The First God to Return

"You must be my true self's dog." Never underestimate the wisdom of the powerful, for intellect is itself one of the crucial measures of the strong. If the fishing village boy who had once walked the sandy shore tracing the footprints of Goddess Mills hadn't possessed astonishing intellect, he could never have ultimately embarked on the path to godhood. Karen had deliberately laid down several coincidental setups earlier; the contrivance was already very faint, feeling entirely natural. Yet Lord Dal had not taken it for granted that the youth before him was a kindred spirit sharing his temperament and experiences; instead, he immediately realized this young man was very likely connected to him. Because Lord Dal knew full well what kind of existence he truly was. He was a god. A long life had granted him formidable experience, and standing at the heights for so long had bestowed upon him an unimaginably grand perspective. Even so, when Lord Dal spoke those words, Karen was still momentarily stunned. Lord Dal had guessed correctly. He had grasped the true nature of things, reflecting reality almost without flaw, like looking in a mirror. But... it was backwards. Someone had indeed become a dog, but it wasn't the young man standing before him; it was his true self—which was to say, himself. Yet one couldn't blame Lord Dal for drawing the opposite conclusion. Karen's very existence was an anomaly; the only comparable precedent known today lay in the descriptions of the God of Order's birth in the *Light of Order*. On top of that, Karen had a peculiar grandfather at his side back then—a grandfather who had no interest in becoming a Temple Elder, refused to serve the god up close, and thought only of being rebellious while paving the way for his grandson. Even so, when Diss dealt with Raniedal in that special state of existence back then, he had been utterly helpless and had even burned his own hand. A god was, after all, a god; no matter how terribly weakened, as long as they opened their eyes, they defied all ordinary logic. In truth, even after being ousted from the body he had meticulously modified, Raniedal was still a very, very long way from becoming a dog—it was practically impossible. Blame it on Diss, who hadn't hesitated to punch holes in both his own chest and his grandson's just to capture him. And blame it on Diss happening to have a longtime friend named Hoffen. After a flurry of kneading, rolling, rubbing, and throwing, before Raniedal could even register what was happening, he had already become furry and capable of wagging a tail. "What is my true self's current condition?" Well, since Lord Dal had moved right on to the next topic, Karen wasn't about to volunteer a correction to his misconception. He could hardly tell him bluntly: *No, I'm not your dog. But you are indeed mine.* "He..." Karen pursed his lips and rephrased. "You are doing very well, yet also very poorly." "My true self is in no danger and living quite well?" "Yes." "Yet he's currently very weak?" "Yes." "Sigh, that is only natural. But for his present state, it's genuinely quite good. As long as he's alive and out of danger, a way can always be found to recover bit by bit." "Yes, that is what I am currently working on." "Mm. Did he tell you that I was here in the Gate of Samsara?" "Yes." In reality, no. What Kevin had meant was that Karen had to steer clear of this place. But at the time, Kevin hadn't foreseen that Karen could wash away the aura belonging to him. "So you came looking for me specifically to seek my protection?" "Yes." "By all reason and sentiment, I ought to protect you." "Yes." "Very well, then we shall proceed by reason and sentiment. Mm, I will protect you." "Thank you, sir." "Sigh..." Lord Dal stretched and yawned. "Actually, my current state is completely different from what he envisioned. Back then, he left me behind as a mental imprint merely to make it easier for him to dump garbage here." "Mm, I know." "Yet after being sealed for so long, coupled with certain special factors... heh, I've become different. Can you tell?" "I can." "Oh? You can even tell that?" "Yes. I can sense that you are no longer a pure mental imprint; you moved past that level long ago." "Heh heh, indeed. Tell me, how could you tell?" "Blazing Valley is so quiet." "Hahaha! Because I was hungry. The commotion Rielsa made was far too loud; the moment she woke, I was startled awake. That woman is a lunatic, as is the Church of the Mural God she founded. In my view, the most suitable place for that church to proselytize would be an asylum." "I think so as well." From Linda to his future father-in-law, Karen had deeply sensed their abnormality. "Do you know that I hold a grudge against her?" "I know." "Oh, he even told you that? Well, fair enough; you even know about Mills, so he must trust you deeply." "Yes." "Are you an orphan?" "No. Earlier, I only wanted to draw your attention." "Oh, is that so? Then is your family very formidable?" "Yes." "Did your family shelter my true self?" "Yes." "Heh heh. For some reason, I'm a bit skeptical. Perhaps it's because our conversation has been going too smoothly. Don't you think?" "Is smooth communication a bad thing?" "No, it isn't. Do you know the underlying reason why it flows so smoothly? Because you haven't knelt." Karen was still standing. "Is kneeling required?" Karen asked. "When you speak to him, you don't have to kneel either, do you?" "I don't." "You don't fear me. You have spoken to me on equal terms all along, which is why our exchange has been so effortless. In fact, I suspect that addressing me with honorifics is already your greatest concession and compromise." Karen fell silent. Lord Dal continued, "You weren't even willing to put on an act just to settle this matter quickly. If you had knelt and displayed complete subservience, there wouldn't have been any lingering doubt, let alone any reversal. "But now, "I'm beginning to doubt the relationship between my true self and you. Heh heh, you lied to me just now, didn't you? You aren't his dog at all." "I didn't deceive you. When you brought up the subject of a 'dog,' I never gave an affirmative answer." "Mm." Lord Dal nodded. "Yet communication built on asymmetric information and intentional misdirection is unreliable." "Yet you already promised me that you would shelter us." "Shelter you, not them along with you." "Is there any difference? More than half of them are members of the core team I've designated for my future development." "Karen, don't you find speaking to me like this a bit laughable?" Karen shook his head. "Or rather, what makes you think that just because of your relationship with my true self, I must grant your every whim? Just because he is my true self and I am merely one of his mental imprints?" "No, I don't. If I truly believed that, I would have revealed my relationship with your true self from the very moment I met you, rather than subtly dropping hints and carefully making veiled references here." "Oh?" "Because I have always known very clearly: you are you, and he is he." *Hiss...* Hearing those words, Lord Dal's hands trembled uncontrollably and the corners of his mouth twitched—a physical display of supreme gratification that he was desperately trying to suppress. In the end, Lord Dal couldn't hold it back. He threw his head back: "Hahahahahaha!" He laughed like a simpleton. When his laughter subsided, Lord Dal wiped away his tears and asked, "So that's where all your earlier groundwork was meant to land. That was your calculation all along. But I must say, you succeeded. Solely for what you just said, I like you very much. Even without giving face to my true self, I will shelter you." "And my companions." "Your companions will require a deal between you and me. Do you understand what I mean?" "What do you need?" "I don't know." Lord Dal spread his hands. "I'm neither lying to you nor teasing you; I truly don't know what I need right now." "That's simple." "Simple?" "You can agree to my request first, and when you figure out what you need, you can come find me." "Can you even do that?" "You can." "Heh heh, fine. But there is one thing I must confirm first: your qualifications. I demand that you prove them to me, understand?" "Certainly." "Your family." Karen closed his eyes and began summoning the family faith within him. Soon, an elderly man clad in the divine robes of an elder of the Temple of Order appeared behind Karen. Before long, the old man's figure dissipated once more. Karen opened his eyes again, looked at Lord Dal, and asked, "Is that sufficient?" "It is." Lord Dal nodded. "Though for some reason, I'm not in the least surprised that my true self is surviving by relying on factions within the Church of Order. Even though the God of Order suppressed him, he doesn't hate the God of Order all that much." "I think so as well." "However, I have a question." Lord Dal walked out from behind the desk. "Even if you can defer the debt, once you leave this time, you probably won't enter the Gate of Samsara again. So theoretically speaking, what you owe me can never be repaid." As he spoke, Lord Dal raised a hand and continued, "Don't give me any talk about repaying what you owe me to my true self. Just as you said earlier, he is he, and I am I." "You... cannot leave?" The mental imprint in Karen's own study had moved with him when he relocated, after all. "In the past, I could. Now, I cannot." Lord Dal opened his palm, held it out in front of Karen, and tilted his chin toward him. "Press your palm against mine." Karen pressed his palm against Dal's. The instant their palms met, Karen felt warmth. It was not merely a thermal warmth, for it carried a distinct sense of weight. Lord Dal stared into Karen's eyes and said very earnestly, "If what you say next satisfies me, I will include your companions under my protection." "I sense a weight accompanied by warmth, born from the layering of the past, present, and future. This is not something a mental imprint can possess, for a mental imprint remains frozen at the moment it was severed and branded." Lord Dal stared blankly at Karen. After a long moment, he nodded and said, "You... surprise me." "My companions?" "Don't be so mercenary." "Understood. Then my companions..." "I will protect all of you." "Thank you, sir." "Heh heh. Whenever your core interests are at stake, all that propriety of yours vanishes." "I believe most people are like that." "Mm, true enough." The bookshelves before Lord Dal parted to reveal a door. He signaled for Karen to follow him inside. Stepping through, Karen found an expanse of dark ice stretching as far as the eye could see. At the very center of the area stood three icicles; the middle one was the tallest and largest, while the ones flanking it were comparatively smaller. Lord Dal walked over to the three icicles and clapped his hands. The central icicle lit up, but it was empty inside. "Were you sealed here?" "Yes, this is where I was sealed." Lord Dal clapped again. The icicles on both sides also lit up, and inside them were two more Raniedals. These two Raniedals looked just as Raniedal did in Karen's memory, but they were not physical entities. Whereas Lord Dal beside him possessed a physical body, likely possessing some puppet. "When I woke up, my first sensation was hunger. Heh, to think I could actually feel hunger—how miraculous. Then, when I turned my head left and right to look around, I was nearly frightened out of my wits. "Who were these two? "I was certain that back then, my true self had left only a single mental imprint—me. Yet these two, though terribly weak, were unmistakably real." "Can they walk out as well?" "No, they cannot walk out, because they exist only within this absolute stillness. One is my past, and the other is my future. It is precisely their existence that gave me this unique warmth—oh, and that weight you spoke of." "This is because..." Lord Dal looked at Karen curiously once more, seemingly eager to hear what he would say next. "Speak it. Let me see just how open my true self has been with you." "The power of time." "I think I really need to reconsider the relationship between you and my true self. To think he would tell you even this." "It's because the Church of Order is also studying the power of time. They obtained a portion of your true self's consciousness, and I happened to be selected as a test subject to enter it. He didn't originally tell me; only after I encountered that matter did he begrudgingly reveal this to me." "Then do you know why my true self researched the power of time?" *[I would trace back time at all costs, only to return to the day you stepped into the sea.]* "For Goddess Mills." "Yes, exactly. Do you know, when I woke and reread my own memories, I found it utterly incredible. That true self of mine actually embarked on the path to godhood solely for a woman. And for that woman, he even willingly touched the laws of time, which are considered taboo even among gods. "What's most incredible... is that he actually touched upon it." "Did he... succeed?" Karen asked. "It's as if you were preparing to forge a divine artifact, and then, a person was born." "That..." "A person being born proves that humanity exists in this world. That person can survive, find another of the opposite sex, reproduce and have children, leading to a growing population that eventually gives rise to faith and religion, until finally a god appears—and that god can then learn how to forge a divine artifact. "Do you understand what I mean?" "There is... a theoretical possibility." "Right. My true self succeeded. In the unique environment of the Gate of Samsara, he successfully enabled the mental imprint he left behind back then—me—to possess a past and a future, breaking free into an independent existence from him. "The moment I began to develop a second interpretation of my memories, a sense of self emerged within me. That shocked me far more than hunger, because I am not an avatar, much less a puppet. I was merely a mental imprint." "Yes, it is truly astounding. So, you cannot leave the Gate of Samsara?" "You can think of the Gate of Samsara as a colossal barrier that isolates everything. My past and future are sealed here; they cannot move, nor can they be moved. If I were to leave the Gate of Samsara, it would sever me from my past and future. "I would revert to that pure mental imprint... which means the 'me' of right now would die directly." "I understand. I will tell him about this when I return. He will surely be thrilled." "Though I doubt he has the ability to enter this place and see me. Even back in his prime, he could only sneak in here to conduct a secret experiment under the pretext of running errands and dumping trash for the God of Samsara." "Do you know about the events of this era?" "I do. Devouring the entirety of Blazing Valley wasn't for nothing. I know that in this era, the gods do not walk the world. But Rielsa has already awakened; that is a beginning." "Will the gods return one after another?" "Hard to say. Rielsa is somewhat unique; hers wasn't a return in the fullest sense. Yet no matter how fragmented a beginning it is, its symbolic significance cannot be erased. "Hm? Wait, that's not right!" Lord Dal rested his chin on his hand, musing, "Rielsa actually wasn't the first to return. If we really think about it, didn't my true self return even earlier than her?" "Yet he is very weak," Karen reminded him. "No matter how weak his return, he is still a god. Even though back then his heart held only the goddess and he had no interest whatsoever in establishing a church, you cannot deny that he is a god." "Yes, he is a god." An evil god was still a god, just like aberrant demons and priests. An obedient aberrant demon could become a priest, while a priest who lost their way became an aberrant demon. "Yet that's still not right." Lord Dal frowned. "No, no, something still feels wrong." "What feels wrong?" "I still feel that against the backdrop of the gods' return, for the first to return to actually be my true self... it feels bizarre. It has an unreal quality to it. Like when an army breaches a city in war, the first one riding a warhorse charging into the city ought to be the bravest general, not a cook from the baggage train, don't you think?" "Is that how you view yourself?" "Precisely because he is my true self, I see it this way. To be even blunter: I am not worthy of being the first god to return in this era. "By the way, how did my true self return?" "A mysterious, ultra-standard god descent ritual." "Who presided over it?" "By the time members of the Church of Order and other churches sensed it and rushed there, the god descent ritual had already ended." "Since my true self is currently with your family, that means the original target summoned by that ultra-standard god descent ritual wasn't my true self. Otherwise, my true self would certainly be with whoever presided over the ritual." "Yes." *Clap!* Lord Dal struck his palms together forcefully, exclaiming with mounting excitement: "Then it is very likely that the true target summoned by that ultra-standard god descent ritual was the first god to return!" Karen: "..."