The Path to Becoming a God
At last, Tana grasped what had happened.
Raga had brought the Sage.
Amazingly, her youngest sister had, in a moment of crisis, thought of the Sage just as Tana herself once had. Though he was still only human, Raga knew of no one else who might help her sisters. And so the youngest of them had impulsively opened a dimensional gate and fled into the forest where the Sage dwelled.
"Sage! Saaage!!"
Raga had bellowed at the top of her lungs as she searched for him. Fortunately, she soon found him in the midst of martial practice.
"What is it?"
Even the Sage, who ordinarily treated the sisters with a certain indifference, looked rather startled when Raga came to him desperate, tears and snot streaming down her face.
"Please help. My sister! My sister is…"
"Slowly. Calm yourself and tell me."
"Huff… huff… So, the thing is…"
Raga told him everything. That her eldest sister was being abused by their father for failing to seduce the Sage.
The Sage felt no particular sense of responsibility over the matter. He had never been the one accountable for it in the first place. That said, the thought of someone he knew suffering was not something he could simply ignore.
"Let's go, then."
And so the Sage stepped through the dimensional gate Raga had opened and arrived in an unfamiliar space. He found Tana at once—surrounded by men, subjected to their foul attentions—and extracted her with ease.
"…My daughter? My beloved Raga? Would you care to explain what this is?"
"Ah… Father…"
"How am I to take this? You bring before me the very man you were meant to subdue, and defy my word?"
Mara was still smiling. Even so, Raga trembled with fear and could not meet his eyes.
"I am called Siddhartha. Though you may be their father, I could not stand by while you so cruelly oppressed someone I know. And frankly, even if you call it discipline, I cannot comprehend the intent behind having your subordinates rape your own daughter."
Through his Eye, the Sage could perceive everything that had taken place in this chamber only moments before. Ever since he had begun his earnest training toward godhood, that Eye had grown stronger still.
"N-no—you have to run!"
Tana stammered. As she had once told him before, even among gods, the gulf between their divine ranks was vast beyond measure.
"Father is nothing like us—gods in name only. He is a true god."
"I already know that much."
The Sage gathered Tana into his arms. Suddenly she felt a crushing shame at the state of her body—naked, ruined, exposed. She had thought she had discarded such useless feelings ages ago; why they should return now, she could not begin to understand. She wanted nothing more than to hide, yet she lacked even the strength to twitch a finger.
The Sage, for his part, showed no reaction to her appearance. He simply handed her off to her sister Arati.
"Leave. Now. You could get caught up in this."
"Leave? Leave for where…?"
"Anywhere. Just get away from here. If you stay nearby, I won't be able to focus."
"Heh!"
Listening to his daughters and the Sage chatter, Mara burst out laughing—not from genuine amusement, but from sheer disbelief.
"This is absurd."
"…"
"Have you truly grown so desperate that you lean on a human? My foolish daughters?"
"Before that, let me ask one thing."
The Sage cut in, deliberately drawing Mara's attention away from the three sisters and onto himself.
"Are you the one who ordered those sisters to seduce me?"
"And if I am?"
"I'm asking because I don't understand. If you meant to stop my ascension, it would have been far quicker to send an assassin and take my head. Why bother with sexual temptation?"
"Kh-kh-kh-kh… Courageous, aren't you? For a mere human to stand before me and ask so boldly."
Mara unleashed his presence. The crushing weight of a true god's existence seemed to choke the very air—yet the Sage remained unfazed, even wearing a dangerous smile. His skin prickled; his soul trembled. Even among gods, this was nothing like Tana and her sisters, nor like Nandihara, whom he had met before. There was no comparison.
"If I must put it simply—it would have been a waste."
"A waste?"
"Look at them."
When the Sage pressed him, Mara gestured toward the subordinates gathered around them.
"These were once human."
There was nothing particularly surprising in Mara's words. The Sage already knew.
"Among them were ascetics who, like you, withdrew from the world and endured hardship for the sake of their convictions or desires. There were Brahmins who served the gods. There were Kshatriya who had lived as great generals and kings."
"…"
"I taught them a truth. The truth of pleasure. And in gratitude for the enlightenment I granted them, they gladly became my slaves."
"I see. So you use pleasure as a means to enslave others."
The Sage roughly understood it as something like a hobby of Mara's—the way a child collects pretty stones, or kings collect antiques and works of art.
"My work has always been to eliminate those who sow chaos, such as yourselves. And yet, rather than take their lives, I gift them eternal pleasure and awaken them. How happy they must be. You, too, should gratefully accept the grace I bestow."
"Grace, is it…"
The Sage looked over the throng of Mara's subordinates that had been steadily closing in. Not one of them had any light left in their eyes. Had the Sage come from the future, he might have been reminded of addicts wandering the streets like zombies, lost in a narcotic haze. Even as he was, they looked anything but normal.
"I can't say I'm particularly interested in ending up like that…"
"Look carefully. See how happy they are. They have been freed from all pain and all worry."
"I'm sorry, but no matter how you put it, a naked man talking to me is not remotely appealing."
"Ah—is it this form that bothers you? I can change it, if you wish."
With those words, Mara transformed. He became a naked woman of devastating beauty, beckoning the Sage with a seductive gesture. Full breasts swayed as she slowly caressed her own hips.
"…You can change your sex at will as well?"
"True pleasure knows no gender."
"And the abuse you inflicted on your daughter just now?"
"Suffering is only temporary. Unbearable pain, given time, transforms into an equal measure of pleasure."
"…I respect your convictions regarding pleasure."
Somewhat unexpectedly, the Sage seemed to accept this without difficulty.
"Then will you not share a heated conversation of the body with me?"
Before he knew it, Mara had drawn close and was stroking the Sage's cheek. The Sage himself remained still—but the sisters beside him recoiled in horror.
"A conversation of the body… I like the sound of that."
—Crack.
The Sage seized the wrist that brushed his cheek.
—Crunch.
This bastard—what kind of strength…
The god of pleasure reeled in shock. The Sage continued speaking.
"But the conversation of the body I desire is rather different from what you have in mind. Will that be a problem?"
"You…"
Mara bared his teeth. Up close, he could tell. The Sage stood upon a threshold—the boundary between the mortal and the immortal. One more step, and he would awaken. The unprecedented strength clamping down on Mara's wrist was surely a sign of that.
"…Trading crude blows like some brute is beneath my dignity."
Mara's body melted into black mud and slipped free of the Sage's grip. He resumed his original form, settled upon his throne, and propped his chin on one hand.
"I sent my daughters to you for the sake of my aesthetics, you fool—not because I was incapable of killing you."
A vast swamp spread out around Mara. It was not meant for attack. The swamp was, in a manner of speaking, a passageway. And true to that purpose, countless people thrust their hands up from within it, bursting outward.
"You three—run. Quickly."
"But…"
Despite the Sage's words, the sisters hesitated. They feared they had dragged him into danger for nothing.
"Don't misunderstand. This isn't for your sake—it's for mine. You'll only get in the way of the fight."
"…Understood."
Put that way, they could no longer simply stand there. And he was right, besides. The sisters flung themselves backward and fled the scene. Fortunately, Mara seemed little concerned with where his daughters went for the moment.
"I'm glad I came."
The Sage rolled his wrists lightly, loosening his body before the real movement began.
"I'd just hit a wall recently, as it happens."
A strange smile touched the Sage's lips—the look of a starving beast that had finally found its prey. Gazing into those eyes, Mara felt a madness he could scarcely put into words.