"Oh?"
"Can power only be given by 'one' god?" Dulmi asked with a grin, resting his chin on his hand. "Could I believe in a bunch of gods at once and get lucky enough to receive power from all of them?"
Benjamin: "..."
He suddenly wondered how his two old friends had raised this kid.
While many details showed Dulmi was indeed an "unusual" child, his carefree curiosity was truly nerve-wracking.
"Alright, Uncle Benjamin, I'm just joking," Dulmi said, "But there are so many believers. Even if just a small fraction received power, it should be thousands. Why haven't I ever met any before?"
He wasn't counting those from the Outer Zone. He meant in the daylight world.
In Nightingale, the existence of many churches, associations, and related organizations was common knowledge. Some of Dulmi 's middle school classmates would go pray at church after school.
Dulmi wasn't one of them, but he knew these things existed.
...But before this, he'd never heard of "exchanging faith for power." After becoming an adult, it was as if the world had torn off another mask for him.
"Because the existence of power is secret," Benjamin patiently explained. "So, only a small number of humans can have this honor—knowing about this power, and receiving it. Otherwise, it would bring misfortune."
Dulmi still didn't understand: "Misfortune? What kind of misfortune?"
Benjamin replied, "Just think of it as a rule, Dulmi . You'll gradually learn about… those things in the future."
Dulmi wanted to dig deeper, perhaps inheriting his parents' scholarly style of relentlessly pursuing questions. But he looked at Benjamin and asked a different question instead: "Do you have this kind of power?"
"Me?" Benjamin shook his head with a smile. "Of course not. I don't believe in any gods either."
Dulmi tilted his head slightly in confusion, wondering why Benjamin turned into that at night.
Was the daytime Benjamin lying, or were all humans different at night?
Benjamin looked at Dulmi and asked in a lowered voice, "So, little Dulmi , do you want to gain power too?"
"Just curious," Dulmi replied.
"You could ask the bell-ringer in the square," Benjamin said. "He'd be willing to test your talent. The followers of the [Chronology] aren't very strict about it."
"...Okay. But you know so much."
"When you're older, you'll gradually learn about these things too," Benjamin sighed. "People just don't like talking about them."
"Why?"
Benjamin seemed to answer a different question: "What drifts in from the sea isn't just wealth and power, but death and disaster too."
........
So, before evening, Dulmi went back to Nightingale's square.
He found an old bell-ringer by the clock tower. The tower was grand and majestic, but the bell-ringer was frail with age. Years of bell-ringing had made him hard of hearing. Dulmi had to shout to explain why he was there.
The bell-ringer nodded and took out an old pocket watch. He asked Dulmi to touch it.
The watch's hands didn't move.
The bell-ringer shook his head and said, "You don't have the talent, young man."
Dulmi wasn't particularly disappointed.
He thought, [Sea Mirror ]and [Chronology] were both ruled out.
He bid farewell to the bell-ringer, who turned to climb the tower to ring the evening bell as he had countless times before.
Dulmi stood alone in the square, watching the pale green light burst from the setting sun in the distance, sweeping across the world. As the bell's toll ended, everything became quiet and desolate.
He stretched and muttered to himself, "Looks like today is 'free.'"
Today, when the Outer Zone descended, he was alone, not greeting its arrival with anyone else.
In that moment, it was as if the world had forgotten him. No one would remember him, only seeing him as a strange outsider. He was like a shadow existing only in the Outer Zone, a ghost with no origin or destination, drifting lonely.
Dulmi glanced to the side and noticed the clock tower had vanished entirely.
He wasn't surprised, as this happened often. Everything in the Outer Zone was fragmented and chaotic. Sometimes things were one way, sometimes completely different.
Every night, he'd encounter a brand new Outer Zone.
Now in the square, the clock tower was gone, the beautiful fountain had turned into a muddy swamp, the grand sculptures crawled with rotting maggots, and the shadows of benches danced freely in the moonlight. In the chilly sea air, faint, distant singing could be heard—today, the merpeople in the sea were rambling with their songs again.
He also heard noisy sounds carried by the sea breeze from the harbor.
It seemed like... "preparing to depart"?