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A long time had passed since I became one of the gods.

“Nothing really changes, does it? Even in this world.”
“Doesn’t it? I think it’s changed quite a lot.”

As I muttered while looking down at a town swallowed by a sea of trees, Fumitsuki, who’d apparently been listening, looked around restlessly and tilted her head. This time, we’d come to a world on the brink of collapse with just the two of us. We decided to let Lullus take a bit of a break.

“It’s more like… the atmosphere. That kind of thing.”
“Atmosphere, huh. It doesn’t really feel like anything to me, but maybe it’s different from a god’s point of view?”
“If you don’t feel it, Fumitsuki, then that’s probably the case. It’s just… this world feels too natural to me. Like my existence fits into it perfectly. And that kind of fit feels dangerous.”
“Dangerous how?”

The way Fumitsuki asked so casually showed how perfectly she understood how to handle me. Deserving of a Level-One Finis Certification. She must have studied the manual thoroughly.

“There’s no danger to my body. I just… kind of want to disappear.”
“When that happens, I’ll come with you.”
“Your love is overbearing, Fumitsuki.”
“I thought it through properly before choosing to stay with you, Fini.”

Even if it wasn’t romantic, love was still love. I was sure Lullus loved me, too. Whether what beings like us feel should truly be called “love,” I didn’t really know.

“So then, what exactly is dangerous?”
“I feel like if I stay here, my workload is going to increase.”
“That is a serious problem. But we can’t just leave, can we?”
“We can’t. And honestly, I never intended to.”
“It’s our homeland, after all.”

Just as Fumitsuki said, this was the world where I’d once been born as Toriyama. I didn’t know how much time had passed since then, but Megi and Monobe had both died of old age. In fact, there was nothing left that resembled any scenery I remembered from my time as Toriyama. The town was swallowed by the forest. The endlessly burning woods. The massive waves that never stopped crashing ashore. None of it existed even in the corner of my memory.

Even the ruined city had some striking structures, yet I didn’t recognize a single one. Objects that looked like cars weren’t actually cars. There were remnants of unknown devices and metal boxes made from unfamiliar materials that showed no signs of decay even now.

“Do you think any people survived here?”
“They went extinct a long time ago. There are no beings left that could be called intelligent life. Animals are probably gone too.”
“And yet… the ruins are still here.”

Fumitsuki said it thoughtfully. Given the level of technology we had when we were alive, only stone buildings should’ve survived this long. And yet, unmistakable traces of a scientific civilization remained. It was fascinating. Perhaps humans lived on for some time after the collapse of civilization, but even so, it was fascinating.

There was something like sheer stubbornness in scientific civilization itself.

“Judging by appearances, it seems like a collapse is still a long way off.”
“There’s no intelligent life left. If you only look at the surface, it feels like it could last another hundred million years. In reality, it’s more like three days.”
“That short, huh?”
“After thoroughly exploring the surface, including the ocean floor, they finally turned their attention underground.”

As I let my thoughts drift toward unseen subterranean spaces, I looked up at the sky.

“Well, once a world is severed from the universe, there’s no salvation left for it.”

Stars were visible overhead, but unfortunately, they were no more than a planetarium display.

I had once thought that when a world with outer space collapsed, the universe itself vanished along with it. But that was not how things worked. Gods placed stars into space and shaped them into a world. From the perspective of other worlds within the same universe, that world existed as a single star. As the collapse approached, it was cut off from the universe and died alone, like a solitary extinguished light.

A universe was something like a subtype of the realm where gods existed. As for why universes were created at all, it was basically an experiment. A game to see what would happen if worlds could physically travel between one another. Some universes were made up entirely of worlds governed by the same god. Others involve multiple gods.

Even so, places where travel between worlds was possible were rare. Our home world had never once reached another world. It seemed they reached other planets, but not every planet was a different world.

◇◇◇

Three days later. The ground split open, and light spilled out from the cracks. What began as one or two beams multiplied with time, eventually merging into a massive band of light.

We watched from the outside.

“This really looks like one of those anime scenes where the planet explodes.”
“In reality, it doesn’t break as easily as it’s shown in anime.”

Just as Fumitsuki said, if this were an anime, the whole thing would be over in a few seconds, maybe ten at most. But what we were seeing had already been going on for hours. From the moment the world began collapsing to the very end, it would last long enough to fill an entire cour. Even back in the age when The Legend of the Legendary Heroes was airing, this would’ve been an instant outrage.

“That aside… isn’t something flowing into you, Fini?”
“It is. Ever since I arrived in this world.”
“Oh? Really?”
“Up until yesterday, it was barely noticeable, like sipping through a straw.”
“And now?”
“I think I’m starting to understand how the World Eater feels.”

This was probably the reason I’d been sent to this world. If I had to put it into words, this was Deacontiral Finis’ enhancement event. The low-tier god that was once me would, after this, become a proper god. Something like that. Which also explained why I felt like my workload was about to increase.

I could only hope that just because I could do more and process more, they wouldn’t start piling task after task onto me. Thinking about the concept of ‘black companies,’ which must have existed even in this world once, I quietly watched the final moments of my former home.