Interlude: The Third One, or So It Was Told

“This, I assume,” said an impressed Giriel, “would be the kind of thing one would describe as ‘freaking OP’?” She spoke in a low voice as she watched the battle play out in the semi-transparent window that floated in the air. The scenes were of Renya fighting the goblins in the settlers’ village. He stood in the middle of the goblin horde, gleefully swinging his broken sword and lousy ax in a wild frenzy. The corners of his lips were curled up in a nightmarish grin. Each stroke of his weapons was accompanied with a flash and a mess of sweat, blood, and goblin parts. It was quite the sight.

At the upper right of the screen was a small row of text that read “REC.” Presumably, somebody had recorded this footage. Giriel had no idea who.

“Freaking OP? Please. This is child’s play.”

The second commenter was not impressed. Giriel turned to God, who stood beside her looking at the same screen, and gave the young girl a questioning look.

“Child’s play?”

“Throughout this battle, Renya defeated one goblin leader and 87 goblins. Any mid-ranked fellow in this world can manage that without breaking a sweat.”

Assuming the girl’s calculations were correct, that meant Renya had personally dispatched eighty percent of the goblins that came out of the Miasmal Forest and attacked the settlers’ village. Of course, there was not much point in assuming. The girl in question was not going to lie. Whatever she said was probably true. Still, for one single human, it seemed like an impressive achievement. If anything, the residents of that world were the ones with the problem, considering any mid-ranked person could perform the same feat without breaking a sweat. Of course, had it been Giriel in that scenario, she could have instantly vaporized every single goblin even if their numbers had three more zeroes at the end. That, however, would be comparing apples and oranges.

“He didn’t even use magecraft, not to mention any of the skills I gave him. His weapons were junk, too. First of all, based on Renya’s fighting ability in his previous world, he should have annihilated them easily. This was too slow. And too rough. The memory wipe must have also erased some of his battle experience. Probably should have pulled back a little on that.”

As the girl voiced her grievances, Giriel made an effort to remain silent and not mention that both the weapons and the memories were the girl’s fault to begin with. For her part, according to the data she had on Renya, Giriel was pretty sure that the “Super Regen” skill alone should have allowed him to brute force his way through a hundred goblins. “Super Regen” was a skill that allowed users to recover stamina and heal their wounds dozens of times faster than normal people. While it was a passive skill, meaning it was always effective to a certain degree, in order for it to unleash its full potential, the user actually had to consciously activate it. The concept of “using” a skill was foreign to Renya, so in his case, the skill was merely on a slow simmer.

“On the topic of weapons, Giriel. I do believe I tasked you with solving that problem?”

The girl glared at her, and Giriel immediately felt herself break out in a cold sweat. She made no indication of it, though, and only bowed her head.

“I apologize. I have yet to find a good opportunity.” She could not imagine what would even constitute a good opportunity, but she kept that to herself.

“Hmph. Fine. But don’t take too long, okay? We’re gonna be in some serious doo-doo if he dies. I’d rather not have that happen because his weapon was crap.”

“Yes, I’ll do what I can. With that said, though…” Giriel tried to change the topic as the events displayed in the semi-transparent window switched from the battle to the entrance of a city somewhere. She was certainly not dragging her feet, and she did not need to be constantly reminded to do her job. “Things look like they’re going pretty smoothly.”

“There aren’t a whole lot of Wanderers in this world, but they’re not that rare either. They’re like, mediocre-rare. And that’s where the problem lies,” sighed the girl as they watched Renya’s trouble with the guards at the city entrance and the subsequent resolution by his female companions. It was true that people’s reactions to him, a person who was literally not of their world, were more “Oh, cool, you don’t see that every day” than “Oh my God I can’t even believe what I’m seeing right now.” Mild surprise, rather than outright stupefaction.

“The problem, you say?”

“Yeah, the problem. For example,” the girl said as she pointed a finger at the window and paused the scene, “take a look at this. In this scene, a Wanderer is trying to get into the city. To do this, he needs present some sort of ID. However, once they know he’s a Wanderer, they let him in without one. They even waive the entrance fee that people are supposed to pay for not having ID.”

The girl proceeded to elaborate on the process. Normally, people without identification were taken to guardhouse for questioning. Once they were cleared, they were given a temporary license and charged a fee. For Wanderers, if someone was willing to be their guarantor, that person would pay the fee instead.

“What seems to be the problem there?”

“Consider how this practice came to be. They’ve developed a system for dealing with Wanderers. That’s only possible if they’ve dealt with them enough to know that most of the time, a Wanderer who doesn’t know how to get into the city also won’t have any money.”

The girl proceeded to ask Giriel if she knew what that meant. Giriel did not, so she tilted her head and shrugged. This led to the girl looking at her like a teacher who had to deal with a particularly slow student. The girl sighed before continuing.

“Wanderers who are clueless enough to stir up trouble just by trying to enter a city generally haven’t been in that world for very long. Putting aside people like Renya who were called up and sent there on purpose, how likely do you think it is that Wanderers would have local currency on them?”

“Probably… highly unlikely.”

Wanderers were mostly otherworldly people who accidentally fell through an interdimensional rift and tumbled their way into the world. It went without saying that anything they were carrying would be from their original world. There was no chance they would have local currency.

“What’s the point in trying to make penniless people pay? Why not just give those poor people a break? We’re talking about a world where people have interacted enough with Wanderers for notions like those to become widespread. That’s the problem.”

“Which means…?”

Question marks continued to pop up in Giriel’s mind. From her point of view, having a system in place for dealing with Wanderers was, if anything, more convenient. There would be less trouble and confusion. It seemed like a good deal when they were trying to send a Wanderer into the world.

“Seriously? Do I have to spell this out for you? …I guess I can’t blame you, since you have no Administrator experience. The point is, it tells you how often Wanderers are falling into this world. Which means rifts are opening up all the time. Which is evidence of how unstable this world has become.” The girl waved her arm and the window disappeared. She then scratched furiously at her head before continuing ominously, “Do you remember seeing any ‘Wanderers for Dummies’ guides in Renya’s original world? No, right? That shows there aren’t any stability problems with the world.”

“True.”

“As for this world, the Administrators should have noticed this phenomenon already. They’ve noticed, but they’re still not doing anything about it. Or maybe they don’t even consider it a serious problem. And that’s definitely a very serious problem.”

“I suppose that means the Resource depletion will continue?”

That was beyond the extent of Giriel’s responsibilities, so she knew very few details. Unsure whether it was appropriate for her to ask further, she hesitated for a few moments before posing the question. She was surprised to find that the girl answered frankly, apparently having no intention of withholding any information.

“The absolute number of souls we can lose is dropping, so the trend is heading downwards, but as long as the depletion continues, it’s bound to dry up eventually.”

“That’s terrible. I’m so sorry to hear that.”

She was not. To Giriel, that was very much someone else’s problem. She had no vested interest in the world Renya was sent to and did not particularly care if it ended up imploding. However, she could not think of anything else appropriate to say. The girl, upon hearing her supposed condolences, stopped scratching at her head and crossed her arms.

“It is terrible, but I guess some people don’t care as much, do they?”

Giriel panicked a little at the girl’s bitter glare, fearing that her true thoughts were being read, but she maintained her composure and kept a neutral expression. While her lifespan was a mere rounding error away from zero when compared to the girl’s, for an angel, she had seen her fair share of years. She could crush any human at the poker face game.

Seeing that her persistent glaring was ineffective at eliciting a reaction out of Giriel, the girl hummed petulantly through her nose.

“You’re no fun…”

“A few millennia of life tends to grind the fun right out of you,” replied the angel in a dull, emotionless voice. The girl tsked and stopped staring.

“Anyway, the only thing we can do for now is to wait and watch. We’ll have to see how much self-mending this world can do with the Resources Renya is distributing.”

“What are the chances it’ll fix itself?”

“Close to zero. But not zero. Even if things went well, it would probably just keep the status quo for a few decades. If things went badly, the world’ll probably go before Renya does.”

“In that case, do I have permission to save at least Renya?” asked Giriel. Her expression was serious. She knew it was a mean question, but she had to ask. As the Administrator to end all Administrators — a Superadmin, if you will — the girl could not, and would not, give preferential treatment to any single entity. Still, she was the one who had sent Renya to that world. Could she look him in the face and, with the world perishing as they spoke, tell him to perish with it, as well? Giriel was betting no. Even for God, that had to be too much. If the girl truly did stoop so low as to utter such a command, then so be it. It would put many things into perspective.

“Yes, you do.”

Her answer was short and swift.

Satisfied, Giriel felt her expression soften. She gracefully lowered her head, bowing deep to hide her face from the girl.

“Understood. The Lord’s will is my command.”

With those parting words, the angel’s form began to fade slowly before disappearing completely from view. The girl watched until Giriel’s presence was fully gone. Then, she waited some more. After a long time, she threw her head back and murmured at the sky.

“She sure checkmated me there… Maybe I shouldn’t have given her a name… That’s definitely a budding sense of free will… Man, maybe I really should have thought this through more.”

The angels had no names of their own. This was a decision made partly because she was too lazy to go to each of her angels and give her a name. There were a couple hundred million of them. That would be insane. More importantly, however, a name was critical in the formation of a sense of self. That was why she gave names to all those beings who had roles to fill, including Giriel, the angel she tasked with watching over Renya. It was also why Giriel seemed to be developing a sense of self, and that was the cause of much headache for the girl.

“Well, then… Heads or tails, boom or bust? How’s this gonna turn out? …Honestly, who’s the one that said God is omnipotent? I’d like the find the bastard and give him a piece of my mind. Omnipotent, my ass. Say that after you see the crap I have to deal with…”

With her hands pressed against her head, she leaned back and cursed at the uncaring sky. As far as the girl knew, nothing was out there to hear her words.