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Once the series of incidents was more or less wrapped up, the two of us returned to my world, my bedroom. The canopy bed sitting in the middle of a flower field… somehow, it didn’t really feel like it had been that long since I’d last seen it. Probably because I hadn’t actually slept all that much.

“Why do people keep increasing in this world, anyway?”
“They’re not increasing.”
“Also, I’m extremely jealous, so please switch positions with me.”
“Absolutely not.”

Viatrix answered with a blunt refusal, dropping her formal tone entirely. Or rather, it might be more accurate to say her tone was simply unstable. I’d said it jokingly, but the truth was that the difference in how she and I were treated was far too great; there was no way we could ever swap positions. It was a frustrating reality.

“Anyway… are you satisfied with how things ended this time, Viatrix?”
“It wasn’t bad… It was not bad, miss.”
“You don’t need to worry about how you speak after all this time.”

Technically I’d been saddled with the role of her superior, so my position was higher now, but worrying about honorifics was a very human habit to begin with. Some gods picked it up after being influenced by humans, but at best, it was a local custom.

“Even if I couldn’t do anything directly, the god who created me lost their power and was cast down into the world. And I can disappear whenever I want.”
“Well, just make sure you don’t accidentally become a god. It gets a lot harder to disappear once you do.”

With a living example standing right in front of her, that warning should carry extra weight. Viatrix may have stepped outside the bounds of humanity, but she was closer in nature to Fumitsuki or Lullus than to a god.

So, in the end, the story surrounding Viatrix turned out to be similar to the World Eater’s.

◇◇◇

The World Eater was created when the God of Chaos looked at me, a convenient existence, and tried to make something similar. Somewhere along the way, something went wrong. While she could travel between worlds, she became a glutton specialized in eating worlds on the brink of collapse. From the God of Chaos’s perspective, the result was still acceptable; if anything, he just shifted to figuring out how to create chaos using what he had. Because of that, he kept a close eye on her.

Viatrix, on the other hand, was created by a different god, one who looked at me and attempted to create a being that would bring about the end, but through a different approach than the World Eater. The plan was to have her experience many apocalyptic worlds, study diligently, repeat the process, and eventually reach an existence close to a god. That god merely arranged for her to reincarnate into doomed worlds, never speaking to her, never offering aid, because they were a god who despised taking the easy way out.

But Viatrix defied that intent and gave up once. As a result, that god abandoned her.

I couldn’t help but admire the sheer arrogance with which a higher being toyed with a human life. Abandoning her without explanation was something only a god would be allowed to do. In some cases, not even a god was forgiven for it. And this time, they weren’t forgiven. We higher beings were born with an instinctive understanding of what we exist to do. From that perspective, that god argued that once Viatrix had been altered, she should have understood her role and pressed forward without hesitation.

From Viatrix’s point of view, it must have been unbearable, but that alone wouldn’t have been enough for that God D to be punished.

What changed things was that Viatrix met me and caused an incident large enough to affect multiple worlds. That became a serious issue even among higher beings. Despite creating someone like Viatrix, God D abandoned her and caused the collapse of numerous worlds, and for that, their power was stripped away.

Seventy percent of that confiscated power was distributed among God D’s Apostles, elevating them into new gods. The remaining thirty percent was given to the god of the last world Viatrix had inhabited. After that, God D was sealed in something unspecified and cast down into the world of the god they had inconvenienced. In name, they became that god’s Apostle. But with almost no freedom, their treatment was vastly different from Lullus’ or Fumitsuki’s.

As for Viatrix’s own disposition, she was given something like a switch that allowed her to freely choose annihilation and was assigned to work under the god of endings with a similar attribute. Namely, me. It may sound like a lenient punishment, but the scale was different when dealing with higher beings versus humans. If God D was punished through a formal trial, then Viatrix was never an entity meant to be judged by law in the first place.

Still, because she had caused trouble, she was granted the right to freely disappear, because that’s what she wanted. And since keeping her with me meant she’d probably work for the gods anyway, she was sent my way. About half of that was because I pulled some strings myself. After all, she seemed useful.

“Just to confirm, you no longer have the power to restore a world’s lifespan, correct?”
“Yes. That power is gone.”
“That’s a relief. Having it would’ve caused all sorts of trouble.”
“To do the same thing again, I’d need to use multiple worlds, so I doubt it would happen.”
“There are beings who don’t think that way. For example, there’s a certain little girl out there eating world energy.”

Viatrix’s powers were heavily adjusted by Chaos. I did want to ask what exactly ‘chaos’ even was, but according to him, randomly altering abilities also fell under his authority. And I could somehow get what he meant. Since I understood that, I asked him to randomly alter me, as the god of endings.

But he refused, saying, “I can’t use it on someone who’s almost my equal.” Whether that was because we were both gods now, or because I was usable back when I was newly ascended but not anymore… I didn’t ask. It felt like the kind of question that would lead to a depressing answer.

Thinking about it made me sad, so I decided to sulk in bed. I worked surprisingly hard cleaning up this time, after all.

“Well then, I’ll be going to sulk-sleep.”
“That’s sudden.”
“If anything happens while I’m asleep, ask Lullus or Fumitsuki. I don’t know what I’m doing while I’m asleep either.”
“That’s… hands-off.”
“Well then…”
“Wait, don’t you need to have the other Apostles present?”

Viatrix hurriedly stopped me. I almost tilted my head in confusion, but thinking about it, for the god you served to go to sleep was a major event. I vaguely remember that Fumitsuki and Lullus stayed nearby when I slept in the beginning. But doing that would only burden them, and it wasn’t like I needed someone at my side.

“It’s fine. This happens all the time.”
“If you say so…”
“Well then, good night.”
“Yes. Good night.”