The Gaze of the Evil God
Seraphina woke with a start, the fine hairs on her forearms standing on end.
It was her fifth day in this world beyond the Gate. Though her mind was still hazy with sleep, her body moved of its own accord, settling into a familiar prayer posture.
As she opened her eyes, a cold, inorganic silver radiance flooded her ruby-red pupils.
'…!'
Her legs began to tremble. Feeling as though she might collapse from the sheer tension if she let her guard down, Seraphina forced strength into her knees.
Even this small act of resistance was a feat made possible only by five days of agonizing adaptation. At first, even standing had been entirely out of the question.
For a fleeting moment, the memory of her first day flashed through her mind—the exact instant she had crossed the Gate, and the terrifying awe that had gripped her soul.
Though Seraphina had managed to escape the Holy Order's interrogation chambers with the help of her mentor, her flight had not lasted long.
The Heretic Inquisitors were closing in. She felt a bitter sense of injustice—was refusing to become a priest simply because she was raised in a convent a crime worthy of death? But they had no interest in her circumstances.
The noose was tightening. This time, they wouldn't stop at mere imprisonment; they would crush her skull with a heavy tome of scripture without a second thought.
In the end, Seraphina had to make a choice. Would she let her mentor's sacrifice go to waste, or would she gamble everything to escape?
The decision did not take long.
She fled to a place where even the notorious Inquisitors of the Order would hesitate to follow. She slipped into the dead lands where a Gate had opened.
The Inquisitors immediately hired Hunters to pursue her, but by some stroke of divine luck, she managed to cross the Gate first.
Yet her relief was short-lived. The moment she laid eyes on the world beyond the Gate, a profound sense of helplessness washed over her.
A great demonic realm that even the Demon Kings of The Continent shunned. A cradle of monsters. The very anomaly that had silenced the three Great Creator Gods.
What could a newly of-age girl possibly do in such a place? Even the legendary master of the Red Magic Tower had failed to return alive from here.
In this hopeless situation, the only thing Seraphina could do was fall to her knees.
It was an act she had sworn never to perform again after leaving the convent. Her unwanted talent had nearly cost her her life, and out of sheer spite, she had refused to pray.
But now, she had no choice. To survive, she had to cling to the very talent she despised. There was no guarantee of survival, but she had to try.
She pressed her palms together and cast her gaze upward.
Calming her mind, she felt the wind brushing against her skin and sought the presence that ordinary people could never perceive. She recreated the grueling training she had endured at the convent.
Gaze Detection.
A technique to perceive the area that a given entity could 'see.'
To some extent, everyone can sense when they are being watched. A tickle at the back of the neck, a sudden prickle of unease—people turn around and lock eyes with whoever is staring at them.
Gaze Detection stemmed from maximizing that very sensory perception.
It was a foundational ability that only a priest without a patron Constellation could perform.
Yet, because it was a pure 'art' that did not rely on mana, it was also the domain most heavily influenced by raw talent.
And Seraphina possessed a truly extraordinary talent for it.
While other priests could only sense a Constellation's gaze as a subtle, fleeting sensation on their skin...
...she felt a distinct, physical touch, while simultaneously visualizing the Constellation's gaze through synesthesia.
She could dye the area within a Constellation's field of vision with a unique color. Once she painted those colors over the world, pillars of multicolored light would connect the heavens and the earth.
Thus, whenever Seraphina looked up at the sky back on the Continent, the gazes of the gods would embroider the void like an aurora.
Order. Goodness. Life. The thick, dominant lines of the Great Constellations that remained high in the heavens, and the countless, vibrant hues of lesser Constellations stretching down to the earth.
The structure resembled the warp threads of a loom. To her, it had always felt like a harmonious, sweet chorus.
But this was the world beyond the Gate. A corrupted realm teeming only with monsters.
Even as Seraphina prayed to activate her detection, she did not expect to see anything like the Continent.
Since there was no civilization here capable of harboring priests, the gazes of the Constellations would not look down upon this place.
Perhaps... this cursed world did not even have Constellations. And so, as Seraphina opened her eyes, she braced herself for what she expected to see.
A lifeless landscape where the connection between heaven and earth was severed, or a desolate void entirely devoid of any divine gaze.
But when Seraphina's crimson eyes finally met the sky—
—what was reflected in her pupils was not the sky at all.
"…!"
There was no blue, which should have naturally painted the sky. There were no wisps of clouds drifting in the wind. There were no floating islands of the Constellations, which usually flashed to assert their presence.
There was only silver.
Achromatic, cold, and chillingly alien.
A color that none of the Continent's countless Constellations had ever displayed had completely usurped the heavens.
The sky, the clouds—everything had been dyed and swallowed by this silver light.
Even with her eyes wide open, Seraphina could not comprehend what she was seeing. The sight was too far removed from anything she had anticipated.
Had she seen the gazes of multiple Constellations, she would have weighed her options and planned her next move. Had there been no gaze at all, she would have despaired under an indifferent sky.
But she had never, even in her wildest dreams, imagined a flood of a single, absolute color.
For a moment, her thoughts ground to a halt. Was something wrong with her eyes? Denying reality, she rubbed her eyes several times, but nothing changed.
The gloomy silver still filled the sky, the earth, and everywhere her vision could reach.
'Could it be—'
It was only several minutes after she had initiated her detection that Seraphina finally realized the true nature of the silver light.
After ruling out every impossible scenario, leaving only the one option that seemed utterly absurd yet remained the sole logical conclusion...
...she finally grasped the terrifying possibility.
The possibility that this entire expanse of silver was the gaze of a single entity.
'…No, no. That's impossible. There's no way such a thing can exist.'
A chilling silver gaze?
That, she could understand. Considering how a Constellation's nature influenced their gaze, it was by no means a positive sign, but it was an acceptable eccentricity for a deity of this mad world.
But she could not comprehend how a single gaze could blanket the entire world.
Constellations naturally kept each other in check. Since their influence over the world was directly tied to their power, they strove to cast their gazes over as wide an area as possible. That was why hundreds of colors clashed across the Continent's sky.
Yet, even in the absence of rivals, it was impossible for a single entity's gaze to cover the entire world.
For even those revered as Constellations were fundamentally living creatures. Though an ascended human might be worshipped as a god, the limitations of a sentient mind remained unchanged.
It was impossible for a single being to hold the entire celestial sphere in its sight.
...Or so it should have been.
The silver light before her eyes defied all common sense. It was a gaze that filled the world not as lines, but as an all-encompassing plane.
The owner of such a gaze had to be a madman who had torn his own eyes into tens of thousands of pieces and scattered them across the world—
'Just how far away is he watching from? How colossally massive must his gaze be?'
—or an entity so gargantuan that it could literally take in this entire world in a single glance.
Even the origin point of the gaze lent weight to her terrifying hypothesis.
'It reaches far beyond the sky.'
Seraphina stared blankly at the source of the gaze.
It easily bypassed the clouds where the Continent's floating islands—the abodes of the ascended Constellations—should have been. It pierced through the vast, distant void of space.
Toward a silver celestial body so incredibly distant and massive that it could only be perceived as the background of the universe itself. The pillar of the gaze stretched infinitely toward it.
In that moment, Seraphina felt like a fish trapped in a glass bowl.
To the fish, the bowl is the entire world. But to the humans looking in from the outside, it is nothing more than a small, trivial decoration.
A colossal god who would view an entire planet as a mere trinket was looking down upon this place.
"Haah, haah..."
Just facing that gaze made her catch her breath. What could one even call such a being? Even the glorious title of 'Constellation' paled in comparison to this cosmic entity.
Great Constellation. Creator God. Even such grand praises fell short. Perhaps only derogatory terms like Evil God or Outer God could begin to describe this incomprehensible horror.
On her very first day crossing the Gate, in her final, desperate attempt at Gaze Detection...
...Seraphina had been utterly overwhelmed by the Evil God of another world.
Crushed so thoroughly that she lost even the will to resist.
As she maintained her prayer posture and focused her mind, the Evil God's gaze began to guide her once more.
Seraphina etched the areas where the silver light grew even denser into her memory.
In places where the chilling light overlapped and intensified, it felt like a physical, biting cold. She pushed herself up, heading toward the pillar of light drawn upon the world.
She still could not fathom the Evil God's intentions.
On the first day, he had cast only a brief, indifferent glance. On the second, he had guided her to water. On the third, to the carcass of a monster. And yesterday, he had led her to a cozy cave.
At a glance, the path seemed designed to keep her alive.
But Seraphina did not let her guard down so easily.
He was the sole Constellation of this world. A supreme deity of such magnitude that he could look down upon even the three Creator Gods of the Continent.
Surely, the rise and fall of this world had occurred solely under his will... and the result was a world overrun by monsters. She must never forget that he was the creator of those repulsive beasts.
'Perhaps even this is just a cruel game.'
Giving hope only to snatch it away was a favorite pastime of the Continent's Demon Kings. Pointing out water sources and monster carcasses could easily be a twisted form of amusement.
Who knew? Perhaps consuming the food of this other world would slowly mutate her body into one of those monsters. Seraphina fought to keep her tension high.
Her intuition was not wrong. One day, two days... as time flowed endlessly, the seventh day since she had crossed the Gate finally arrived.
And the girl faced the moment she had dreaded most.
'…Ugh, seriously…! What a crazy god…!'
The moment the Evil God handed down a demand that even she could not easily endure.
First, I focused on managing the girl's condition.
It was my first successful communication in a very long time. I couldn't let her die, return through the Gate, or reject my gaze. I locked the observer's focus onto the girl. I mapped out the optimal path for her to avoid danger and sustain her life, helping her find water and food while steering her away from wild beasts.
So far, it had been quite successful. A young girl dropped entirely alone in the middle of a savanna had managed to survive for a whole week.
Of course, I was a bit worried that she might have some chronic illness, given how pale she looked and how she trembled every time I looked at her...
...but at least her physical condition seemed better than on the first day. The health analysis from the observer confirmed her vitals had improved.
Besides, after doing this for a week, I was starting to find it quite fun. It felt a bit like playing that old game, Princess Maker.
Just as I was resolving to take good care of her again today...
Beeeep— A siren wailed. It was an alarm I had set to trigger only under specific 'anomalous circumstances.'
I hurriedly shifted my gaze, refocusing the observer on the source of the alert—the Gate where the girl had first appeared.
At the same instant, I realized exactly why the alarm was ringing.
"...Huh? More of them are coming out?!"
A group of people was stepping out from beyond the Gate.
Five people in total. Four of them looked relatively ordinary.
Heavily armed and built like tanks. They looked like primitive versions of Rambo who could clearly hold their own in a fight. They had the exact same vibe as the people who occasionally popped out of the Gate.
But the last one was different. He emerged with a much more relaxed, dignified air.
'I've never seen this type before.'
He was an old man who looked to be well over sixty. His posture was straight and commanding, so he didn't seem frail, but the passage of time was clearly etched onto his face.
A highly unusual specimen compared to the others who usually came through the Gate.
Furthermore, his attire was peculiar. Unlike the other four, who wore practical, easy-to-move-in combat gear, his robes were flowing, pristine, and luxurious.
'…Those clothes. They look somewhat familiar.'
It was unmistakably priestly attire. Though far more colorful and ornate than the girl's, it belonged to the same general category.
I looked down at them with a mixture of anticipation and anxiety.
I didn't have to wait long. Unlike the girl, who had immediately fallen to her knees in prayer, these newcomers clearly had a specific objective.
"אָנָא אַבְקֵי בָּתַר עֲקֵיבָתָהּ. אַתּוּן אִשְׁתְּמוֹרוּ סָבִיב."
Immediately upon exiting the Gate, the old man barked an order to the four young men. They instantly fanned out, securing the perimeter.
At the same time, the old man reached out. He swept his fingertips gently through the air, whispering into the void. In the blink of an eye, a brilliant golden light flared at his fingertips.
A clear miracle that had never belonged to this world. A living, breathing aura of light swept gently across the nearby ground.
The light crept forward, leaving a trail across the endless savanna. It visually highlighted the tracks of their target.
They were footprints—footprints that perfectly matched those of a certain young girl.