Chapter 14 – The Goddess’s Mistake
“Oh nooo…! That was a soul I brought all the way from Earth and I went and botched the reincarnation!”
Why do I have such awful luck?! I finally get a soul out of Japan, out of Earth, out of Sherifie herself, and this is what happens! I built a whole world modeled on Japan because I love it so much, and this is what happens!
All right, that child I sent down as my Apostle last time turned it into something closer to medieval Europe than to Japan, so I picked the wrong one that time. Even so, I was looking forward to seeing where it all went next. And instead. And instead… why did I have to go and fail, stupid, stupid me!
If things stay as they are, this world gets torn apart by monsters and the humans die out all over again. Absolutely not! And who knows how long it would take to build up enough divine power for another world after that. First things first. I have to go and see Sherifie!
“Sheriiifie! Heeelp! That soul you gave me the other day, I botched the reincarnation! What do I do?”
“Micheline, what do you mean, you botched it?! That soul came out of my world. I told you to be careful with it!”
Sherifie was furious, that beautiful black hair of hers flying everywhere. I made myself as small as I could and apologized.
“I’m sorry…”
Being meek about it did nothing at all for Sherifie’s temper. She came over and started grinding her knuckles into the top of my head.
“Ow! Sherifie, ow, that huuurts!”
“It’s your own fault, isn’t it. Hold still and take it.”
“It hurts, it really hurts! I’m sorryyy!”
I apologized for all I was worth, and at last she stopped.
“So how did you manage to fail?”
“The thing is, there was a body in my world that fit that soul exactly. Then, of all the luck in creation, that very human died at the exact instant I was moving the soul across, so his own soul had just come loose. The empty body pulled, and the soul I’d brought from Japan went straight into it…”
“A body and a soul from two different people, fitting each other exactly? Can that even happen? And if it did, what about the body? It should have been rotting by now.”
“It’s true! I don’t tell lies! The body repaired itself the instant the soul got inside it.”
“So that sort of thing does happen… What extraordinary odds.”
“Sherifie, this is not the time to be impressed! Think about what I do next!”
I was going to put that soul from Japan into a child of the royal family, as my Apostle. It ended up in the body of a poor commoner!
“All right, all right. Your world was the one being eaten into by the monster forest, wasn’t it, and you wanted to save the humans, and that was what the reincarnation was for.”
“That’s the one! I was going to explain everything to him in the divine realm and then grant him his abilities and put him into the highest rank there is…”
“You couldn’t grant the abilities either?”
“Magic in every attribute and comprehension of every language, those I managed. It was lucky that reshaping the body was easy while it was repairing itself. But I couldn’t hand him the divine object he needed to talk to me, so I can’t reach him. He’s a poor commoner and he doesn’t even know what he was sent for.”
I was supposed to keep in touch with him after the reincarnation, regularly, and steer him through saving the world. I was going to have him pull that medieval-Europe mess of a world of mine back toward Japan, too…
“How long have you got before your world is overrun? And when can you next send someone down?”
“A bit over ten years, that’s all… And I can’t reincarnate anyone again for several hundred. I’ve used so much divine power I’m all but empty.”
“What did you spend that much divine power on?!”
“Well, the humans in my first world died out, and I really did want a world with humans in it, so I made this one as well, didn’t I. Building a brand-new world took an enormous amount of divine power to start with. On top of that I wanted humans to appear in this one quickly, and I wanted the climate close to Japan’s, so I kept meddling with every corner of it and running time forward. That took almost all of the rest.”
In the first world I made, I gave mana to every living thing, and the monsters wiped the humans out. So for the second world I worked out that I only had to give mana to humans! Clever of me, don’t you think? I built it in the image of Japan, that country in Sherifie’s world that I love so much. I worked terribly hard on it. I even gave it the same sort of plant life!
There are one or two differences, because of the mana. And there’s no rice. I left the rice out, because rice was what made the monsters multiply in the first world. Well. Small details. Nothing worth worrying about!
Then, for the finishing touch, I brought one person down out of Japan as my Apostle, and that child turned around and said medieval Europe was nicer than anything Japanese, and my world stopped looking remotely Japanese. Even so, I liked it. If only I hadn’t made that mistake…
Because I made one serious mistake when I built this world, and it was only a bit over three hundred years ago that I finally noticed. Of all things, I had punched a tiny hole between my first, failed world and this one!! Whatever was I thinking?!
The hole kept getting bigger. Plants and animals came through into this world, and out of them the monster forest grew. There were never supposed to be monsters in this world at all. If it goes on like this, the humans will be destroyed by the monsters exactly the way they were in the first world.
Which is why I dropped a divine tool and a book into the world so the hole could be sealed! I do try! Except that nobody found the tool or the book. By the time somebody finally did, the humans who could read that language had been all but wiped out in a war, so nobody could make sense of it. Or so I gather.
So the monster forest spreads and spreads. This time I was going to send one more person down to seal the hole for me, and I never dreamed I would fail at it…
“If there’s really nothing left you can do, then all you can do is pray that human moves on his own and saves the world for you. Anyway, monsters are cute. I wouldn’t mind a world of monsters.”
“I like humans! I want a world with humans in it! Your world is a human world too, Sherifie!”
“I didn’t set out to make it a human world. It just seems that in a world with no mana, the clever humans are the ones left standing. Shouldn’t you have made a world without mana as well, Micheline?”
“But you were the one who told me! You said a world with no mana falls apart eventually.”
“Well, that’s true enough. When humans use an energy that isn’t mana, the world seems to break down bit by bit.”
“So I made a world with mana in it to stop that from happening!”
Up to that point it should all have been fine. Where did I go wrong? No, wait! I didn’t go wrong at all. I was just unlucky.
Enough looking backward. I need to think about what comes next. He goes by Leon now, I think? Then Leon is the one who has to seal it for me. If only I had some way of getting a message to him…
“Isn’t there any way at all to reach him?!”
“An oracle would hardly cost you any divine power.”
“Sherifie! That’s it!”
Of course! With an oracle I might get word to him without ever speaking to him directly. Oh, but hold on. Nobody in this world has the slightest faith in me… what do I do? Would anyone believe an oracle if I sent one?
“Sherifie! I’ve just remembered, nobody down there believes in me. What am I going to do…”
“What are you going to do? You brought that on yourself. In any case, nobody has any faith in me either.”
“That’s gods for you, isn’t it. …Is it really hopeless? If I sent an oracle, do you think they’d believe it?”
“Not without a good deal of time, I expect. For now all you can do is watch. If it doesn’t work out, you can always come and visit Earth again.”
“That’s very kind of you, but I’d rather have my own world…”
“Well then. Do your best.”
“You don’t mean a word of that!”
“Yes, yes. I’ll have the next volumes of your manga waiting for you next time you come, so cheer up.”
“Really?! Sherifie, I love you!!”
“Honestly, you’re so easily bought. Anyway, watching is all you can do for now. It’s about time you went back to your own world.”
Sherifie said it with a wry smile, waving me off.
“Yes, all riiight. But there has to be something I can do. I’m absolutely going to save those humans, just you watch!”
And with that settled, I went home to Miyusolute, my own world.