Brain bloom

But for some reason, a hint of melancholy crept into the smile of the primordial god. This vibrant world, created in dreams through thought, also faded.

Volume 1 #363: The Dream That Never Fades

No matter how vibrant a flower is, as long as it is rooted in the soil and grows beautifully by the influence of nature, it will gradually wither after its bloom. Even in this dream, the flowers that should have been in full bloom soon faded and withered.

Because the girl who conceived this courtyard received a certain answer.

—She knew how to leave this place.

She was the instigator of this clumsy prank. This prison created by the resonance of divine power was entirely her doing. So the primordial god had a flash of inspiration and devised a way to escape this dream, but that method was somewhat cruel.

Once one of the elements that resonated with the dream disappears, the resonance ends... This is how to leave the dream. Full of both hope and sorrow.

"What's wrong?" Darkness didn't notice anything, but questioned, "The color of the flowers has faded! It doesn't look good! I still need to play the piano."

"Perhaps it was because your piano playing was so beautiful that I was distracted for a moment. Just like when I got punched hard by you back then."

Amidst laughter, the Primordial God regained his senses, bathing the entire flower field in a shimmering, radiant color, making it even more beautiful than before. The Primordial God couldn't help but gaze at it a few more times, memorizing the shape of each flower.

“In the past, when I was in real life, I gave some of them names.”

"Oh? Name?"

"Yes, a name." The Primordial God nodded, explaining the concept, "In my testing ground, on that small blue star, humanity has developed rapidly. I have poured a great deal of divine power into them, and they have come up with many new concepts."

Is a name one of them?

"Yes, a name for every person and every thing. They seem to have a bit of pride that I created, believing that they are not just one of the masses, but should be distinguished and exist in a more special way..."

“So, a name is a code that distinguishes one person from another.” Darkness pondered for a moment and found it to be an interesting concept.

“For me, flowers are actually more important. So, I gave flowers names. For example…” In her hand, a red flower supported by green stems and thorns appeared. “This is a rose, and the meaning of flowers is to help those humans who do not understand beauty to apply for mating with others.”

"...I remember, this was the first flower that appeared?" Darkness, in the shadows, recorded every subtle change in the world.

"Yes, so flowers, although so beautiful, are primarily used for procreation and to multiply more flowers. In short, everything here has been designed by me using divine power."

After speaking with a smile, the Primordial God pointed to other parts of the flower field.

"There's also that little white flower that can be eaten and teaches humans what sweetness is. It's also one of my attempts. The combination of flower and fruit is the strawberry. The meaning of this flower is to bear fruit, be picked, and then sincerely exclaim, 'How sweet!'"

"You really have a lot of free time."

"There's also this kind, which is cotton used to keep warm. I've already given them names."

At this point, the Primordial God patted his head and immediately conveyed the most important matter to her in a nonchalant manner.

"They may wither, but don't be sad. Although fighting with you has ruined the world again, actually, I hid the original seeds of these flowers."

The primordial god wanted to introduce more flowers, but alas, she could only name a few. But at least the message was conveyed: once darkness returned, the world could be carpeted with flowers. Flowers are far more beautiful than barrenness.

After that—

The primordial god chose to vanish, ending this romantic resonance, and sending darkness back to the real world that had been swallowed by darkness and desolation, awaiting a bountiful future.

Before the Primordial God vanished, she didn't know why she did what she did, but in the beginning, light was born first. Perhaps this was the sacrifice that the elder sister had to endure. But that didn't matter; the Primordial God used her power to do many remarkable things.

The resonance between the divine powers finally ceased with the passing of one of them.

After the darkness departed, the primordial god preserved this dream. With his own divine blood, he enriched this vibrant and boundless flower field, which, long afterward, became known as the Rose Garden.

Darkness waited a long time, dragging her body, ravaged by the endless recurring nightmare, to every corner of the world. But her footsteps told her she was alone. From then on, the world lost its light, leaving only what she feared.

True loneliness.

Her soul, too, was shattered, and unknowingly, she sought solace with the primordial evil. But this world had lost its creator…

After hearing all this, Mori remained silent for a long time. Dandelion reacted even more intensely, taking the Rose Queen's everlasting crown from Mori's head and weeping for the story of her ancestor.

After an unknown amount of time, Mori's state of mind calmed down somewhat—

“I have a question,” she asked.

"You want to know what this has to do with Eden Bank? Anyway, you can probably guess how things will develop from here..."

Mori shook his stiff head, squinted, and asked the Ancient Demon King, "The Primordial God and the darkness that was born alongside her are both girls, I can understand that. What about you? As a Primordial Evil on the same level as them, you wouldn't actually be a beautiful girl owl, would you?"

"...Huh?" The ancient demon king thought he had misheard. "You have seen my true form...it is a powerful and robust male figure that symbolizes destruction."

"Isn't that right? Otherwise, I feel like this beginning is more like a story about a male and a female, rather than two females going to admire flowers while you're stuck in a dark world doing nothing?"

After a long silence, the Ancient Demon King rejected Mori's opinion.

“I’m not doing nothing; I’ve been thinking about the answer—where did I come from?”

"So, it's no wonder they don't want to play with you..."

It said in a serious tone, "Actually, I don't want to associate with those gods who only know violence and don't understand philosophy."

While the Darkness and the Primordial Gods fought and schemed against each other, or while one was holed up in the testing grounds creating stars and the other was hiding in the forest making music, the Ancient Demon King was certainly never idle. He was always thinking in the Demon Realm; otherwise, there would have been no later attempt to bring the laws to fruition, which led to the emergence of demons.

"What happened to the Rose Queen? What happened next? I don't care how owls came to be, tell me about my ancestors!"

Another listener wiped away his tears and stared intently at the ancient demon king.

If it weren't a shadowy figure, but a flesh-and-blood creature, Dandelion would probably have pounced on it, pried open its inferior skull that even plants couldn't grow on, and dug out its brain matter to directly obtain its memories. She didn't have the patience to listen to such a long story.

"Later, she did what all of you Four Seasons People would do."

"Did you go to resurrect your beloved?"

"Indeed, she spent a long time trying to do this. But in the end, she found that the scattered remains of the gods could not be reforged. Instead, the soul of the primordial god nurtured a very... novel world."

Mori tapped the wooden table lightly with his knuckles and immediately asked, "The so-called divine realm."

“That’s right, that everlasting rose manor is what mortals consider the divine realm. But back then, she only left behind that dream. Strictly speaking, that world is still a continuation of the dream. It can’t be called false, but rather… well, it should be called another kind of reality.”

And this world, seemingly still containing a trace of the emotions of the primordial gods, appeared above the human world.

Its azure blue, along with the "distinction between day and night," the "blue sky," and the "curtain of billions of stars" conceived by the primordial gods for the sake of beauty, have all been preserved and reflected above the human world from beginning to end, illuminating the world in an unchanging way.

Unfortunately, this dream world is too far away.

Only darkness and the ancient demon king could distort the walls between reality and dreams, forcibly intruding into them. But the departed primordial god could no longer be found…

At this point, the Ancient Demon King glanced around and noticed that the myth, unable to withstand the long story, had already gone to harvest the golden wheat, intending to grind it into flour for bread. But the Ancient Demon King still had many things he wanted to tell others after so long.

"The realm of gods is an incomparably beautiful place, where divinity has nurtured many new things. All kinds of life, and true gods who have inherited a little bit of power."

"This thing, it was also born in the garden?"

Mori pulled out Fufu, who had been sleeping in his pocket but was now radiating an increasingly divine aura. Fufu quietly observed the world, realized it wasn't home, and went back to sleep. Lately, faith had been flooding its body, and it wasn't used to it yet.

"Poseidon? I'm not too sure about that, but I guess so. I'm not omniscient or omnipotent either..."

"And what about the coffin bearers?"

Why don't you ask yourself that question?

"Um……"

The ancient demon king continued, "The woodpecker you all know is the true god who controls delicious food. It seems to have been a concept of the primordial god in her lifetime. She felt that there must be insects in the tree, and there had to be something to dig them out. But unfortunately, this insect-digging bird has taken control of this divine power."

"It was also a true god born in that world and that era... No wonder it knows quite a lot."

With the woodpecker master as a reference, Moritoshi roughly understood the weight of the life born in these gardens.

"But that's not Eden Bank..."

"I've said it before, Eden Bank is a ballad."

"—Where are my ancestors? Tell me about our venerable Rose Queen, I don't care about anyone else's business..." Dandelion asked wistfully.

The ancient demon king said kindly, “She wanted to resurrect her beloved, as I mentioned. And I helped her, thinking that this would help her understand her origins. But after many attempts, it still didn’t work. You see, she was trying to resurrect the Creator… But we can do something in remembrance.”

Therefore, the Rose Queen, still shrouded in darkness, and the Ancient Demon King, still embodying primordial evil, sought to carpet the human world with blooming flowers, searching for an everlasting field of blossoms to commemorate—or perhaps one day, to welcome the awakening of the primordial god.

When she wakes up and sees a new world full of flowers, she'll be very happy...

But those humans who had unknowingly developed civilizations and settlements considered their attempts too terrifying and a huge threat. Two monsters of creator-level power spent their days searching for lush, green places, and once they found one, they would silently begin planting flowers—it was truly frightening.

To silence these little creatures' chatter, yet respecting their divine creation, darkness and primal evil devised a new concept: "equal exchange." They drove out the original inhabitants and acquired the land of the human world.

"The history books were right after all; the human world is governed by four seasons," Dandelion said with a happy expression.

"...It belongs to the Rose Queen and me, not to you," the Ancient Demon King corrected.

Mori crossed his arms and murmured to himself, "So, the Four Seasons bought the world just to cover it with flowers that never fade, as a tribute to his departed lover."

"Yes."

“So… the plants above our heads…” Mori no longer felt that the bodies of the Four Seasons were frightening, but his soul was filled with sorrow.

"Yes, the relic left by the primordial god, that seed that can bloom into a rose, was grown from the Rose Queen's soul. This is the only way for the soul to continuously nourish the flower."

Mori picked up the relic from the Rose Queen from the table.

One of the three ancient sacred objects of the Land of Flowers—the Rose Queen's everlasting crown. Its significance far surpasses anything Mori had ever imagined. Each of its full petals is born from love.

She clearly remembered that this crown contained several spells from the Rose Queen.

Nightmare comes true —

Suddenly, Mori remembered a word.

Familiar words...

Her mind had already processed the memory, recalling them on a paper boat and what she knew from that time. It was the name of a spell, the spell of the Four Seasons, inscribed on the petals of the Rose Queen.

In the hands of the dandelion, it became a massive, terrifying weapon that robbed the night. But what was its true nature? Perhaps this magic was created by the Rose Queen simply to bring the beautiful dream left behind by the primordial god to life, to find a chance to reunite with her…

She shook her head, a sense of melancholy washing over her. It turned out that she had already touched upon fragments of this story on that swaying paper boat.

"We tried many things, but all to no avail." It was the voice of the Ancient Demon King, much gentler now. "Finally, I remembered that the Primordial God left behind a universe. Every star was shaped by her own hands, every speck of starlight is a trace of her remaining divine power..."

For some reason, a certain feeling was surging intensely within Mori's soul.

At this moment—every word spoken by the ancient Demon King is like a signpost, a true guide that can save those on their perilous journey to death.

Volume 1, Chapter 364: Waiting for Interest

Even the absent-minded dandelion basically understood what had happened after hearing this. Perhaps feeling sorry for the Rose Queen, a heartfelt thought arose in her heart: if only they could be reunited.

"So... you believe that the way to revive the primordial god can be obtained from that universe."