Gestation by John Gold (love books to read .txt) 📗

an avatar to have a chat with him, and told him to go screw himself. That’s when I got here. I had a hard time convincing them not to kill the boy, though I promised I’d take his weapons to make sure he doesn’t threaten the balance in their world. Then, the kid disappeared for another two months. The keeper finally calmed down at that point.”

“Hey, he isn’t here from the workshop, is he? That’s not how you’d expect someone from their world to do things.”

“No, I checked that. What I’m wondering is how you missed losing two and a half thousand souls.”

“I was busy having a philosophical conversation with a spirit.”

“Mm…” The boss practically moaned in frustration at his underling’s stupidity. “Sagie drowned the guards in blood, and then shot them with his bow. And he’s so used to monotony and serenity that he didn’t even notice anything. He beat the rest of the trials by activating his weapon.”

“So, you came to meet him so he didn’t kill me accidentally? And you sent him back after taking from him everything he picked up in the trial zones?”

“Yep.”

“Thanks. And what about the keeper?”

“He let him go. The boy beat the trials, and his punishment was having everything he had made and found taken from him. I even turned his body back to the way it was. He didn’t get a reward.”

“It sounds like their world is starting to move, Idzumi.” Set relaxed and looked up at the sky, which was where the light was coming from.

“Yes, and you need to correct your carelessness. The director didn’t get involved in the trial when the boy found his spike, and you could’ve died. Death knows that, too. It’s a hint. Have you figured that out yet?”

“Yes.”

“Okay, then I’m off. I imagine we’ll be seeing each other again.”

Idzumi, or Lucifer, stood up, drank the rest of what was in his cup, and melted into the stream of light coming from the sky. He was off to see the director. That world has a saying: Death doesn’t wait.

End of Part One

Part Two

Prelude to War

Tiamat paced the room in anticipation. That day, the first chosen one had a shot at completing the trials. Even with his five-meter height and poorly concealed power, the director was graceful, appearing to soar across the ground. His aura of strength had a black tinge, giving him a terrifying look. Everybody saw him as a man in a black hood. Even those beneath him feared him, not to mention ordinary people. The gods lost their power just by coming near him; ordinary people died instantly or fell into a panic. He’d only ever used his weapon, a scythe, a few times in that world, but even that had been enough to change the shape of several continents. Only four beings could match him in strength. Three had already left, and Idzumi, second in strength in that world, was scheduled to arrive that day. But the director wasn’t nervous about an upcoming duel.

A year and a half before, Tiamat had been hunting in the shroud for relaxation. One of his throwing spikes had flown out of the shroud and fallen into the border with the trial zone, where one of the test subjects had picked it up. He hadn’t wanted to give it up voluntarily, and Tiamat didn’t step into the trial zone. He didn’t want to disturb the trials and kill the subject with a blast of power. All Tiamat did was grant the subject’s soul to be taken to the Gray Lands if he died in the trial zone. It would have been easy enough for Tiamat to pick up his spike there.

The boy had just approached Set’s territory, and his using the spike could have killed Set. The boss’s inadvertent misstep had created the opportunity to bring about the death of one of his officers. That was what the keeper was worried about. “Impeccable, pedantic Tiamat had made a mistake.” Right then, however, even the keeper wanted to punish the kid for all his violations.

Idzumi stepped into the office and immediately said exactly what Tiamat had been waiting to hear.

“Set is alive. I cut the trial short. It was too dangerous. The keeper said I could.”

“Ooph.” Tiamat sat down in his chair and turned to the window and the slumbering depths of the ocean on the other side. A second chair appeared beside him, and Idzumi sat down. “Nobody was killed?”

“No. As soon as the subject appeared in the trial zone, I brought him over. The titans are all in one piece, and the guards on the other levels have already been restored.” Idzumi looked out at the underwater world, too. “You’re still in this office?”

“It’s the only place in this world, where I don’t always have to contain my strength. And you’re the only one who can be next to me and see my real image, all without the black hood everyone else sees. So, what about the subject?”

“Oh, the keeper practically killed him. The boy used his opponents to create an activatable weapon, though he’s not supposed to be able to go past a specific threshold without the permission of his parents or until he turns eighteen. They had already fixed that. But just the fact that he was able to become stronger with each level he beat was scary—he was able to boost his resistance so high that he could move around the final part of the eighth trial zone without a problem. Can you imagine what would have happened if he’d used the full potential of that weapon?”

“Yeah, really. I watched his battle in the astral. The keeper was so furious with how cocky he was, not to mention all his infractions, that he smashed the island and summoned subjects from other worlds. The boy just started shooting all of them with his bow. Then, the other subjects fell back, unable to do anything. The keeper was livid, sending out