Chapter 122: A New Side

"...My past, huh... what exactly do you want to know?" Nio gets a bit evasive.

"Anything, I understand if you don’t want to talk about it," Typhon says in a very permissive and gentle tone.

"...There’s nothing special about it. My life was almost entirely spent playing the game, but thanks to Nioh I now know the game wasn’t actually a game, and that most of the things in it were real and weren’t created by me, while only a handful of things were truly made by me."

"Even you already existed long before I put you into my character’s lore... and also—"

"No, Nio, I’m not asking about the game. I’m asking about you."

"Oh... that... I don’t know what life was like for you and Nioh before all of this, but in my world, he was practically doomed."

"The air was so polluted that when I arrived in this body, one of the first things I did was savor the air and want to smell grass."

"I’d never seen real grass in my life before, which is the standard for 90% of the population. Only the rich lived in beautiful places. The sky in my world was practically black from all the waste and pollutants used irresponsibly for centuries."

"The water and food were shit, and the game was a true salvation for everyone. I only left the game to eat, rest, and do external item purchases with money."

"Since you could earn real money selling valuable in-game items, my life was literally lying in my room playing... it was a pretty miserable life, but I was happy, because in the game I was someone incredible..."

"Does me being someone so pathetic make you lose interest?"

"No."

"Why?! What’s good about a man with no real job, no dreams, no life expectations, whose greatest achievement was in a virtual world?" Nio grows slightly irritated that Typhon hasn’t lost any interest at all.

"You said you had fun. You liked playing not for the money, but out of passion. You had... soul, unlike so many others. Being an incredible person in a virtual world is still your own merit."

"If I were looking for someone perfect, then Nioh definitely wouldn’t be the one I love. But as they say, love is blind—in my case, it’s blind, mute, and deaf, and anything about you is fascinating to me." Nio looks up at the red sky with a frustrated sigh.

"You’re so weird..."

"Maybe I am, but I love you. I love Nio for who she is, not for what she has or what she’s achieved. Doesn’t it make you happy to know there’s something that loves you this much? So much that it even considered going to your universe to find you?"

"I don’t know... it sounds macabre. It’d be like me meeting someone inside the game, and that person suddenly saying they love me and chasing me through the game until they find out where I live and break into my house through the window." Nio uses something metaphorical, but it’s a great example.

"So that’s what I look like to you? A stalker who breaks into houses in the dead of night through the window with a knife in hand, repeating insanely ’you’re mine,’ and in the end she kills you and kills herself because she can’t live in a world without you?" Nio shivers a little and her tail gives a light thump against Typhon’s back.

"That was bizarrely specific."

"Specific and unreal. Nio, if you and Nioh die, I won’t kill myself. As long as I live, you’ll live on in my memories. There’s also no reason, motive, or circumstance for me to break into your house through the window."

"I can just make your house disappear... and why would I kill you for not wanting to be mine when I can force you?"

"Are you trying to calm me down or scare me?"

"Look at it from my side. I like you, all aspects of you, even your mediocre human life."

"I thought you found my human life fascinating," Nio points out the ’incongruity’ she notices.

"Fascinating doesn’t remove the fact that it’s mediocre. But even in mediocrity there’s a certain beauty... after all, the very concept of love is something mediocre."

"Wow... bizarre. You think love is mediocre after everything you’ve done?"

"My love is pure."

"Typhon, your euphemisms and hypocrisy are so huge."

"I’m not exaggerating, Nio. For most beings, love is just a chemical response in the brain. But what about me? I had no body, no brain, no emotions, yet I felt love. What is my love if not the purest definition of true, pure love?"

"..." Nio opens her mouth to disagree, but can’t find a real answer to give, so she falls silent.

"I hate how consistent and clever you are."

"Divinities need to be consistent. It’s part of their nature."

"...Goddess... I keep forgetting, but you’re kind of a goddess. Why did you come to hell? Shouldn’t gods have a guaranteed place in paradise?"

"No. Gods and goddesses also fall into hell for their sins... but most leave quickly. They truly die and vanish."

"Oh..."

"Thank you for telling me your past. It’s lamentable that the humanity of your world condemned such a beautiful planet."

"You think Earth is beautiful?"

"Naturally."

"...Seriously?"

"Yes."

"...Why? What’s beautiful about Earth?"

"...I feel like there’s no answer I could give that would satisfy you, so I’ll be very direct. Every single thing that exists had to pass through an infinity of possibilities."

"Among infinite possibilities, Earth became a lovely blue and green globe, while its sibling planets turned into hot rock, balls of ice, glass, gases, or dust."

"Everything that overcomes probability is beautiful in my eyes. After all, my own love is something that shouldn’t exist, yet at some point it was born. So I see beauty in what is rare, but at the same time common."

"Planets are common. Love is common. But they’re phenomena that keep me intrigued."

"...You know, Typhon... if I’d met you in the game, and you weren’t crazy about me, I think we could have been great friends." Nio says something that, if Nioh were listening right now, would make her start screaming.

"..." Typhon just gives a faint, sweet smile, but while her expression is happy and satisfied, the gleam in her eyes is extremely dark and sticky, like a bottomless, horizonless dark green swamp.

"Thank you, Nio. I’m sure we would indeed have been great allies. It’s a shame that right now we’re only temporary allies. I hope that at some point you’ll change your mind about me."

"...Eh, not gonna happen." Nio rolls her eyes at her and goes back to observing the surroundings, not wanting to talk anymore after such a heavy conversation.

While Nio doesn’t notice, Nioh knows that the worst part is the way Typhon speaks. Typhon converses so casually and "mundanely" that despite her being monstrous, with evil goals and extreme obsession, Nio ends up "forgetting" that fact—just like most people would when talking to her.

Typhon is the kind of evil being that everyone knows is a monster, but when talking to that monster, everyone simply forgets that fact until the monster does something that makes everyone remember, "Oh right... this monster is a terrible being who deserves hell..." Something Nioh has learned to always consciously think.

But which Nio hasn’t learned yet, since it depends 100% on you keeping that in mind at all times.

"Such a shame you feel that way, but we’ll see what the future holds, Nio."