Nairmis ground away for a long time, rubbing the stone flake against the stone surface over and over.
The nymph sat quietly beside him, occasionally tilting her head to study his focused profile, occasionally lowering her head to fiddle with the grass nearby.
After a long time, Nairmis finally stopped and blew the last layer of stone dust off the cutting edge.
The edge of the stone flake was thin and even, with a faint, cold gleam. Testing it with his hand produced an extremely slight sting.
He raised the knife toward the sky and could not help smiling, his features relaxing, a little pride in his eyes.
After all that time, his effort had finally paid off. He really was amazing.
The nymph leaned over from beside him, the stone knife reflected in her amber eyes. "Lord Nairmis, what is this?"
Nairmis turned his head, his golden hair lifting with the movement. The nymph blinked, then froze.
The god looked so beautiful when he smiled that she stared blankly for quite a while before coming to her senses.
Nairmis did not notice anything unusual about her. He looked down at the stone knife in his hand. "This is a knife. It's a tool."
The instant his words fell, a familiar tremor of the laws came from deep within him. An unfamiliar divinity was rapidly taking shape inside his body. His second Subordinate Divinity, the divinity of tools, was born.
Nairmis froze. He had a new divinity just like that? Wasn't that far too easy?
He carefully sensed the new divinity's level of power. It was indeed a lesser divinity too, even weaker than his Emotion Divinity, so faint that he could barely sense it working.
Although it was currently so weak that even the proclamation had been dispensed with, and the entire world had not even noticed its birth, the laws had seen its future.
Tools would change the shape of the world over the long years. The laws recognized their potential as a constituent element of the world and thus responded.
Nairmis blinked his pale blue eyes, slowly looking around, his fingers unconsciously tightening around the knife's handle.
A single stone knife had opened up an entirely new divinity.
What if he created other things, those things indispensable to human civilization in later ages? Would the first appearance of each one receive a response from the laws?
Countless thoughts surged through his mind, and for a moment, he could barely contain them.
"What is a tool?" the nymph asked gingerly, her tone carrying a caution born of being startled by that moment of silence.
Nairmis came back to his senses, temporarily suppressed those thoughts, and smiled at her. "Something that helps you."
The nymph blinked, her amber eyes still full of confusion. She looked at the knife in his hand, then at his face. Her lips moved slightly, as though she wanted to ask more, but in the end she merely nodded and crouched beside him, watching blankly.
Nairmis offered no further explanation. He turned back to the dead tree, tightened his grip on the stone knife, and began whittling the first strip of wood.
The blade cut into the bark more smoothly than he had expected, leaving shallow knife marks in the yellowish-brown wood.
He roughly remembered the structure of a lyre-two curved arms, a crossbar, and several strings.
His hobby of collecting musical instruments over the years of his previous life finally proved useful in this world. Although the stone knife was unwieldy and could only produce a rough outline, he carved and ground away bit by bit.
The nymph continued watching curiously as those slender, fair hands gripped the stone knife and carved over and over. Then, involuntarily, her gaze shifted from the wood to Nairmis's face.
His long golden hair fell beside his shoulders, swaying gently with his movements. His lowered lashes cast faint shadows beneath his eyelids, his lips were lightly pressed together, and his expression was focused.
This newborn god really was both beautiful and gentle. Her heart gave a little flutter.
For water spirits like them, the best possible future was to find a god to serve and seek protection.
Especially after that war between the gods, many nearby tree nymphs and water nymphs had perished in its aftermath. Their souls had been taken by His Highness the God of Death into the newly formed Underworld, never to return.
She had watched the guardian of the neighboring clear spring turn into rising vapor in an instant, without even having time to cry out. She wanted to live.
So when Nairmis was born, this thought had risen in her heart. But she was afraid too. She had heard that some gods were brutal by nature; serving them was worse than staying in her own deep pool.
That was why she had never spoken up, only quietly observed, quietly helped, and quietly sat beside him and watched.
Now, this God of Emotions seemed very gentle. He did not treat her condescendingly or ignore her because she was weak. He was completely different from the gods of nature she had heard about.
Once Nairmis finished, she had to ask for his protection.
After another long while, the two curved arms had been whittled into shape. He fitted the crossbar on top, and the joints slotted neatly into place. The lyre's initial form had emerged, rough in its lines but distinct in its outline.
Nairmis held it in his hands and examined it, checking the strength of the joints with satisfaction. Then he frowned.
What was he going to do about the strings? Without strings, a lyre was just a carved piece of wood.
He remembered that in ancient Greek mythology, they seemed to have used sheep intestines. But first, he did not remember exactly how those intestines were processed, and second, he did not know whether there were any sheep nearby. Surely he could not go searching all over the mountains.
He thought for a moment and was about to ask the nymph whether there were any flocks of sheep or similar animals nearby.
Just then, his gaze happened to sweep over the long golden hair hanging over his shoulder. He reached out, pinched a lock, and tugged. Not a strand broke.
Right, his hair was itself part of his divine body and contained his divine power. It was far tougher than the hair of ordinary living creatures and could easily replace sheep intestines as strings.
With a flick of his fingertips, he pulled a few silver strands from the ends of his hair. His movements were gentle, but there was still a stinging pain that made his scalp tingle. He tied the silver strands to the crossbar one by one, pulled them taut, then secured them to the base of the arms.
Each time he secured a string, he infused a trace of emotional divine power into it, giving it the quality of soothing the will.
When the final string was drawn taut, the lyre was at last complete. Nairmis stood up with it cradled in both hands, his hands trembling slightly with the satisfaction of having turned a memory into reality with his own hands.
The nymph finally could not resist leaning closer, her eyes fixed on the lyre. She cautiously reached out a hand, then drew it back. "Lord Nairmis, what is this, then?"
Nairmis looked down at the lyre in his hands, light flowing through his pale blue eyes. "This is a musical instrument, the first musical instrument in the world. I call her a lyre."
The laws responded with that same subtle fluctuation, and unfamiliar divine power once again condensed within him: the divinity of musical instruments, equally faint and likewise a Subordinate Divinity.
But before he had time to sense this new divinity carefully, before the lingering fluctuations of the laws had fully settled, a third surge of divine power welled up inside him, rapidly condensing into a Subordinate Divinity, the divinity of crafting.
Nairmis stood where he was, holding the lyre. Having gained three divinities in one go, his mind went blank for a moment.