“…….”
The right side of Ian’s vision was stained ash-gray. Most of the world’s colors vanished, and only blue and red gave off a vivid light. Everything else was gray. Only their outlines could be dimly perceived. And Ian instinctively understood what the only two remaining colors signified.
[——————!!]
Dagon roared. As it swung its arms, the seawater became a single tidal wave and came crashing toward him. Within it, thousands, tens of thousands of creatures writhed, opening their maws all at once as they sent their hostility toward Ian, craving his blood and flesh.
—All of it became a single solid red line, surging before Ian’s eyes.
An attack he could respond to if he wished. But Ian did not counterattack. He did not defend either. Instead, he reached out and seized the red line in his fist.
At that moment.
Saaaa……!
From the edge of the right side of Ian’s vision, a blue butterfly fluttered in. The butterfly, made of liquid, slowly sailed through the sky, then gently beat its wings and covered Ian’s entire field of vision.
Blink.
The world briefly flickered. Ash-gray turned to black, and black turned back to ash-gray.
And Dagon, who had surely moved, was still walking atop the sea, not yet having roared.
“……Ha.”
Something that had existed disappeared.
It was not confusion in his memories. Nor had he experienced death and returned to the past.
Observation of the future.
An ability that allowed him to confirm what would happen moments later, and, if he wished, erase it.
[Red is Mother’s color.]
The Returner whispered. The blue butterfly positioned in one corner of Ian’s vision fluttered a line of the same color right beside Ian’s footprint. Ian moved his foot there.
Kwaaaang!
From beneath the place where he had been standing, a creature created by Dagon—a Deep One—surged up. Ian seized the wrist of the creature that had lost its target and switched grimoires. Unfurling the Hand of Re-creation, he whispered.
“Be born anew.”
Crack!
The Deep One’s form changed like powder and crumbled apart. Ian trampled over it and walked in the direction the butterfly led him. Whooong—a flying slash of water cut an entire building in half, but the spot where Ian stood remained unharmed.
[Mother does not suffer from eternal hunger. She can feel hunger when she wishes, and she can also feel satiety. And when Mother is hungry, she displays tyranny that is truly difficult to describe.]
Paang!
The giant butterfly flying through the sky disintegrated and scattered in every direction.
Among the first five creatures, it had the weakest direct combat ability. Yet the Returner had never once felt hunger in its life. That was because it could forcibly explode the moisture within matter and absorb the energy.
Pabababak!!
Roars erupted from all directions. Following the direction the butterfly flew, buildings collapsed, withered, and the Deep Ones that had landed were crushed apart, scattering their organs. Ian watched the sight as he slowly descended from the rooftop.
[That is why avoiding Mother is the best course of action. My ability evolved for this very reason.]
“Impressive…… Red means danger, blue means safety. Is that enough for now?”
[Yes. And the total number of times you can observe the future and twist it away is five. That is the limit a human can withstand. If you use it more than that, Father’s existence will collapse.]
“So that means four remain. Plenty. Doesn’t matter.”
He stopped midway down the stairs. A fused mass of Deep Ones appeared, smashing through the building’s outer wall, and swung a sharp obsidian blade.
Flutter.
The butterfly flew into the creature’s gaping maw. With a thud, the slick corpse exploded, staining the stairs with flesh and organs. Ian peeled a piece of liver from his face and swept back his blood-soaked hair.
“There’s no better ability for combat support. Good. Let’s get started in earnest.”
[If you wish, I can summon my siblings as well. I will use my body to create a magic circle, and Father need only sprinkle blood on it. You will not even have to recite an incantation.]
“Confirmed. Then prepare it in advance.”
[Which child should I prepare?]
“The Producer. We’ll answer numbers with numbers.”
[Understood.]
With that answer, the butterflies composing the Returner all flew up at once and engraved a magic circle in midair.
A summoning rite to call forth the Producer. Ian glanced up at it, then confirmed a red line surging and turned his head.
[Magiciaaaaaaan————!!]
The starting point of the line. Dagon, now fully revealed above the sea, screamed and stretched both hands toward Ian.
Crack.
The mouths on its palms split left and right, exposing teeth and tongues. Within them, transparent streams of water rippled.
Streams of water compressed to the limit. If they struck, it was certain he would vanish along with the island, not even leaving a corpse behind.
“His blessing covers my shoulders.”
But Ian did not dodge. Instead, he took out the Hand of Re-creation, grinned, and recited the incantation.
“Know that the world is mine.”
Snap.
He flicked his fingers. At that instant, pure white radiance surged up from three or four rooftops around the city. Dagon frowned at the blinding amount of light.
That was all. Along with the streams of water generated from its palms, it gathered all the seawater composing the space into a single spear and fired it.
The scale was truly overwhelming. It was far more oppressive than the girl he had faced in the art gallery. It felt as if it would not be strange for his neck to be sliced clean off at any moment.
That instead awakened the senses of every cell in his body. As creatures of the Outer Sea took root inside him, his dynamic vision, strengthened in turn, captured the forms of the monsters contained within the tidal wave. Among them were ancient creatures long extinct, such as dinosaurs and megalodons.
They were not in proper form. A megalodon with another head where its tail should have been spun round and round, having lost all sense of front and back.
A mosasaurus had eyes growing like antennae beneath its belly skin, and a Dunkleosteus had carapace sprouting across its entire body, making it struggle greatly to change direction.
But they were all the same in that each bore hostility toward Ian.
[Die.]
Dagon whispered inside Ian’s head. What reached his ears were only screams difficult even to describe, but the inside of his brain interpreted the creature’s language.
A blatant curse telling him to die. It was a voice containing such dreadful mental domination that an ordinary human would have gladly torn out his own heart and offered it up, but Ian let out a small laugh and turned his head away from the creature without hesitation.
“And as my world is also Your world.”
He finished reciting the incantation.
Gurgle……
The surging beams of light changed one by one into viscous liquid. The light that had reached the sky collapsed from its ends and flowed backward downward.
“Thus, beneath the sky we have created, walk hand in hand together.”
Tok.
At the conclusion of the incantation, the falling white paint dropped onto the tidal wave.
At that moment.
Kwaaaaaaaa!!!!
Together with a tremendous gale, the tidal wave collapsed in real time. It was only one pure white impurity poured over it, yet the sea was torn apart. Crushed. Split. Sobbing. Stripped of color.
[Aaaaaaaaaah!!!]
[Gueeeeeeeaaaaaagh!!!]
The creatures within the sea warped into grotesque forms, then split apart so thoroughly their shapes could no longer be recognized. Flesh floated into the air, clinging to Dagon’s skin and melting away its flesh.
The collapsed tidal wave fell, bleached pure white. Like a gigantic titan toppling backward, the tidal wave that had been shooting forward lost its strength and crashed vertically downward.
A pure white sea. Neither the Outer Sea of the Deep Sea Travelogue, nor Dagon’s transparent sea. A new ecosystem constructed through the Hand of Re-creation encroached upon the space. White liquids slowly falling from the sky covered the ground like snow.
Ian stared at the sight, then planted a hand against the wall and lowered his head.
“Bweeegh…….”
Food that had been in his stomach poured from his open mouth.
The recoil of magic. It was inevitable, since he had activated spells that would have strained him even one at a time, all at once.
At least he had drawn the magic circles in advance and set up the necessary materials, so it ended with this much. If he had forcibly instant-cast them, all his organs would have twisted apart.
“Hoo…….”
Ian wiped his mouth roughly, adjusted his grip on the grimoire, and looked back at Dagon.
[Kraaaaaaa————!!]
The creature was screaming as it struck away the arms crawling out of the pure white sea.
Since the sea itself, which was no different from its strongest weapon, had been contaminated, it was understandable that it felt wronged. But understanding that did not mean Ian had any intention of dispelling the magic. After briefly catching his breath, Ian hid behind the wall and activated the other spells he had set up.
“Cover it. As day is erased, the curtain of the night sky shall settle upon the world.”
Riiiip.
A sound rang out overhead, as though something were being torn.
And three seconds later.
Crack.
The sky split violently. The void that appeared erased the blue of the sky.
Instead, it revealed the full sight of outer space beyond the atmosphere.
Jupiter, Saturn, Mars, the Sun, the Moon, Mercury, Venus, and more.
Every planet composing the solar system drifted slowly through the pitch-black universe.
Planets that could never be seen with the naked eye. Yet a single blue mantle holding them in its embrace turned the absurd into the ordinary. With a clank, the chains hanging from the end of the mantle swayed.
[……Ah.]
Dagon let out a sigh as it stared at the sky reflecting the universe.
[What beauty…….]
Ian ignored it and stretched his hand out into the air, curling his fingers as if grasping something.
……Crack!
At the same time, space shattered like shards of glass.
From beyond the broken space, a single hem of blue cloth slowly extended. Ian seized it and wrapped it around his body.
At the same moment, his form vanished.
His body and soul had become one with the night sky, and his existence and presence had flown to the far side of the universe. But he was certainly here, and he could also observe his own form.
“Good.”
After repeatedly clenching the hand visible in his field of vision a few times, he stared at Dagon, who was looking up at the universe, and brought one finger to his lips.
The final spell he had set up.
“Know that silence is a virtue.”
His voice resounded from the universe. Only then did Dagon come to its senses and swing its hand. From within its sharp claws, elongated pupils bloomed, then split once more, revealing thousands of hooked tongues.
Tongues, each possessing fearsome power. They were swung with enough force to tear space itself apart.
If left alone, the island would surely be ripped into several pieces. So Ian stretched out his hand and seized a single red line.
Bzzzt!
Noise appeared in the right side of his vision. The butterfly sitting on Ian’s shoulder flew up and dove down toward his eyeball.
A brief blackout.
Recovery.
With the sound of the butterfly’s wings, light returned to the world. Dagon was still standing in place, admiring the universe.
“……Haha.”
Ian burst into laughter.
“What a truly absurd ability.”
Clatter.
He placed the lantern on the floor with its light lit, summoned ten butterflies flying through the sky, and placed a shard of glass on their backs. Then he made a bow of butterflies and drew the bowstring taut.
[Ah!]
[Ha!]
[Ha!]
The Returner laughed.
To others, it would look like a bow that had suddenly appeared out of empty air.
The string was drawn tight, and with a sound like a waterfall pouring down, the arrow flew.
Swaaaaaaak!!!
The butterflies composing the arrowhead rotated in midair, placing the shard of glass at the tip and using it like real metal.
And then, thunk.
The flying butterfly drove the shard of glass into Dagon’s forearm.
[……!]
At the stinging pain, Dagon turned its head.
But it was already too late.
……Crack, crack.
One of its arms changed like a shard of glass. At the same time as a brittle shattering sound rang out, its scales fell away piece by piece, and its flesh hardened.
Its arm, which had become broken glass in an instant, vibrated in midair.
An arm that would surely break even if left alone. Into it slammed a single bullet sent riding on butterflies.
The reaction was immediate.
Shatter!!
Dagon's arm—the Outer God's arm—shattered. Shattered glass fragments sank into the pure white sea, and transparent blood gushed from the cross-section.
[Uwooooooh----!!]
Dagon roared in agony.
A figure closer to a monster than a god. Since it was merely a mass of divinity rather than a true god, it was not strange that it had fallen to the level of a monster.
But he did not let his guard down. It was because he could see the shattered arm regenerating in real time.
"I figured it wouldn't be easy, but as expected."
Ian clicked his tongue and slightly cut his finger with an axe.
Blood flowed. He poured it generously into a bowl made of butterflies.
[I have received it.]
The Regressor whispered. The bowl of butterflies flew up, heading toward the magic circle floating in the sky.
Blood was poured over the magic circle made of butterflies. The transparent bodies of the Regressors were dyed red, and that formed a blood-colored current.
[Come. It's Father's call.]
Crackle!
The current evaporated, creating a blood mist. And from within, a spherical creature possessing hundreds of eyeballs revealed itself.
The Producer.
The entity he had met once on a cruise and once in a world eroded by the moon rolled its red eyes and looked up at the universe.
[We meet again, Agent.]
No matter how much a creature of the Outer Sea it was, it seemed unable to pierce through the concealment magic written on the contract. The Regressor was an exception, as she was dwelling within his body.
Ian smirked and wiped away the flowing blood.
"Is it the same one?"
[Yes. If it does not please you, I will end my life right here and now.]
"That's the same question you asked before."
[Yes. Is your answer the same as last time, Agent?]
"There is no reason for it to be different."
[It is an honor.]
The Producer bowed its massive body to greet Ian, then used its different eyeballs to gaze at the Regressors flying in all directions and moved its lips.
[It has been a while, Big Sister. Have you been well?]
[Yeah. But let's save the greetings for later. For now, we need to focus on Father's work.]
[That is true. Understood. Then let us postpone our reunion.]
The Producer opened its mouth. The seawater of the outer universe, bubbling and boiling from within, dripped from the corners of its mouth.
[What must I do, Agent?]
"Devour every living thing everywhere else, except for the space where the human named Gim Yul is."
[An easy task. I shall comply.]
The Producer answered as such, then suddenly looked up at the sky and added,
[Agent, once this matter is concluded, may I also call you Father? Seeing Big Sister call you that made me a bit envious.]
"Ah, do as you please. The title doesn't matter."
[Thank you, Agent. May the blessings of the Outer Sea be with you forevermore.]
"That doesn't sound like a blessing."
Ian smirked and threw himself off the building. The height was not very great, so he could land lightly.
"Hoo...."
He let out a long breath and gripped the Hand of Re-creation.
"Let's go, Rea. Today, you'll be the protagonist."
[Mm.]
The grimoire vibrated briefly.
The sight made it seem almost as if Rea had truly answered, and Ian wore a faint smile.
Pitter-patter.
Snow-white rain streaks falling from the sky beat against his entire body.