The Evil God Beyond the Smartphone - Chapter 5: Awe and fear - (1)
Chapter 5: Awe and fear – (1)
—What do people need to live?
Probably if you ask this question to anyone, most will give a similar answer.
It is that people need food, clothing and shelter in order to live.
To eat. To wear clothes. And even a safe place to live.
It takes a lot to ensure a minimum standard of living.
And this seemed to be no exception to the character I now see in front of me.
The character who first developed the characteristics of a ‘Cultist’, Euthenia High Lost.
She kept having food emojis floating above her head for a while now .
“It was supposed to be a idle game, but now it acts like you’ve deposited your food in the house.”
The catchphrase I saw when I first faced this game was that it was an idle game that anyone could play.
I was told that for the most part it was possible to progress without doing anything, and without any difficulty.
However, looking at the character in front of me, it didn’t necessarily seem like the right thing to do to leave it alone.
Day 3 in-game time.
Euthenia had been cooped up in a cave so far and had not eaten anything, and she was hungry.
The physics of this game are much the same as in reality.
If she doesn’t eat for a long time, she will probably starve to death.
In that sense, it didn’t seem like a good idea to leave that thing still.
“If I leave it alone… It will probably starve to death. I’m not going to let that thing starve to death.”
It’s one character at most.
While I wonder what the importance of one character being gone is, I also feel that it would be a shame if it were to disappear.
Wasn’t this the first ‘Cultist believer’ character I gained?
It wouldn’t be so bad to try to develop at least one character with care.
I moved my finger and pressed the inventory button in the corner of the screen.
Click._!
With a light notification sound, I saw the inventory in which items were registered.
— [Rusty Iron Sword] x 3
— [hard black bread] x 4
— [Torn cloak] x 1
— [Crude dagger] x 1
All the items in the inventory were obtained through ten consecutive gachas.
It is completely impossible to acquire items except through gachas in the shop.
Therefore, the contents of my inventory were largely unchanged from a few days ago.
I dragged one [hard black bread] among them .
As I moved, clicking on the bread-like shaped graphic, the bread that followed, my finger moved out of the inventory.
Pang.
The bread fell outside the inventory, right in front of Euthenia.
When [hard black bread] was brought out in front of Euthenia, her gaze immediately turned to [hard black bread].
— (Question)
The first reaction shown by Euthenia when she faced the bread I took out was a question mark on her head.
From her point of view, the bread suddenly appeared.
A normal AI reaction would have been to question.
However, she quickly finished assessing the situation and picked up the bread from the floor.
As she picked up the bread, Euthenia’s speech balloon quickly changed.
— (Grateful).
— (Impressed)
— (Grateful)
— (Impressed)
The crude dot graphics lifted the bread, and the figure was not well distinguished from the character.
After lifting the bread, Euthenia expressed gratitude by slowly beginning to eat the bread.
Euthenia’s graphic was smaller and the bread’s graphic was much smaller than that.
Looking at the screen, I could barely make out the fact that she was eating the bread.
Yet, when I saw the bread disappearing little by little, it seemed certain that Euthenia was eating the bread.
“Is this how it feels to feed your pet?”
Watching Euthenia eat the bread made me feel happy and I smiled.
It reminded me of when I fed the fish I had as a child.
When I put the food in, the fish wriggled and swarmed, their mouths flapping.
Due to the poor graphics, I didn’t feel any more emotional than that.
I chinned up and continued to watch Euthenia eat .
It must have been about 20 minutes since I put the bread down.
Euthenia ate all the bread and sat down.
— (feeling full).
— (Impressed)
— (Grateful)
After finishing her meal, Euthenia thanked me again.
I thought the spirit of the AI was a little strange, but she was more positive in her expression of gratitude than I expected.
With a response like this, I wouldn’t mind offering a little more mercy.
I opened my inventory and took out other items.
[crude dagger] [torn cloak].
Each of these items was necessary for living in the cave.
Euthenia blinked at the sight of the dagger and cloak lying on the floor and watched them.
“I’m giving you the by-product of ten consecutive draws directly to you.”
Not a single one of these items is of any use to me.
Because, except for the magic book, I couldn’t use a single one of them.
However, they were of value to Euthenia in front of me.
When I gave the items to Euthenia, she prayed, again with an intense reaction.
— (Impressed)
— (Grateful)
— (Impressed)
— (Moved)
You wouldn’t see a reaction like that if you lent money to someone suddenly.
I closed my inventory, satisfied with Euthenia’s reaction.
I don’t think she will be here forever.
But it’s something she could use while she remains living in the mountains.
If I want to see other reactions later, then I will have to do a touch or kick her out of the mountain.
Anyway, it was quite fun to see Euthenia’s reaction to the item she got from the gacha.
Except only for the fact that the item came from a gacha.
“Evil bastards… They are ripping my money like this.”
Let’s look back at the items from the last gacha one by one.
Bread to feed your character.
The weapons I let my character use.
And there is a magic that I can use.
Except for the fact that the prices and probabilities are unreasonable, the structure of the game made me want to push it more often than I thought.
It was a temptation I came to understand after getting used to the game to a certain extent.
I resisted the itching in my fingers to press the draw button right away.
It was all for my wallet.
* * * * * *
Euthenia – High Lost.
A gray-haired girl with dry lips looked up at the sky.
Before she knew it, three days had passed since she had locked herself up in the mountains with a sense of emptiness about her ruined village and hatred for the world.
A nameless god saved her from a life-threatening situation, but that did not bring a happy ending to Euthenia’s life.
Family – Friends – Relationships.
Everything that supported her had already been shattered.
All that was left now was God, who looked after her, and Euthenia herself, who was left alone and lonely.
Even that was only surviving thanks to an nameless god who had saved Euthenia’s life.
If it had not even been for the nameless god who had saved her at the last moment by striking down the lightning, she would have given up her own life long ago.
“Huh…”
A sigh escaped her mouth as she gazed at the darkened cave.
The empty cave was damp and dark.
Goo-goo.
After three days of not eating anything, her stomach began to scream.
Cold. And hungry.
Had she ever experienced hunger for such a long time?
At least not as far as she could remember .
For Euthenia, who had grown up eating at a dining table with plenty of food all the time, this experience was unfamiliar.
That said, she could not suddenly expect a rich table, so the best she could do was to forget her hunger.
“…”
Euthenia’s gaze passed through the empty cave.
Mossy ground, damp air.
Nothing except Euthenia.
Once more Euthenia’s gaze moved.
Mossy ground, damp air.
Pon.
Mossy ground, damp air. Black bread that looks hard.
Life returned to Euthenia’s eyes, which had been moving with a loss of strength.
“… a bread dropped?”
What fell on the floor was, for all intents and purposes, bread.
It looked quite hard, as if a lot of time had passed, but it was still bread that people could eat.
As she picked up the bread that had fallen to the floor, Euthenia looked up at the ceiling.
The bread couldn’t have suddenly bloomed on moss in the middle of the cave.
There was no way she could have overlooked it lying on the ground, so it must have fallen out of the sky, in Euthenia’s opinion.
However, all Euthenia could see in the ceiling she looked at was plain-looking stones.
“I am sure it’s a god gave it to me.”
A smile blossomed in Euthenia’s mouth as she lifted the black bread.
The lightning that had struck was not the last time.
The nameless god cared for Euthenia.
On top of that, knowing that Euthenia was hungry, he even prepared a separate loaf of bread for her to eat.
Bringing the black bread to her mouth, Euthenia gently chewed on it.
Crack.! Crack.!
Her teeth touching the black bread, bounced back, unable to bite into it all at once.
The old bread was harder than she had expected.
“Do I have to lick it slowly to eat it?”
It seemed that the only way to eat the hard bread was to wet it sufficiently.
LICK~! Euthenia’s tongue ran over the surface of the black bread .
Normally she would not have looked at this hard bread.
Still, the bread that she got in a hungry situation felt delicious, even if she simply lightly licked it with her tongue.
Euthenia put the hard black bread in her mouth, slowly melting it.
The situation was not so generous that it could be unravelled in a matter of seconds. So there was no choking or stomach churning for Euthenia as she ate the black bread.
( I wish I had had some milk…).
She even felt a little disappointed that there was no milk to wet the bread because it was hard.
But bread eaten in a hungry situation was like no other delicacy.
Besides, wasn’t the black bread she now had a heaven-sent food of mercy?
In her opinion, any more grumbling would worthy of punishment.
“Mmm, mmm…”
It had been quite some time since Euthenia had started eating the bread.
The large black bread had almost disappeared into Euthenia’s stomach before long.
All that was now left in her hand was the last chunk of bread.
Euthenia put every piece of bread left in her hand into her mouth and looked at the sky with a satisfied look on her face.
It felt good to have a full stomach for the first time in a long time.
Clasping her hands together, Euthenia said a short word of thanks to the sky.
“I ate well Thank you very much.”
She didn’t know what kind of god was looking after her, but she had been saved by that being many times already.
Now Euthenia was ready to serve him, no matter what god she was dealing with.
It was the last remaining guide to Euthenia’s life, which had nothing to offer.
It would have been foolish in anyone’s eyes not to follow the only path left.
Even if that opponent was a god full of evil tales.
As Euthenia, feeling a little cheered up, was praying to the sky, she heard something falling from the sky.
“Yes…?”
Thump. Thump.
One crude dagger fell in front of Euthenia, along with one shabby cloak.
A light dagger that anyone could use.
And a warm cloak to cover her body.
Her god was worried not only about her food, but also about her life in the mountains.
When she saw what was bestowed before her, Euthenia lifted the dagger with tearful eyes.
“In what words should I thank you? Really, it is difficult.”
They say that after every ordeal comes sweet rewards.
She thought that every trial she had ever gone through was for the encounter now .
Devotion to an nameless god.
That was the path the gray-haired girl had chosen for herself.