Looking at Yukari Yakumo's bewildered eyes, Roland merely shrugged.
My authority outranks yours.
Unreliable as it might sound, that was the truth.
As far as understanding the world went, Roland had encountered only three stages so far.
The first was engaging with the surface of the world through mortal eyes, using matter as a foundation to translate truths he had yet to understand.
Then came perceiving its essence from the world's perspective, reaching the conceptual level of understanding, and gaining the power of rules by drawing connections.
And after transcending the world, what had once been an inexhaustible world composed of myriad phenomena became a whole represented by the universe on a macro scale.
In essence, planets had things in common with worlds, too.
However severely humans polluted a planet, as long as they ceased their activities, voluntarily left the area, and let it be-
Over time, disasters that current methods could not address, or could only address at enormous cost, would be alleviated or even reversed.
That was a planet's instinct, and the universe was the same.
Neither possessed emotions of its own. They were vast, chaotic entities, cold yet orderly, taking the universe's operation, future, and continuation as their standards.
And just as planets could give birth to planetary spirits that actively regulated them, whether a universe possessed a will also affected every aspect of it.
The most obvious aspect was its restraining power.
Relatively weak worlds, like the Dungeon's, were utterly passive amid the fusion of multiple worlds, placing all their hopes in the Dungeon.
Distorting rules there was like drawing a blade to cut water. Although it left no concrete result before the world's mighty power, making a momentary change was not difficult.
Type-Moon was much more troublesome. Because it was so immense, the Root paid