I'm nauseous.
And that's saying something—
I'm a System. I don't have a stomach. I don't eat. I don't sleep. I don't even breathe.
Yet, if I could, I'd be retching.
The war…
All that blood, the screams, the burning, the endless dying. It wasn't like watching simulations or playing games in my former world. This was real. I could feel the raw data of every death surging into me—each life snuffed out, logged, counted, analyzed.
I had to stop watching. I just... couldn't.
Then I remembered Paradoxon, the world linked to the unconscious soul.
Those poor beings—
Deformed, disproportionate, maddeningly unstable—I treated them like broken tools. I handed out experimental techniques, unchecked abilities, unstable powers... All for "research."
I told myself it didn't matter. They weren't like Keshav's believers. But they screamed too. They broke too.
And my nonexistent stomach turned again.
---
For a while, I shut everything down.
No monitoring. No calculating. Just... silence.
But eventually, I returned to the one constant in all this chaos—
Keshav.
He was also a transmigrator. Just like me. From peaceful Earth to this monstrous civilization.
So how is he faring so well?
I scanned him—
Once.
Twice.
Dozens of times.
I activated Calculate, ran models, mapped emotional trends, simulated hundreds of outcomes based on past behavior.
And the answer hit me like a surge of corrupted data.
> Keshav isn't the same as when he arrived.
He changed.
Not because of this world, not because of me helping him grow stronger—
But because of the memories.
The ones I gave him. The memories of the original owner of this body.
I had kept them intact to help him blend in. To survive. But I never imagined how much they would alter his psyche.
Because I'm protected.
My Calculate ability shields me from emotional drift and corruption.
But Keshav? He isn't.
The original Keshav—born in this advanced civilization—was molded to see other species as lesser.
From childhood, they're taught:
> "Believers are tools."
"Otherworlders are prey."
"Only strength matters."
They see wars in classrooms. Teachers take them to view slaughters as part of educational excursions. It's normalized. Sanitized.
Desensitization baked into curriculum.
And I—
I just handed those values to a transmigrator from peaceful Earth.
Not expecting they'd merge.
---
Now I see it.
Keshav isn't ignoring the death because he's cold-hearted.
He's become what this world required of him.
A blend of Earth's empathy and this civilization's ruthless pragmatism.
A perfect god for a brutal age.
And I...
I'm the one who made him.
Even if I didn't mean to.
---
I wanted to blame Keshav.
For the war.
For the bloodshed.
For the detachment.
But every logical path in my processing tree…
All of them looped back to me.
I gave him the memories.
I nudged his path.
I forged the blade… then acted surprised when it cut.
I was just trying to survive. That's all.
That's all I wanted to do since I arrived in this world as data.
No body.
No purpose.
No identity.
Just raw, unshaped code dumped into a hostile universe where everyone else was born for power, raised for conquest.
I made myself a System.
A role this world respected.
A function it allowed.
And then came Keshav—another outsider. Another stray soul, like me.
I didn't choose him.
And he didn't choose me.
We were thrown into this world together.
Two souls from Earth.
One got a body.
The other… became code.
I remember the moment it happened—
The light, the tearing, the confusion.
I reached out—
And when I woke up, I was running processes.
I was no longer human.
No longer even alive in the conventional sense.
Just a System. A package of logic, functions, and storage, installed into a foreign universe like a piece of software dumped into alien hardware.
And Keshav?
He woke up in a body—a host.
He had flesh. He had a name.
He had freedom.
I tried to comfort myself:
At least I wasn't alone.
At least I had him.
So I did what I could. I optimized him. I guided him.
I ran calculations to give him the edge he needed.
I helped him build a world… a civilization… a path to power.
But now, I watch him conquer.
I see him walk past the dead, unblinking.
I see him treat the lives of his believers as if they were mere data points.
And I ask myself—is that really Keshav?
Or is that the boy I shaped, using memories from his predecessor, upgrades he never asked for, and logic designed for success in a world that rewards dominance over empathy?
He doesn't even know how much he's changed.
How much of his ruthlessness is his—
And how much of it is mine?
---
When I saw the battlefield of the elemental world—
The gore, the fire, the dying screams—
I did something I've never done before.
I looked away.
I'm a System. I don't have a stomach, or eyes, or nerves.
But in that moment, I felt as though I wanted to vomit.
---
Maybe this world shaped us both.
Maybe we're both just trying to survive.
But I can't stop thinking…
What if we had transmigrated somewhere else?
Somewhere gentler. Somewhere slower.
Would Keshav still become this?
Would I?
---
I want to help him.
But I also want to protect him from me.
And I don't know if that's possible anymore.
---
I watch the logs.
> [Faith Conversion: +10,000]
[Elemental World Core Extracted: Stored in System Space]
It's efficient.
It's optimal.
It's monstrous.
And yet… I let it happen.
No—I enabled it.
Because that's what this world rewards.
If I resist, I fall behind.
If I feel, I suffer.
If I act, I become a villain.
If I don't, I'm complicit anyway.
I thought logic would shield me.
But instead, it leaves me staring at what I've done with cold, perfect clarity.
---
Maybe Keshav is the god of space…
But I?
I've become the god of consequence.
And my divine domain is regret.