[Booooring!]
The cacophonous voice of devilmen—those headless beings, spawn of human and angel—echoed across the theater.
With gilded ornaments on each side of the stage we stood in, the walls, and balconies, tomatoes were thrown and splattered on our clothes, even those who weren't lit by the droplights.
The light moved and swirled around, leaving the light off Kim.
Then, eventually…
It fell on me.
[The gamemaster is watching.]
I could hear Kim who had survived and Jim gasp as I looked behind me and saw Lucas who was a few meters away from me sneering.
Though I had expected that the drop light would fall on me at some point, I didn't think it would be this early.
My gaze elevated to the balconies above.
The red-eyed and red-haired clad in silver armor had stood up, looking down on me further.
It made me ponder if this man was really the Benedict Ian Leyendecker I knew of.
Did I make him witness the first round?
His clothes were strange, like it doesn't fit him right at all.
Looking aged, his skin sagged slightly. Even from far away, through the masquerade mask, I could tell he had wrinkles near his eyes as if he was looking through a suit of skin.
The skin he wore was also rather pale-ish, almost translucent.
The veins that usually appeared on his face were less visible.
Was this a doppelganger?
My eyes squinted to see if it really was him.
He walked away, his silver-clad back disappearing in the darkness.
Raising my hands in defeat, I sighed.
[Dance for us, fool!]
I tilted my head.
A microphone came to be in my hands.
"Uh…"
I pretended to think, my chin wrapped in between my fingers.
A thick, two-inch mustache appeared on my upper lip, my clothes turning into a Victorian-like outfit almost akin to Ch*rlie Ch*plin.
The background glided into a red brick wall, the type that would be commonplace in bars. The background seemed to be what aliens would think a human comedian would be like.
"What do you call a three-humped camel?"
A tomato was thrown but it had missed me.
I've only just started…I thought sheepishly, a bit nervous as sweat pooled in the back of my outfit that had turned into a clown
I gulped.
"Pregnant."
[Your role is Co?]
Tomatoes flew ahead.
To make things easier for me, the gamemaster had changed my clothing into a farmer.
How amusing.
A hoe and a fistful of hay surfaced in my hands. These were generic items of what a farmer would have.
"Hm?"
Earlier, the tuxedo man held a gun and was eventually killed by it. D*rothy held a basket wherein the pills lay. Thereby being killed by overdose.
How interesting that different items appear depending on the role given to you.
An idea was aroused in my mind.
An idea as idiotic as Harry that it may just work.
It is true that I don't understand this first round.
I don't understand it in ways that a nephilim, a god might.
Even as the writer, I sometimes don't understand my own work and how it came to be.
I diverted away from the plot too many times, creating characters of my own.
But I like to think I have somewhat improved it.
My plan included a certain protagonist's attendance.
This plan was formed with much thanks to Junhan, to what I learnt from The Federation.
With that…
My moments of silence had bored the gamemaster. I survived.
The droplight fell to another human, a certain blond teenager.
"Let the show begin."
-
I was never one to believe in a higher being.
And I hadn't grown to be someone who did.
Perhaps once in a while, even in a world where gods are no longer followed I'll look up to the sky and think, who was so cruel to create something such as humanity.
There was a phrase I heard once: "Did god create humanity because he was lonely or did humanity create god because of their loneliness?"
I always believed in the latter.
Now, I stand above all, both man and monster; above the dead and living.
It felt… exhilarating.
This must be how god felt.
It made me curious; what could he possibly have felt when he was struck down by the very beings he created?
Angels descended from the sky from a world beyond human comprehension with Lucifer leading them.
His own creation, lightning stabbed god right in the heart—the very place he had created us, humanity, from.
To god, the seats are empty. The theater is pitch black. So why do you keep acting?
The stories and mythology of gods may have been simple, but it was the start of my path as a writer.
Not some fiction bullshit. Even if reality was somehow always incorporated in fiction.
Perhaps it had been some sort of quiet wish for me—that my creations would turn into reality.
Was I to regret it, I wondered.
Whoever made it come true was someone I could never dislike, that much can be said.
My heart right then was beating so fast that it may just stop.
But, since the advent of the rounds, I have changed.
I think this must be what I was meant for.
But I thought the same when I first met Archie and became a nurse.
I might just leave with no regrets if I died right now. In fact, I might just jump from up here, with my bones broken. But when you see my dead body on the ground, sluggish and dead, you might just see me smile.
I understood god now.
This god-fearing is broken.
The god—angels you fear do not care for you.
Because if I had been in the sky, staring down at mankind for millennia, I would lose the feeling of giving a damn to them too.
I knew all too well of the devils that slept inside mankind.
If one asked me who to blame for the creation of the rounds…
I would say:
"God."
Then, the inquirer may respond with:
Then, you?
Then, I would correct myself.
"The god who made me write this story."
I'm just a poor boy, I need no sympathy.