"What do I have to do to save Kokkoro?"
"This quest might be very difficult for you as you are now..."
Jhin cut Eris off, telling her in a flat, resolute tone, "Please just tell me the objective directly."
"Fine..." Eris sighed helplessly. "Kokkoro definitely wouldn't want you to go off adventuring."
"All I want is for her to wake up. Everything else is beyond my consideration." Jhin remained unmoved, his gaze fixed firmly on the goddess.
He'd handled every prior crisis so calmly—how had he become so impulsive now? Could this be what they called love?
"What if... one of the conditions for saving Kokkoro is the lives of your other companions?"
The moment Eris finished that sentence, the pitch-black war plate laid its blade flat against her snow-white neck, a faint killing intent woven into his words. "I think you'd better first prove to me that you really are the goddess Eris. Answer wrong, and your head's going to relocate."
"Hehe." She showed not the slightest hint of tension, nor any intention of moving the light sword away. "At times like this you really do act like you used to. Just now I was only joking."
"That wasn't a funny joke. And... please prove yourself."
"Ngh... you really are stubborn. Let me think about how to prove it."
Eris pressed her index finger to her cheek and lowered her head in thought. Then her eyes lit up and the corner of her mouth curled into a smile. "The ability you chose back then was called... the Void Genome, right?"
Jhin dismissed his [Elemental Armament] and said expressionlessly, "...Correct. Please don't make that kind of joke again, Goddess Eris."
"Sorry, but since you haven't slept this whole time, it's been very hard for me to reach you this way. If the connection interference keeps worsening, this might be the last time I can speak with you before it's cleared."
"Is this interference difficult to deal with?"
"Mm... you could say it's interference emanating from the world's very source. Even we don't have many options."
"The world's source..."
Could this have something to do with the assimilation progress of [What Heads Toward Death]?
As a viral program, it threatened the safety of the entire world. It made perfect sense that the process of assimilating native organisms would affect the world's source.
If it were allowed to complete the assimilation, the connection between this world and the gods of faith would likely be severed in an instant. The great churches and their believers would all descend into chaos—a fitting prelude to the world's destruction.
Jhin set these deductions aside in his heart for now. The most important thing at the moment was figuring out how to wake Kokkoro.
"How do I save Kokkoro?"
"You must go to the Red Dragon Volcano, defeat that mutated red dragon, and obtain the purest drop of dragon's blood from its heart. Drip it onto Kokkoro's hair ornament, and that will awaken her."
"It's that simple?"
"If you hadn't kept healing Kokkoro with that miraculous ancient magic, the steps would probably be a lot more troublesome. But as things stand, that single drop of pure dragon's blood is enough."
Eris's expression turned grave as she warned Jhin, "It sounds simple, but that mutated red dragon has survived in this world for over a thousand years. Defeating it would be very hard for you as you are now."
He froze for a moment, then his brows knit tight. "Over a thousand years—don't tell me it isn't the one on the Adventurer's Guild bounty commission?"
"Of course not. That red dragon is merely its little underling."
A mutated thousand-year red dragon for whom overlord-class monsters were just lackeys—Jhin felt this had to be the most dangerous challenge he'd faced since coming to this world. To ensure success, he asked Eris for information about this red dragon.
Eris laid out everything she knew without reservation.
This mutated red dragon had named itself "Letishi." Red dragons were originally a dragon race skilled in fire magic but inferior at close combat. After mutating, Letishi had become a red dragon immune to flame magic and extremely formidable in close-quarters fighting.
The Red Dragon Volcano hadn't originally borne that name. It was only because Letishi had dwelt here for so long that the high temperatures radiating from its body had reshaped the local terrain, so it was renamed the "Red Dragon Volcano."
To defeat it, the first thing one had to do was restrict its flight ability, preventing it from spewing the dragon flame that could melt all things from the air. One also had to watch out for the snake head on its tail, which could spray corrosive venom, and then find a way to break through its hard dragon scales and slay it.
Jhin stared straight at Eris until she was drenched in sweat, then asked suspiciously, "Why is this strategy of yours so rigid and clichéd? You're not just reading it off a book, are you?"
"Ahaha..." Eris laughed awkwardly. "Because I wasn't in charge of this area before, all I can give you is the strategy written by another senior."
"How long ago did this senior of yours write that strategy, and what was he in charge of at the time?"
Eris's eyes darted about evasively, and she said with great embarrassment, "More than three hundred years ago... he... he was in charge of collecting data on reincarnators back then."
"..." Jhin didn't know what to say. He suspected that before things went wrong, this world had absolutely been a place full of fun and surprises—the gods all unreliable in every way, their assigned duties bizarre beyond belief.
"Come to think of it, why haven't I seen any other reincarnators in this world?"
"Ah... because back then Senior Aqua was in a rush to go out... uh... shopping, so she just shut down this world's reincarnation passage outright. You're the last reincarnator; the previous one died six hundred years ago."
"May I ask how this senior died?"
"..." Eris turned her face away and fell into an eerie silence for a moment. Then her cheeks puffed up slightly and she said in a small voice, "He was... drained dry to death by the companion golem he created with his own ability."
"..." In his heart, Jhin offered a respectful moment of silence for that gentlemanly senior.
This world really was improper everywhere you looked.
"Goddess Eris, can you locate the creature that attacked Kokkoro and the others?"
Eris shook her head with difficulty. "The interference is too severe. I can't lock onto the target. But you can rest assured—after you attacked it, that creature's aura became very faint. It was likely gravely wounded and is probably lying low somewhere in Landosol to recover."
"Is there really no way to track it down?"
"Of course there is. How dare it attack my believer—I must make it understand what the wrath of a god means!"
Eris huffed indignantly and pulled five small, exquisite amulets from her bosom. "These are charms I made specifically for it. They'll glow whenever they sense its aura nearby, and if the wearer is attacked, they'll deploy a protective barrier and teleport the wearer to your side. Each amulet can only be used three times, so keep that in mind."
"Thank you so much for your help." Jhin took the amulets and bowed to her in gratitude.
"No need to be so formal. Kokkoro thinks very highly of you, so you score very high with me too." Eris seemed about to say something more, but her figure flickered twice like a distorted image and vanished from sight.
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