When day came, the child whose name I don’t know woke up.
It’s quite funny watching her get flustered as she wakes up on the bedding in a corner of the kitchen.
One good thing about having a body like this is that I see people as heaters rather than by appearance.
Appearance isn’t the problem, warmth is important. Isn’t it wasteful to throw away a heater bought cheaply for its pretty appearance when it turns out not to be warm?
Oh? Is this stranger?
The phrase “not human offspring” is being emphasized in the faded man’s memories.
Though there doesn’t seem to be anything that could be called personality, memories sometimes flash up in the middle of the night like dark history suddenly popping into your head making you kick off the blanket.
Whether it’s early stages of schizophrenia or just how it is, it probably isn’t an important issue.
The problem is food.
Looking at the amount, 3 days if we eat sparingly.
Considering feeding the child, it’ll be gone by tomorrow. Given Heavenly Demon’s gloominess, it seems like it’ll be several days after the food runs out before more comes.
If I were alone I could just wait, but this little one… there’s a high chance she was sent to die.
He wants to see how I act.
So I won’t do anything to this child.
Above all, isn’t it common sense to handle borrowed things cleanly? Indiscriminate modification is not allowed.
“If you’re up, go wash yourself.”
I pointed to the jar in the corner of the kitchen. Originally it was black water with bugs floating in it, but I twisted reality and now the jar is full of clean water.
Objects that don’t match the time period cause cracks, but natural materials can be brought to this world without cracks.
Of course, I thought natural materials might be unlimited so I tried pulling a lot of water at once, but cracks formed so I quickly stopped.
Can’t help it since the world is weak. I’m carefully changing what I can while being careful not to break the glass bottle.
The fact that child woke up on bedding rather than a bare stone floor is also a result of experimentation. That bedding was originally the rotting bedding in the room.
Rather than creating bedding that didn’t exist originally, just twisting and changing broken objects makes less cracking sounds in the glass bottle.
It seems the pressure on the glass walls differs between creating something that didn’t exist and changing something that already existed.
The drawback is that living things can’t be twisted.
Not only is the pressure on the glass walls stronger compared to regular objects, but like when textures break in a 3D game, bodies strangely tear apart then disappear into pixels.
I wonder if this could become an attack technique if used on people?
No, using it on people might break the glass walls faster…
While I was thinking that, the child only takes a little water in a nearby bowl and washes just her face.
Though it seems there wouldn’t be a shortage of water in this karst terrain with stone pillars rising from water-filled areas…
Today I have lots of free time. No, this is actually my first such free time since entering someone’s body.
Since I was mostly confined as Rebecca Rolfe, you could say this is my first time exploring another world on my own legs. Of course, I did move around a certain space then saying I was exercising, but the fact that I was confined remained.
Since I’m free this time, I should go look for things I’m curious about.
I cooked food with a little less water than yesterday while filling in my future schedule.
Ah.
It got slightly burned.
I can eat the heavily burned parts. Cooking is difficult.
“Come, eat.”
Having watched me intently while I cooked, when I served food in bowls she looks up at me with a subtle expression.
Why?
When I tilted my head, she immediately bows her head and eats. I don’t understand.
Is it a look asking if I’m calling this food?
Can’t help it. Though I have many memories of people who cooked, the ingredients are fundamentally different so I don’t know how to handle these.
So I guessed and ended up making it too thick or burned. Cooking is difficult.
A recent memory rather than the faded one rises then slowly sinks.
Joanna Smith.
She comes to mind because she was someone who made food, then disappears. That must be the reason. But she’s not here.
She’s already dead, right?
This child will die someday too.
Thinking that, I fed her the meal and cleaned the kitchen neatly. The child was restless so I asked why. She answers with gestures but I can’t understand what she’s saying.
Looking at her expression is difficult since her face is already collapsed from muscle breakdown and swollen with edema.
So I ignored it and cleaned around.
Meanwhile, the child quietly sits by the fire since it’s still morning and cold.
Fire?
That doesn’t go out. That thing.
I wonder what kind of fire I brought. Though entropy and energy conservation come to mind, I’m already quite a strange monster myself.
It’s strange to nitpick.
Seeing how the child isn’t bothered by the fire, it must not be too strange so let’s take the good with the good.
After organizing the place, I went outside.
Going outside, you can see huge buildings rising far in the distance. They built buildings on top of bizarre rocks jutting up like pillars. Of course the houses are only on the rocks, with passages crossing between them.
Looking down from the buildings, there are several doors leading out of the buildings, and one line from those doors comes this way.
After going down a long way past a cliff on one side and a path tangled with rocks and trees on the other, you finally reach the house I’m in.
They threw me quite far away.
According to the 4 harvesters’ memories, where ordinary people live is quite far from here. Looking at Jeonyang’s memories, this seems to have been an area where people once lived.
Meaning it’s now an area where people don’t live.
But saying people once lived here means there are buildings around.
So I moved my steps to look around the area. After looking around there, going down to the waterside should make for a good day.
Crunch crunch
I walk along a path barely visible with lots of grass grown over. Come to think of it, this body probably needs exercise too.
Rebecca Rolfe used her heart strangely. I wonder if I could use martial arts or something with this body too?
I should try in the evening.
Tap tap tap
Before taking more than a few steps, I hear someone running.
So I turned around to see the child running hard with a wobbling posture. No, wouldn’t it be better for you to stay in the room since your body is unwell?
No, this should be kind behavior, but why does “not human offspring” come to mind again? Compassion? I wish that would be given to me.
While grumbling inside that they should pity me who’s so cold, I matched her gaze and asked.
“What is it?”
The child just grabbed my clothes tightly without a word. It’s not that she didn’t say anything, but that she couldn’t say anything.
I walked along with her.
The pace slowed because of her small steps. We won’t be able to go as far as planned. I’ll have to give up on the waterside. Looking at her walking, her joint axes are rotating strangely so fatigue must be high too.
Well, with legs swollen like that walking must be difficult, so what is she doing.
I looked around this area with the still nameless child.
There are traces of buildings and paths, but no buildings are intact, perhaps from people with strong martial arts fighting.
There are holes that look like they could suck in one child, or traces like someone took a sword to a landscape painting.
Well, if such incidents happened in a village where people lived, it wouldn’t be strange for them to abandon the village and go elsewhere.
What appears to be human bones stick out among the ruins overgrown with grass, but unfortunately no warmth remains.
Though sometimes corpses still have light remaining, and in those cases there’s warmth.
This one’s been dead too long.
Seeing the child suddenly grip my clothes tightly, she must have seen the skull following my gaze.
“Who are you?”
Just then someone suddenly spoke in a husky voice like an old woman.
Looking that way, there stands a woman wearing a wide-brimmed hat wrapped with semi-transparent cloth.
She’s hiding who she is.
But I know her clothes. I saw this person’s face this dawn.
Gapjae saw her face directly and talked with her. Considering she spoke in a clean voice then, her current voice must be fake.
Well, it’s not strange to change your voice if you want others not to know the previous cult leader’s daughter has returned.
I raised my arm pointing toward the direction of the house.
“I started living in that house over there yesterday.”
At my words, the woman looked in the direction my hand pointed.
“That’s not a house fit for people to live in, is it?”
A house fit to live in?
This person. She knows what state that house is in. It means she’s seen where I’m living at least once.
Though I don’t know what kind of person she is, she seems to be on bad terms with Heavenly Demon. First, to show that Heavenly Demon is a bad person, I brought this child before me.
“After Heavenly Demon sent me, he sent this child saying she’s a maid.”
Hmm.
I can’t read her expression so I don’t know what her reaction is. But that woman approaches.
More precisely, she approached the child rather than me.
“That one is still like a bug. First eat this and sit with your back to me.”
She took out a small pill from her clothes. The child looks up at me as if troubled. Hmm. Looking at the atmosphere, it seems she’s trying to do something about the bugs in the child’s body.
That must be something like deworming medicine?
I took a step back.
Though she makes an expression like she might cry, I pointed at the child with my finger while looking at the woman, indicating to do as she pleases.
“It’s extremely bitter but don’t spit it out, swallow it.”
The woman seemed to understand my intention and handed the small pill to the child while repeatedly emphasizing. The child took it and gulped it down.
Right after that, the woman removed the child’s outer clothing and placed her hands on her back. Is she sending qi?
I’m not sure if she’s using a very small amount because it’s for the child, or if I just can’t feel it at all.
Even watching carefully, it only looks like she’s placing hands on the back. But suddenly the child’s expression contorted and blood vessels bulged prominently.
I watched thinking she might die, but her bright red face suddenly returned to its normal color and she bent over.
“Kehek! Keheuk!”
Along with lots of blood, a grotesque-looking bug shot out of the child’s mouth. But seeing it has no legs, it’s not the same type as the bug that was in my head.
The woman forcibly held the trembling child suffering from pain and kept her hands on the back for quite a while longer.
And when the child went limp, she let out a deep sigh.
“You’ve passed the crisis. The swelling in her face and body should go down in a month, so recover slowly.”
She thinks I’m the guardian? But I shook my head.
“I can’t.”
“Why not?”
The woman’s voice rose slightly. Is being angry a sign of being a good person? However, she’s the previous cult leader’s daughter, right?
There’s a high chance she dislikes Heavenly Demon.
So I’m thinking of trying to make this person clash with Heavenly Demon.
“This child is someone Heavenly Demon sent. I have no power.”
I spoke meaning I couldn’t reach out if Heavenly Demon tried to do something to this child.
“How do you think of this child?”
Ah, this is a predictable question. Is she asking if I can take good care of the child? So here I answered in a way easy to misunderstand.
“Warmth.”
“I see. Then, please keep her even if just for a while.”
She misunderstood my words just right.
The woman stroked the child then quickly got up and moved her steps.
In other words, it means she’ll cause some incident soon?
Hehe.
I carried the child on my back and returned home, thinking about the soon-to-be-shaken Heavenly Demon Divine Cult.