Second chapter of the day.
Now then, it would be a bit anticlimactic to say that wrapping up the current state of reincarnators brings this conversation to a close.
Rather, I could tell that Oni-kun had something else on his mind.
I decided to wait until he brought up the real topic.
Things with the Demon King had taken a strange turn lately — something about entrusting the Eighth Army to Oni-kun or whatever — an uneasy current running beneath it all.
Well, there was nothing I could do about that, so good luck, Oni-kun.
And the Demon King flashing that nice smile while inviting the vampire girl to lead a legion too.
The vampire girl declining with an equally pleasant but firm smile of her own — "I'll have to pass."
Despite their smiles, it looked like sparks were flying between the two.
Unfortunately, the vampire girl was planning to forcibly recruit her into the Tenth Army the moment she graduated from the academy, so there was no way I could let anyone else take her.
Well, I'd sit tight and stay out of this one.
"White. There's something I want to confirm."
While the vampire girl and the Demon King were silently sparking at each other, Oni-kun finally opened his mouth to broach the real topic.
He had that "I've steeled myself" look about him, so it was easy to read.
Yeah, this was the kind of atmosphere where I'd need to respond seriously.
I gave a solemn nod — though to Oni-kun, it probably looked like my usual composure.
"I want you to tell me what you've been hiding."
Quite the vague line.
But I understood what Oni-kun was getting at.
No — I'd been expecting this.
I'd known for a while that Oni-kun was wary of me, based on his behavior up to now.
And the fact that he could communicate properly with me — someone of few words — to the point where I'd want to call him an esper, meant he probably had a deep understanding of what lay behind my words as well.
From all of that, it was obvious — judging from how he'd behaved during the initial meeting with the Shingon-kyou — that he was convinced I was hiding something.
Oni-kun had been probing me for information while also conducting his dialogue with the Shingon-kyou.
He'd noticed.
That I was hiding something.
He probably didn't know exactly what it was yet.
If he did, he really would be an esper — and even Oni-kun surely didn't know that much.
But he'd guessed it was something bad.
Otherwise, he wouldn't be this visibly on guard, nor would he steel himself to confront me about it.
And his guess wasn't wrong.
What should I do?
Telling him this was a gamble.
Knowing the truth, how would he choose to act?
I couldn't read it.
Would he support me and become an ally? Would he oppose me and become an enemy? Or would he stand on the sidelines as a third party?
Whichever he chose, I wouldn't blame him.
But if he tried to get in my way, I wouldn't show mercy.
A bit contradictory, given that I'd told the Demon King not to lay a hand on reincarnators.
While lost in thought, I realized I'd opened my eyes.
Not clairvoyance — I was looking directly at Oni-kun's face with my own eyes.
His expression was dead serious.
Oni-kun was perceptive enough to understand how important this question was.
He knew, and he'd asked anyway.
That meant his resolve was no half-measure.
After all, it meant he was prepared for the worst — to become my adversary.
To expose what I was hiding.
Which might earn my displeasure.
Oni-kun wasn't the kind of person who didn't understand that.
And becoming my adversary meant nothing less than Oni-kun's death.
Knowing that, he'd still asked.
Maybe I should steel myself too.
I enveloped everyone present in an extra-dimensional space.
So Black couldn't hear.
What I was about to say couldn't be revealed to Black just yet.
I'd brought the vampire girl and the Demon King along because if I was going to tell Oni-kun, I figured I might as well tell them all at once.
Especially the Demon King — there were things I needed to discuss with her soon regardless.
Dumped suddenly into an extra-dimensional space, Oni-kun and the others were caught off guard and visibly tense.
I felt bad about the confusion, but I wanted to get straight to it.
"This world is kept alive by the System. But even that is on the verge of death."
As I spoke, I slit open the extra-dimensional space and showed them a panoramic view of this planet.
The planet as seen from space.
The far side.
The vampire girl and Oni-kun both drew sharp breaths.
There lay half a planet where the seas had dried up and cracked earth stretched to every horizon.
The territories of both the Human race and the Demon race still held enough abundance for life to be lived without hardship.
But that was only within those territories.
Take one step beyond them, and all this planet had was barren wasteland.
Beyond the ocean — there was no ocean.
The sea had dried up, and cracked, desolate land extended in every direction.
That land too was fractured, forming enormous canyons.
These were fissures running through the planet.
The image of a shattered world.
The habitable zones where living beings could survive were nothing but a fraction, artificially sustained by the System.
This planet was merely being kept alive in a state of near-death, forced to survive by the System's power alone.
"The System was meant to collect energy and use it to regenerate the planet. That was its original purpose. But in its current state, it can barely gather enough energy to keep running — there's nothing left for regeneration."
Most of the energy that should have gone toward regeneration had been consumed in the battle against D, bringing the planet's recovery to a standstill.
The vampire girl and Oni-kun had been stunned by the sight, but in truth, the planet had already recovered considerably.
Judging from the System's history logs, in the beginning, half the planet had been literally shattered.
It had been on the verge of total collapse.
From that state, it had been restored to the point of mere surface cracks.
Without the massive energy expenditure, a complete recovery through conventional means would have been possible.
Still, many people would have had their souls wear down and fall out of the cycle along the way.
That couldn't be helped.
Repeated reincarnation in the same soul inevitably caused it to erode.
D must have foreseen that as well.
The System had a built-in function to protect souls once they reached their limit.
I had activated it to safeguard the souls of the people Oni-kun had slaughtered.
The protected souls would be given time to rest, then reincarnated back into this world.
Of course, since recovery of damaged souls took an enormous amount of time, they could practically be considered fallen out of the cycle.
Now, with so much energy already consumed, a complete recovery through conventional means was no longer feasible.
I wouldn't call it impossible, but at the very least, a quarter of the current population would be lost along the way.
And that was the best-case scenario — in the worst case, total extinction wasn't out of the question.
Most critically, the soul of the Goddess serving as the System's core couldn't endure much more.
Even now, the Goddess's soul was significantly eroded.
As the Shingon-kyou had noted, the Goddess's lifespan was not long.
She was currently sacrificing her own life force to keep the System running.
Once the Goddess's life ran out, Black would take her place.
And if my prediction was correct, Black would rapidly consume what remained of himself, offering everything he had to attempt the planet's regeneration.
The only reason Black watched over this world was for the Goddess.
He wouldn't want to live in a world without her.
And to save the world the Goddess had tried to protect, he would die.
A death identical to the Goddess's — the ultimate form of suicide for Black.
With two deities offered as sacrifices, the world would be saved.
By imposing complete death — the annihilation of souls, unable to ever be reborn again.
If we instead collapsed the System using the method I'd proposed and used its energy to regenerate the world, the Goddess could be saved without sacrifice.
However, the Goddess's life had already deteriorated beyond the point of self-sustaining. At best, I could return her to the cycle of reincarnation.
Her death could not be avoided.
Even so, complete annihilation could be prevented.
But that path came with its own sacrifice.
Those who possessed many Skills would die from the shock of having them reclaimed.
In the worst case, their souls could collapse entirely.
Since the System itself would be collapsing, it couldn't protect their souls either.
In other words, my proposed method meant sacrificing many lives to save the Goddess.
If that was unacceptable, then the only choice was to sacrifice both the Goddess and Black.
In the end, those were the only two options.
I explained all of this, holding nothing back.