BOOOM!
Just as Gilgamesh was about to exchange for two more items, a tremendous crash rang out, and he felt the floor tremble faintly beneath his feet.
“What now?”
Gilgamesh sharpened his hearing and realized the sound had come from the other side of the temple. He immediately shoved the door open and rushed out.
In case something had gone wrong, he had already put on his armor.
“Don’t tell me Shamash actually took offense and started tearing the place apart.”
That was his first guess, and it only made him move faster. Sure enough, when he rounded the far side of the temple, he found that something had gone wrong at the altar in the residential district.
Even from where he stood, dust was billowing everywhere, as though some kind of explosion had just gone off.
Gilgamesh paused, drew Ea from the Gate of Babylon, then immediately realized that using it in the middle of a residential district would be idiotic.
So he switched to Excalibur instead, a weapon suited to straight-line attacks.
He poured magical energy into it. As golden light began to gather along the blade, he rushed forward again, the holy sword ready to fire at any moment.
Before long, Gilgamesh spotted Siduri, covered head to toe in dust.
“Siduri, where is that damned mongrel?!”
Siduri froze, then instinctively pointed toward the “center of the explosion,” where the smoke was only just beginning to clear.
Gilgamesh looked over.
A blond man in human form floated in midair. In one hand he held a magic circle so dense with destructive power that it was obvious at a glance what it was meant for. The enormous magical energy gathered inside it was poised to be unleashed at any moment.
Meanwhile, Ishtar was crouched on the ground, clutching her face and not moving.
The man’s eyes lit up with a flicker of joy when he saw Gilgamesh, though he quickly hid it and coughed twice.
“Gilgamesh, I am Shamash, the sun god. You have detained my servant. If you would release—”
“[EXCALIBUR]!”
A pillar of light surged into the sky, illuminating all of Uruk.
…
A man named Inan had just stepped outside at that exact moment. He stared at the beam in utter amazement.
Then he knocked on the door behind him.
“Honey, come out and look at this wonder.”
Things like this were not exactly rare in Uruk. Everyone regarded the beam with awe and began speculating over whether the king was making another major move.
Whatever they guessed, once the pillar of light faded, they all returned to their ordinary work.
The people of Uruk were as peaceful as ever today.
…
As for Gilgamesh, he clicked his tongue as he looked down at the man sprawled on the ground before him, covered in wounds and no longer remotely dignified.
“So what was all that lofty nonsense just now?”
Horror written plainly across his face, the man struggled to raise his head from the ground.
But a sharp blade was already resting at his throat.
“Speak. Who are you?”
“I am Shamash, the sun god,” the man replied in a trembling voice.
Golden light flared along Gilgamesh’s blade once more.
“Wait! I’ll talk, I’ll talk!”
The man’s outer skin gradually dissolved away, and in its place appeared a small blue-haired figure with a girlish appearance.
“What are you here for?”
“To… to find my companions.”
“Companions?”
Gilgamesh considered that for a moment, then realization dawned.
“Kurumi Tokisaki and Shirou Emiya?”
“Yes.”
This time, the little blue thing sounded wronged, as if it still had no idea what had just happened to him.
Gilgamesh’s face remained expressionless. He glanced over at Ishtar, who was still crouched there.
“You. Stop squatting there and explain what happened.”
“The invocation succeeded.”
Ishtar lifted her head and spoke through gritted teeth. Gilgamesh noticed that her hair had turned even blacker than before.
“What?!”
Before Gilgamesh could say anything more, the little blue person on the ground suddenly gave such a violent start that he collapsed into a mass of semi-transparent blue slime.
“N-no, no, no, that’s impossible! I clearly sensed your magecraft had failed! That’s why I dared jump out and pretend to be the sun god!”
“Yes. It failed.”
With a baffled, almost incomprehensible look of confusion, Ishtar gazed up at the sky.
“It clearly succeeded, and yet the result was failure. Just what happened to the divine realm?!”
Gilgamesh looked at her, then at the sky, then down at the lump of slime.
“I will spare the questions for now, Rimuru.”
“You know me?!”
“I do, but that is hardly the important part. What matters is that you are probably not supposed to be this strong yet, which means you’re about to go play Gwent happily in prison with your companions.”
“Frankly, the lot of you are absurdly naïve, but since you came here to protect the world, I will not take your life.”
“Huh?”
Looking at the bewildered “face” on the slime, Gilgamesh let out a sigh.
“You still do not understand what is happening? Then do you at least know who she is?”
He pointed at Ishtar.
“Isn’t she the priestess performing the invocation?”
Rimuru still looked utterly lost.
“You protectors truly are… never mind. Sit quietly in prison and watch how I save the world.”
“Oh, and by the way—she’s Ishtar.”
Under Rimuru’s shocked gaze, Gilgamesh clapped shackles on the level of Noble Phantasms on him and had Uruk’s guards drag him away.
Only then did Rimuru realize that pretending to be the sun god had been doomed from the start, because the one invoking the sun god had been the Goddess of Venus herself.
But whatever the case, he was still hauled off in chains.
Gilgamesh walked over to the Goddess of Venus, who looked thoroughly dejected.
“Gilgamesh, I…”
“It’s fine.”
He patted Ishtar on the shoulder.
“But… this was the last method I could think of to get back to the divine realm. And during the invocation, I sensed a disgusting presence almost identical to that man from before…”
Even though reason told her that there were many gods in the divine realm stronger than she was, and that nothing should have happened, for some reason she simply could not stop worrying.
In her seemingly endless life, she had never felt as lost as she did today. After living so long without danger or pressure, she finally seemed to understand what “pressure” really meant.
Once again, she instinctively touched her stomach, as though she could still feel that wound throbbing faintly there.
“Ishtar, do not give up yet. There is still one road left.”
Gilgamesh patted her shoulder again.
“There isn’t, Gil… there’s nothing left.”
She gave a bitter smile and shook her head. As the goddess of Venus, she had existed for longer than anyone cared to count. Naturally, she knew there were no roads left that led back to the divine realm.
“No. There is.”
Gilgamesh spoke with complete certainty.
“What road?”
“A one-way road.”
He thrust a hand into the Gate of Babylon and quietly reached out to the system within his mind.
…
A/N: About the issue some readers brought up in the review section regarding last night’s chapter—I was honestly shocked to see some people thought the protagonist had a screw loose. So, on the spot, I…
…went ahead and liked those comments.
Honestly, that’s great. If everyone thinks the protagonist’s thought process was insane, then that proves you’re all perfectly normal. I’m not fighting this battle alone.
But there really was a reason I wrote it that way.
What reason?
Because at the time, the protagonist really did have a screw loose. So he got scared.
He was scared that if parallel worlds or future versions of himself really existed, then maybe those versions might also have a screw loose—and might actually act on it.
Logically speaking, what normal person wants to kill themselves? But if they’re temporarily not normal, then it makes sense.
Especially once he started thinking there might be another version of himself with cheats even more broken than his own—if someday in the future, that version of him really could go back and kill his past self at no cost, then the moment his brain short-circuited, no one would be able to stop him.
Not sure whether everyone noticed, but the protagonist’s logic knotted itself up here.
Before this, all he had to worry about was whether a future or parallel-world version of himself might lose it.
But now?
He also has to worry about whether that future or parallel-world self might think he’s the one who’s lost it, and come kill him for that reason.
At that point, striking first becomes the best option. After all, he can always dig up some item from the system that lets him kill his past self at no cost.
But then the logic knots up again.
He can kill the other guy because he doesn’t know whether the other guy suspects he’s gone crazy—but couldn’t the other guy be thinking the exact same thing? That logic can stack forever like infinite nesting dolls.
That’s the first point.
The second is that he has no idea what the future looks like. What if he really runs into a situation like EMIYA, where for some reason a future version wants to kill its past self?
And then the logic knots up again.
So at that point, what the protagonist is really considering is not whether a future version of himself would kill him, but whether that future version has the ability to kill him.
What he fears is not the one holding the knife.
It’s the knife itself.
Maybe I didn’t explain that clearly enough in the previous chapter, so I revised it as well. You can go back and take another look at exactly how insane the protagonist was acting.
Anyway, he really was nuts at the time.
T/N: Q _ Q we are all nuts
ALSO IT IS RIMURU!!!!!!! dont bitch about strength and powerlevels here ez to see that its not prime rimuru prob not even the original rimuru like kurumi
This is a fan translation of 我要往王之财宝里再加点东西 by 海绵宝宝宝宝 Rights to the original work belong to the creator. Please support them by exploring their original work or sharing it with others if you can. Thank you for reading and supporting my efforts to bring this story to a wider audience!
Reader discussion
0 Comments
Be the first reader to share a thought about this chapter.