The Outer God Needs Warmth-Chapter 144: Academy, you’re out of your mind (14)

Although it came out of the sewer, it wasn’t just pure water. Transparent water, as if a waterfall had turned sideways, flowed into the house on fire.

As if gravity were pulling sideways, the water burst out from the ground, soaking the entire building and flowing sideways.

This chapt𝓮r is updat𝒆d by ƒreeωebnovel.ƈom.

Not long after, the fire in the house died down, and a group of people, including Victoria, hurriedly ran out of the building.

Before Morris could approach her, a man who had come out from the side ran up in front of Victoria, kneeled, and pleaded, pointing to the adjacent building, saying that there was a child on top and that they couldn’t do anything because of the fire.

Victoria immediately headed in that direction.

Beatrice was busy evacuating the people from the company and the survivors to a distant place, while Morris just stood still, watching Victoria.

He was standing in the middle of the road, not doing anything.

I saw the world through the eyes of the harvester.

The five people working from a distance had also noticed something strange about Vern City. To be precise, almost everyone around was staring at Vern City.

The entire city of Vern was burning.

Thick black smoke was rising from all parts of Vern City. Just a moment ago, white smoke had been rising, but now it was not.

Even from the viewpoint of the five in the suburbs, there was talk of things happening.

For instance, when a fire truck enters, the same sudden acceleration accidents happen, or suddenly fires spread on the streets.

There were also stories about mages trying to put out the fire, but they were just running in place due to a lack of magical energy in the air.

Civilization had been paralyzed in an instant.

And in this situation, there were people who went inside, thinking that they should at least save the people.

Among them were the five harvesters. It wasn’t strange.

People who commit light evil are walking lightly as others do. In other words, at least in this country, it’s natural for people to move in order to help others.

At least for now.

People move, immersed in the collective, to save someone.

But if they get hurt doing that, it’s their own loss. No one will rescue them, and they’ll be treated as heroes at that time, but they’ll soon be forgotten.

In other words, for individuals, it’s a foolish act.

The correct thing for an individual to do in this situation is to stand back and think, “This is unfortunate. I hope someone comes and solves it.”

The problem is, this world doesn’t operate with such cold, fake rationality.

Social and mental gains sometimes outweigh physical, tangible losses, and there are beings who, like animals climbing a mountain, act on impulse.

Just like the carcass of a seal that starved to death while climbing a rock mountain in Antarctica for no reason.

Inexplicable impulses always exist.

In short,

People, both men and women, came toward the burning city of Vern.

They guided the escaping people to safety, tried to drag those stuck in the fire, pieced together horribly crushed body parts from traffic accidents, and kept the injured alive.

Meanwhile, Victoria seemed to have gotten used to it and was getting faster at using water to put out the fire on the buildings.

The number of people saved by people was increasing.

Of course, among those saved, not everyone acted normally. There were those who panicked and had seizures. Some would say, “Don’t save anyone, just save me,” or ask for items to be fetched.

It wasn’t because they were evil.

When reason is paralyzed, they just want to hold on to whatever they thought about most and scream, “I just want to live!”

The truth, however, is amidst the chaos.

There were people sneaking into the building to steal expensive items. In fact, among the people who had just gone into the building with water dripping from them, some were like that.

In such a situation, acting selfishly could be helpful.

If someone spoke to you, would anyone say anything if you just said you brought what you needed from your house?

Of course, such people are rare, but they definitely exist.

On the other hand, there were those who, not just waiting for Victoria, but also holding tools, moved to help strangers.

Some were rushing into burning buildings, drenched in water from the restroom, to rescue people, while others formed groups passing water buckets relay-style to put out the fire in non-burning buildings.

It was a chaotic situation.

Depending on where one focuses, people can be seen in different ways.

I quietly observed this.

It wasn’t my time to move yet.

Screams, shouting, cries, explosions, and various sounds echoed through the road as I waited for the right moment.

If there were only a few harvesters from the beginning, it would have been too few.

But if too many were made, the world would collapse.

So I had to move cautiously.

In truth, even without me, the key to this situation was already by my side.

That key was none other than Morris.

It seemed like a useless invention, but Morris’s machine didn’t leave residual magical energy. Of course, its output was much lower.

Instead of consuming ambient magical energy, it consumed human life force, solving the problem of insufficient output. The fatal flaw was that with each use, his life span shortened.

But, put another way, that machine could also absorb other people’s life force and inject it into him.

Of course, the efficiency was low, and it didn’t just add up.

But if he were to put hundreds of people into it and gain a year of life, anyone would do it.

Humans are cheap, after all.

But that would destroy morality. Humans would become mere commodities, and human rights would lose their value. The logic of extreme capitalism would trample on morality and stand above it.

That’s what we mean when we talk about a society depicted in faded memories of cyberpunk.

Or, before that happens, people may be treated as enemies worldwide.

But once something is created, it doesn’t easily disappear.

The world would be divided before and after the event where humans became fuel.

As I was anticipating Morris’s choice, I walked closer to him, and he seemed to notice me, speaking.

“Bell, wasn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“Can you solve this situation?”

As I mentioned earlier, it seemed like he was out of his mind, so I said it again.

“I’m not a god.”

It’s not that I can’t do it, but wouldn’t that break this world?

I can’t.

“You said you gave Tori the ability. Then share that power with others.”

“It’s random. I don’t know what kind of power they’ll have, or even who will get the power.”

I had a guess, though.

At my words, Morris looked up at Victoria, who was now flying in the sky. Water beads were stuck to her soles. She must have realized that water could float in the air and applied it.

“But, if it’s like this, Tori...”

At that moment, someone popped out.

It was a perfect setup for making her a hero.

In other words, she’s a toy for the public. If the hero becomes a group, it’s one thing, but as an individual, the hero is torn apart on the grounds of understanding and profit, left as a corpse, or stripped of their honor and trampled into the dirt.

Or they may use that honor to fall into an evil creature.

Victoria found a child whose half body was burned and stuck to the floor in a building some distance away and embraced them.

The child had serious burns on the left side of their body, and without treatment, they would die.

After Victoria, who was holding the dying child, came out, she suddenly stopped, not going down to the floor. She looked around, moving her gaze from side to side.

Was she looking for something?

At that moment, Victoria’s eyes locked on me.

Then, she flew toward me.

Splash.

Standing on the floor, Victoria, holding the child, bowed her head in front of me.

“Bell. Bell-nim. Please, save this child.”

She used formal speech.

Hehe.

She made the worst choice among the available options. The child, who could have been left as a corpse, was offered to the monster.

It was truly an excellent choice.

I said one last thing with my last bit of energy.

“You’ll regret this.”

But Victoria stared at me with unwavering eyes. Meaning, there was no need for words. I nodded and approached the child. My breathing was heavy, and the searing pain was so intense that I almost lost my mind.

But that didn’t stop me from making a contract.

“I will offer myself to you. In exchange, when you finish everything later, I’ll take everything you have. What do you think?”

I asked the child.

The child answered that they wanted to live.

The contract was made.

In an instant, the child’s skin swelled up, and like pottery breaking, a blue-skinned boy emerged from within.

“His skin is blue. Is something wrong...?”

Victoria looked at me with a confused expression. I shook my head.

“I don’t know why, but those who receive deadly wounds and make a contract turn blue.”

And while I was at it, I looked around and said.

“If you want to heal the wound no matter what happens, I’ll make the contract.”

The opportunity came, and I grabbed it. Among those who saw this scene, the first ones to rush over were the parents with children.

They offered their child to me, and I made the contract with the child.

Half of them had white skin, and half had blue skin. But whether they were burned, lost limbs, or had their eyes crushed,

If they stayed alive, they would return to their original form.

It was instant when the child changed into a harvester. And it was easy for the injured to decide to make a contract with me.

In an instant, people gathered around me, and the air was filled with screams of “Save me!” and cries of gratitude.

In the chaos, some pushed more seriously to save themselves or their children and ended up causing someone else’s death.

But I liked those people, so I immediately turned them into harvesters.

As the sun set, the night passed, and the sun rose again, I kept creating harvesters there.

By the time a day had passed, things had somewhat stabilized, and firefighters and soldiers came in with huge equipment to clean up the inside of the city.

With that, the incident was more or less concluded.

And I got exactly 9,190 harvesters.