(3rd Person POV)
"The Origin sounds pretty heartless, if you ask ," Apollonia said aloud — then imdiately clapped a hand over her mouth as the eyes turned toward her.
Arthur laughed. "Forgive my sister. She genuinely cannot help herself."
"It doesn't matter." Saza's smile was easy. "What she said isn't wrong. The «Origin» can appear very cruel from where mortals are standing. But in the end, its wisdom isn't sothing we can truly question."
"Indeed," Arthur agreed.
He turned it over quietly in his mind. Their own world had possessed an Origin too — he knew that much from the history Kaiser and Keanu had walked him through. Solarus had claid it. Absorbed it entirely into his own power and left the world without its guardian.
The «Origin» was the world itself. A living, breathing consciousness woven into the very fabric of existence — which explained things he'd wondered about before. The pure mana of the Na'vi world he and Firfel had visited aboard the Spaceship, the one those people called the Great Mother. That was what an intact Origin felt like from the outside.
He didn't underestimate it.
The only reason Solarus had managed to absorb their world's Origin at all was through planning that had unfolded across centuries — influence seeded in the human empires four years Before Solarus, faith accumulated slowly and deliberately, the groundwork laid so carefully that by the ti the real move ca, the outco was already decided.
And critically, the reason the world had survived the war between Solarus and the local deities at all was precisely because of the Origin's laws: the fighting had been pushed outside the world entirely, confined to the Gods' Domain Expansion, leaving the mortal world below untouched.
Now that it was gone, there was nothing left to enforce that separation. If Solarus moved against their world again, the protection wouldn't be there. That weight sat with Arthur quietly.
It was all up to him.
"Rember what I've said," Saza continued, drawing the group back. "Do not interfere with the war between humans and demons." Then her expression lightened, and she looked toward Apollonia and Sylwen with sothing approaching amusent. "That said — you two, as mortals, are another matter entirely. Even from another world, mortals are mortals. If you wanted to challenge this world's Demon King yourself, there's nothing in the laws preventing it."
Sylwen, who had been silent through most of the conversation, blinked. "...Really?"
"You are mortal. The restriction doesn't touch you." Saza nodded.
Sylwen said nothing further, but sothing flickered behind her eyes — temptation held carefully in check.
Arthur cleared his throat. "Setting that aside — spreading my influence here through a company would be acceptable, yes?"
The surface aning was plain enough. The one underneath it, which Saza read without difficulty, was sothing else: gathering faith as a deity — that's permitted?
The corner of her mouth curved. "As long as you don't interfere with major events, and conduct yourself as an honest rchant, I see no issue whatsoever."
The slight emphasis she placed on rchant carried its own quiet understanding.
Arthur felt sothing ease in his chest. "That's all I needed to hear." He could sense it, faintly but clearly — Saza wasn't in opposition to this world's Origin, but she wasn't in complete agreent with it either. There was a gap there. asured, deliberate, and entirely her own.
They talked for so ti after that before Arthur and his group slipped out of the academy with Reiner, leaving quietly.
Profellie watched them go from the corridor, then turned to Saza with a look that had set aside politeness entirely. "Is it really fine to leave them to their own devices in this world? Do you understand what you're allowing here? This could fall back on you, Saza..."
Saza smiled. "What do you an? I gave them my advice. Whatever they choose to do from here is their decision — not mine."
Profellie looked at her for a long mont. Then shook his head. "You are older than by a considerable margin, and you are behaving like soone who doesn't know what they're doing. What are you actually planning with them?"
"I'm not planning anything," Saza said, with just enough lightness to make it unconvincing. "I'm simply guiding."
"You are as unfathomable as you've ever been, old friend." He exhaled and turned back to the window.
The group was still visible below, moving away from the academy together. He watched them and felt sothing he couldn't quite na settle over him.
'My ti is already drawing near. I won't be here to see what they set in motion.' He studied the small group a mont longer. 'A pity. Whatever Saza is setting up for this world — I'm afraid I won't live to witness it.'
---
The city was bustling — not with the dense, relentless energy of the modern cities back ho, but with a charm entirely its own.
Carriages rolled through the streets drawn by horses and great beasts, the crowds moved in robes and traveling clothes, and the market stalls chattered with the noise of vendors and buyers haggling over everything from spices to wares.
It was, in its own way, beautiful.
Firfel, Apollonia, and Sylwen took it in with open delight, heads turning at every new detail. Kaiser and Keanu were quieter about it, but the recognition was there in their eyes — nostalgia for a version of the world they hadn't seen in a very long ti.
The mana here was sothing else entirely. Pure in a way that was imdiately noticeable, the kind of purity that ca only from an intact Origin. Their world had once carried that sa quality, back when its own Origin still breathed beneath it — but even at its peak, it hadn't felt quite like this.
Whatever the Origin of this world was, it ran deeper than anything their world had managed at its height.
"You're all free to wander for a while," Arthur said to the group. "I'll be going with Reiner to handle the company registration."
They split up after a brief exchange. The three won headed imdiately toward the nearest row of market stalls, pulled by curiosity and the novelty of a world that was simultaneously familiar and entirely foreign.
Kaiser and Keanu drifted in their own direction, moving at the comfortable pace of people with no particular destination in mind.
"This world really does remind of the old days." Keanu let out a slow breath, looking at the street around him. "The main difference is what the demons here have done to it. Back in our world, demons were cruel enough — territory grabs, bullying humans into submission — but nothing like what they've done here."
Kaiser glanced at him sideways. "That's easy for you to say. Your wife was a demon, after all."
Keanu went quiet.
Kaiser caught it imdiately and recognized he'd stepped wrong.
The God of Beauty. A succubus, loyal to a degree that defied every assumption about her kind — loyal enough to fight alongside Keanu when the war ca, loyal enough to fall in it. Their child had gone with her.
Keanu said nothing. He just exhaled, and the weight of it said everything.
Kaiser searched for a change of subject and found one almost imdiately.
He nodded toward a large establishnt set back from the main road, its signage visible above the crowd. "Would you look at that. An Adventurer Guild." He let the recognition settle into his voice deliberately. "Takes back to the days when I used to walk into one of those pretending to be a struggling E-Rank."
Keanu looked up. The building was grand — well-funded, well-maintained, the kind of guild that had been operating for a long ti and knew it. "I used to frequent them myself. Going undercover to find soone worth blessing — soone who might grow into a Holy Son of War."
"Heh. I rember that." Kaiser smiled properly for the first ti since the slip. "You gave a blessing to that fierce woman — what was she, a wandering sellsword at the ti? She ended up a great general of the Yeke Empire."
"The Blade Saint of the Crimson Vanguard," Keanu said, and laughed quietly at the mory. "I really do rember her."
They went in.
The interior was loud and well-populated — adventurers clustered at tables, around the board, in loose groups near the bar. Kaiser and Keanu drew no particular attention. They looked ordinary enough, which was exactly the point.
The task board dominated one wall, covered in layered notices. They were still reading it when a voice cut clean through the ambient noise.
"You're kicking out of the group?!"
Both of them turned.
A dark-haired young man stood facing a group of six, his expression caught sowhere between disbelief and the dawning recognition that this was real.
He had an athletic build and the kind of face that suggested he wasn't accustod to being the one caught off guard. The group across from him was a mixed picture: one burly fighter, three won with the look of people who had made up their minds, a well-dressed male wizard, and at the front, a young man in gleaming silver armor with blond hair and the bearing of soone used to speaking for the room.
"I'm sorry, Leonard." The blond knight's voice was asured, genuinely apologetic but immovable. "The group made this decision together. We thought about it carefully, and it stands."
Leonard stared at him, then shifted his gaze to one of the won — pink-haired, composed, giving nothing away. Sothing more than a professional grievance moved across his face.
"Charlotte." His voice dropped. "We've known each other since we were children. Are you really not going to say anything?"
Charlotte t his eyes without flinching. "What would you have say? This is our decision."
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