Lazy Salvation

It had happened sometime after the appearance of the giant flesh monstrosity.

Cornelia suddenly found herself being lulled to sleep. Her first thought was that she was under attack, and that the attacker was sneaky enough not to trigger her skill that reacted to malice.

She scanned herself and found a minuscule amount of foreign mana embedded near her brain.

The mana resembled a parasite. It was slippery enough that she had barely managed to spot it despite it being inside her own body.

She was just about to squash it when she sensed the intent behind it.

There was none of the hostility that accompanied any attack without exception. Instead, she felt... an invitation.

That explained why her instincts hadn't reacted.

The being behind this little parasite was inviting her somewhere, and all she had to do to accept the invitation was let herself fall asleep.

Normally, she would never have accepted this. Her first thought had been that it was an attack by the Outer Gods. After all, one had just revealed itself through a possessed cultist.

But two things made her change her mind.

The mana felt too pure to belong to one of those corrupted entities.

Normally, a Narkal's mana was tainted by countless minuscule fragments of unrelated concepts, making it murky and corrosive. But this mana held none of that. In fact, she could only sense a single, unmistakable concept.

Sloth.

‘And the depth of Sloth is something else... Could this perhaps be the doing of the Sloth Sin Lord?’

That was her next thought, and the first reason she didn't simply expel the mana.

Secondly... she simply had enough confidence in herself to defend against it if things went south.

And so, with mild curiosity, she accepted the invitation.

*

The intent behind the mana had been truthful. There had been no ambushes or hidden malice.

Instead, she found herself in an actual meeting, with people gathered in a dreamy realm. The people themselves—if she could even call them that, since none of their forms were remotely humanoid—were pleasant.

They possessed none of the Narkals' expected bloodthirstiness, nor the Outer Gods' characteristic madness.

She was then introduced to the one presiding over the meeting.

He was the most elusive being she had ever encountered. He called himself Lord Mercy, and his reason for inviting her into his realm was so simple that she refused to believe it.

He was giving her a place of respite.

Though the other participants had supposedly turned the place into a hub for exchanging information and requests, Cornelia had to give them credit for their audacity.

When the meeting finally ended, she had spoken no more than a few words, contenting herself with simply observing.

By the end of it, she had confirmed two things.

First, this was indeed not the doing of the Narkals nor their superiors.

Second... Lord Mercy had been doing the sanctuary a huge disservice by merely calling it a place of respite.

Because this was the best sleep she had ever had. It was so relaxing that she even felt the Wrath she was always holding at bay settle down for a brief moment.

Despite that, she hadn't let her guard down. Over the next four months and four more meetings, she devoted herself to observing everyone, including the big tiger that almost never woke from his sleep.

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Everyone was harmless, aside from the man who always stood beside Lord Mercy. That one made her instincts go haywire whenever she looked at him. She even found herself wanting to burn the realm to the ground whenever she thought about him.

Other than that, everything remained the same.

It was really as if... she had simply been invited to a secret hangout to relax and talk.

She couldn't find any hidden agenda or manipulation. Granted, the realm of the mind and dreams had never been her area of expertise, but she trusted her sense of danger enough to know that everything about Lord Mercy was utterly harmless.

And now... for the first time, she was going to voice a request and actively participate.

***

Cornelia had noticed one consistent truth about this realm: it never looked the same twice.

One meeting, everyone had appeared as small, distinct animals. She had found it charming, though she would never admit that aloud.

The second had rendered them as silhouettes of smoke and color, each a different hue, with no features to distinguish them beyond height and the color they'd been assigned.

The third had given everyone the shape of flames; some burning high and pale, others low and red. The fourth, lanterns of different makes, hanging beneath the rain.

Each time, she had assumed the theme was deliberate and spent the entire meeting trying to decode the symbolism before eventually abandoning the effort.

If Ashen knew what she had been doing, he would have laughed his ass off. There was no special meaning behind the changes. He was simply getting better at camouflaging their identities and had finally become capable of giving them a familiar form.

And so, tonight, they were finally human.

Or close enough.

The forms occupying the clearing were no longer animals or abstractions but people, with the shapes and proportions of people; men and women she could finally distinguish by the contour of a shoulder or the way someone held their head.

What remained unclear were the faces. They were present but unresolved, like figures seen through fogged glass. She could make out a jaw, the line of a nose, the general impression of an expression, but no feature ever came into focus.

Privately, she found this more unsettling than the animals. A fox she could observe without the nagging feeling that she was supposed to recognize it. A person with a familiar posture and an unreadable face was something else entirely.

Above them, on the great branch arching from the ancient trunk, the tiger slept undisturbed, its chest rising and falling in a slow rhythm.

The armored man beside it was still awake. He sat with the bloodied spear resting across his knees, his eyes slowly sweeping across the clearing.

Over four meetings, she had learned that looking directly at him for more than a second produced a very specific response from her instincts: the overwhelming urge to destroy.

But she knew that urge only existed to smother a deeper feeling.

Fear.

It was like an ordinary human standing before a lion. No matter how docile the lion behaved, that primal terror would still creep into your bones. But she had never been an ordinary human. She was a hardened warrior.

So alongside fear, her body screamed at her to strike first, because only then would there be even the slightest chance of survival.

She had gotten better at managing those instincts, mostly by avoiding looking directly at him.

After taking a moment to satisfy her curiosity about their new appearances, Cornelia finally turned her attention to the meeting.

*

The exchange of information proceeded as smoothly as it always did. She held back the urge to speak until everyone else seemed to be finished.

When the quiet that typically preceded the end sank over the clearing, she spoke.

"I have a question."

The hazy faces turned toward her.

Ashen, masquerading as the mysterious sleeping deity, also directed his attention toward her.

‘Finally…’

He had been racking his brain over how to harmlessly deliver the information about the Outer Gods without entangling himself in a barrage of probing questions. His solution had been to invite one of the Sin Lords to attend the Absentia meetings.

His choice had naturally fallen on Cornelia, since he was the most familiar with her. Lola had also been an option, but with that woman's skillset, he wasn't confident he could fool her.

With his Twin Soul guaranteeing that Cornelia wouldn't discover his identity even if he slipped up, he had acted.

But to his dismay, the woman had been overly cautious, barely participating in their exchanges.

More than once, he had been tempted to simply feed her the information without waiting for her to ask, but he held back.

If he did that, she would surely become suspicious of why she had been invited here in the first place, and that would only create problems in the long run.

Besides, what would become of Lord Mercy's dignity if he acted so eagerly? He had been playing the role of a lazy deity this whole time, for God's sake...

‘But now... she's the one asking... this has nothing to do with me, hehe.’

"Oh? How rare. Are you finally overcoming your shyness, Red?" a blonde silhouette teased from the side as Ashen was distracted with his thoughts.

Cornelia let out a helpless sigh at the nickname. No matter how much their appearances changed, the reddish hue accompanying her always remained, so they had naturally settled on calling her Red.

Even now, she could see a faint crimson tint where her hair should have been.

The nickname didn't bother her much, but she would have preferred if they settled on proper codenames soon, considering they were effectively a secret group.

‘It would fit the theme rather nicely,’ she thought with a quiet hum.

Not dwelling on it any longer, she continued.

"The Outer Gods currently operating against the human army." She kept her tone level. "I would like to know more about them."

Silence followed the moment the words Outer Gods left her mouth.

‘Is the request too much after all...?’