Second World

"Mister Greed, may I ask you something?" Jack asked.

"Is it going to be the same question as the last time?" Greed asked back.

"Ahaha, no. May I ask why you live here in solitude?"

"That is the same question as the last time only being rephrased."

"Ahaha...," Jack laughed awkwardly.

Greed was silent for a while before saying, "Well, I guess I don't mind telling you. I'm trying to prove a point."

"What point?"

"That I am who I am because I choose to."

"Huh?"

"I dislike the idea that I am being controlled."

"Control?" Jack had no idea what Greed was talking about. "You are one of the strongest beings in this world with a cult of minions at your bidding. How can you be controlled?"

Jack's memory went back to the ancient battleground when he was going up against the army of Greed. He could hardly believe someone that owned that kind of an army to develop a feeling of being inferior and being controlled.

"Cult? Do you mean my underlings? They are no more," Greed said.

"Oh? Where did they go?" Jack asked.

"To the afterlife. I sent them all there myself."

Jack didn't know what to say to that.

"Like I said. I dislike the idea of being controlled. Certainly even more so when I realized all those underlings were given to me. Not my own accomplishment."

Greed, who was sitting leisurely all this time, sat up and looked straight at Jack when he said, "You are an outworlder. So, I'm sure you are aware of the truth of this world." He then looked at Peniel, "You, on the other hand, might find this as somewhat of a shock. The world we are in now is not what we thought it to be. It is a world created by the outworlders as some sort of entertainment."

When Greed saw Peniel's flat expression, he said, "Hm... Not the response I am expecting."

"That's because she already knows," Jack explained. "But I'm surprised. How do you know about this truth, Mister Greed?"

"Hm... Well, I found out about it from another outworlder. This outworlder came before me and my brother and sister when we were convening. We don't do that often, so imagine our surprise when a low-level outworlder intruded on our secret place of meeting. Fear and I were ready to slay this intruder the moment he showed himself, but our sister, Wrath, gave him a chance to speak as recognition for his successful intrusion into our sanctum."

"This outworlder, is he by any chance goes by the alias Master?" Jack asked.

"Oh...? You know him?" Greed said with a raised brow.

"You can say that," Jack replied. "What did he tell you and the others?"

"At first, we thought he was just spouting nonsense. Saying that our world is a fake world that was made by outworlders. For entertainment purposes, he said. That all the existences in this world, including me and the other Gods and Goddesses, are just programs. I still have no idea what that word means. Anyway, he claimed that our natures, our characteristics, and our powers, are all given to us by these outworlder creators. Imagine Fear's and my responses. We blast him with our divine powers where he stood. However, he was protected by some kind of a prismatic shell."

'That prismatic shell can even block God's powers? No wonder Leavemealone's Fire God Barrage and Syndrillis' flame breath had no effect,' Jack thought.

However, Jack knew that the prismatic shell was created by a consumable tool. An alien entity that was not producible in-game. Those must have been defensive tools that Master had prepared before the world was changed by his machine. This meant that Master only had a limited quantity of them. Jack just hoped that Master ran out of that tool when they next met. Otherwise, Master would be invincible as long as he still had that prismatic shell tool.

"Imagine our surprise when a lowly outworlder managed to survive a combined assault of two Gods," Greed continued. "Since we couldn't do anything to him while he was inside that prismatic shell, he continued to ramble. But as he spoke, he started to reveal secrets that only us Gods know. He even told us some secrets that we weren't aware of and dared us to go check. We all left and checked those things he mentioned, only to find out that he was telling the truth. When we were back, he was still waiting for us, completely unafraid. Furthermore, after being made aware of this world's nature, we did realize the structure of this world heavily favors the outworlder. Although we didn't want to, I guess the three of us started to believe his words then. He also told us that the God of Courage and Goddess of Joy are no more, a fact that we have sensed. He claimed to be the one who was responsible for those two's absence."

"So... When you said you don't like the idea of being controlled..."

"Yeah. I just can't accept the fact that I was made. I am the personification of greed. I am greedy to the core. I want to take everything that exists in this world for myself. But to think that this character is not truly mine. That I am greedy because someone made me this way, sickened and infuriated me tremendously."

"Even so, do you have to go on a killing spree and wipe out your entire cult?"

"If they are made just to serve me, then me exterminating them was relieving them from their predetermined design. I was setting them free."

Jack scratched his head, "I guess that's one way to look at it."

"What's the point of Master coming and telling you three about this truth?"

"He wanted to give us an offer. If we help him conquer this world and gather the seven divine treasures, he will help us escape this fake reality and bring us into the real world."

"Say what?!" Jack asked.

"He offered us access to the real world. A chance to be free from this fixed world that enslaved us. I don't like that outworlder, so I just outright rejected him. I have no interest in going to an unknown world. But I also dislike the idea that I am not my own self. So, I have been fighting my impulse since then, trying to prove that I can be something other than what I have been made to be. Trying to prove that greed doesn't rule my nature."

"What about the other two, do you know what were their responses to Master's proposal?" Jack asked.

"Well, after I rejected him, I tried to kill him one more time but failed again. Since I can't kill him, I decided to just leave. Wrath also left but she said she was considering the offer. Fear stayed. From his expression, I could guess that he would be taking up that outworlder's offer. I don't care. I don't want anything to do with them."

The fact that Fear was helping Master was something that Jack had known. He was asking simply because he wanted to know if the remaining bad God, or Goddess, in this case, was in Master's camp as well. From Greed's tale, it seemed that Wrath was still on the fence. Jack felt grateful for that.

'So, that lie is what Master used to employ Fear's services,' Jack thought.

"Lie?" Greed stared at Jack. "What do you mean?"

"Huh?" Jack was confused.

"Don't you pretend!" Greed uttered. "After that first day you are here when you and that fairy communicated by telepathy behind my back, I have installed a new rune diagram in this hut. I can hear your thought! Now, tell me the truth!"

'Uh-oh,' Jack thought.

"Damn right you should be uh-oh. Now tell me the truth! Remember that I can hear your thought. I will know it if you are lying."

Jack was unsure. Greed was staring at him, urging him to answer. Jack couldn't afford to think clearly as he didn't know which of his thoughts Greed might hear. He also didn't dare to stall too long as Greed had expressed his impatience. So, Jack decided to just come clean, for better or for worse.

"What Master told you about the creation of this world is indeed true," Jack said. "However, he was lying about taking you all to the real world. Because our real world, where we came from, is no more. This is the real world now."

Greed frowned, instructing Jack to tell him more. So, Jack recounted Wilted's story to him. About how Master used his mysterious machine to alter reality. Rewriting the world into one that was based on a game. Giving lives to the various denizens of this game world by sacrificing the lives and energies of the previous world, except for the sentient humans, who were reimagined in this new world as outworlders.

The offer that Master gave them was a lie from the beginning. Master never meant to revert the world to its previous state. He intended to harness the power of the seven divine treasures to become a God himself.

Jack stressed that Greed was now as real as he and Master, and so too this world. His personality might have been based on something someone wrote when they designed the game, but they were not something that governed him. As a real being, he had the right to choose. Jack emphasized this point strongly, in the hope of influencing Greed that what he did now was correct, to not succumb to the greedy nature that the game creator had preordained for him.

Jack was seriously afraid that Greed would go back to his original nature once he knew that he was real.

Greed was silent after Jack finished his tale.