"Lord, the moment I completely absorbed the mist, I vaguely sensed that something was wrong."
"At the time, my spiritual senses were exceptionally sharp... the ability to perceive my surroundings through the Sea of Unconsciousness. I could even vaguely sense your presence."
"Not this shell of yours, but you yourself... Well, I don't know what that really was either. I only vaguely felt that it stood above the world."
"Besides that, what I sensed was... a gaze."
"Later, I learned that it was Lina's gaze."
"I'd encountered Lina before. She inexplicably berated me, saying I hadn't gone to save Bruno. I'd barely even heard of Bruno, and only later found out he'd been dead for centuries. Ridiculous, right, Lina?"
"Lina?"
"Ignoring me? Fine, I'll continue... After we talked for a while, Boss, didn't you say you were going to call someone to pick me up? So I stood there waiting, and then Lina came out."
"To be honest, I originally wanted to attack her straight away. She'd always been our enemy, and her reputation was terrible. But she, she..."
"But the first thing she did was call me [Father]."
"You probably can't imagine how complicated my feelings were at the time... Oh, I nearly forgot, you were called that too... Well, then maybe you can understand how I felt..."
"I was completely dumbfounded. I even thought I'd accidentally done something wrong in the white mist... Anyway, I started talking to her."
"Lina is kind of insane. It took me ages to understand what she was talking about."
"She said that all [Named Ones] were created, and the person who created them... was called [Father]."
"She had never met [Father], so she could only follow the limited clues in search of him. And those clues pointed to me..."
"How absurd. How