My Players' Second Playthrough!

"Magical Girls' instructor was an Elder God?"

"I remember there were four Magical Girl mascots in total. Besides this teddy bear, there were also a frog, a parrot, and a robot. Were they all Elder Gods?"

"Was this the Creator God's true form? My megalophobia is acting up!"

"Where's the doujinshi? Where's the lewd art? Draw a Lilith doujin already!"

"That explained it. Because of the residual power of the Elder Gods, we were able to find remnants of past dreams in the alliance during the first playthrough."

"So the devs had been laying the groundwork for the Magical Girl backstory from the very beginning. Was it only revealed outright in the second playthrough because nobody ever discovered it?"

'Amulet Owl' stood nearby, watching the livestream chat's discussion while pondering the game's backstory himself.

He was not much of a lore enthusiast, but whenever he encountered a question the wiki could not answer, all he had to do was point the camera at the chat. The viewers in the barrage comments would help answer it for him.

According to the viewers, this sudden and completely unheralded plot development was actually introducing the expedition's most fundamental worldview.

Namely, why the gods had been corrupted and become the bosses of each major version.

The teddy bear suddenly fell silent. It looked around and said, "This isn't the place to talk," hinting that this segment of the story was about to end.

But the Creator God's incarnation backhanded it across the face and replied, "They are heroes I summoned from another world."

Then, as though he had suddenly figured something out, he glanced at the red-themed Magical Girl being held down and smiled.

"You've been playing dumb in front of me. Did you really think she could stay out of this after learning of my existence?"

The teddy bear immediately flew into a rage, roaring, "What are you planning to do?" as it kicked wildly with its short stuffed legs.

"Purify this world, of course," Li Li answered.

"Purify? You're talking to me about purification?" The teddy bear sneered. "Wasn't this world polluted by you?"

"My patience is limited." Li Li walked over to the Magical Girl and brushed aside her severed red hair. "Very limited."

"I'm not entirely sure either." The teddy bear immediately became obedient. "At first, only a few lesser gods were corrupted, but... because of the rules you set, the gods were constantly at war with one another. No god cared about something like this. They thought it was just some god's tactic."

"I was one of the first to take these corruptions seriously. They were strange, because they did not pollute divine power, divinity, or authority. They just..."

"Simply polluted."

"After observing for a while, I suspected the corruption was related to civilization. After all, my opponents were the Old Ones. Like us Elder Gods, they did not care for mortals, so they suffered the least corruption."

"Later, I also noticed that the more prosperous a civilization was, the more likely the gods they worshipped were to go mad."

"So I promptly stopped the war against the Old Ones' forces and hid with the other Elder Gods. But in the end, we were still found by the maddened Nyarlathotep."

"To prevent myself from being corrupted, I did not resist and fled directly into the territory of the unbelievers. The Elder Gods who resisted won, but they all went mad not long afterward."

"..."

As Li Li listened to Nodens' account, his brow furrowed deeper and deeper.

What the hell was this corruption?

It sounded as though it specifically targeted gods. Once infected, they would go mad. Not even he, the World Master, could escape it.

Li Li had only recovered his power for a few minutes, so his ability to investigate the world was limited. However, based on the information he had obtained from the lore enthusiasts, he could be certain that there was an "awareness" behind the corruption.

The Feast of Gluttony incident showed that the corrupted gods obeyed something.

This was definitely not content from the Mod.

According to the rules of Creator Simulator, once the last "civilization" disappeared, the game would end, and the entire world would sink into nothingness.

Even if those gods had been twisted into lumps of rotten flesh, they should have understood that after destroying the alliance, they would eventually vanish as a result.

In other words, the mastermind's goal was to destroy the entire world.

Working backward, if the mastermind could gain something after the world was destroyed—such as the remaining World Origin of this world—then everything made sense.

If those assumptions were correct, then the corruption had actually originated from another world?

It was still possible that all this had been caused by some lunatic who wanted to drag the world down with him, but Li Li felt he was already very close to the answer.

It was precisely because some existence from another world wanted to devour this world's origin that this world had departed from its "parallel line" state.

That was why this world's origin had been able to choose him, on Blue Star, as the new World Consciousness.

So that he, this "third party," could resolve the crisis it faced.

As for his reward, it was the identity of the "Creator God."

At first glance, this deduction might not make sense chronologically, but time was not flowing water. It was not linear.

Intuitively, the sequence should have been: World Origin chose him → he created this world → the mastermind successfully corrupted this world.

But the actual sequence was: the mastermind successfully corrupted this world → World Origin chose him → he created this world → the mastermind was about to corrupt this world.

To put it plainly, just as the mastermind was about to succeed, World Origin—

reversed time.

So the game on Blue Star called Despair Expedition OL was a projection from the point where "the mastermind successfully corrupted this world."

Because everything had been restarted, the event of "the mastermind successfully corrupted this world" had not happened. Thus, for him, Nodens, Aer, the other natives, and the mastermind behind it all, this world was a brand-new "first playthrough."

But the Blue Star people who had played Despair Expedition OL were different.

They were third parties outside the screen who had truly traveled through this world. Perhaps, without even realizing it, they had faced the mastermind behind everything head-on.

They were the players of the second playthrough!

With that thought, Li Li glanced at the several players watching from the sidelines.

He knew that 'Amulet Owl' was a major streamer, and he had deliberately allowed the players to hear the conversation just now.

There was some risk in doing so, but only by letting the Blue Star people who had experienced the first playthrough join the discussion could they pool their wisdom and arrive at an answer closer to the truth.

They were beings from outside the world.

They could neither be corrupted nor were they pieces on the board of this game.

While the mastermind orchestrating everything pondered which move to make next, these people might just jump onto the table, pick up the board, and smash it into Its face!

Having sorted it all out, Li Li returned the teddy bear to the red-haired girl and said to 'Li Yuan,' who had brought them here:

"When you clear the corruption outside the city tomorrow, bring this little girl along too. See what she can do for our newly built outpost—merchant, blacksmith, whatever. In short, once the corruption in the abandoned village has been completely cleared, let her handle logistics. Discuss the details among yourselves."

"The world is about to be destroyed. To save it, even the smallest strength must be put to use."

With that, Li Li looked again at the teddy bear pretending to be dead. "As for this little guy, it probably can't leave the city any more than I can, so it can follow me and serve as a class advancement instructor."