"Last...last pull! I really won't get carried away again! So please, give me an SSR! Azathoth above, anyone will do, I'll definitely worship them like my own father from now on!"
The small, dim space was pitch black. Only the faint light from a phone screen barely allowed one to discern that this was someone's boudoir. The girl, attempting a superstitious ritual, clumsily hopped around a low table, seemingly performing some unspeakable summoning ceremony.
"Ow! Ow, ow, ow, ow! Kicked the table leg... Wait! What is this!? Holy crap! It's shining with rainbow light!"
The girl, who had tripped and fallen, cried out in pain, clutching her big toe. But then she heard a peculiar sound effect and instinctively looked up at her phone, which had fallen nearby. Her pupils contracted sharply, revealing an expression of disbelief.
The dazzling rainbow light on the screen illuminated the entire room as if it were daylight, blindingly bright. A swirling, intense wind caused the anime posters on the wall to flap loudly for nearly half a minute before gradually subsiding. Darkness enveloped the room again, but slightly different from before, a blurry figure appeared where the phone had fallen.
"I remember I was in a graveyard just now? So, I was discovered after all? But honestly, digging up someone's ancestral grave in the middle of the night feels like having an affair in a cornfield by the road... There's a hint of nervous urgency, and once caught, an unexpected sense of relief."
Click—
Just as the man was still wondering what had happened, the room's lights came on. What appeared before him was a black-haired girl wearing a white off-the-shoulder T-shirt. Her waist-length hair had inner highlights of a dark green, similar to her eye color, and against the black pharaoh rune on her left cheek, she appeared particularly mysterious. However, all of this was contingent on ignoring the girl's suspicious, butt-jutting posture.
"Dad! Father!"
The extremely excited girl no longer cared about the pain in her big toe. She slid across the floor and lunged, trying to hug the man's leg. This was an SSR she had pulled by betting all her savings; finally, there was hope of paying off her usurious loans.
"I don't have a daughter that old."
Rosen, yawning from lack of sleep due to excessive late nights, decisively lifted his foot and precisely stopped the girl's head right in front of him. The crisp sound of the girl's forehead hitting the floor made one shiver involuntarily.
"My foot! Get your foot off me! Is that how you treat your Goddess?"
The self-proclaimed goddess struggled in every way possible but couldn't lift her face from the ground. She could only furiously pound Rosen's leg in frustration. In her imagination, a God Chosen should elegantly kneel and kiss her feet, swearing allegiance. Yet, reality was a painful kick to the head from a shoe sole.
"You're the one who suddenly pounced without introducing yourself, right? And you seem to be quite enjoying it."
Rosen maintained the posture of stepping on the back of the girl's head, squatting down to examine her closely, making sure he wasn't being attacked by something strange. After all, with his special physique, he easily attracted certain non-human entities.
"Alright! Listen carefully and don't be scared! I am the Crawling Chaos, the God of One Thousand Faces, the Black Pharaoh, the Messenger of the Outer Gods—Nyarlathotep!"
"Nyarlko isn't silver-haired with an ahoge, so I'm not entirely convinced. I just thought some big black rat scurried out."
Nyarlko, unable to bear the humiliation, shouted out her identity, hoping to intimidate the other party. But Rosen merely glanced at this so-called god thoughtfully before moving his foot. Although his expression didn't change, she could feel the man's gaze, full of suspicion.
"You bastard, where are your manners!?"
Nyarlko rubbed her neck, finally able to get up from the ground. She was in a divine realm completely under her control, so why couldn't she do anything against a human just now? Could it be that the poisonous oath she made while pulling cards earlier had taken effect?
"First, I'm already acting very gentlemanly by remaining calm and speaking to you after being inexplicably brought to a strange place. Second, my name is Rosen, and I'm an exorcist out of interest. Third, casually calling someone a 'bastard' is very unladylike."
Rosen earnestly introduced himself as an exorcist. However, in reality, he didn't possess any magic and wasn't registered with any relevant institution to obtain a professional certificate. His method of exorcism was even simpler and cruder, to the point that from a normal person's perspective, he was just an executioner who enjoyed vigilantism.
"The word 'gentlemanly' sounds really out of place coming from you. How could someone like you be an SSR? Was I just hallucinating... Holy crap! What kind of skill set is this? Is this the general-purpose special attack card those whales on the forum keep raving about? I actually have a day where I'm a European Emperor?"
Nyarlko skeptically picked up her fallen phone and opened the character details. But upon seeing Rosen's attributes, all the unpleasantness that had just occurred instantly vanished. God Chosen are divided into four levels: N, R, SR, and SSR. And this man, even among the rarest God Chosen, was a T1 existence.
"Is it that exaggerated? You're practically drooling."
Looking at Nyarlko, who occasionally let out silly giggles, Rosen once again seriously doubted the woman's identity. However, he didn't fully believe her story either, initially guessing that he had been ambushed and kidnapped while digging a grave.
"Anyone would be like this, okay? The probability of drawing an SSR-level God Chosen is only one in ten thousand, and the cost is astronomical. It forced me to mortgage my divine realm to the Pantheon Forum Administrator and shamelessly borrow high-interest loans from Shub-Niggurath. But fortunately, it was all worth it!"
Thinking about how she wouldn't have to endure ridicule anymore, and could even post her character attributes on the Pantheon Forum to show off, receiving endless envious and jealous curses from those who looked down on her, Nyarlko's cheeks involuntarily flushed with excitement.
"Mortgaging real estate and taking out high-interest loans to gamble on a one-in-ten-thousand chance—in some ways, you're quite extraordinary."
Rosen looked around the room, which was covered in anime posters and piled high with various figurines and body pillows. He noticed there wasn't even space for a bed, forcing one to sleep on a tatami mat. Compared to a divine dwelling, it looked more like a shut-in's cramped room. The only exit was a very suspicious-looking door.
"By the way, your divine realm isn't just this small now, is it?"
"Wait! Inside there's..."
Before Nyarlko could stop him, Rosen had already placed his hand on the doorknob, turned it... and opened it. What met his eyes was not the heavily guarded thugs he imagined, but quite the opposite... Amidst the swirling mist, a White-haired girl who looked only sixteen or seventeen was humming softly with her back to him, seemingly enjoying her shower.
"How many times have I told you, don't peek when I'm taking a..."
Karenina, hearing the doorknob turn, instinctively furrowed her brows. Ever since she arrived here, she had been constantly harassed by that perverted goddess. As she glared angrily towards the door, her golden pupils reflected Rosen's calm, deadpan eyes.
"M-man!? Die, pervert!!!"
After her brain crashed for half a second, Karenina felt her consciousness and all the circulating fluids in her body boil. Her fair skin visibly turned completely red. Without hesitation, she hurled the bar of soap by her hand at the man at a speed that broke the sound barrier.
The soap, enveloped in a fierce wind, let out a piercing roar as it shot towards him. In this moment of life and death, Rosen clasped his hands together and actually managed to catch the projectile that was about to blow his head off. However, because the target was too slippery, it still hit him on the forehead, knocking him out cold on the spot.
"Wait, Karen-chan! This is my new companion, everyone calm down!"
Nyarlko, who had just reacted, quickly shielded Rosen. After a frantic, chaotic explanation, she finally clarified the misunderstanding with Karenina, managing to rescue her hard-won SSR.
"So, can you explain why the bathroom isn't separated into wet and dry areas?"
Rosen, with a swollen red forehead, felt that everything that had happened so far was giving him a headache (physically). Yet, despite this, he still didn't seem to have gained the understanding of the person involved, who was now glaring at him with her arms crossed, like an interrogator staring at a peeping tom.
"Because we don't need a toilet, so one bathroom is enough."
Nyarlko's eyes widened, and she replied as if it were obvious, "What goddess in this world needs to excrete?" Karenina, being a combat android with a mechanical structure, could taste food, but she generally wouldn't choose to eat unless necessary, only requiring daily cleaning and regular maintenance.
"Then there must be a changing room, right? And this door isn't even locked."
"In that case, I can't peek at Karen-chan showering."
"She really just said that brazenly... What about a private room? How do you explain that?"
"Well... at least until we redeem the God Realm from the Administrator, the three of us might have to squeeze in. What's with that look of disgust! Coexisting with two beautiful girls is a privilege you couldn't even dream of, okay?"