Untying the Knotted Thread
Every morning, you wake up, go to work, come home in the evening, enjoy your hobbies, and then go to sleep.
The next morning, you wake up again, go to work again, come home in the evening again, and go back to sleep. A simple cycle, repeated day after day.
Of course, people’s jobs differ. Some go to work at night, and some go to school instead of work. There are small variations like that, but everyone has a daily routine of their own.
Some people look at that and say it’s a life as boring as a wheel spinning in place, the same dull routine repeated every single day.
And yet, those same people often show their displeasure the moment that repetitive routine is broken.
Repetition means familiarity and stability.
Which is to say, breaking away from repetition means facing the unfamiliar and the unstable.
Daeun was one of those people trapped in a wheel.
She would wake up, wash up, eat breakfast, then lie down in the capsule-type virtual reality rig, turn on her stream, chat for a bit, and log into Silia Online.
And after that, she’d stare in frustration at Kana buried under the blankets… That had become her recent daily life.
But today felt different.
“Haaahh…”
After Daeun logged into Silia Online and sat up in bed, someone padded over on quick little steps.
“…”
“Ah, Kana!”
The girl was stretching out her stiff body and yawning when she noticed the presence nearby and turned with a bright smile.
“Did you sleep well?”
“Yeah.”
Normally, Kana wouldn’t even acknowledge anyone unless they spoke to her first. But today, she had come up to Joni on her own.
That alone would have been surprising enough, but it could still be brushed off with a simple, She must be in a good mood today.
What really stunned everyone came next.
Kana, fidgeting with her fingers and hesitating, finally opened her mouth shyly.
“…Did Joni sleep well too?”
“I slept great, thanks to our Kana! …Hm? Kana, come here for a second?”
“Okay.”
“Your hair’s a mess. …There, all done!”
“…Thanks.”
“No, I should be the one thanking you. I got to touch such soft hair.”
Swish.
As Joni’s hand stroked her hair, Kana formed a tiny smile so faint it was almost impossible to see, and she even rubbed her head against the touch as though asking for more.
-?
-????
-Meeting??? What the hell is happening??
-???????
The viewers watching through their monitors collectively short-circuited, their heads filling with question marks.
That Kana was returning morning greetings, and then obediently walking over to Joni’s call without the slightest resistance to let her pet her head?
Even that was already so far beyond anything their brains could process that they had gone rigid, and then, the instant they saw Kana smiling and nuzzling into the touch, they clutched their hearts in unison.
The smile and bashful gesture of a girl who was usually so blunt carried enough destructive power to flatten people on the spot.
-Something, something is happening;
-Wakapyah-heok lol
-Awww, she’s so cute T_T
-What the hell happened yesterday for the girl who wanted to break up to turn into this??? Did you use a hypnosis app??
-How much is that hypnosis app?
-(A user who has already died of otaku overload)
-So what happened yesterday, I’m asking!!!!!
-🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥
The chat erupted into a chaotic mess of comments, half fangirling and half demands for answers.
Joni, who had been petting Kana’s hair, glanced at the chat, then smiled a little.
“Curious? Want me to tell you?”
-Yesss, yes yes yes yessss
-Show us what you saw too!
“Hmm, doesn’t really look like you’re dying of curiosity.”
-Sir, today as well, may your body be well and your household be blessed. If it isn’t too much trouble, may I inquire about what happened yesterday?
-Aw, this bastard’s posturing again.
┗[Deleted message]
-Ah! I respectfully report that I have questions regarding whether I may speak of my inquiry into obtaining approval for the use of yesterday’s events—
-Do you use the whole chat by yourself, what the hell -_-
“Mm! Good. That does look pretty desperate. If that’s how badly you want to know, then I guess I can tell you!”
Joni smiled with satisfaction.
Then, lowering her voice like she was about to whisper a secret—
“…but I’m not going to tell you.”
After that, it was only natural that the chat turned into a blazing inferno.
* * *
“So. Have you made up your mind?”
When I stepped into the prayer room, Edel welcomed me from where she was sitting on a cushion.
The goddess was sitting on the very cushion she’d placed there for me to pray to her on.
It was a wonderfully ironic sight, though if the person who’d set out the cushion saw it, she’d probably be crying rivers.
“I thought so.”
“…Don’t read my mind like that.”
“What am I supposed to do if it gets read on its own? If you’ve got a complaint, work harder so it doesn’t happen.”
“…”
Edel, who had been greeting me in a prayerful pose, loosened her legs and sat more comfortably.
“Looks like it’s time for the conversation we didn’t finish.”
“Sure. If Edel doesn’t run away like last time.”
“…I wasn’t running away. I just ran out of time, that’s all. If I’d had my full strength, that wouldn’t have happened.”
“A useless goddess.”
“What?! Hey! What do you mean, useless?! You take that back!”
At my words, she puffed up in offense, then suddenly looked like she’d realized something and quickly smoothed her expression back into calm.
As if that made the little display of temper disappear.
“…Yeah, I know. Ahem. Anyway, looking at your face, I’d say you’ve mostly sorted out your thoughts.”
“Maybe.”
Did I really look that relieved to her?
Honestly, I still didn’t know what Edel meant when she talked about the thing I truly wanted.
…Still, well.
“I’ve sorted some things out.”
That was true. My mind did feel lighter than before.
As I shifted my feet, the bracelet on my wrist gave a faint jingle.
Passing by Edel’s cushion, I reached the statue and leaned against it the same way she had a few days ago.
I looked up at the statue wearing its benevolent smile, then asked her,
“You said I was a sword, didn’t you?”
“Yeah.”
“You’re the one who brought me to this world?”
“No. Not that.”
Edel shook her head.
“I didn’t bring you into my world. You were born into that kind of environment. And your benefactor never managed to recover from his wounds before dying—”
“…He wasn’t a benefactor. He was my dad.”
Edel, who had looked startled at my words, quickly regained her composure.
“Right. Including the fact that your dad died like that, none of it was something I arranged.”
“Then—”
“Ah—wait, wait. Before we get into that, there’s something you need to understand first.”
Ignoring the fact that I was looking at her with obvious annoyance because she’d cut herself off, Edel went on.
“Didn’t you think it was strange? Your growth was absurdly fast… ah, and I’m not talking about your height. That part would be more accurate to say it wasn’t just slow, but practically stopped.”
“…”
Of course I’d thought it was strange.
Everyone else struggled just to sense mana, let alone control it, while I could use it as naturally as breathing.
I had reached the realm of Master—something most people only attained after turning forty at the earliest—when I was barely in my teens.
No matter how much of a once-in-a-generation genius you were, wasn’t that way too fast?
That was part of why I’d suspected Edel had brought me here.
If she had taken me from Earth and artificially raised me, then my bizarre rate of growth would at least make sense.
“You wouldn’t know this, but when gods create a world, there’s something they always do.”
They place restrictions on the souls belonging to that world, Edel said.
“Restrictions…?”
“Things like how quickly they can grow stronger, how far they can go… There are more, but just know it that way for now.”
“Why put something like that in place?”
To stop them from getting too powerful and challenging her authority?
“There could be gods like that, sure. But the fundamental reason is to protect the soul.”
Think of a machine.
If you force the engine to run too hard, it might produce great output for the moment, but it won’t take long before it breaks down.
“Souls are the same. If they grow too quickly and gain power out of proportion to their vessel, the soul gets damaged. What god would want the soul they painstakingly forged to be ruined so soon?”
“Then what about the people who grow stronger faster than everyone else?”
The so-called geniuses.
“Their souls are more resilient than others, so their limit is different.”
“And what about the people who get stronger after surviving a near-death experience?”
“Going through that and surviving means their soul is resilient enough to loosen some of those restrictions.”
“…Fine. So you’re saying my soul is strong?”
“No. Your soul is strong, yes, but that’s not why you were able to get this strong.”
Edel flatly denied my guess.
She opened the fist she’d been holding closed.
“Your soul doesn’t have those restrictions.”
“Because I’m from another world?”
As I said that, a thought struck me.
“Then shouldn’t Earth’s administrator or whatever have put some restrictions on me too?”
If we’re talking about strength, I couldn’t imagine that side’s limits being weaker than these.
“Yep, yep. You caught on. That’s right—your soul doesn’t have any restrictions on it right now. Neither the ones I made, nor the ones the administrator on that side made.”
As Edel clapped her hands lightly, her expression changed in an instant.
As if the calm look from a moment ago had never existed, her face went blank.
“A few days ago, I told you about the dimensional beasts. The ones that invade other dimensions and suck them dry. I also told you I’d been fighting them for hundreds of years.”
“Yeah.”
“Dimensional beasts make a dimension unstable just by existing. So I’m sure I don’t need to tell you what kind of state my dimension is in after fighting them for centuries. One day, while I was battling them, I felt the boundary of the dimension shake violently.”
There had been countless times the dimension had shaken before, but that one was stronger than anything she had ever felt.
And in that instant, both the dimensional beast she was fighting and Edel realized it.
“That this dimension had briefly connected with another one.”
Though the connection had only lasted for a split second, the path opened once still remained.
“While the wall of the shaken dimension and the other dimension were linked, I was too focused on the fight with the dimensional beast to notice that a single soul had slipped through. I never imagined something like that could be possible.”
How could she have?
A fragile soul crossing the boundary between worlds.
Enduring the vortex between dimensions.
Then crossing the boundary once more to enter another world—how could anyone have believed that was possible?
Even Edel, a god, couldn’t have guaranteed success for such a perilous gamble, but that frail soul overcame everything and created a miracle.
Like a blade forged by being heated in fire and struck again and again until it became strong.
Through all that suffering, the soul grew resilient.
“A lot would have been erased, and a lot forgotten. The restrictions placed by Earth’s administrator were part of that.”
“…”
“And that soul—”
Even before she finished, I already knew what she was going to say, so I cut her off.
“That soul was me.”
“That’s right.”
Edel nodded at my words.
That was the hidden story behind the birth of a girl named Canaria Grasis.
“Do you know how surprised I was when I first found you? A soul I’d never seen before had entered my world, the restrictions on it were nowhere to be found, and on top of that it was absurdly tough…. Though thanks to that, I was able to start looking for a chance to counterattack.”
She muttered under her breath.
And after learning all of that, I—
“I see.”
Just nodded.
My calm reaction seemed to catch Edel off guard, and she couldn’t hide her embarrassment.
“…Huh? That’s it?”
“Then what kind of reaction are you expecting?”
I understood that I’d been dragged through a grand adventure across dimensions, but telling me about something I didn’t even remember wasn’t going to hit me very hard.
Besides, if it wasn’t even something Edel had done, what was I supposed to say?
If she’d talked about the things I’d actually experienced after being born in this world, I’d have a lot more to say.
I shrugged.
“So that’s why you cooperated with the god of Earth?”
“…Yeah. Once we realized your existence, it was obvious this world would be the next meal if Silia fell.”
They had a convenient forward base in Silia, and on top of that, they were already paving a road to the next target?
There was no reason for the dimensional beasts, blinded by hunger, not to invade.
“So we decided to lower the rank of this dimension and turn their power against them. I wasn’t just sitting there taking it either, so I became able to use their power.”
That was why they had gone to the trouble of turning it into a game.
To have the players kill dimensional beasts and weaken their power.
And even if they ultimately failed to stop them, if Silia were destroyed and the beasts’ claws reached Earth, the players would still be able to resist them based on the strength they had built here.
That was the contingency arranged by Earth’s administrator and Edel—the true nature of Silia Online.
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