The fog-shrouded city was still being devoured.
Once it swallowed the entire city, Kain would awaken. That would be the moment he sealed the Warp away again.
It was not as Aerith had understood it. The fog swallowing the city did not mean he would completely lose his humanity.
Aerith had misunderstood. She had it backward.
If the fog expanded and manifested a more complete world, that would mean he was walking the path toward godhood.
Of course, Aerith's appearance really was what made him aware of his own change.
On the first day Aerith appeared, the moment she clicked open that video, he had already awakened.
Over the following days, he seemed to have been avoiding Aerith the whole time, but that was merely the version of himself in the dream acting like an extremely inexperienced young man trying to run away. He pretended not to know that Aerith had really seen what he was doing, like a man covering his ears while stealing a bell, all so he would not have to feel the crushing force of social death.
Then, if he knew Aerith was already beside him the instant the video started playing, why not simply stop doing something so awkward?
He had wanted to control that socially fatal behavior too.
But just like when a person dreamed, the self inside the dream was often not under one's own control.
In that half-dreaming state, he could not fully control himself.
Meanwhile, the other half of him—the fully conscious half—was in the process of closing the Warp.
As the Warp domain shrank and returned toward the depths of his soul, the fog in the half-dream world kept swallowing everything.
In the end, only his house remained.
By that point, the dream had almost become a lucid dream.
In other words, he could do whatever he wanted now, rather than being trapped in a state where his body would not obey him.
So he was no longer passive.
And that brought the issue back to the "novel" he had written.
At the time, he really had intended to write a crossover novel about Warhammer. But he had written less than two hundred words of the opening before he was abruptly caught in a massive earthquake.
He had hurried outside and noticed something strange in the sky. It looked as though another planet was reflected there.
That planet was Earth.
The two worlds had drawn close, and under their mutual gravity, an earthquake seemed to have been triggered.
Yet it looked like he was the only one who could see that scene. No one else could.
After that, his consciousness had sunk into darkness, as if he had been swallowed when the ground split open beneath him.
Before he was swallowed, from the corner of his eye, he also noticed that the collapsing buildings around him had become unfamiliar. Even though they had collapsed so completely that it was impossible to tell what they had originally been, he was certain they were not the buildings surrounding his house.
How should he put it?
It was almost as if he had instantly returned to the Earth he had first arrived on.
And as for that brief memory—from the moment he ran out of his house to the moment his consciousness plunged into darkness—he had only recovered it this time because he had nearly become a god of the Warp.
No, recovered was not the right word.
Rather, it had truly been far too brief. The old him, who had not yet stepped into this stage of godhood, simply lacked the ability to interpret that information.
It was like his previous self had been an ordinary camera. If an object moving at Mach 20 flashed past his eyes without making a sound, he would not be able to capture its trajectory. He might not even notice it had passed him at all.
But now, as he moved toward becoming a god of the Warp, he was like an ultra-high-speed camera.
He could see it all clearly.
In other words, he could be called a transmigrator, but in a sense, he could also be considered half native.
After all, he had been in cryogenic hibernation in this world for forty thousand years.
Returning to the matter of becoming a god of the Warp, this incident had also made him notice that there were certain "interfaces" inside his Warp—interfaces corresponding to different emotional authorities.
Among them, four interfaces stood out: hatred, hope, joy, and despair. That was rather interesting.
No, it was not that they had already existed.
Rather, during his journey toward godhood—during the process of becoming something like Alaya—he had constructed them himself.
As for their purpose, he did not know, because he had stopped the expansion from continuing.
It was like Orks. Their DNA hid an astonishing number of extraordinary technologies.
Only when they encountered certain situations would those technologies activate, along with the knowledge of how to use them.
The continuous expansion of his Warp domain was like opening a database. But right now, he was still not capable of withstanding that massive amount of data, so he had no choice but to stop it immediately. Otherwise, he really would have become a program-like Alaya.
Then where had the fog from the past two days come from?
Naturally, there was only one suspect.
But what did that suspect want him to do?
After nearly becoming a god this time, Kain had gained a faint direction for his speculation.
If this were a chinese novel, people would probably think he was a vessel being cultivated for possession.
Here, in a certain sense, that was true—but also not true.
So Kain was not too worried.
"Aerith, something outside seems… wrong."
Tifa noticed that the lights beyond the window were gradually going out.
In the next second, she let go of what she had been holding and rose to the window, peering carefully outside. The lights truly were fading one by one.
More accurately, the fog was spreading without stop, drowning those lights as it came.
The dark beast was steadily approaching, ready to swallow everything.
Had their stimulation produced the opposite effect instead?
"Aerith, the fog is spreading toward us. Is this really right?"
She looked toward Aerith as she spoke, and Aerith's expression had grown anxious as well.
"It is right…"
As Aerith answered, she looked as though she had made some kind of decision. Tifa immediately hurried over and grabbed her.
"Aerith, you're not about to do something stupid again, are you? What needs to be done? This time, I'll do it!"
Just as before, when Aerith had acted in reality, Tifa was afraid she might do something similar again.
If that happened, Aerith might truly disappear and lose any chance of being reborn.
"Huh? N-no, that's not it. It's not what you're thinking, Tifa. It's just…"
Aerith's expression grew extremely unnatural, and her face flushed even redder.
"What is it?"
"It's… I need to bring us even closer. Close enough for the strongest possible reaction."
Tifa froze.
"That should create the greatest level of stimulation. Maybe then we can wake him."
After Aerith said that, her hand slowly lowered.
Seeing something flicker in Tifa's eyes, Aerith parted her lips.
"Or Tifa, you could do it."
"Huh? I-I don't know how. You should do it, Aerith."
Tifa's refusal made it sound as if she did not want to go that far, as if she could not accept it.
But Tifa could tell that Aerith was yielding the chance to her. Aerith had clearly seen through her feelings.
"Tifa, what's that supposed to mean? Are you saying I know how? That I'm a bad girl?"
Aerith puffed up her cheeks in mock indignation.
"No, that's not what I meant. I…"
"How about you settle it with rock-paper-scissors?"
"Hm. That's a good idea. Tifa, let's play rock-paper-scissors."
The moment the words left Aerith's mouth, her face froze.
Tifa's expression stiffened as well.
Both of them looked toward the owner of the voice.
He was clearly awake now.
(End of Chapter)
[Get +30 Extra Chapters On — P@tr3on "Zaelum"]
[Every 300 Power Stones = 1 Bonus Chapter Drop]
[Thanks for Reading!]