Gawain spent quite some effort suppressing the flood of filthy quips in his mind, and was immensely grateful that he had not brought Amber along this time—otherwise, that Half-elf would surely have read who knew how much from the changes in his expression, and several exaggerated versions of "Emperor Gawain Cecil's Sacred Filthy words" would have appeared in the next secretly circulated issue of The Emperor's Holy Words...
He shook his head and looked at the Nature God before him, who let out a soft laugh. "Clearly, you have no intention of helping me remove these restraints."
"We've already discussed that," Gawain replied calmly. "What concerns me more is what you just said. You said, 'So that day really came'—did you foresee what the Goddess of Magic was going to do?"
Amun answered frankly. "...I did not foresee the details, but I knew that other gods like me would inevitably try to break this cycle. And among all gods, the one most likely to act... could only be the Goddess of Magic."
"Why do you say that?" Gawain frowned. "And hadn't you said before that gods normally could not communicate with one another, and that you knew little about the others?"
"Bound by their domains of faith and the ideologies to which they belong, gods indeed cannot communicate with one another. Nor do I know what other gods are thinking or planning..." A hint of amusement seemed to enter Amun's voice. "But that does not stop me from inferring other gods' 'tendencies' from certain patterns..."
Gawain immediately noticed the key term the other had mentioned, but before he could ask about it, Amun abruptly threw out a question. "Do you know how—and why—magic came into being?"
Veronica, standing nearby, found it strange that a Nature God would suddenly ask such