And at this moment, what was the sturdy backer that Fujimaru wanted to cling to doing?
Caelus stood with his arms crossed over his chest, looking at the blonde girl standing before him, whose height barely reached his chest. She had a bow on her head, wore a blue and white dress, and was looking at him with innocent eyes.
"Big brother! Alice can't find her way home. Can you help Alice find her way home?"
Tears welled up in the girl's eyes. Anyone who saw this scene would inevitably be moved. Seeing such a pitiful and cute girl who couldn't find her way home would stir feelings of pity and a desire to protect, compelling people to help this poor girl.
But Caelus calmly stared at the name floating above her head. [Alice Liddell (Nyarlathotep)]
"I thought we would meet at The End of the story, but I didn't expect you to step out yourself. Perhaps you wanted to disguise yourself as an innocent and lovable figure to lurk by our side and watch us perform. I wonder if you considered that from the very beginning of our meeting, I would see through your true name?"
"Nyarlathotep, the Crawling Chaos, one of the three Outer Gods recorded in the Cthulhu Mythos. I didn't expect that in this universe, the Cthulhu Mythos would actually exist. I used to think it was just a pure work of science fiction."
"You found me."
The girl, who had initially been adorable, revealed a smile that made one feel terrified and horrified. Then, after a mass of writhing darkness, the appearance of the blonde girl vanished, replaced by a girl with purple hair.
"This look of mine is also quite pretty, right?"
The purple-haired girl blinked, looking full of energy, just like that troublesome underclassman at school who was always smiling at you and occasionally playing little pranks.
"I was just purely curious about a special guy like you coming to this universe, so I specifically ran to this Singularity to meet you."
"Ah, the Void that devours everything and the Existence that records everything are balancing each other out. You really are an interesting existence. You have devoured a vast amount of evil in your heart, yet it has not caused your personality to waver, and even within your memories, love is gestating! This is truly fascinating!"
Another sound of writhing occurred, and the purple-haired girl turned into a beautiful girl with a full head of silver hair, a long ahoge, wearing a black and white dress, and a face full of vitality.
"What are you longing for? Are you longing to be like a normal person, to cry, to laugh, to feel pain, to have normal taste and smell, and to be able to see colors with your eyes just like a normal person..."
"Haha! Do you want it? Let me help you. I will bestow upon you all the emotions you desire! Let me teach you what love is!"
Caelus looked at Nyarlathotep, whose words were full of bewitchment and erosion toward him, and said with no change in expression, "Stop eroding me using your own status and spirit, otherwise I will consider this a signal for us to go to war."
"As for you teaching me emotions or giving me normal sensations, you can spare me that. You are the same thing as love."
"What!?"
Nyarlathotep's expression was slightly stunned, someone had actually said that she was the same existence as love.
"In my cognition, love is an extremely chaotic emotion. If you fall in love with someone, your emotions will shift in that person's direction. If that person is evil, but you love them deeply and are willing to do anything for them, you will also fall into evil. If they are good, you will also do good."
"Love makes people extreme, but love is not just extreme, it can also be very restrained, because when you hope for the happiness of the one you love, you will also choose to let go."
"Contradiction, opposition, change, extremity, chaos, unpredictability, this is my understanding of love. You will never understand why you can fall so passionately in love with someone, nor can you understand how quickly this love can fade. You cannot even imagine what choices you would make when you fall in love with someone."
"Isn't this you? Nyarlathotep, you deeply love everything in this world, so you will do anything for it. This is your unpredictability."
"...Hehe! Hahahaha! Very good, very interesting statement! I think I can understand why that 'me' was obsessed with falling in love with someone inside a little box, and was so deeply infatuated!"
"You are right, everything is love, an impulse named love. I love everything in this world, whether it is twisted and chaotic or orderly and conserved, whether it is heinous or benevolent, whether it is sickly or strong, whether it is human or any other living being. I sincerely love everything in this world. I love them, I embrace them, and I crave their changes! I savor the impulses produced every time their emotions reach an extreme! I also savor the void that is born when everything comes to an end."
"Someone once told me that love is a beautiful emotion that can overcome everything. Others have told me that love is worthless, brings no change, and is merely the pursuit of a group of mediocre people."
"But you tell me that I am love! My god, how interesting this is! This is truly the most interesting thing I've heard in all the years I've been in this universe, the thing that most makes me want to laugh out loud!"
Caelus calmly watched this Outer God laughing crazily in front of him, to the point where her lips had already torn her own cheeks.
And when the laughter subsided, Nyarlathotep's expression became unprecedentedly calm, not at all like the entity that symbolizes chaos and change.
"Caelus, I have noted this name. As a reward for your previous words, I will help you unlock a certain potential hidden within your body. How about it?"
"What..."
"You cannot refuse!"
Caelus lowered his head and watched his chest being pierced by a pitch-black tentacle. The tentacle writhed madly, and then, along with a large mass of pitch-black matter, it burrowed into Caelus's body.
Caelus's vision fell into boundless darkness, and in that boundless darkness, he saw an hourglass, and the sand inside the hourglass was rising from bottom to top.
He saw a waterfall flowing upstream.
He saw an apple falling upward.
He saw a clock rotating counterclockwise.
Finally, he saw everything in the world returning to the beginning.
When the darkness faded, Caelus shook his head and released his right hand, which had been covering his face. When he looked forward, there was no one there.
[The End Path, unlocked.]
[Hint: Your Path of The End is different from the Path power in your main universe. It comes from a higher dimension in another universe, transcends the concepts of time and space, ignores all causality and reincarnation, and symbolizes Azathoth, the origin of all things.]
[The Path of The End no longer symbolizes reversing from the future to the past, at this moment, this Path has been alienated...]
[It is The End where all things in the world will eventually return to one.]
[System: "Wow, you've unlocked something incredible. Congratulations, congratulations. Besides the choice of achieving a higher status through Equilibrium, Nihility, and Memory, you now have a second choice, become the Destroyer faction I mentioned before, choose a universe to unfold The End, and ascend to become the One who unites all things. As long as you swallow a few more universes, becoming an Eighth-Order powerhouse in the future is a certainty."]
"Forget it. If I become an Eighth-Order powerhouse that way, would it really be me, or would it be that Azathoth?"
["You're quite clear-headed. As expected, thinking that a guy symbolizing Nihility would lose his mind just because he gained the possibility of becoming powerful is a joke."
"But feel free to use this power. Anyway, the power from the Cthulhu side can't erode other universes. It could only come here because there was a connection. As long as you don't lose your mind and, as I said before, become part of the Destroyer faction to swallow an entire universe and become the One, there won't be any aftereffects."]
"Hmm, but since the Adventurer is Nyarlathotep, has she left now? Can my mission be considered complete?"
["Did you see me pop up a mission complete window for you?"]
"...This thing hasn't left?"
["I don't know, I, the system, don't know anything!"]
Caelus took out Fujimaru's hair once again. Regardless, he didn't want to miss the story of this savior yet.
(To be continued.)