“Ah…” The little girl’s expression went blank for a moment.
The gentleman before her seemed to be…
preaching to her in return.
Could such a flagrant inversion of the natural order even be allowed?
“Sir, our Lord is the one true God.
You must not worship other gods…” the little girl whispered to Klein.
Klein raised an eyebrow.
“Funny thing, our God-Emperor of Mankind says: He is not a god.”
“Huh?” The little girl couldn’t seem to follow Klein’s train of thought, her expression growing more and more vacant.
“And moreover, the Emperor tells us: ‘You shall believe with all your heart and soul in the following truth: there are no gods and ghosts among the stars, no supernatural phenomena, no magic or witchcraft.
All things can be understood through science.
Mankind, by the light of reason, can overcome all.
Nothing should be worshipped.
The rational galaxy must utterly eradicate religion, that backward concept.'”
Klein spoke with a perfectly straight face, his voice resolute and forceful, addressing this little girl who was trying to convert him.
The little girl clutched her forehead, her eyes full of bewilderment, confusion, and incomprehension.
Her brain was racing at full speed, struggling to parse the meaning of Klein’s words.
“Wait, sir!”
At last, the little girl seemed to untangle Klein’s logic:
“Your god says he is not a god, and your god states that there are no gods in this world, nothing beyond human understanding, nothing that should be worshipped, and furthermore, your religion seeks to eliminate religion?”
“Correct.” Klein nodded slowly.
“So…
huh?” The little girl was completely befuddled by this doctrine brimming with contradictions.
After a long pause, she finally managed to say: “How did you come to accept such a convoluted doctrine…”
“Our god himself says he’s not a god, so what else can we do?
Just go along with him.” Klein shrugged his shoulders as he spoke.
What he had just recounted was precisely what the Emperor himself had proclaimed while walking among mankind during the Great Crusade.
That’s right, that’s right, even though the Emperor had a halo of light radiating from behind his head, his whole body releasing a golden glow, could crush a star down to the size of a house, had lived for tens of thousands of years, and had twenty-one sons who were akin to demigods, one of whom even resembled an angel, he was not a god.
Even though the Warp was a dimension of emotion and will, filled to the brim with all manner of demons, specters, and the Chaos Gods; even though the material universe contained entities like the C’tan, beings that were essentially material gods, there were still no gods in this world.
To explain the so-called Imperial Truth that the Emperor preached in more jesting terms, it would be…
The Ecclesiarchy organized a religious conference.
Those who believe Chaos is a god, stand on the left.”
But there was one man who stood neither on the right, nor on the left.
The Pontiff was perplexed.
That man said: “I do not believe the Emperor is a god, and the Chaos Gods do not exist at all.”
The Pontiff’s expression changed dramatically, and he hastily said: “God-Emperor, when did You descend from the Golden Throne?”
Though inwardly he had already mocked the Emperor’s Imperial Truth up and down, on the surface, Klein still spoke with a perfectly straight face: “So what?
Did you know, back in the era before humanity had left Terra, there was a religion that tried to convince people: inside every person dwells a Holy Spirit capable of impregnating a virgin, and that this Holy Spirit, his son, and the father of his son are all one and the same person?”
The young girl’s expression suddenly turned a bit strange.
Klein had figured that after spouting such nonsense, the girl would realize she was wasting her time and stop blocking his way.
But to his surprise, the girl seemed stimulated instead and pressed even more insistently closer to Klein.
“Sir!
I am now more convinced than ever that you must come to know our one and only Lord!”
Klein felt his headache worsening.
“Is this one and only Lord of yours the god of love, beauty, and art, who favors purple, whose symbol is the serpent, and who is both male and female?”
The young girl shook her head.
“Then is it the god of life, immortality, and fertility, who favors green, whose symbol is the fly, and who is bloated and swollen?”
The young girl still shook her head.
“Then is it the god of courage, war, and military affairs, who favors red, whose symbol is the hound, and who sits upon the Skull Throne?”
“You speak of the Lord of War?” The young girl scratched her head.
“Then is it the god of wisdom, change, and hope, who favors blue, whose symbol is the eagle, and whose form is ever-shifting?”
“Not that one either.” The young girl denied again.
None of the four?
Klein’s expression grew a bit more serious.
“Is your master a dragon?” he inquired.
He recalled a certain dragon slumbering beneath the surface of Mars…
“The dragon is the enemy of my Lord.” The young girl lowered her head and spoke reverently.
So it wasn’t even any of the five…
Klein detected no trace of falsehood on the young girl’s face.
Could she be a follower of some wild, rogue daemon?
Or some minor entity entirely unknown and unrecorded within the Warp?
Or perhaps… Read this novel at g.com for the best experience.
At that very moment, the young girl slowly reached a hand to her neck and pulled out the pendant hanging there from within her collar…
It was a silver cross.
“…So it’s the old veteran.”
No wonder the girl’s obsession had flared up the moment he made that snide remark about the Trinity.
“You’re a believer of Catholicism,” Klein said.
The young girl revealed a gentle smile.
“You know our faith well.
In this age, very few still understand the sacred mystery of the Trinity…”
In this godforsaken galaxy, this old veteran might actually be a relatively safe faith to follow.
Because according to Klein’s memories from his previous life,
the Catholic faith, in this universe, in all likelihood pointed to a certain Big E.
The Emperor’s old comrade-in-arms, the Perpetual Ollanius Persson, who would one day sacrifice himself before the Emperor, was himself a Catholic believer.
But Klein truly had no intention of finding himself a faith.
“I’m truly sorry, but I really don’t have the time to listen to your preaching.
My niece back home said she’ll have my hide if I’m late.” Klein gestured for the young girl to look at the parchment, bread, fish sauce, and vegetables in his hands.
The young girl hesitated for a moment.
“Well, if you ever have the time, you can come to the Temple District and find our church…
hmm, the smallest building in the entire Temple District, that’s our church.”
“You absolutely must come.
We give away free fish sauce.”
Free fish sauce…
Sure enough, giving away free food was still one of the most effective means of proselytizing.
Klein couldn’t help but sigh inwardly.
Though in this current universe, to say nothing of eggs, whether chickens themselves even still existed was a question…
Uncle Dinosaur, through the long ages, had ultimately been thoroughly eliminated by evolution, yet Uncle Crocodile was still alive and well.
In Klein’s memory, Macragge still had a significant population of crocodiles.
Aside from homo sapiens, those terror-inducing upright apes, in this entire universe, you alone, Uncle Crocodile, were truly the most enduring.
Klein returned to the apartment he rented.
After setting the bread, vegetables, and fish sauce down in the corner of the room, he seated himself behind the wooden desk and spread the parchment out before him.
It was time to practice a diviner’s traditional craft.
Picking up his pen, Klein began to sketch patterns onto the parchment.
(Translated by yourtl.app)