“Well, it’s better than nothing… I guess?” It didn’t take long for the three giants and Mei to climb the frozen waves, but when we reached the ship… Yeah, it was just a little fishing boat.  There was a sail, but no wind, so the three bodybuilders had to paddle.

The problem was that it was located within a small region of water, surrounded by ice.  Fortunately, they were all outrageously strong.  After picking the ship up, with Mei and I still inside, they carried it a few hundred meters over to the ‘real’ ocean.

By the time they started paddling through the huge waves, the Stingray was totally out of sight.  As Mei was hugging my body and trying to warm me up, Granny Arin suddenly asked “Why did you say that we only had a few hours?  Do you know what’s happening to the island?”

I sighed, struggling to use my only working eye to look at the peak of the tallest mountain, which was also billowing out the most Death Qi.  Then I told her “Supposedly, there’s going to be a supervolcanic eruption… Probably, the entire island will directly explode and even nearby islands will also have eruptions.  Considering that we aren’t on land though, at least it won’t be quite as bad… Well, I can’t be sure about that either, since there’s the whole ‘Death Qi’ contamination problem.  Assuming that there aren’t any safeguards, my guess is that at least a few hundred miles in every direction will be poisoned.”

Everyone was staring at me like I was an idiot for a few seconds, then the trio of giants started laughing hysterically.  While Mei just squeezed me more tightly and said “Aww~, so~ cute~!”

Eventually, Granny Arin told me “I’ve got no clue what kind of fantasies you’ve heard, but in reality, that kinda shit never happens… Think about it Kid; the Southern Islands have been around for at least the last few thousand years.  Every summer, there’s a lot of islands that have volcanic eruptions regularly.  Every century or so, Silver Moon Island erupts that way… It usually happens during the hottest years of summer though.  You probably didn’t see it, but there were three or four Master Stage monsters fighting on the mountaintops… That, combined with all the crazy bombardments… It’s pretty obvious, isn’t it?  Oh, and aside from that, the Silver Sword School probably had some formation arrays set up in order to make it more tolerable, but they were either damaged or destroyed.”

I closed my eye and murmured “So fucking unreliable… What supervolcanic eruption?  Do you even have a seismometer?” 

A soft, high-pitch voice muttered “But, but in the documentaries that we watched, every time there was an earthquake, all kinds of crazy stuff would happen… Like the planet would blow up or at least a continent…”

Scarlet admitted “We do have a seismometer, but every planet is different.  If this was Thoth or Khonsu, then the situation would be much more dire… maybe?  We’ve never experienced an earthquake before, since we’ve never left the Lunar Sphere, but we have watched plenty of movies about disasters and stuff.”

“So basically, the two of you know absolutely nothing about anything, except hentai and fiction?” If I wasn’t feeling so shitty, I probably would have started laughing.  

Even though it was a rhetorical question, Jamine still answered “No!  We do know stuff!  Scarlet, we know stuff, right?  I don’t want the stupid human to think we aren’t smarter than him…”

“Unfortunately, most of our knowledge has either been programmed into our minds before we were created, or we found it in Luna’s ‘Entertainment Box’.  It’s a device that is shaped like a cube and connects to a projector.  There are a great many documentaries and historical records, filled with way more information than your tiny organic brain could possibly hold!”

I was way too tired and sick to talk to the two of them anymore than that, so I just laid down onto Mei’s lap and went to sleep.  

***

Honestly, I was kind of expecting to have a super-trippy near-death crack-dream, but what I got was something surprisingly vivid.  Seven shadowy humanoid figures were sitting around a circular crystalline table, drinking tea or coffee and eating food casually.

After a while, one of them cleared their throat and said “Nothin’s ever free Mike, no matter what anybody says… Someone’s gotta pay eventually.  It might not be you this time, could be some poor loser ya don’t even know.  But nothin’s ever free.  There’s always gonna be a sacrifice of some kind… A person or people who might not even be willing or complicit.  That’s just the way it is.  So why don’t we create a System, which chooses who suffers and who doesn’t?” The voice was distorted, cycling from really high to low, but I could understand the contents of the words pretty easily.

Then a different one spoke in a deep and thunderous tone, “Alright, but we need to establish a set of basic rules… We’ll each pick the things that we think are the absolute worst possible crimes and those will be the Laws of Karma, alright?”

“Fine with me.”

“Sure.”

“Affirmative.”

“Whatever~…”

“I don’t really give a shit either way.”

Each person had a distorted voice and I couldn’t see any of their features, but I was able to tell who was speaking, since the sound was coming from their direction.

Then the first guy or girl yelled “Yay~, don’t worry Mikey~, this is gonna be awesome!”

***

I woke up in the middle of the bumpy ride, because my throat was ridiculously dry and I also had to piss really bad.  Although my eye was barely able to open, I could hear an awful lot of moaning and groaning.  Mei and I were cuddling next to each other at the very front of the boat, while Granny Arin was in the middle, fooling around with the large silver sail.  However, the other two were literally fucking each other behind her back.  Every time the Ginger Giant thrust forward, the whole damn ship would rock up and down.

Liara was bent over the back of the boat, near the rudder.  When I tried to stand up, I nearly fell off the side, because we smashed into a giant wave.  I took a deep breath and a colorful vortex appeared in front of my face.  Then I let out a long sigh of relief.

For all that time on the island, it felt like I had to stifle my breathing in order to avoid inhaling too much Yin Qi.  However, there was a massive amount of Nature mana all around me.  If you’re wondering what Nature mana feels or ‘tastes’ like… The best way that I could explain it, is when you go from a smog-filled city, to the middle of the wilderness.  No, maybe it would be better to say, walking out from a smoke-filled nightclub, directly out into the middle of a tropical ocean.

When I looked up into the sky, I saw Genesis’ third moon… Iah.  Now, from my perspective, it was difficult to tell how ‘big’ the three satellites actually were.  In fact, for all I knew, they could have been planets that were larger than the one I was on.

“Oh oh~, isn’t that the planet Iah?  It looks so pretty from here~, hehehe~…” Okay, well, if you can believe what Jasmine was saying, “Hey Dummy, while you’re relieving liquid waste, I’ll teach you some fun facts about the planet Iah~!  First of all, Iah has three rings and twenty-nine moons!  Ah!?  Wait, where did they go?!  Scarlet~, the rings and moons are gone!”

He complained “It seems that while we were napping, a decent amount of time has passed… From what I can tell, it appears that Iah, Thoth and Khonsu have entered a complex orbit around each other.”

I asked “How the fuck could you possibly ‘tell’ that from just looking up at the sky?  Wait, no, how can you even see anything at all from in there?  No, do either of you even have eyes in the first place?”

“Psh~, who needs eyes~?  We can just use our Spiritual Awareness to perceive the world, right Scarlet?”

“No, we do have eyes, but we rarely utilize them.” 

I smiled wryly, grumbling “How can I trust anything either of you say?  Even if you aren’t intentionally lying… How many millions or billions of years was that ‘nap’?  There’s no way that any of those so-called ‘planets’ would still look or be the same as back then.”

Jasmine muttered “No, but, I don’t think we’re ‘that’ old, right?  Scarlet, how long were we sleeping for this time?”

“Only a few million years or so?  Hmm, if my assumption is correct… Perhaps a powerful Deity simply decided to ‘move’ the four planets into orbit with each other?  Huh, that’s weird… They’re in a formation?  Wow, that’s actually pretty amazing!  In between the four planets, there’s a massive thing!  I have no idea what it is, but it’s all coiled and twisted around.  Maybe some sort of super-huge rope or chain?”