Chapter 247
"Dad! Brother keeps pulling my hair and teasing me!"
"Dad will have to scold him. Why does he keep pulling your pretty hair?"
"It's not pretty. Brother has all shiny pretty hair but only mine is black. Why do I have hair like this? Dad is mean! You should have asked Mom to give birth to me properly!"
"Even if I had put in a request to Tika, I couldn't have changed your hair color..."
"I don't care! Dad is mean! Mom is mean too!"
"Are you that angry? Then Dad will tell you an interesting story."
"...What story? Another story about the white god who helped Mom and Dad? I already know that one. He healed Mom when she was sick long ago. And he brought us to this snowy place."
"No. This is a story I haven't told your brothers either. About the person who brought the god to Mom and Dad."
"Who is it? Isn't he here?"
"He's not here now. It was all thanks to him that Mom and Dad came out of a very hot place called the desert. He traveled with Mom and Dad for a long time, and even lived together in the first Theem'dra. He was a very remarkable person." "Wow- How was he remarkable?"
"He was."
A hand that was no longer that of a young man, but mature, stroked the head of his daughter whose eyes sparkled like stars.
She was the precious youngest daughter he had finally gotten after having twelve sons.
She looked exactly like Tika and was full of mischief and innocence,
But whenever she got sulky from her brothers' teasing, she would always come to Shan and whine.
"How should I put it. He was someone who wouldn't die even after eating poisonous mushrooms three times."
"...Poisonous mushrooms? Why did he eat those?"
"There were reasons for everything. Back then, it was a time when people didn't know what poisonous mushrooms were and could die from eating just anything. Come sit on Dad's lap, my daughter. I'll tell you the story of the day we first met him. Just until Mom comes back from hunting."
*
The avatars of the Mother of Sorrows fell one by one in succession, and the last avatar hid in the center of the planet, fearing downfall.
The Serpent King lost his believers and entered eternal hibernation.
The Mi-Go race was driven from the castle they had stolen from the Elder Things and began migrating to other locations.
No one knew who had hunted them,
But only cold, dry footprints remained where they had fallen.
The god who had contributed to this roamed the planet with a single believer.
The bond strengthened through countless repeated timelines,
And contracts made at the cost of memories given only once to humans drove the foreign god to rampage.
A hundred years passed, and a thousand years passed.
Ten thousand years passed, and a million years, then ten million years passed again.
The land split apart and rejoined, changing the terrain,
Mountains were worn away to become plains while new mountains were built up.
The wind was not the wind of a thousand years ago,
And the sun could no longer shine as hotly as when it had illuminated the desert.
Even as everything changed like this, only winter, which never stayed still, continued to wander the planet.
Life forms other than the descendants of those the apostle had once lived with began to sprout.
Life forms that had chosen one path in evolution instinctively formed groups and devised social rules within them.
But in an era when writing and language did not yet exist,
Someone was looking down at them and 'speaking' to the being beside him.
"They don't seem particularly dangerous, do they?"
[How would I know? You would know better whether such things are dangerous or not.]
"Are you still sulking? I told you yesterday that if you wanted to try that fruit we saw, you could eat it. I didn't stop you."
[Don't you remember what you said after that! Didn't you ask if this being would defecate immediately after eating since I don't have digestive organs!]
"You're not even really human, yet you're incredibly sensitive about strange things. I was just asking. It would be troublesome if you pretended to be really human just because you took my memories."
[Blasphemy! Sacrilege!]
A man who was completely white from head to toe jumped up and down.
But the young man with long, bright red hair looked down at the scene spread below without moving.
The young man, watching life forms with shapes similar to his own moving around, slowly got up.
"Well... it doesn't seem urgent. For now, it would be good to collapse the entrance to the cave where that thing is."
[Don't you think those creatures will dig into the entrance?]
"They're not at that level yet. No matter how you look at it, it's the prehistoric era. They won't have the capacity to dig caves. The Shaguna Fan inside isn't the type to move actively either."
[That's true. Then should we go back and collapse the entrance right away?]
"Just a little longer."
[Why? Are you waiting for something?]
The white man asked as he stood beside the young man.
The young man had kept his gaze below throughout their entire conversation.
The young man, who couldn't take his eyes off the life forms that looked as small as ants,
Answered blankly with a face that contained no emotion as always.
"Because I like it."
[Watching those things?]
"Yeah. It's nice. The way they move like that, all living together. I can't even remember when I last saw people."
[Hmm.]
The white man didn't miss the softness that briefly settled in the young man's eyes.
The young man treated everything with indifference most of the time.
It was natural since the only things he had encountered in recent tens of thousands of years were Yog-Sothla's offspring.
But even setting that aside, the young man was very dry and withered.
The white man smiled brightly.
[How about going to see those you once lived with? They would welcome you warmly.]
"No. Even if they're descendants of Shan and Tika... they've been full of thoughts of leaving Theem'dra since long ago."
[Did you hear that when you went five million years ago?]
"Yeah. Maybe everyone has left Theem'dra by now. They must have scattered everywhere."
[Oh dear.]
"I thought I should see them once after parting from Shan and Tika, but after hunting one more of Idra's avatars and even driving out the Mi-Go... thirteen hundred years had passed. That shouldn't have happened."
[Dulling time sense is a characteristic of long-lived species.]
"But I'm human."
The young man muttered. The white man's lips twisted slightly.
Human, human, that damn human.
He was still shocked by the fact that he had forgotten the death of someone who had shown him kindness.
Even though that incident had happened countless ages ago,
It still seemed to disturb the young man.
It would be good if he could quickly steal this memory too.
The white man thought this and spoke as if sympathetic.
[It can't be helped. But didn't you visit them occasionally after that? Their descendants probably didn't blame you either.]
"No one blames me. I'm nothing to those who are alive."
[If you're so gloomy, it lowers the dignity of this being, your god, believer.]
"Wasn't it only the believer's faith that had influence? I wish my emotions weren't linked to your divinity. It's somewhat unpleasant."
[How many times are you committing sacrilege today?]
The white man clicked his tongue and turned around.
[Look around moderately and come back. Don't you need to see Shaguna Fan, the sitting god, directly? Only then can you either close the cave or bind it completely.]
"Yeah."
Despite his obedient answer, the man couldn't take his eyes off the tiny beings.
The white man was displeased with this sight.
They were things he couldn't even be with anyway, so why did they make him care so much?
The young man, who had been stopped for a long time, finally slowly turned his steps to follow the white man.
Half a day's walk from where the newly grouped life forms lived,
A small cave appeared when the densely grown vegetation was pushed aside.
Entering through an entrance sized so that an adult man had to bend his waist to barely get in,
What could be seen in the narrow space that seemed like stone had been forcibly carved out was just one thing.
A small gray statue with sharp fangs protruding.
The torso hung down as if layers of flesh were piled up,
And the hands and feet had webbing like those of a merman.
The ears were large, flat, and drooping, reminiscent of a familiar animal.
The hands gathered in front were pressed together, looking as if praying.
At first glance, it looked like a stone statue carved with a strange life form,
But the statue had an eerie vitality.
The young man picked up the statue with one hand. When his hand touched it, the young man unconsciously frowned, but no particular incident occurred.
The white man who had been watching asked.
[Mental intrusion?]
"It must be that type. My head is killing me."
[Excellent, believer. Even with this being's protection, it wouldn't be easy for a human to block.]
"It reminds me of when I fought the Mi-Go race. I died twice because of mind control. But Shaguna Fan doesn't seem to have hatched yet."
The young man turned the small divine statue this way and that.
Since eight years ago when Aphoom-Zhah had notified him of the alien god's arrival, he had been traveling to find this.
He had vaguely guessed it might be a threatening being like the Serpent King or Dream Witch.
But when he arrived in this area, he could immediately tell that it was not yet active.
No unusual races or giant cities were visible.
There were only primitive people living peacefully.
Of course, even so, a god was a god, and the fact that this needed to be eliminated didn't change.
The white man asked.
[The ones coming to the planet seem to have changed their policy. Wouldn't a militant like the Serpent King be better?]
"I hate both. More than that, what should we do with this? If we freeze an unhatched god, will it hibernate?"
[Try it once, believer. You can try it and come back after a thousand years to observe the results, can't you?]
"As if that would work. Who knows what will happen in the meantime."
The young man, who had been thinking for a moment, came out to the entrance holding the statue.
[Are you planning to take that out?]
"I can't leave it here. The people we saw earlier might get involved. At least we should go to a place where there's nothing-"
-Rustle.
His words were cut off.
The young man's brown eyes flashed sharply.
At that moment, the small statue was thrown to the white man.
The white man screamed.
[Believer! Hey! I don't want to hold such things! I said I don't want to! Do you only make this being do such things!]
"I'll be right back."
Leaving only those words, the young man hurriedly left the small cave and roughly pushed aside the branches covering the entrance.
He hadn't sensed any sign earlier,
Had touching the pre-hatching statue caused a minion to reveal itself?
Or was it a child of Yog-Sothla that had been nearby?
However, in front of the tense young man was,
"Huh."
"...Tika?"
Now only vaguely remembered, A child with a face resembling that dear old face was frozen, looking up at the young man.