[The next round shall commence in:]
[31:53:12]
As the fictional counterpart of Justin turned into ashes, sentences, paragraphs, and words alike spilled from his skin, and, eventually, organs.
I stared directly through his eyes as it happened.
I understood then that this was not the Justin I knew.
Or, rather, I tried to convince myself so.
Half an hour later, the flames ran out of fuel, extinguishing itself.
The ashes that Justin left behind dissolved in the black soot that were left by the oil and a moist figure lay below.
There was a reason that nephilim's tombs were stored with oil: it was their weakness.
Nephilim or angels were actual creatures made by god, made with water rather than mankind' s clay and dirt.
While they were called "holy" beings that live in an Eden beyond human comprehension, they were not so different from the average animal.
I turned around to see if Harriet had come in yet. Fortunately, she did not.
She couldn't ever know what happened in this place.
She couldn't ever know that she is fictional. I could only imagine her pain.
With a blazing torch in my hand, I kneeled then illuminated the figure that slept below.
"Bachulus," I said, vibrating. "Arise."
The ground shook with every movement of the figure. As he stood, the creature boasted an unexpected but rational height of more than four meters. He was taller than me who stood on higher ground
He was naked, its skin paler than snow, more like chalk, but he did not bear any genitals. His greasy hair grew down until his knees, strung on the front of his face, making me unable to see. Though, it was probably blurred or unintelligible.
This was the first time I saw a purebred nephilim in the flesh. Or whatever they were made of.
His body resembled a lanky male human, with puny wings on his back.
That figure was Bachulus, an offspring and creation of the once almighty god.
He was not one of the angels that descended from the heavens to fight god, but rather one who sided with god.
Now that I stood in front of a nephilim, I felt my legs stumble like noodles.
I've always been afraid of those high-presence, confident jocks at school.
Compared to a nephilim, though, that was nothing.
I gritted my teeth so that I may keep in place.
[Do not flee.] said the nephilim, Bachulus, carefully. His voice did not come from his mouth, but could be heard vibrating inside his enclosed body. [Defy your urge to escape. We are nothing but the offspring of devils here.]
His body remained still as he spoke, unmoving.
I gulped. "Does that mean you're aware of the situation?"
I saw through the unintelligible face of the nephilim: a red, glowing eye.
[As your friend might say: mayhaps.]
"That makes things quick then."
Like god, nephilim watched over us and our every move as humans.
As a certain squad leader might say, they watched us as we killed our comrades, our loved ones, and as we fucked!
But they did not watch us from the heavens.
Truth be told, there was no heaven in this world.
Even I, the writer, was unsure if these memories of the world I held came from my pen of fiction or if the world had always been like this.
One thing is certain, however.
"There is no such a thing as a moon."
The words of Junhan resonated.
The discoveries made by the members of Lucifer-180, comrades of Ben, was something that will matter in the near future. It was strange.
It made the nephilim sound less omnipotent.
If there was no such thing as heaven, then where did the gods rest?
Were there any gods at all?
My thought process darted to the discoveries of Lucifer-180.
The discoveries being…
-
A rocket that ascended from earth now floated in a sea of nothingness, of a void.
This spacecraft that was designed by its own members and launched by NASA itself and was also blessed by a priest from the church of Nephilim was a three-part structure whose shape was akin to a thin bullet.
When standing vertically and not hovering in space, it stood at more than twenty meters.
On the surface, there were colorful signatures of names and jokes of the like where the children who visited NASA at the time of their departure and relatives of the astronauts signed. It made the bleak spacecraft look lively.
Inside were seven people, a mixture of men and women.
One of them was older than the rest. That was obvious from his salt-and-pepper hair.
Some had faces that were not visible at all, floating inside the enclosed space.
Amongst them, one stood out.
A red-haired and blue-eyed man of muscular stature stood, buckled in, and was in front of the one-sided window where he gazed out of.
The space was as desolate as he had thought. Once in a while, they'd pass by a meteor or comet and Benedict would simply move his eyes as it went from one end to the other until it'd disappear from his field of sight.
It wasn't as exciting as he had thought, being an astronaut. But he was recruited and needed the money since he had transmigrated into this world alone.
Their bodies were bare and out of their spacesuits, armed on one side of the space.
The chic-looking old man announced, "We are about to land! Prepare!"
At last, thought Ben, removing the belt that hugged him across his torso, floating away towards where the spacesuits rested.
After a week, they finally arrived.
The spacecraft descended slowly and the people of the spaceship leaped into the air then into their spacesuits to prepare. The old man was the one that controlled the ship, ever experienced in it.
There was a thud once they landed on the moon.
Curious, everyone looked at the miniscule window that faced the moon, assuming they landed on a crater or whatnot.
But what awaited them was irrational.
There was a crack on the moon's surface.