Chapter 37: It All Started With a Village Called Konoha... |
Mitsuri watched the approaching blade with detached indifference.
'Perhaps it is better to just die here...'
She certainly wanted revenge, but what was lost could never be returned. It was better to follow her fallen husband, the man she had failed to protect.
Lost in these thoughts, the girl didn't immediately grasp the strangeness of what was happening. The look of doom in her eyes gradually shifted to one of pure bewilderment.
The glinting steel was still approaching.
But for some inexplicable reason, it had slowed down.
And as it drew nearer, it slowed more and more...
Until, at last, it ground to a complete halt!
Mitsuri looked around and found that the Demon Slayers were frozen with worried expressions. It was clear they were desperately trying to help, but they had slowed down hundreds or even thousands of times over.
Everything had slowed down—one could even say everything had frozen entirely!
"What is...?" the girl's jaw dropped in shock. She reached out and touched the shimmering blade with her hand, then pushed it aside.
The blade moved just as slowly, as if it were stuck in thick mire.
It was then that a flash of fear crossed Mitsuri's face.
She noticed the only thing that hadn't slowed down in this infinitely sluggish world: the "corpse" lying in a pool of blood nearby.
The viscous blood was flowing strangely back toward the body. Even the droplets on her own clothes took flight, returning to Yeruashi.
Before Mitsuri's terrified eyes...
The "corpse" of Yeruashi slowly rose to its feet.
Every drop of blood returned to his body. Not a single scratch remained on his throat, and his face was a picture of absolute serenity.
He was no longer a simple doctor, but an omnipotent god who held power over time and traversed the vastness of the universe.
"Yeru... Yeruashi," Mitsuri stammered, dropping her Nichirin Sword and pointing a finger at him. "You... you..."
Meanwhile, Yeruashi walked toward her with an unperturbed expression and gently ruffled the hair on the crown of her head.
Mitsuri stood petrified, her face a mask of shock and fright.
"Well now... my life has come to an end," he said, a faint note of regret in his voice, though he simultaneously felt a spark of joy at the emotion itself.
True gods were entirely foreign to feelings like regret. The closer a being came to godhood, the fewer emotions they retained.
Lost emotions were replaced by ruthlessness and indifference...
The emergence of these echoes of regret signaled a significant restoration of his human side—the part of him that had been lost when he gained excessive power, leading to his detachment.
"Life..." Mitsuri began to come to her senses at the sound of her husband's painfully familiar voice, then suddenly burst into tears like a child. "Yeru... Yeruashi... is it really you...?"
At the same time, words like 'death' and 'ghost' whirled through her mind.
"I am no ghost," Yeruashi chuckled softly. At the same time, he gave Mitsuri a light flick on the forehead. After regaining his omnipotence, he could instantly decipher all of her thoughts.
He had often done this during his time as a doctor. His wife, who naturally felt no pain from such a light touch, would always cry out dramatically and rub her forehead just for show.
But now...
"Ow!" Mitsuri exclaimed and recoiled, her hand reflexively reaching for the reddened spot on her brow.
This time, she didn't have to pretend. If before she had felt only a gentle touch, she now felt real pain.
In reality, all this time, it had been Yeruashi playing along, not Mitsuri.
This realization sent the girl's already chaotic thoughts into a complete jumble.
"I don't understand anything..." Mitsuri finally murmured, looking back and forth between Yeruashi and the infinitely slowed world.
"Well, I have quite the tale to tell," he said, thoughtfully stroking his chin. He asked casually, "It's a long story. Do you want to hear it?"
"Yes!" Mitsuri answered with an energetic nod. Despite her confusion, she was ready to listen to any story Yeruashi had to offer.
"Then I shall begin my story from the very beginning... with a village called Konoha," Yeruashi said with a smile, a hint of nostalgia coloring his voice.
Time flew by as he spoke...
The seriousness on the girl's face was replaced by wonder, which gradually transformed into horror. Her mouth hung open, and her eyes went wide with shock.
Yeruashi smiled slightly at the sight. He thought for a moment and placed one hand on Mitsuri's head while simply raising the other.
"This is how the world looks to my eyes after gaining such power..." he whispered, smoothly waving his hand.
Whoosh!
At Yeruashi's gesture, the scene before Mitsuri's shocked eyes began to rapidly rewind, like a film reel spinning backward.
Yeruashi himself vanished, the ruined building reassembled itself piece by piece, and the splashes of blood flew back into place. The terrifying monster appeared, and the wounds of the Demon Slayers were fully healed.
The monster fought ferociously against the three Demon Slayers.
But that was only the beginning...
The darkness of the night receded as the sun rose in the west. Clouds drifted across the sky, and the village came to life. The speed of the rewind continued to increase until the people nearby became nothing more than blurred silhouettes.
The sun streaked across the sky, and night fell once more, followed even faster by the day. Day and night cycled with dizzying frequency.
The ordinary village houses gradually gave way to a dense, primordial forest.
Then.
The cycle of day and night accelerated even further.
The dense forest slowly morphed into a mountain, which in turn transformed first into a hollow and then into a boundless sea. The cycle repeated until all vegetation vanished, leaving behind only a barren, lifeless stretch of earth.
Then, chunks of the earth began to soar upward one by one, vanishing into the sky like flaming meteors. Meanwhile, the lifeless ground beneath their feet first ignited like a smelting furnace and then disintegrated into infinite myriads of dust particles.
As the dust cleared, a galaxy was revealed to Mitsuri. She found herself alone in the midst of the vast, cold, and empty void of space.
After that...
Time froze once more at a light wave of Yeruashi's hand.
Then he gracefully swept his hand in the opposite direction. Dust gathered in the cold cosmos, forming a planet.
The lifeless earth reappeared as flaming meteorites struck it one after another. The landscape shifted countless times. Gradually, water flooded everything, and green algae began to sprout at the bottom of the newly formed sea.
Soon after, the blue world was overtaken by vibrant greens.
Mountains rose where the sea had been...
Mountains turned into plains...
Day followed night and night followed day an infinite number of times.
Whoosh!
And at last, everything returned to how it was.
The village, the night, and the ruined building...
The infinitely slowed Wakuraba was still in the middle of his strike, and the worried Demon Slayers stood nearby.
To say that Mitsuri was shocked by what she had seen would be an understatement.
"...And after that, I traveled to the distant past and the unknown future, until after several worlds, I found myself here," Yeruashi continued calmly. "I have seen too much and lived far too long—longer than any human can possibly imagine. Along this path, my human emotions faded and were replaced by the detachment of a god. So, I decided to live the lives of doctors, hunters, farmers, and blacksmiths... using a single ability to become millions of people in this world. By living through them, I sustain the emotions that make me human."