"Wake up, Slime!" Lin Jun's mycelium finger elongated, poking at that mass of soft, squishy jelly repeatedly. Every poke created a shallow dent, which then quickly sprang back to its original shape.
The eye on the slime rolled around meaninglessly—Lin Jun knew very well that this guy had no facial features at all; naturally, it didn't use that temporarily fabricated "eye" to see things.
"I am a Fluid Person, you can clearly see the status panel—" The Demon King looked at the mushroom man with the glowing mushroom cap. "No matter how many times I look, it's still so unbelievable. Such a massive soul, yet it actually possesses a unified will."
"Lack of experience—no, wait," Lin Jun paused and adjusted his tone. "Respected archenemy! We finally meet again. I wonder if you have any interest in chatting a bit with your opponent, which is me?"
"..." The Demon King fell silent for a moment. "Let's chat. I'm quite curious about you too."
"What do you plan to do by coming out this time?"
The Demon King quivered slightly: "I suppose you could call it—saving the world."
I suppose you could call it—
However, before Lin Jun could ask further, the Demon King beat him to it and asked: "What about you? What are you doing? Dominating the world?"
Lin Jun straightened his mushroom cap a bit, turned his right hand, and placed it over his chest: "Of course I'm also saving the world! To bring love and peace to everyone!"
The Demon King, currently in a suppressed and isolated state, couldn't see Lin Jun's status panel, but recalling the [Greed] he had seen on the spirit sea during their battle—he nodded.
Only then did Lin Jun continue to ask: "How much do you know about the gods?"
"The gods?" The Demon King seemingly didn't expect Lin Jun to ask this question so directly either. "Why don't you ask the god behind you this question?"
Lin Jun's finger paused: "On what basis are you certain there is a god behind me?"
The Demon King glanced at the soul sea outside the bubble: "Such a bizarre and massive soul—if it originally existed in this world, how could there not be any records of it? And as for what could have brought you over, aside from those gods, it seems no other existence could achieve that."
His thought paused, carrying a trace of realization: "You were clearly brought here by a god, yet you come to ask me for my opinion on the old man—it seems you two are not of one mind."
Lin Jun did not deny it.
The Demon King continued, his tone carrying a bit more understanding: "But this is normal too. Those gods are just like that, liking to hide the truth and not letting anyone know their true intentions."
"You still haven't answered my question." Lin Jun's twisted mycelium finger poked over, squeezing the Demon King out of shape.
Only then did the Demon King say: "A few incompetent fools unworthy of their positions. They possess authority and power in vain, yet only bring disaster to the world. That ever-approaching Mist is the proof of their incompetence, isn't it?"
Lin Jun nodded; he actually agreed with these words.
Obviously, those gods were the rulers of the world, yet they seemed powerless against the crisis of the world's destruction. They even left Lin Jun to find a solution himself; indeed incompetent.
However—
"Bring disaster?"
"Aren't you and I exactly that?" Lin Jun sensed that when the Demon King said these words, his mood dipped slightly.
"Us? Are you referring to the identities of Hero and Demon King?"
"Exactly! This identity represents power and strife. Every time it appears, it is accompanied by war, disaster, and countless deaths."
Lin Jun rubbed his mushroom cap with three fingers and rested two against his chin: "Setting my Hero status aside for now, as far as I know, if the Empire didn't invade the United Kingdom, humans originally wouldn't have summoned a Hero, right? Doesn't the god respond to people's prayers?"
"That is an illusion." The Demon King's thought became very heavy, as if dredged up from a very deep place. "The gods will provoke strife whenever they need sacrifices. Regardless of whether the current world is a living hell on the verge of destruction, or—an era of peace and prosperity."
"Sounds like you've suffered a loss from this?"
This time, the Demon King did not answer.
Lin Jun continued asking: "Then what do the gods provoke strife for? Fun? Or souls?"
The Demon King suddenly said: "The Navigator's Seat."
"What?"
"You want to know your own situation, you are afraid that the gods have ulterior motives towards you; you can find the answers to all these questions at the Navigator's Seat. As long as you go there, you will understand the truth of everything."
The Demon King had guessed Lin Jun's thoughts. However, Lin Jun did not ask in a frantic rush, but instead waited for the Demon King to continue speaking on his own.
Sure enough, seeing that Lin Jun didn't take the bait, after a short contest of silence, the Demon King proactively said: "How about joining forces with me? I can take you to the Navigator's Seat and let you know the truth of everything."
"Heh, and then after I know the truth, you stab me in the back and stuff me into the engine to burn as fuel?" Lin Jun never hesitated to assume the absolute worst of others.
Since the Demon King had proposed a condition, he naturally wouldn't easily tell him the answer to this question anymore.
Thus, the bubble began to shrink, and the mental suppression struck once more.
"You are too obsessed with the truth," the Demon King said one last time before being sealed. "Sometimes, ignorance is bliss, just like—"
His facial features disappeared, and the Demon King reverted back into a blob of jelly floating in the deep, dark sea.
Lin Jun's perspective detached from the mushroom man and arrived high in the sky in an instant, looking down at his own spirit sea.
Souls, souls, souls!
Everything in this world revolved around souls.
Lin Jun was already starting to suspect that this world was driven by soul fuel, and the gods were just waiting for him to gather all the ingredients, then activate [Wrath] to burn himself and illuminate the world.
However, if that was really the case, why did the gods have to take such a huge detour?
Wouldn't it be fine to just forcibly stuff him into the engine directly?
Thinking of it this way, the truth might not be like that.
Besides the speculations regarding his "own usefulness," Lin Jun also felt a trace of an anomaly.
A very, very tiny sliver within his own soul seemed to have undergone some sort of fusion with this small blob of the Demon King's soul.
The feeling it gave Lin Jun was somewhat similar to Little Xi's current situation.
Lin Jun didn't know whether the Demon King had noticed it or not; regardless, he couldn't see anything from that fake face of the Demon King's.
Why would it be like this?
After all, if souls could truly fuse, then Lin Jun should have long since digested this blob of the Demon King's soul. Why would he need to go through the trouble of finding another method to seize [Envy]?
Lin Jun planned to set up a ritual later to invade his own spirit sea, and find a lucky D-Class personnel to see what was really going on.
Sigh—it was all full of questions.
The Navigator's Seat—the answer to all questions?
Thinking of his [Spirituality] that could communicate with the Navigator's Seat, Lin Jun tried it out once again without holding any hope.
"Hello? Old geezer Grim Reaper, are you there?"
"Cough." [Spirituality] lit up.
!!!
There was a reply!
Before Lin Jun could even think of how to explain, the Grim Reaper's voice came through again: "Little mushroom, stop—preaching—anymore."
Towards the end, the voice became more and more blurry, but at least he finished speaking.
[Spirituality] lit up briefly and then dimmed down.
Stop preaching? Why?
Also, was this old geezer intentionally not picking up the phone all this time before?!
(End of Chapter)
Comments