Around the time a day had passed since Baek Sihyeon had voluntarily been kidnapped and put to sleep, Ruvlian woke up. The moment he opened his eyes, an unfamiliar white ceiling came into view.
He didn’t even have time to wonder where he was with that natural question. It was because Sihyeon’s scent was deeply embedded everywhere. That’s why he could easily realize this was Sihyeon’s room.
Ruvlian sat up and searched the house with magic. The search magic didn’t pick up anyone. Ruvlian let out a deep sigh, then buried his face in the blanket filled with Sihyeon’s scent and calmed his heart down. Then he organized step by step what had happened before he fell asleep. In the end, only one scene lingered in his mind.
Sihyeon had left. To protect him.
Ruvlian bit down hard on his lower lip. He could confidently say he knew Sihyeon’s way of thinking better than anyone. That’s why he’d been suspicious from the moment Sihyeon approached, but he’d been dazed for a moment by the affectionately called name. He shouldn’t have let his guard down, but he’d been had. Ruvlian blamed himself. At the same time, he wanted to confront Sihyeon who had left, asking why he followed when he knew it was dangerous.
From Baek Sihyeon’s standpoint, that would have been the best choice. He wasn’t unaware of that fact. However, emotion and reason always played separately. He wished Sihyeon wouldn’t sacrifice himself for him. The strength that had unknowingly entered his fists showed no signs of relaxing.
“God. You’re still here, aren’t you. Come out before I destroy everything here.”
Ruvlian slowly spoke toward the empty air. However, as if he’d left his post, God didn’t come out. He’ll come out if I destroy enough. He left Sihyeon’s house and moved toward the mountains where there were few people. He didn’t care if anyone got swept up in it, but Sihyeon would hate it. Thinking that, he half-destroyed the mountain as is.
When an abnormal landslide occurred, only then did God come running in a hurry and ask.
[What the hell are you doing right now!]
“Sihyeon’s location. Spill it.”
[What? Whaaat?]
God, who had come running because a problem suddenly occurred in the world, was so flustered that he could only repeatedly say “What?” That’s how absurd God found Ruvlian’s brazen demand to hand over Baek Sihyeon’s location.
Sihyeon had already dropped into a world outside of his jurisdiction, so God was in the middle of going to the god in charge of that world to plead his case, but Ruvlian’s eyes had completely lost it. This was chaos.
At the continuing “What?” parade, Ruvlian furrowed his brow slightly and gently rubbed his temple with his thumb. How did he endure this headache every time? His head hurt.
“Can you only answer ‘what’?”
[I can do other things!]
“Then hurry up and tell me. Sihyeon’s location.”
[Why should I?]
He didn’t see why he should honestly tell. God truly thought so. Well, of course, because the reason Sihyeon voluntarily went to the parallel world was to break the curse. So that that shameless bastard wouldn’t die.
But if he told Sihyeon’s location here, Ruvlian would immediately move there. Then in the end, wouldn’t all of Sihyeon’s choices and thoughts become useless? The arm bends inward. God also had something called emotions, so he unavoidably cherished Sihyeon more than Ruvlian who was running around causing trouble everywhere.
[You know Sihyeon followed your parallel world self because of you, right? If you go now, wouldn’t you be ignoring Sihyeon’s choice?]
“Ha, choice? Can you say Sihyeon chose something that came with coercion by his own will alone?”
Ruvlian spoke as if scraping his throat. It was a voice reminiscent of a beast’s threatening cry.
Ugh. God let out a groan. Time was of the essence, but it seemed he had no intention of letting this go until he told. However, whatever it was, it was true that Sihyeon had chosen it, so he tried not to tell the location. When Ruvlian went looking for him, if Sihyeon was in a state where he hadn’t broken the curse, he would run away, and then he would clearly cross over to another world. No more incident reports.
But as if seeing through God’s thoughts, Ruvlian was faster to open his mouth.
“You want to see this world completely destroyed? I can make you write more of those incident reports you didn’t want so much… how about it?”
Unlike when talking to Sihyeon, it was a languid tone with the aegyo completely drained out. Ruvlian was openly making a threat to destroy the world if he didn’t tell. As if he had no intention of hiding that it was a threat.
The one going crazy at this was God.
[Wh-what are you saying!]
Squawk. At God shrieking sharply and highly, Ruvlian slightly scrunched his eyes then opened his mouth. A slow voice flowed out between his red lips.
“Are you asking because you don’t know? When I’m being nice, I’m telling you to hurry up and tell me Sihyeon’s location.”
It seemed sarcastic, but it was a tone that said he’d stay quiet if he just told. God fiercely racked his brain. Soon realizing this was a world where Sihyeon’s precious friends existed, he used this.
[If you half-destroy this place, Sihyeon will hate you, you know? This is a world where Sihyeon has friends he cherishes, and you know it’ll be terrible if they get swept up, right? Plus, there are places with good memories too.]
A nuance of “do you really think you can destroy this place even so?” heavily wafted. Ruvlian clicked his tongue. He couldn’t destroy places meaningful to Sihyeon. He didn’t want to be hated, and he also wanted to go there together later and directly ask what kind of memories were there. If he knew where, he’d destroy everything except there, but he didn’t know.
But thinking conversely, he could half-destroy anywhere as long as it wasn’t related to Sihyeon. Ruvlian raised the corner of his mouth crookedly. It was such a wicked smile that if Montrio had seen it, he would have said a demon had been resurrected and asked Sihyeon for purification.
“Then I’ll just destroy other worlds.”
[……What?]
“If I destroy places that aren’t worlds you’re in charge of, there’ll be even more chaos. You’ll have to write even more incident reports too. How unfortunate.”
It wasn’t a voice that sounded regretful at all. God shuddered at the thinly curved eyes. He felt sorry for Sihyeon for why he liked such a chilling bastard of all people. However, separate from that, he had to think. A method that satisfied those two things: not having to write incident reports because worlds weren’t destroyed, and being able to buy time for Sihyeon.
[Th-then let’s do this.]
Ruvlian nodded his head as if to say he’d listen. A bored and arrogant attitude that anyone could see was that of the one holding power.
At such an ill-mannered attitude, God, who had lived several hundred years longer, got angry, but in the current situation, anyone could see he was the powerless one. Since God couldn’t directly intervene in the human world, he couldn’t inflict any harm on Ruvlian. The aggrieved God continued with tears in his eyes and mustard in his mouth.
[On the condition that you don’t half-destroy worlds, I’ll tell you twenty worlds. Sihyeon will be in one of them. This much is okay, right?]
“Ten.”
[What? That’s too few!]
“Thirteen.”
[Ugh. F-fifteen……!]
“Alright. Then let’s make it fifteen.”
Ruvlian, who had aimed for fifteen from the start and mentioned ten, answered sharply. In his head, God made a bewildered “Huh…?” sound. He doesn’t even know he’s been tricked. To think this is a god. It was only amazing that the world turned properly.
To God who only kept repeating “Huh?”, when asked if he wasn’t going to tell, God told him the locations of fifteen worlds one by one. He was threatening that he’d only say it once, but it wasn’t scary at all. Ruvlian, who had written down various things in the air using mana like formulas and coordinates, opened his mouth as if he’d just remembered.
“Ah, now that I think about it.”
[……What now?]
God felt uneasy. The way goosebumps crawled up his spine meant it probably wasn’t an unnecessary worry. It was an instinctive feeling he got whenever Ruvlian was about to cause a big incident.
“When moving between worlds, if parts of the world are unintentionally destroyed as an aftereffect, I don’t know about that either.”
[What? Whaaaat? What are you saying right now,]
As soon as a noisy sound filled his head, Ruvlian gestured and moved to another world. God’s voice was cut off abruptly.
A fierce vortex that filled his vision unwound and spread out strongly and quickly centered on where Ruvlian was. The aftereffect of that vortex was tremendous. The entire surrounding area was completely destroyed. However, there were no casualties. It was thanks to the fact that the place he’d moved to was in a dense forest. It seemed he could faintly hear God’s crying voice. Ruvlian, who had deliberately moved so the aftereffect would be greater, leisurely used search magic to confirm whether Sihyeon was in this world and moved again.
Excluding when he returned to his original world because of the curse, Ruvlian did that fourteen times. In the end, Baek Sihyeon was in the last place he went. Unlike the other thirteen times which were all forests, this time he destroyed a mansion while moving, and naturally the incident reports God had to write increased. God learning of this fact was to be in the somewhat distant future.
_oOo_
The parallel world Ruvlian had turned back time.
He couldn’t be certain, but if this hypothesis held up, the bizarre behaviors the parallel world Ruvlian had shown so far made some sense. His overwhelmingly powerful strength, acting like he knew me well, his obsession with me. There must have been some kind of incident before he turned back time.
It was when I was treating the three noisily chattering people and God like folding screens and digging deeper. Kwa-kwa-kwang! A loud sound of something exploding rang out and the mansion shook as if there was an earthquake. While catching my body’s center, I felt a presence behind me. Then a shadow fell over my head and solid arms wrapped around my waist. I raised my head, and my gaze crossed with blue eyes so deep the water’s surface couldn’t be seen. Soon red lips opened.
“We meet again, darling.”
The crazy bastard who should have gone to sleep after warning me was unperturbed, even though something in the mansion had definitely exploded. Anyone would think this was his daily routine.
The moment I thought that, one part of the room’s ceiling collapsed. The collapsed part collided with the floor and shattered into pieces, raising hazy dust. After coughing briefly, the hazy smoke settled and moonlight came in only through the collapsed part. In a place as if receiving a subtle spotlight stood Ruvlian.
……Wait, Ruvlian?
[This doesn’t make sense! H-how did he already find you…? With fifteen worlds, what with mana and everything else being consumed, even for a balance-breaker it should take at least a month…… does this make any sense?]
Before I could be more flustered, God’s shocked voice rang buzzingly and chaotically in my head. When I was already caught and my head was protesting in pain on top of that. When I quieted God down, this time the parallel world trio started chattering.
“Wow…… he looks exactly like the old face. So unpleasant!”
“Alli. That’s rude.”
“It’s true though. He looks exactly like the old face, it’s uncomfortable.”
My head already hurt, and it was hurting even more. In front was Ruvlian, on the side was the parallel world trio, behind was the bastard who’d lost his mind.
……What kind of total chaos is this?
