The Outer God Needs Warmth-Chapter 246: Unfortunately, I got attached to it (11)

That afternoon.

A person came looking for me.

Polaris Balwin Behrington. She's a girl who's shorter than me, even though I'm already on the shorter side.

"Did you fight with Victoria?"

She threw a sharp question at me right away, staring at me with a fierce gaze.

"No, we didn’t fight."

I honestly haven’t fought with her. I might have pushed Victoria a bit harder, but it’s not something you’d call a fight.

After hearing my answer, Polaris crossed her arms and stared at me. Then she sighed deeply.

"Right, you wouldn’t lie. So what’s the problem?"

This question is the same one she asked Victoria earlier at lunch. Victoria avoided the question, saying something like that had happened.

Seeing her response, Polaris didn’t push any further. She stepped back instead.

So I don’t know the reason.

But I do know.

Victoria didn’t tell Polaris, but she did tell her parents. She confessed that it was too hard to point out the path I was taking, a path I never specifically indicated.

No, I’m serious.

I never told her to go save people, nor did I ask her to forgive the enemy.

In fact, if there’s an enemy, I pray they get killed. That way, I get to absorb all the warmth from the process.

Anyway, I briefly consider how much of the truth I should share in response to the question.

I have to think through the parts I need to know, the parts I can consider. I’m figuring out the best way to answer, spinning the thoughts in my head.

There’s plenty of time. I can’t stop time or go back, but I can move fast or slow.

It’s probably something that works when different worlds have different harvest cycles. Let’s assume there’s a world A and a world B.

When 1 second passes in world A, in world B, 1 week passes. I can set the speed of time differently.

But it's not all-powerful, because the world I observe only shows in real-time, at 1x speed.

I can adjust the time-speed between worlds, but I only experience it at 1x speed. So, I cheat.

I take what I’m thinking about in world A, bring it to world B, think about it there, and then bring the answer back to world A. So in world A, it feels like I thought about it for 1 second, but in reality, it was 1 week.

It’s not that I can’t bounce ideas back and forth, it’s just that it feels like jumping between videos rather than seeing it in slow-motion, so... it’s a bit...

If I were smarter, I’d use this trick more effectively, but what can I do? A person who’s not particularly clever will struggle to come up with a good answer even after thinking for a long time.

After a moment of thinking, I came up with my answer.

"I think it’s because I realized I’m a monster."

This reason can explain everything. The rift between Victoria and me, and the rift between me and others, all starts and ends here.

"Ah... Right. You’re not human."

Polaris, who had experienced this herself, quickly understood.

"But didn’t Victoria know that better than anyone?"

Polaris asked, with a look of confusion, glancing at the spot where Victoria had been.

By the way, Victoria had already left the classroom when Polaris came up to me.

Today was set up as a simple meeting, where students in the same class were gathered to familiarize themselves and form groups.

So, political maneuvering has already begun. Victoria and I hadn’t experienced it when we entered in the second semester, but it had been a thing in the first semester of the first year too.

Unlike the academy mentioned in the story, this is not a place of equality.

Therefore, Victoria, who didn’t have any power to belong to a faction, is free. If she wanted to aim for a higher position, she would have to line up here, but Victoria isn’t interested in that.

So Polaris asks, "Didn’t Victoria know you well?"

"She didn’t know, I guess."

In response, Polaris glared at me with an unhappy expression.

But, seemingly resigned, she shook her head.

"Don’t be like that, go check it out."

"Me? Go to her?"

"Why? You don’t like Victoria anymore?"

Hmm.

There’s not just bad feelings, but the negative emotions are clearly more prevalent. Plus, she seems to think of me as some sort of monster, a philosopher-like being.

It’s hard to approach her while denying that image because there’s so much to gain from it. To her, I’m someone who denies their good actions and forces it onto others.

The ones who are just ‘right’ are often avoided.

"You’re right, I know, but it’s suffocating. Please stay away."

Something like that.

People like that don’t want to look inward. They don’t truly check who you are.

They already believe you’re that kind of person.

"Victoria will probably run away."

At my question, Polaris let out ◈ Nоvеlіgһт ◈ (Continue reading) a quick laugh.

"Yeah, okay. I’ll try to catch her somehow. Let’s talk after the weekend!"

"No, you don’t have to go that far."

Even if she tries to catch her, won’t it just increase the hostility? But Polaris misunderstood my words somehow, humming a tune as she left the classroom.

A fleeting thought crossed my mind... but everything will probably be fine.

I also had no reason to meet someone and form a group, so I left the classroom as well.

And when I went outside, right in front was a fountain with a lot of cars parked around it.

Some of the cars were heading to buildings not far from the main entrance.

Honestly, I thought about whether I should take one of those cars, but if you're going to indulge, it’s best to do it in a place like this.

Vehicles themselves are also symbols of power.

Of course, there are some odd modifications visible here and there, things that have been added to the original design. I think that’s because the original power systems have been removed or modified.

I’m not sure, but they say the original power system has a distinctive feel when it converts magic into kinetic energy.

If you are reading this translation anywhere other than Novelight.net or SilkRoadTL, it has been stolen.

It’s like the sound of an engine in a car, something from a faded memory.

So when you get that feeling, people rush to destroy it. The media has probably painted the use of those power systems as inherently evil.

In the first place, people in this world aren’t used to large amounts of information.

It’s not much different from the primitive age when people dealt with only small amounts of information. So when a piece of information comes in, it’s easy for people to believe it as truth.

The function of choosing information comes only after the chaos has spilled over.

It’s like how safety rules are written after disaster strikes.

People in this world aren’t necessarily stupid.

They just don’t know yet the consequences of playing with information.

Even in a society flooded with information, many people will cling to the first piece of information they receive and believe it to be true.

Even if it’s a lie, it’s hard to revise the information they’ve already accepted.

In fact, people cling to the first piece of information they encounter as if their lives depend on it. This is a biological trait.

People resist scarcity but collapse under excess.

Because life has always been far from abundance.

This applies to food as well as information.

When information is scarce, we search for it through reasoning, but when it overflows, people just tremble and cling to the first thing they accept.

So, when there are only a few media outlets distributing information, if you distort them, people are bound to fall for it.

In an ultra-information society like the internet, there are other ways to exploit this trait, but at least in the third and fourth worlds, it will take a long time to reach that point.

Looking at the cars, my thoughts drifted elsewhere.

I went straight to the main entrance, turned left, and walked away.

It was the weekend tomorrow, and I was wondering what to do with the abundance of free time, so I returned home.

Just like in the third world, the fourth world is doing well.

Unlike Bell, this place still doesn’t have a name.

Zever calls it the Violet God, but that’s not a name; it’s just a title attached to a tool.

There was a need to do that, so I slightly skewed the time.

One day passed in the third world, but a week passed here.

A lot happened during that time.

Zever started experimenting with turning different species into harvesters.

He began with pets like cats and dogs, then riding animals like horses and camels, and also edible animals like pigs and chickens.

Thanks to that, I’ve learned a lot.

First, normal animals didn’t respond to the contract chant. But when they were starving or severely injured and close to dying, they always contracted.

And when it comes to edible animals, cooking them as harvesters makes them taste bad.

They become too tough and hard to eat.

Otherwise, most of them had abilities somewhat enhanced like humans.

The most interesting experiment I observed was the next one.

Insects.

Yes. Zever experimented on turning insects into harvesters. After all, insects do have light.

99.9% of them didn’t respond to the contract chant. Just like with the animals, even after I tore most of their bodies apart, they didn’t contract.

To put it another way, 0.1% did contract.

And those contracted insects exploded.

Yes.

Instead of becoming harvesters, they exploded as soon as I injected light into them.

It felt familiar.

Long, long ago.

It was a similar phenomenon to when I put light into a person.

At that time, I was pushed into the light from beneath the surface.

And when that happened, the person exploded.

Hmm.

It was something I squeezed out as the bare minimum, but it exploded. I don’t know if it’s truly impossible, or if it’s something I could do once I grow more.

But the light evaporated with the explosion, and although warmth entered, it was essentially as if nothing had happened.

How little?

If you think of human light as a person, then the other end is something like a virus with a lower intelligence.

There’s a reason I mainly hunt humans.

But the fact that I’ve learned a lot from turning various creatures into harvesters is true.

The fourth world is nice.

I’m really lucky to have been summoned to a human like you, Zever Ibn Haideka.

I look forward to more experiments in the future.