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"Do you want to live?"
Fuck. I couldn't help swearing inwardly. Nobody had saved me when I was running so hard I could barely breathe. Nobody had answered when I prayed to every honorific name I knew. Now that I was already dead, someone had come to save me?
A scam! Obviously a scam!
That was what I thought, but my mouth was very honest-I didn't even know whether I made a sound. I said, "Yes."
"Then do something for me," the voice said again. "You don't need to know what it is. Once it's done, as long as you have any consciousness remaining, you'll receive a second life."
What could I possibly object to? I agreed immediately for the sake of staying alive! Even a second's hesitation would have been disrespectful to life! Just because I'd killed myself didn't mean I really wanted to die. Since someone had said that, even if he was an evil god, an evil spirit, or a devil, I had to give him some praise. Of course, if he was lying-well, that didn't matter either. Since he wanted me to do something for him, at least I'd be alive while I was doing it, right?
For me now, every extra second alive was pure profit. Since he'd come to deceive me, he might as well keep deceiving me a little longer!
The Demon of Knowledge watched events unfold indifferently, since he had no direct conflict with either of the two Great Old Ones symbolizing catastrophe and the end.
Thus, when the City of Calamity invaded Feysac, he merely watched. When the incarnation of the tributary of the River of Eternal Darkness erased every living thing in Balam from the earth, he still merely watched.
Although Feysac already counted as the country of