"What has Charlie been talking about this whole time?"
Ais's voice reached Charlie's ears softly but clearly. With the senses of a Level 6 adventurer, it was impossible for her not to have woken at the sound of someone speaking right beside her — let alone someone who was holding her in their arms.
Charlie looked down, meeting the golden eyes that were now open wide and gazing up at him with curiosity.
Rather than answering directly, he chose to ask a question in return. It was an old habit of his — testing the person he was speaking with before sharing important information.
"Ais, I want to hear an honest answer from you. What do you think of the gods?"
"..."
Seeing the seriousness in Charlie's expression, Ais understood that her answer would determine whether this man would tell her the truth or simply change the subject.
How did she know that? Don't ask. It was intuition.
Female intuition, after all, cannot be explained by logic.
"They are..." Ais's voice was quiet, yet carried an invisible weight. "Nothing more than children who have been given far too much power."
Ais thought of Loki — the god who always tried to embrace her in that insufferable way, yet the same god who had granted her the Falna to fight. She thought of Freya's hungry gaze, which always sent a chill running through her.
"Oh... That's unexpected." Charlie hadn't anticipated hearing an answer like that. He had assumed the girl before him viewed the gods with the same positive regard as most people. "Go on, Ais."
"The gods came to this world because they were bored." Ais spoke in the same tone — flat, devoid of emotion, yet every word carried weight. "They descended from Heaven because their eternal lives had grown monotonous. They gave us the Falna, gave us our dreams, and then... they laughed, watching us struggle inside the Dungeon."
Ais closed her eyes. A fleeting image from her distant childhood passed through her mind — the time before the gods descended, when heroes fought without divine blessing.
"They are a noisy audience." She added, her tone dropping just slightly softer, barely audible. "But without them, I would have no power to realize my purpose."
To her, the gods were not something to be worshipped. They were a contract she was bound to, in service of a goal far darker and more profound than any outsider could imagine.
Having grown up in the Age of Heroes before the gods descended to the lower world, and as the daughter of the legendary hero Albert Waldstein, her perspective differed greatly from that of ordinary adventurers. Coming from a lineage tied to Spirits — her mother, Aria, had been a Spirit — Ais knew that the gods could not save everyone, and that they often did nothing more than watch human suffering unfold.
"I see. I understand."
Having heard her answer, Charlie finally grasped the girl's perspective on the gods.
Ais tended to hold a view that was cold, pragmatic, and at times skeptical. She saw the gods more as a means to an end — tools for obtaining the Falna so she could grow stronger and avenge herself against the monsters. She often felt a quiet shame at the behavior of gods who hungered for entertainment and drama, who treated the life-and-death struggles of humans as a spectator sport.
On the whole, Ais respected their authority, but she did not worship them the way a devout follower might. To her, the gods were foreign entities who had descended to the lower world to play, while the heavy duty of fighting and protecting it remained in the hands of the mortals.
"Is that enough, Charlie?"
Ais looked at him with calm golden eyes. She had answered honestly. Now it was Charlie's turn to fulfill the implicit promise between them.
Meeting that gaze, Charlie gave a slight nod. He had tested Ais, and she had passed.
"Very well. There's no harm in telling you, Ais. What I was talking about earlier were sealing techniques I obtained from some friends of mine... Well, call them friends, even if our relationship is more complicated than that."
"Sealing techniques?"
Ais's body gave a faint tremble at those words. Her reaction was immediate, impossible to suppress.
How could it not be? Her mother and father had sacrificed themselves to seal the One-Eyed Black Dragon. They had failed to defeat the monster, but they had succeeded in sealing it, placing their hopes in a future generation — that someone would eventually emerge capable of finishing what they had started.
"What's wrong, Ais? You're trembling."
Charlie was no dense protagonist, oblivious to the shifts in a person's emotions. He sensed the change in the girl in his arms immediately.
"What does Charlie intend to do with those sealing techniques?"
Ais's voice carried an anxiety — a tone that rarely ever surfaced from a girl who was usually expressionless. Her beautiful eyes now fixed on Charlie with an intensity that was almost painful.
She was afraid.
Deeply afraid.
Afraid that Charlie would do the same thing her parents had done. Afraid that the man now holding her would sacrifice himself for something greater, leaving her alone in this cruel world.
"..."
Charlie fell silent. He could hear the fear in Ais's voice, see it clearly in those golden eyes. For a moment, he considered withholding the truth — protecting Ais from the burden of this knowledge.
But he chose to be forthright.
He didn't want to begin this relationship with lies. Besides, if Ais was truly going to stand by him, she deserved to know what she was standing by.
"I am preparing a planetary-scale spell. A spell to drive the gods back to Heaven. And after that, to seal the lower world so they can never return."
"!!!"
For the first time in her life, Ais felt her mind go completely blank.
Her eyes widened. Her mouth opened slightly, but no sound came out. She stared at him with an expression of disbelief so plain it was impossible to miss.
"Charlie... are you serious?"
Ais's voice was barely more than a whisper.
Charlie nodded slowly. There was no uncertainty in his eyes.
"..."
Ais fell silent, processing the information she had just received. Her thoughts turned rapidly, trying to grasp the full implications of what Charlie had just said.
The reasons people threw themselves into the dangers of the Dungeon were many and varied — ranging from the profoundly noble to the utterly absurd. Adventurers in Orario were driven by all manner of motivations.
The majority came to change their fates. Selling Magic Stones and monster drop items was a fast — if dangerous — road to wealth and renown.
But Charlie's goal? This fell outside every category.
He might well be the only human in all of history who sought to drive the gods out of the lower world.
"What is your reason for doing this?"
Ais finally steadied the turmoil raging within her, though her chest was still rising and falling rapidly. She needed to understand what drove this man to walk such a monumentally unconventional path.
Charlie answered without needing to think. "Objectively speaking, the arrival of the gods is a double-edged sword. I won't deny that the gift of the Falna is their greatest contribution. Without the Falna, humans would be nothing more than frail creatures who die easily in the Dungeon. The gods gave us the ability to transcend biological limits, to become something more than ordinary humans."
"But that is the only positive side. There is a darker side that people often overlook, choosing to turn a blind eye."
He paused briefly, then shifted the lower half of his body that had still been connected to Ais. After a moment, he finally withdrew, and felt a small relief at the cool air of the room. The warmth inside the girl's body had been almost uncomfortably intense to remain in for too long.
"Before the Falna existed, heroes like Albert, Epimetheus, and Argonaut proved that the free will of humanity could produce extraordinary power."
Charlie didn't notice the subtle shift in Ais's expression when he spoke the name Albert. Those golden eyes flickered for a moment, her lips trembling faintly. But Charlie was too focused on his explanation to notice.
"In that era, humans worked alongside Spirits to obtain power. It was an equal partnership — humans and Spirits standing side by side, complementing one another. Not the lord-and-servant relationship that the gods' Familia system enforces today."
"Among the heroes of history, Albert stands the most prominent. He was able to wound the One-Eyed Black Dragon — an achievement that even Level 7 adventurers today have yet to match, despite years of accumulating Falna."
"This reveals something important, Ais. Genetically and mentally, the races of the lower world possess the potential to reach the level of the gods through their own means. Even without the gods' assistance."
The faint curve of a smile formed on Ais's lips at hearing her father praised.
Because Charlie was an Otherworlder, he possessed the mindset of an observer. He had not been born in this world, had not been raised under the doctrine that the gods were the supreme beings. He could see everything from an outside perspective, and that gave him a clarity that native inhabitants simply didn't have.
"With the Falna, a person's growth becomes measurable. Level 1, Level 2, Level 3, and so on. Humans become trapped in numbers and statistics. They race to chase the next level, forgetting that true strength cannot be measured in numbers alone. On the other hand, without the gods, the ancient heroes were forced to surpass their limits through raw suffering and a will unbounded by any status etched into their backs."
"What's more aggravating is that the arrival of the gods transformed the life-and-death struggle against monsters into entertainment. Just look around us. Orario is full of people who gamble on expeditions, bet on which adventurer will level up next, and admire statistics the way they would admire scores on a leaderboard. Humanity's struggle against existential threats has been commercialized."
"That is a truth many people choose to ignore."
Charlie looked at Ais with a penetrating gaze.
"Remember — the ancient humans managed to push the surface monsters back into the Dungeon without the gods' help. They fought, they bled, many of them died — but they succeeded. The arrival of the gods, by contrast, led to Orario being built directly over the entrance to the Dungeon, turning it into a systematically managed playground. Monsters that were once feared are now commodities — sources of income and fame."
"In short, the arrival of the gods can be seen as a cultural and spiritual invasion. They did not save the lower world. They claimed the victory that the ancient heroes had nearly won for themselves, then labeled it a 'Blessing' so they could remain the center of attention."
Charlie smiled, but it was a bitter smile.
"One could say the gods are exceedingly friendly parasites. They provide ease and convenience — the Falna. But in return, they steal the independence and dignity of true heroism from humankind. They made us dependent on them, so we forget that we were always capable of standing on our own."
"..."
The atmosphere sank into a deep silence.
Ais said nothing. She simply stared at him with an expression that was difficult to read.
Her thoughts moved quickly, absorbing every word she had just heard.
If anyone outside had heard that narration, they would surely have branded Charlie a blasphemer. They would have accused him of ingratitude, of disrespecting the gods' gifts, of being a public enemy.
But Ais... she found herself in partial agreement with him.
Because she knew more than most. She knew that before the gods descended, the lower world was not entirely without order. She knew that true heroes had existed even without the Falna. She knew that her mother, a Spirit, had been able to grant power without requiring the 'Blessing' of any god.
And that was before Charlie had even touched on the subject of evil gods.
Before the gods descended, a villain was only as dangerous as their physical training and their weapons. But with the Falna, villains became capable of mass slaughter. The Dark Age of Orario was proof enough of that — the era when Evilus held power, when blood flowed in the streets, when death lurked at every corner. All of it had been possible because criminals had the logistical backing and divine power of their patron gods.
It was a scale of evil that would never have been reached without divine intervention.
The gods did not grant the Falna based on morality. They granted it based on entertainment. Evil gods like Thanatos and Erebus deliberately bestowed tremendous power upon sociopaths and killers, simply because they wished to watch the resulting chaos unfold.
Without the gods, the lower world would have had an honest natural selection. Heroes would have risen organically to oppose monsters and villains. But with evil gods present, humans were forced to war against each other wielding power equal to — or even greater than — that of monsters.
Resources that should have been spent conquering the Dungeon and completing the Three Great Quests were instead squandered in civil war between Familias.
"Whatever your goal may be, I will support you without reservation."
Ais finally spoke. Her voice was soft but certain.
She needed no long deliberation. Her decision was already absolute.
She wanted to be like her mother. Aria had always stood at Albert's side, no matter what came.
When Albert decided to face the One-Eyed Black Dragon, Aria did not waver. When Albert decided to sacrifice himself to seal the monster, Aria chose to go with him.
That was true love. That was what Ais wanted.
If others were to hear Ais's answer, they would surely brand her a traitor. They would say she was irrational, illogical, foolish for supporting a reckless plan to overturn an established world order.
But humans cannot always make rational decisions.
And Ais, for the first time in her life, chose to be irrational.
"Thank you."
Charlie stroked Ais's hair with a gentle hand. His fingers moved slowly, combing through strand after strand of that beautiful golden hair.
"It will still be a long time before my plan can be realized. I'm not foolish — I know this is not something that can be done overnight. This is a long-term plan."
He looked up at the ceiling of the room, his eyes growing distant.
"Right now, I'm building the prototype. Gathering materials, studying theories, laying the foundation. For that, I need a vast, vast number of sealing techniques."
He looked back down, meeting Ais's eyes again.
"After all, the targets are the gods themselves. Immortal beings of unimaginable power. The seal must be strong enough to contain their divine might. One mistake, one small weakness, and the entire plan falls apart."
Ais gave a slow nod. She didn't fully understand everything Charlie had said, but it didn't matter.
What mattered was Charlie.
What mattered was that she would be at his side, whatever came.
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