The One Who Can’t, The One Who Can.

You’d think all gods can do as they please? Not a chance! If every god could live however they wanted, the world would have already ended long ago. Right? If everything went your way, how would you stand the boredom? So all there’d be left to do is destroy things and make them again.

Still, sometimes it’s annoying when things don’t go my way.

—The grumbling of a minor god who lost all his stakes at the casino in the Divine Realm.

“…Fuck.”

The message suddenly cuts off, leaving behind an out-of-place question mark. A message that doesn’t reappear no matter how long I wait.

Hazel and Lee Hyo-ju approached me with worried faces as I stood there bewildered.

“Mr. Kim Han!”

“Rejected?”

“Ah… I’m fine.”

“What happened?”

“Ah… no, I think there must be an error in the reward calculation process. The message appears and then disappears without telling me the result?”

“Pardon?”

“Hmm?”

Neither of them could hide their stunned expressions. And why wouldn’t they? Even I, living as the second representative in the Battlefield of the Gods, had never seen anything like it.

“Let’s wait a moment. Ah, before that, is everyone okay?”

“Yes, we’re fine.”

“Good. Then the Tyrant— the guy who fought us at the end— his body is still there, right?”

“Yes.”

“Bring it to me.”

I asked them to bring the Tyrant’s corpse, and while telling the members we’d rest about another hour before moving out, I had to say over and over again that I really was fine.

While everyone took out food or rested, the Tyrant’s corpse was brought before me.

And at that moment, the message that had disappeared appeared again.

“…Huh?”

I had been unable to contain my anger because of the luck that was about to drop, but the situation was unfolding in an unexpected direction.

Was the freshness and coolness I felt when the godmother’s soul kissed me not just my imagination?

At any rate, the messages were now openly hostile. How was I supposed to take that?

A supreme being. In a situation where even gods couldn’t interfere, the only one who could summon me was obvious. The Creator I also wanted to meet. If he called, of course…….

“I’m refusing.”

『…What?』

“Now you’re even getting flustered? You really do all sorts of things, you Suho 2-looking bastard.”

『…There was a temporary error. A summons from a supreme being is pending. Do you accept? Please decide carefully.』

“Error my ass. Forget it. I’m not going.”

『…….』

The reason the Creator was calling me was obvious.

My stats are like this. As for luck, while I was unconscious for more than half a day, the effect of ‘Dice Dance’ disappeared, but my pure luck is 160, and with the two accessories combined it is 167.

If I add 942 to that? Since stats above 150 rise by 1 for every 50, it would increase by about 19, or even up to 20 if there were stats accumulated below the decimal point until now.

‘Pure luck 180, huh…….’

I could reach the absurd figure of 180 pure luck, excluding accessories. With accessories and Dice Dance, it could reach 200, the third threshold.

In this situation, it wasn’t strange for the Creator to be looking for me.

But isn’t it too transparent for him to act like this now, after pretending not to know anything when that absurd die appeared just a moment ago? I’m not some stupid sucker. There’s no reason for me to go.

『Please reconsider. The chance to meet a supreme being is a rare and precious opportunity that may come once in a lifetime, if ever.』

“No.”

『Do you really hate it that much?』

“Yeah.”

『Damn it…… Understood.』

“Huh? ‘Setting’ is swearing?”

『…By supreme authority, forced summoning will be carried out. Moving now.』

“…Hey!”

In the brief instant I was engulfed in light, the faces of the members around me froze. Not stiffened and froze, but froze in the literal sense of the word. As if time had stopped.

The moment I confirmed that, the scenery around me changed.

Before I knew it, the usual old man was waiting for me in front of me.

“Hey!!”

“What!!”

The Creator, of all people, was the one snapping at me, even though I was the one who wanted to get angry.

Honestly, I had said several times from the beginning that I didn’t like having to re-enter the Battlefield of the Gods.

Even so, I had no choice but to take part because of revenge and because a god, an irresistible being, had intervened.

But at some point, I began to feel a noncooperative vibe from the messages of ‘Setting.’ I didn’t know whether that was the Creator’s will or the will of a unique ego like Suho, but it was very displeasing.

“Why did you refuse!”

“Hah! You’re not asking because you don’t know, are you? Mr. Creator?”

“…….”

The Creator turned his face away with a fake cough.

But this issue was too serious to just laugh off. My luck almost dropped into the low 100s. Luck of 160, that is.

“Good grief, what exactly is your intention? Since you dragged me here by force, let’s clear up my questions.”

“…Tsk. What are you so curious about?”

“You want to know what I’m curious about? Plenty. First, why aren’t you restraining Manus? Second, why have you been keeping silent since the Melun incident? Third, whose intentions are behind the messages from ‘Setting’ that, starting some time ago, have gone beyond uncooperative and begun showing hostility toward me? Especially that absurd die this time!! Fourth, what on earth is so important about my luck increasing that it warrants a forced summons like this?”

I had been trembling as I held back my desire to use an interview scroll all this time, and now I spat out questions like a machine gun.

I was the same way, but for the first time since meeting me, the playful look vanished from the Creator’s face, and it hardened.

“Huu…… Things have gotten complicated.”

Breaking the long silence, this was the first thing he said.

With a heavy sigh, he began to speak one by one, his face showing visible anguish.

“Actually, if you had been a god rather than a representative, I wouldn’t have been able to tell you. The ripple effect caused by a god’s existence is enormous. To cut to the chase, have you ever heard the words ‘Order,’ ‘Will,’ or ‘causality’?”

“Yes.”

“Causality will be easier. Anyway, think of it as something like a will flowing through the entire dimension. As for Manus, he’s always been preparing. You and the other gods may not know, but ever since he became the highest-ranked god of battle, he’s prepared every time the Battlefield of the Gods opened. He was waiting for a ‘gap’ that would let him interfere in the Battlefield of the Gods like this time. The previous Battlefield of the Gods—the Battlefield of the Gods before you regressed—had no gap. It appeared in the Battlefield of the Gods that opened again now after time was turned back.”

“…You mean? Something went wrong because time was turned back?”

“No, there’s no problem. It’s just that causality has fairly granted ‘room’ to other beings as well. Isn’t it very different? Compared to your previous life, I mean.”

I nodded silently. It was indeed very different.

There were aspects I had deliberately guided, but there were also unexpected, out-of-the-blue changes.

Martial Star Proy followed me. Even more fiercely, the moment he confirmed he’d been abandoned by his patron god.

Violentia, the Demonic Star, likes me. I don’t know the trigger, or the reason.

Yohan, the Fist Star, approached me.

Benialis, the Compassionate Star, had in a word become a complete idiot. Though it seems he was that kind of bastard to begin with.

Mae Young-ryeong’s ‘Melun’ activated, and things claiming to be Manus appeared.

“That’s right. Room. Like your Fons trait, it’s something that widens the range of possibilities. And you’re asking what luck is worth all this? Hmph! You’re not really asking because you don’t know, are you?”

“No, I’m asking because I don’t know.”

The Creator was instead flustered by my firm answer.

I don’t know exactly what luck’s effect is. Luck does affect some skills, but…….

Sometimes the messages say something about it, but I haven’t really felt it much in practice.

“What? You don’t know?! You, that child beside you who bears Melun. Not only did you return that child to normal, but you also came out alive from that ominous place—what was the most decisive factor in bringing about the best result?”

“My calmness in handling it without panicking? My boldness? Or courage?”

“…Do you really think that?”

I wondered if my face looked like that when Naruan caused trouble. The Creator’s face was full of shock and fear.

“Let’s just say it is. So what?”

“It’s not a matter of let’s just say it is!! Huu…… Luck… contains something that not even gods, no, even I as the Creator, dare to explain. You know, don’t you? What the Tyrant’s specialty originally was?”

“Mental magic and necromancy.”

“Yes. And he happened to pick up the power Aetas dropped and focus on copying it. If he’d targeted the members rather than you with necromancy and mental magic, it would definitely have been troublesome. But the Tyrant didn’t do that. Did you know? Because of the power Aetas threw down, Aetas, Spatium, Mors, and Genesis went to look for Ludicer, the god in charge of you.”

“…Is that so?”

“Yes. The five goddesses debated back and forth for quite a while. Sophia tried to stop her, but Aetas worried until the end. She thought the power she threw down was something extremely troublesome. In fact, Aetas’s intention was probably for you to die at the Tyrant’s hands and absorb the power Aetas had thrown. As a result, the battle ended emptily, unlike what the goddesses expected. Contrary to Aetas’s intention, the fragment of power she threw ended up lowering the Tyrant’s strengths and exposing his weaknesses. Doesn’t that seem like a coincidence?”

“Isn’t it?”

“It’s all because of luck.”

The Creator’s words were definitive. He was full of certainty.

“I define luck as the affinity with the unknown things called causality, or the order, laws, and will of the universe. It’s a measure of how much they reject you, or how actively they help you. That is luck. In short, it means you’ve now reached a level of affinity high enough that those obnoxious wills which caused Manus to intervene in the Battlefield of the Gods are actively helping you.”

Perhaps because my reasoning had increased, I could now define even the Creator’s difficult words in a single sentence. In short, what the Creator was saying was that whatever I do will work out.

“A guy who can do anything?”

“…Yes. That’s you, a guy who can do anything. Like if you take pity on a puppy getting rained on and pick it up on the street, and it just so happens to be ‘Poppy,’ the granddaughter of a conglomerate chairman who’s been desperately searching for her; or if you stayed up all night partying yesterday, came to work, and while working overtime get a slight nosebleed, and your boss happens to see that scene on the way home—a guy like that, multiplied by dozens!”

No, had he ever worked as a low-level employee at a company? There was no need to blow up in a fit of envy and spit out his resentment like fire…

“So what am I supposed to do?”

“What do you mean, what! The luck you gained this time!! Let’s settle.”

“I don’t want to.”

“I’ll give you some other fair compensation. Is there anything you want?”

“It’s a whopping 942 luck. Is there even fair compensation that matches that?”

“You don’t want anything? A weapon, maybe? Or a potion?”

The Creator looked at me with sparkling eyes full of expectation.

He was poised like a hawk leaning forward to strike at prey. As if if I said anything at all, he’d just push through with it somehow.

To the Creator, who was waiting for my lips to open, I threw out one line.

“…Hey, make an offer.”