The Divine Realm of the Three Gods, Issvid
Adaptation Period
Simply put, it was the time body and mind needed to grow used to a new environment. The rule applied not only to people, but to animals as well.
Ignore it, and you were asking for trouble.
Dump a fish straight into a brand-new tank and nine times out of ten it would die. Drag a cat out of the corner it had chosen to hide in and it would treat you as a threat and fight back. Every living thing needed its own stretch of time to settle into unfamiliar surroundings.
As already said, the same held true for humans.
Karem simply could not get his head on straight.
Dazed was closer to the mark.
Common sense said day and night could not exist together. Even at high noon shadows still formed, and the reach of sunlight across the earth had its limits. The boundary where day met night was either a fleeting instant or a phenomenon confined to a handful of special places.
Yet the sight spread before his eyes trampled those basic laws of nature head-on.
A narrow band of purple cut the sky cleanly in half. On the right of that border hung a clear midday sky. On the left, a night sky glittered with countless stars. The two skies that should never have coexisted hung there as if time itself had stopped.
Thumb-sized snow crystals drifted on the wind and vanished deeper into the forest. Each time they brushed the icicles hanging from ancient trees like chandeliers, a pure, clear chime rang out.
"Hey. We've still got a ways to go. Snap out of it."
"Ah—yes."
The warrior gave him a solid thump on the back. Karem grunted, but he forced his stalled legs to move again. He felt no urge to protest.
"Even so, you came around a lot faster than most."
Whether Karem looked awkward or not, the warrior—Tutatis—remained completely unfazed. The god brushed aside an icicle dangling to head height and kept talking.
"Among the ones my wife invited, some spent a whole week rolling around on the floor."
"Uh… rolling on the floor? Why?"
It isn't that bad for me, though. Karem tilted his head and rubbed his skin. Issvid was dry enough that his skin already felt tight.
"Well, explaining it properly is a pain. Just think of a fish yanked out of water."
"So… this dry weather, the way my skin pulls—that's it?"
"I felt something similar the first time I arrived in Issvid myself."
Tutatis tapped his forehead slowly, as if fishing up an old memory.
"Right. One warrior who made it up here said it felt like having his hide flayed off and vinegar and salt poured over the raw meat. Something like that, anyway."
"Have I walked into some kind of deathtrap?"
"So? Does anything hurt right now?"
"Well… no. Just the tight skin."
"Then you're fine."
That's it? He just ends it there? Karem felt distinctly unsettled. After talk of flayed hide and salt-and-vinegar, the absence of any lingering dread would have been the stranger thing.
What Tutatis said next was pure horror. Of all the people invited into a god's domain, only a tiny handful had stayed as intact as the two of them. Some had gasped like cod hauled onto dry land, others had burned alive where they stood, still others had felt as if thousands of needles were piercing every inch of their bodies—vivid accounts from earlier visitors.
The sheer mismatch between the unreal beauty of the landscape and those unbalanced stories raised goosebumps all over Karem.
He could not listen to another word.
"Ah, and the ones who felt like every razor—"
"S-so! Did the offerings please you three?!"
"Hm? Offerings? We haven't presented any yet."
"Not today's—I mean all the dishes I've offered the three of you up until now."
"Ahh."
A guest's reaction was a lifeline that extended a cook's lifespan. In that sense Karem was intensely curious. Of course every dish he set on the altar had vanished down to the last drop of sauce and dusting of powder, but the only one whose actual eating he had ever witnessed was the Nameless Traveler. Even that had been a stretch; the Traveler's method was closer to stuffing things in than truly tasting them.
He waited with a spark of expectation. Tutatis, walking ahead, spun around on the spot.
"You saved my life!!!"
Without warning the god dropped to one knee and clamped both massive hands on Karem's shoulders. The sudden intensity made Karem twist away on pure reflex—yet he could not break free of a god's grip.
"No, the praise is way too much. Could you maybe let go of—"
"You only say that because you have no idea how cursed my wife's hands are in the kitchen."
"Even if the food is delicious, that still seems a bit—wait, what?"
The rest of the sentence simply would not come out. Through Tutatis's eyes Karem saw the countless struggles of countless warriors. Yet something about the vision felt off. Looking closer, he understood.
Behind the glory of battle and the honor of the hunt lay a reality no one ever mentioned. So fixated on fame and renown that, out in the wilds beyond cities and villages, most warriors filled their bellies with jerky harder than stone, dry hardtack, tree nuts, and grass roots. That was the desperate truth reflected in Tutatis's eyes.
"I'd rather just roast some meat over a fire and eat it with foraged nuts and roots!"
"…"
"With those catastrophic hands of hers, anything she cooks tastes like nothing! I mean it literally—nothing! No! Taste! At all!"
Tutatis released Karem's shoulders, yanked off his helmet, and raked both hands through a mane of hair as thick as his beard. Karem saw himself reflected in those fierce, hawk-like eyes.
"So I'll ask only one thing of you."
"Uh… as long as it's within my ability and doesn't wreck my daily life…?"
Wherever the pride of a warrior who had ascended to godhood by his own power had gone, Tutatis now beamed as brightly as Alicia discovering candy.
"Then on the altar, make sure you—"
Sssshhk—THWACK!
A burst of ice shards exploded against Tutatis's head. The impact forced him to duck; he scowled and twisted around.
"What part of that was wrong, woman?!"
He bellowed at empty air loud enough to set the icicle chandeliers ringing, then muttered under his breath as he stood.
"What was that just now?"
"My wife telling me to quit the useless chatter and hurry up."
"Uh…"
"Haaah. Reincarnator—no, Karem. You at least still have a working stomach, so you're better off than me. Better."
He waved for them to keep moving, heaving one sigh after another. With the helmet back on, nothing about the warrior god radiated divine majesty. If anything, he felt like the thoroughly henpecked husbands Karem had seen in his previous life—grumbling the whole way yet still carrying deep affection for the other party.
"You still love the Lady of Winter, though, don't you?"
"What? Me? Pfft. Nonsense! Who loves who? I got scammed into a contract!"
"They say a fierce denial is as good as an admission."
"Don't be ridiculous!"
And with that, Karem understood part of why Skadi had been hurrying Tutatis along.
If the guest is right at the door and still dithering, of course she'd get annoyed.
Trailing the still-grumbling Tutatis, they arrived at a place as unreal—and as pastoral—as the sky where day and night shared the same heavens.
Frost-white grass that swallowed their feet. Countless pillars of ice reaching toward the sky. Snow crystals that had drifted on the wind now floated in slow defiance of gravity, turning lazily in midair. Beyond it all stood a single house that looked ancient and nothing more—its entire roof formed from an upturned longship.
Nothing about it seemed special… until you noticed that the wooden longhouse with smoke rising from its central chimney was large enough to hold several hundred people with room to spare.
"Is that… the place?"
"Yeah. My house."
"It's pastoral."
"Nothing special. I just built the house I always wanted to live in."
The praise must not have been entirely unwelcome; Tutatis roughly ruffled Karem's hair with a hand the size of a pot lid and gestured for him to follow.
"You always wanted to live in a house like that?"
"From the time I was small, I dreamed of a peaceful place and a house like this."
"You never had one?"
Wait—something about that wording feels off. Karem glanced at Tutatis, suddenly worried the question might be taken the wrong way.
"I became this before I could build it. Never managed it while I was still human."
Fortunately the god took no offense. Then Tutatis's face twisted in a scowl.
"But every time the old fossils from the Pantheon show up they start yapping that it lacks dignity, that it's shabby—"
Honestly, it did lack dignity. Tutatis's longhouse looked less like a god's dwelling and more like the oversized home of a village headman. Winterhome, the Felwinter family seat, looked far more fitting for a deity.
"Only people who aren't confident in their own strength and skill care about looking dignified. Barbaric civilized types, the lot of them."
"I see."
Karem offered noncommittal agreement while Tutatis grumbled that civilized folk could be as rude as they liked because they never got an axe for it, and simply followed.
Creeeak—
Inside the vast longhouse the same old-fashioned, pastoral style greeted them. A great hearth blazed in the center, ringed by a square of tables and countless chairs. Beast-head trophies hung on the walls; wooden furniture carved from whole trees and animal pelts covered the floor.
"Where did that woman run off to after she rushed me? Ah—take your boots off before you come in."
"Yes, sir."
Except when he washed or slept, Karem almost never removed his shoes indoors. Taking them off after so long felt awkward, yet a strangely nostalgic sensation brushed through his mind. While he wriggled his toes in the thick bear fur, the now-barefoot Tutatis strode ahead and Karem hurried after him.
Thud-thud—thud-thud—
"Myung~?"
Something that looked soft and adorable yet somehow not quite either came waddling toward them. Orange fur covered a pear-shaped silhouette; thick little hands and a belly with claws politely folded; button eyes; a white facial mask of fur and rabbit-like ears. It was the sort of creature you only ever saw in games.
"Lord Tutatis… is this Lady Skadi?"
"What? This thing? Don't be an idiot."
"Ow."
While Karem rubbed the top of his head where he had been cuffed, Tutatis roughly tousled the creature's fur.
"Right, you're here. Where's the wife?"
"Myung~"
"Went to fetch drinks?"
"Myung~"
"Got it."
The mysterious little being toddled off somewhere with more soft thuds. Karem found it hard to look away from that waddling rear end.
"What are you standing around for? Sit and wait."
"Ah—yes. What was that one's name, by the way?"
"What one?"
"The little creature that went myung-myung and left."
"Reyna. Child of a crow divine beast another god keeps."
Karem rolled the name silently around his mouth. In his previous life he had never kept a pet. He probably never would in this one either. Owning a pet meant taking full responsibility for a life. He could barely look after himself; the idea of caring for a creature that could not even speak from start to finish felt like far too much trouble.
No, wait—Mary's already here… never mind.
The fact that he had even thought that meant he was already a lost cause. Karem decided, as in his old life, simply to admire from a distance with his eyes alone.
"Lord Tutatis… why did Lady Skadi invite me here?"
He changed the subject to drive the image of that fluffy orange belly out of his head.
"Because you carry something of sufficient value in your arms."
Stairs opposite the door led down underground.
Creeeak—creeeak—
A woman rose into view, a large jar in her arms. Over a dress that looked as though it had been woven from endless white snowfields she wore a semi-transparent gown.
"You tell me to hurry and then wander off somewhere else?"
"And what would you have me do, husband? Invite a guest for the first time in ages and greet them empty-handed without even a cup of beer?"
With a single sentence Skadi silenced Tutatis. She set the jar lightly on the table.
"Uh… value? You mean the offering I prepared?"
"Yes."
Joy, welcome, and anticipation shimmered in the goddess's eyes like the aurora of a night sky.