It reeked.
The stench was unlike anything I'd ever experienced, so overwhelming that I instinctively lowered my sense of smell.
My sense of smell, which had been on par with a dog's, dropped down to that of an ordinary person.
Even so, the lingering discomfort of that once-embedded stench refused to fade.
Wind brushed against my skin.
Even that wind could hardly be called pleasant.
To put it bluntly, it was cold.
What reached my ears was a cacophony of sounds.
The chatter of people passing by.
The exhaust noise of cars.
Music seeping out from a department store.
In the distance, a cityscape — well, not quite a city, and not exactly rural either. That awkward in-between, with a station-front of decent but unremarkable size.
I had returned to Japan.
Among the tasks I'd delegated to my clones, the highest priority had been making transfers to Earth possible.
There were various reasons for that.
Games, manga, snacks, cup noodles.
Wait...
I can't come up with a single decent reason?
Well, whatever.
First things first — I walked into a convenience store.
For the record, my current appearance wasn't my usual robe outfit.
I'd changed into something that wouldn't look out of place in Japan, rather than that full-blown fantasy getup.
It seemed to be winter right now, so I went with something fitting: a white coat, a skirt, and boots.
Being entirely white myself, on top of wearing all-white clothes, I stood out quite a bit.
I could have changed the color, but that was a pain.
I was going back soon anyway, so as long as I didn't stand out enough to get the police called on me, it was fine.
Having my eyes closed the whole time might be a little dangerous, though.
I casually picked up a magazine at the convenience store.
Then I checked the issue number.
Seeing the date, I felt a mild surprise despite having expected it.
Over five years had passed by Earth's reckoning over there, but only half a year had elapsed here.
The flow of time was different.
Special relativity?
Well, I was just throwing the term around — I don't actually know anything about special relativity.
In a world with magic power and all that, maybe worrying about physics is pointless anyway.
So, half a year, huh.
No wonder the scenery matched what I remembered. I'd thought it was strange that there was absolutely no change in the buildings — after all, you'd expect some alterations after five years, but there were none.
When I checked, sure enough, my guess was correct.
I also leafed through a weekly manga magazine, bought nothing, and left the convenience store.
Hm?
Why didn't I buy anything?
I'm completely broke, you know.
Plus, the store clerk was shooting me the most suspicious looks as I kept reading manga with my eyes closed the whole time.
So I beat a swift retreat.
Yeah.
X-ray vision still worked perfectly on Earth.
It wasn't the case that magic was unusable. If magic couldn't be used at all, then I wouldn't have been able to transfer here in the first place, so that was obviously a no-go from the moment I arrived safely.
A lot of novels have settings where Earth has no magic power, so magic never developed, but that doesn't seem to be the case.
Why magic didn't develop here — I have no idea.
Maybe someone was pulling strings behind the scenes, but that's not my problem.
And that's exactly where I intended to head — the person who seemed to be pulling those strings.
Needless to say, to D's place.
The number one reason I came to Earth was to meet D in person.
Entertainment and snacks were a distant second.
I'm serious.
I knew of D's existence, but that was all.
We had never met.
The idea of becoming someone's vassal when I'd never even met them — my pride wouldn't allow it.
I'd always despised the very notion of serving under someone.
But even if, hypothetically, it came to that against my will, I'd at least want to serve someone I could respect.
So I needed to see D with my own eyes.
To determine whether this being was worthy of my service.
In terms of power, I could never win. That much was certain.
Even being what they were, D was the creator of something as impossibly advanced as the System — a grand-scale magic construct.
Having touched even a fraction of it, I'd glimpsed its artful perfection.
That alone told me everything about the difference in our abilities.
And even though I'd ascended to godhood, I was still the lowest tier of newly-ascended gods who barely knew how to wield my own power. Not a one-in-a-million chance of winning.
Besides, if I took the fragmentary information and D's own revelations at face value, then D possessed power even among gods that was particularly exceptional.
Assuming I took those claims at face value, that is.
So power wasn't what I was evaluating.
Whether D matched my vibe — that was everything.
If it didn't, then so be it.
I could fake obedience for a while and escape, or bide my time and overthrow them through sheer growth. That would be up to my mood.
In the end, same as always.
I walked toward my destination.
The familiar scent of earth was completely absent, replaced by a jumble of unpleasant odors clogging my nose.
Endless stretches of concrete roads.
City streets that felt suffocating.
None of it stirred much emotion in me.
I had no real sense of having come back home.
Well, naturally.
If anything, I felt a vague irritation.
Oh — a beef bowl restaurant.
Ahh, I wanted some.
But I had no money.
D, how about an allowance? If you gave me one, I might provisionally recognize you as my master. Yeah, maybe.
From the station front, I headed into the residential area.
Compared to the station front, people became sparse and shops disappeared.
Further in from there.
Behind the shadows of houses, standing quietly — a single home.
A completely unremarkable single-family house, roughly ten years old.
I opened the gate and walked up to the front door.
Next to the entrance, there was a potted plant. I slipped my finger into the gap between the roots of the ornamental tree growing from it.
There was a key hidden there.
Using it, I opened the front door.
The house was perfectly silent.
Right inside, there was a staircase leading to the second floor.
Beside it, a hallway that led to the back of the first floor.
Without hesitation, I went upstairs.
At the top of the stairs, I opened the door right beside me.
The faint sound of a PC filtered from inside the room.
On the screen, a game was playing — a bald, middle-aged male character was elegantly dodging enemy attacks.
With every dodge, the clacking of the controller echoed through the room.
"Welcome. Or should I say — welcome home?"
The girl gripping the controller spoke without turning around.
"This is my first time here, so I think 'welcome' is more accurate."
Strangely, the words came easily.
This might have been my first proper conversation with anyone other than the Demon King.
And I understood the reason why.
"I should say 'nice to meet you,' right?
The girl turned around.
The face in my memory — my own face.
A girl who was my spitting image.
The only differences were that her hair was down, and her expression was slightly different.
"Nice to meet you. My stand-in."
That being who was my original spoke in a flat, expressionless voice.