NOVEL WEB 296: F35, Networking
Hell Challenger Lo Fennrick
is now assembled into
Divine Network.>
Administrative Rights…>
{::w::}
Hell Challenger Lo Fennrick
does not fulfill requirements to grant
Administrative Rights.>
{::o::}
{::m::}
Administrative Rights.>
Administrative Rights.>
View Framework Details
for reasoning.>
{::m::}
{::m::,}
Aw—hey, come on, Simon, don’t cry over that! It’s fine. Sure, I don’t know what you were trying to get me, but I can tell that it’s not worth crying over. There, there. Calm down, okay?
{::m::,}
{::w::,}
There you go! All better. No need to be sad or anything. Whatever this divine network is… it’s not something I need to be in on, anyways. I’m doing fine without all of that, so…
{::w::}?
…What’s that supposed to mean?
Please stand by…>
Oh, wait, it can still—
There’s a flash of light. I suddenly feel very inclined to vomit. My head is bursting with static. It’s like someone crammed a television inside my head and is blasting all channels at once. The fishing rod drops from my hand. I squeeze my eyes shut, trying to keep out the stimuli. It feels like my skull’s going to explode. U—urghh…!
Divine Network has been activated.
Have a good day!>
Everything goes quiet. As soon as it had happened, all of it was gone, replaced by an eerie stillness.
Cautiously, I open my eyes.
…Whoa.
The world… it’s… different. Everything looks the same, but somehow, it’s like everything is more connected than ever. More than that, it looks doubled. With one eye, everything looks the same, but with the other… It’s different. The overlapping visions feel almost as nauseating as booting up did. But, still… The lake, the grass, the rocks, the trees…
I look at a tree.
E.2655400987 O.GoHu.P1122PUR.
R.GoL.P1122TERR. C.113. 1199. 1766. 109. 002.
8899. 226. 29. 117.>
What the hell is that?
{::w::}!!
Huh? Wait, what are you—
Spruce Tree
Owner: God of Hunting
Ruler: God of Love
Energy: 2,6B>
That’s… interesting. I’m not entirely sure what use this is to me, but…
Huh. Hm. No, wait, hang on. This is strange! Sure, the owner is Hunter, but…
I turn to Hunter. He’s fishing again, humming to himself. “Hey, Hunter?” I say. He glances at me without turning his face, perking an eyebrow. “Where is this, exactly?”
“This lake?” His smile widens. “It’s on Earth.”
“We’re… on Earth?”
“That’s right. Not a lot of challengers beat Cocytus during any one day, so,” he throws his line back out, “we set up this little part on Earth so that rather than having to wait an entire month for enough challengers to appear to be able to continue with things, they only have to wait a single day.”
“What if they were to run off?”
“For one,” he says, reeling in slowly, “you’re actually the only one who’s noticed, so far. Secondly…” He pulls up his hook, finding a fish attached to it. Grinning happily, he turns to me. “The area is secure! Nobody gets in, nobody gets out. So even if they did realize that we were on Earth…” Removing the fish from his hook, he watches it warmly before releasing it back into the lake. “There’d be no running away.”
“How cruel,” I mutter, throwing my own hook back out. But I don’t really mean it. It’s only logical that they’d do things this way. It’s like putting a fence around a summer camp. Perfectly rational. However, I kind of don’t want to talk, mainly because he doesn’t entirely look like a normal goblin anymore.
Still keeping an eye on my line, I watch him from the side. From my left eye, he looks like an ordinary goblin, dressed in strangely modern fishing gear, reeling in his line. But, from my right one…
I… I can’t really describe it. Even if I close my left eye, I can’t comprehend what I’m looking at. He’s like some sort of… Elk, maybe? But with his horns knitted into a crown, a ball of fire hung in the middle of it, and with the chest of a wolf, standing on bear’s legs, one arm like a hawk, the other like a lion… And that isn’t mentioning the multiple wings or the half-a-dozen or so tails. When he turns to me, seven different eyes curl up in amusement, and a double-split mouth, half fox and half rabbit, widens into a toothy grin. “What a funny little thing. You can see Me properly now, can’t you?”
“Why, um…” I gulp. “Why do you look like that?”
“After seventy-three thousand years, keeping track of how you’re supposed to look gets difficult. Harvest helped Me set up how others see Me, but it seems it only works on fully ordinary mortals.”
“R—right,” I stammer, trying to keep myself from staring at him too hard. He honestly looks like some kind of forest demon. An awesome one, sure, but with him looking like this… I suddenly feel very aware of what he’s supposed to be.
A God.
His twofold mouth falls a little. “Come on, now. No need to look at Me like that. I’m not that ugly, am I?”
“I guess so,” I say, but the atmosphere’s kind of ruined. It’s difficult to focus on trying to fish when you’ve got an eight-foot-tall elk demon next to you.
As I’m grumbling about such things, said eight-foot-tall elk demon lumbers up to me, flaming crown blazing, and before I can consider whether my claws work on elk demons, he holds something out to me. “Here,” he says. “Until you get used to it.”
It’s a little eyepatch, made from fish skin and dyed a mellow, floral pink. Although I could complain about the color, I simply put it on, blinking at the world, now as ordinary as it’s always been.
“Better?”
I look at him. He’s back to normal now, smiling with one mouth. I smile back. “Yeah, it is. Thank you.”
Trudging away from me, he continues fishing. “It took Me a while to get used to it, too.”
I feel my brows furrow. “You used to be…?”
“Of course. All of Us were, once. Even the God of Harvest, the oldest among Us, used to be nothing but a goblin. A scared, but tenacious one, who would always get lost in the forests trying to find rabbits. And Mom would send Me out to go get Him, and I’d find Him cowering in a little grove somewhere—but He did catch that rabbit.” He chuckled warmly. “And I’d have to lead Him home, holding His hand the whole way there. But… that was long ago. Much has changed. Mostly for the better. In some ways, though… I miss those times.”
From where I stand, even though he now looks like a goblin, I can’t tell what expression he’s making. Melancholic, or happy, or nostalgic, or… Is it all of it? I can’t tell. Nevertheless, after a moment’s hesitation, I inch closer to him, and even though I kind of don’t want to, I pat him on the shoulder. I want to say something, but I can’t think of any words that feel right. His situation is so far removed from me that I can’t even imagine how it must feel for him. But what I do know…
“It must have been hard,” I say.
He chuckles. “Yeah. I suppose it was.” Smiling, he pats me back. “You’re alright, kid. I can’t remember what I said to upset you all those years ago, but I’m sorry.”
“Thanks,” I say. “I appreciate it.”
And for a few hours more, in comfortable silence, we fish, occasionally catching something, always letting them go.
Things are good.
And then, the other people arrive.