Chapter 23 — Interlude: My Puppy Got Split in Two!
It had wandered into this world searching for signs of a god. It roamed aimlessly, approaching anything that appeared within range of its senses. Basically, the only thing it could do was kill. So when it encountered a person who wasn’t its intended target, it killed them. If they were in the way, if they fought back, or if it needed information from them, it killed them.
Of course, it wasn’t like it had an obsession with killing everything besides the god it was searching for. If it realized the target was unrelated, it sometimes picked a new objective and left. The criteria for that decision weren’t very clear. It didn’t truly understand itself. It contained a number of processing devices, but they had been randomly inserted into it and weren’t connected in any way. The person who had sent it here likely didn’t have any particular plan in mind. It just needed to come across its target at some point. That’s as much thought as they had put into it.
“Ah, dammit! My puppy’s been split in two! What the hell is wrong with you?!”
In a forest near the abandoned ruins of the capital of Manii, a divine woman stood facing off against the Aggressor known as the Hedgehog. Its black body covered in blades was an incarnation of slaughter and had claimed countless lives in this world already. The Wolf King, an enormous wolf that the woman had been riding, had become another one of the Hedgehog’s victims.
“I can hardly believe it. Why would you ignore me and kill him?!”
The creature’s actions had been perfectly normal. The god had had her defenses ready and showed no openings at all, so it had attacked the wolf. A half-hearted attack wouldn’t affect a god, but an emotional shock could cause her to lose her composure. So it had hoped to create an opening to strike, but besides being surprised, she hadn’t let down her guard in the slightest.
The creature hadn’t considered what it would do next. It merely repeated the same actions everywhere it went, not thinking about whether those actions would help lead it to its ultimate objective. The Hedgehog was broken—one could call it a manufacturing defect. Having been sent into this world without a proper tuning up, the numerous processors it possessed made decisions independently of each other, making it incapable of seeing the big picture.
“Just die!” The Hedgehog’s right arm was twisted off and blown away. “So you can even dodge that?!”
Although she seemed furious at first, the woman howled with glee upon seeing the Hedgehog’s response. She had performed an attack on the past. The Hedgehog responded to the attack by moving even further into the past, partially avoiding the attack that had forcibly rewritten an already determined outcome. Within a limited space-time environment, the ability to alter phenomena was only natural for a god. If one couldn’t fight on that level, they had no business fighting a god. For the Hedgehog, who had been designed specifically to fight against gods, such an ability was a necessary function.
“As expected of a god-slaying machine! But you’re clearly no match for me! What’re you gonna try next?!”
This wasn’t the world that this woman ruled over, so she couldn’t exercise her full power. But even so, the difference in strength was evident. So what could it do? The Hedgehog didn’t have the capacity for thought. It simply did what was possible at that moment. Deploying the blades all around its body, it leaned forward, gathering power.
“Ohhh? A desperate last stand, is it? All right, then. I’m fine with that!”
The woman clapped her hands together in front of her chest. With an explosive sound, the world changed. The domain of her control expanded around her. Even as the Hedgehog was dragged into her world, it sat there, unmoving, still gathering power. Whether or not one was a god, if they were in a foreign domain, they couldn’t exercise their full power. Even if the woman expanded her own domain here, the power she could employ would be limited.
The Hedgehog was expanding its own domain on a smaller scale around it. Because of that, the god’s power wouldn’t be able to reach it directly. At the very least, it could avoid instant death.
Then eyes appeared. Countless eyes opened, encircling the Hedgehog. This time, she no doubt intended to land a solid hit. Past, present, future, she would unleash an attack that saw through everything and would be completely unavoidable. The Hedgehog continued gathering power, ignoring them all.
The woman swung her arms wide. Adopting a physical stance was totally unnecessary for a god, but there were some who found this type of acting useful. This woman must have been one of those who felt that her power increased when she did such things.
Quietly, power filled the space between the two of them. The moment before those two powers collided, something changed. The presence of a god that hadn’t been there before filled the air for a brief moment, then vanished. Like a wave, originating from some other point, it simply passed through the space they were occupying.
“Huh? That was... Oh, I see. The god of this world had sealed it away! No wonder we couldn’t find it no matter how much we looked!”
For a moment, the sense of that god held the woman’s attention. It was a once in a lifetime opportunity for the Hedgehog. If it struck in that opening, even if it couldn’t defeat her, it could inflict serious damage.
But instead it turned and ran. Its priorities had changed. This was the presence of the Hedgehog’s original target, the waveform of the god it was designed to slay.
“Hey, wait!”
It heard the woman’s voice from far away, but at the speed with which it ran, it soon lost track of her entirely. It continued to run towards the source of that wave. It had only sensed its target for a brief moment, and the wave had long since faded away. It wasn’t nearby, nor did the Hedgehog know its precise location. But it still ran blindly forward, howling a piercing, otherworldly cry. It was hard to tell whether it possessed any sort of emotion, but to those who heard it, that voice would have seemed to be filled with overwhelming joy.
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