Chapter 101. Calling

Some time later, I was back at the hotel room. I was still thinking about both the Emperor’s request and the Duchess’ offer… while wondering about the Duke’s intentions, which were fairly obvious, so I was leaning more on the side of ignoring whatever he said and wanted—at least… as long as I didn’t need it…

Nicole came with me, and was currently sitting on my bed, looking at her phone, but not really paying attention to it as the screen hadn’t moved for a while already. I also noticed how she would throw glances at me from time to time, so with a sigh, I turned to her.

“What is it? I can tell that you want to say something to me.”

“Well… was it that obvious?” she asked back with a wry smile that was quickly turned into a serious expression. “I’ve just been thinking about this whole thing… and couldn’t you just say no to it all so we go back to our normal lives?”

“I would want to do that, yes,” I answered with a nod.

“Then…?”

“I just can’t. The mistakes of my past can’t just be forgotten like that, even if there weren’t any Holy Gods out there looking for this world, I should at least do something about the things that my actions left behind,” I said and turned to look at the night scenery of the city.

There were a few lights here and there from this world’s creations, but overall, the city was dark, save for the dim lights of some houses and the torches that illuminated a handful of streets. In contrast, the Imperial Palace was bright—much more than how it used to be back in our world. The Emperor appeared to be someone who had no problem showing how much he wanted to integrate into this world as this world’s lights illuminated everything around it…

“But,” Nicole continued after a moment. “Isn’t this really dangerous? Couldn’t you end up dead in just a moment? I don’t want to hear that you died suddenly from a message of condolences just like how it happened with Steven…”

I turned to look at her once more. Her face turned sad as she looked back down to her phone. With calm steps, I went over to her and placed my hand on her head, which she hardly reacted to. “I appreciate the concern, but… I already died once, and I’m not planning on doing so again so soon.”

“Heh,” she softly chuckled. “Or so you think.”

Removing my hand from her head, I turned once more to look out the window. “My real concern isn’t really on the dangers of doing such a thing. I believe I can deal with almost anything right now. It’s really about whether or not I should even follow the man’s request and do this. I’m just not sure about the consequences of doing it, since it could just end up like last time, where the world could be destroyed because I was convinced of doing the right thing, or it could be destroyed because I hesitated to do the right thing… I’m just not sure.”

“Ah, I see… and Asteora and Oliver don’t really seem concerned about it… they were the ones that brought it up, after all…” she said, and I could hear her plopping on the bed. “Well, you already know what I think, so…”

Without responding to her, I simply nodded my head and kept on looking at the city. The stars could be seen here much better than in the place I’d been living so far, but I couldn’t recognize any of the patterns in the sky. Some dots were moving, something that shouldn’t be possible, but as I focused on them a bit more, I realized that those were airplanes.

“Say…” Nicole spoke, cutting the silence that we’d had for a moment. “I’ve been thinking about something else for a while now, but I wasn’t sure if it was silly or not…”

“What is it?” I asked, turning my head slightly while keeping my eyes on the stars.

“Have you… tried talking to that God? Um… Salazar… Salrock… by using the same phone number?” she asked.

“Salrak, and yes I’ve tried it. It only says that the number is not in service,” I replied, shaking my head slightly.

That idea did come to me a couple of months ago after coming out of the Tainted Land and seeing the payment from magic stones come into the bank account. By that point, the feeling of despise that I had for Salrak had mostly faded—thanks to Bo’guth and his family—so I decided to try talking to him, only to find out just the strange monotone voice of the phone talking back to me.

“But… Have you tried, like, using your darkness powers while doing so…? What if his signal only works if you do it like that?” she continued causing me to frown and look down as I considered what she said.

If Salrak was really as easy to contact as just calling a phone number, then almost anyone would be able to talk to him, especially the people that own the numbers, so it made sense that by just doing that I shouldn’t be able to talk to him, and what Nicole said was something that I hadn’t really considered before.

With a quick turn around, I rushed over to my phone, causing Nicole to sit up straight from the half-lying position she had on the bed. “W-what is it?”

I didn’t reply as I took the phone, and quickly scrolled past the last few phone calls there were to find the phone number that Salrak used to call me when I first arrived into this world. I looked intently at the numbers on the screen, carefully thinking about what I should do to make this work, or what I should say should it work at all. But after hesitating for a moment, I tapped on the call and pressed the phone to the side of my head.

At first, there was nothing but silence. No beeping of the call going or out, or a voice coming from it. Then, I heard a couple of those beeps, after which a voice came out.

“The phone number you’ve dialed is not currently in service, if you want to—”

I cut off the monotone voice of the woman that usually answered those sorts of things, and looked at the phone once more. It didn’t work, just like last time, but… what if I attuned my power to the phone… giving it a trace of darkness like Nicole suggested.

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And so, I carefully dropped just a bit of my darkness power into it, making sure that the phone itself wouldn’t get destroyed by it. The phone turned jet-black on the exterior, while the screen turned dim and difficult to look at. I precisely maneuvered the darkness to be able to see and tap on the phone, and once more… I pressed the call.

Silence… and more silence followed up. This time, there was no beep, no tune, and no voice saying that the number was not in service. After what felt like five minutes of silence, I finally heard the tone of someone picking up, with the phone slightly vibrating for a moment. I remained just as quiet, waiting for someone to speak, and after a couple of seconds, I swallowed and opened my mouth.

“Hello?” I asked, not knowing who might answer.

“Hey, Althea. Took you a while to figure out how to call me back,” I heard a deep, raspy voice that sounded as if it was coming from the abyss. “Though, it seems like you didn’t figure it out at all in the end.”

“Salrak…” I said in a low tone of voice.

Nicole jumped from the bed, and stood frozen with her eyes widened as she looked this way. Her mouth opened and closed several times as if she wanted to say something, but no sound came out. While I had my eyes turned on her, I heard a chuckle come from the phone.

“Why don’t you put me on speaker? I think your friend wants to talk to me as well,” Salrak said, and I did as he asked without thinking about it.

“H-hello?” Nicole whispered, and I feared that with such a low tone, Salrak might not be able to hear her.

“Hi! It’s a pleasure to meet you. I’m Salrak, former God of Darkness and Hellfire,” Salrak replied with a weird cheery tone.

“I-I-I am N-N-N—”

“Nicole Lain. I’ve seen and heard plenty of you,” Salrak interrupted the girl who was stuttering non-stop, before chuckling. “There’s no need to be like that. I might’ve been a God at one point, but right now, I’m just this voice.”

“What do you mean?” I asked, since being able to talk to him meant that he was still alive somehow.

“We’ve already talked about this. I hijacked some of this world’s people’s creations to talk to you, but the God that you knew is no more. I can’t fight, I can’t walk, I can’t feel the world around me anymore. All I can do is just watch and listen,” he said, his voice sounding not too different from someone just talking about the weather.

“Isn’t that… a bit sad…?” Nicole asked, the fear that she carried just a moment ago slightly suppressed.

“I’m fine like this. Otherwise, I’d be completely dead, so at least I get to do what I used to do in Arretia, which is to watch over the people,” he replied. “That was really all that I wanted in the end.”

“In the end…” I whispered, my eyes looking down as I thought about the end that I helped cause.

“H-hey, mister Salrak,” Nicole said with some hesitation, “Can I ask you a silly question?”

Salrak chuckled. “Of course you can.”

“A-are you—no wait, rather—were you really a God?” she asked, lowering her head between her shoulders as if unsure of what she was saying. “And are there really those ‘Holy Gods’ out there?”

“Hm…” Salrak replied, pausing for a moment as if he was trying to find the right way to answer her. “I guess that if we were to compare me to Yahweh, one of the most famous ideas of a God that this world has, then we wouldn’t really be Gods in that sense.”

“Oh then you really aren’t—”

“But if we were to compare it to the feats and powers of said God, then we are. Just like him, and many other Gods of this world, we also have the power to give life to a world, and… to end it. Just like it was done to Arretia by the hands of the Seven.”

“Ee-eh?!” Nicole exclaimed in surprise, her face paling slightly. “T-then, d-d-does that mean that—that if I offend you… I’m so sorry for being so rude!”

She went to drop to the ground in a clumsy way of lowering oneself, but Salrak just laughed. “No, no, don’t worry about that. If I could be so easily offended, then I would’ve destroyed the world a long time ago just by the things that Althea used to say and do. Stand back up.”

Nicole slowly rose herself back up, giving a fearful look at the phone in my hand. “T-then… What about the other Gods, the Holy Gods, are they… close…? or far…?”

“I don’t know,” Salrak quickly replied. “I can’t sense, hear, or see anything outside of the systems that this world uses. I can’t even see what the beings in the middle of the forests or the deserts are actually doing beyond what a satellite flying over it shows me. So for me to know where the Seven are, or what they’re doing, is simply not possible.”

“But they’re out there, looking for this place, correct?” I asked, since this time I wasn’t in a confused state like when I first got here.

“Yes. From what I remember while fleeing to this world, they didn’t waste any time getting behind my trail. Thankfully, I managed to get here before they actually pinpointed me, otherwise, you, the elves, demons, and everything I carried with me would be completely dead,” he replied.

“So… it’s all true…” Nicole said with a pale face.

“Quite the skeptic friend you have. She questions it every time it’s mentioned,” Salrak said with a chuckle.

“I mean… if you were to tell someone that there’s Gods…” she started, but trailed off while looking to the side.

I took notice of something he just mentioned. He seems to know more than he should about both Nicole and me. “Wait. How do you know that she's a skeptic? Or her name?”

“I’ve been watching the whole time,” he replied as if it was obvious.

“What do you mean? Althea said that she killed you, how is it that you’ve been watching? Are you, like, a ghost… Or not actually dead...?” Nicole asked with one eyebrow raised.

“I am,” he said without a change of tone.

“Then…?” I followed up, hoping that he’ll understand my meaning.

“I ‘live’ now as something that the people of this world would refer to as an ‘AI’—Artificial Intelligence—or well, something similar to it, since the ones there are, can't really think, feel, or talk like I do, nor do they carry part of my own powers to function.”

“Huh? So you’re like, a machine?” Nicole asked with a tilt of her head and placing her index finger on her chin.

“More or less,” he said with a nonchalant tone, making me think that he might’ve just shrugged.

Nicole sighed and placed a hand on her chest. “I was scared there thinking that we were talking with an actual God or something like that.”

Salrak didn’t answer as there was just silence from the phone. I expected him to laugh it off, but after a few seconds, I worried that perhaps we might’ve lost connection. “Salrak?”

“Yes. I’m here. It’s just… weird to see someone react like that to me… even the most powerful beings in our world would be careful with saying something like that—even if I wouldn’t act upon it,” Salrak said with a low tone of voice.

“Eh… hehe, well I’ve used some of those AI tools from time to time…” Nicole said with a wry smile.

There was yet another moment of silence in the room. It was amazing to see Nicole shut down Salrak like that, when he usually talked down to me regardless of how angry, or how much I looked down on him. It might be because I used to do so as I looked at him as an enemy, but Nicole was now looking at him as if he wasn’t a real being…

“Anyway…” I said. I decided to put that to the side and ask him something that I’ve been wondering so far. “I’ve been wondering about something regarding my presence in this world.”

Without waiting for me to continue, Salrak chuckled. “I told you already, you can do whatever you want. Don’t worry about what I or others want you to do.”

“I know that; I remember that,” I said with a nod. “But I feel like I have to do what’s right from the damage that I caused.”

“Sure. But I was hoping that you’d try to live a normal life. Still, if this is what you want, then I won’t tell you not to do it.”

“Then… I was wondering if…” I trailed off as I thought about the Emperor’s request.

“If… you should go and do what Lodrick wants, right?” he finished.

“Yes,” I answered with a nod. “Would that be no different than what I did with you? Would I doom this world as well if I went on the offensive with those who still believe what I spread?”

There was a moment of silence once more, and I waited for Salrak to answer...