was his honest opinion. The girl, however, protested loudly.
“Who’re you calling stupid? I’m standing right here, you know? Me! God! Don’t call me stupid!”
“You are stupid! Look at the ocean and how it’s literally falling off the edge of the world! How’s all that water getting replenished?!”
“From the streams and rivers that flow across the continent, obviously!”
“How the crap does the water cycle work, then?! Does it even exist?!”
“What do you think, dumbass? Of course not! You think everyone goes around recycling their planet’s water like you?”
“Isn’t that why there’s a Resource deficiency, then? Because of this shoddy system you’ve got going?” asked Renya. Being called a dumbass by the girl caused his temper to flare, but he managed to catch himself before resorting to more violent forms of retaliation. He could have shut her up with a good smack to the noggin, but somehow, that felt like admitting defeat. Instead, he opted for a pointed remark. The girl visibly paled.