This Life, I Will Be the Protagonist-Chapter 1086 Divine Game: My World31 Nuclear Flash

"She just passed through Nuclear Flash. Are you sure you want to leave now? You are not even curious about what she is going to write?" Ashveil called out to Boiling Orange, who was actually getting ready to leave at such a moment. It was rare for Ashveil to sit down calmly and watch the spectacle together with Boiling Orange.

Boiling Orange hopped away, muttering nonstop. "Oh, I need to go ask. A world that has already been reconstructed should have its old dock closed. How can there still be sighs?"

"You are afraid to see what she writes about Nuclear Flash," Ashveil said with certainty.

The orange that had always been wrapped in flames changed shape. Unlike when he worked in the Demon Metropolis and had to keep a form too short to even reach the table, he turned into a tiny figure barely half a meter tall.

Spiky orange hair, childish overalls that always made Ashveil and Ironclaw laugh at him for never growing up, with fruit patterns printed on the fabric. Only Deceitful Bloom would praise them as cute. The problem was that anything a Vineborne said should never be taken seriously.

Still, this was the style the Fruitling race loved most.

He did not turn back. With his head lowered, he said to Ashveil behind him, "I already know My World well enough. I do not need to see it written."

"I understand."

"I am not afraid."

"Mm. Hurry to the tavern. The others have been there a lot lately."

"..."

"I am sorry, Boiling Orange. I should not have said that."

"I am not afraid of her writing about Nuclear Flash. I am afraid that when she writes about fruit, there will happen to be citrus."

...

Does a world have boundaries?

Yes. Not only does it have boundaries, its center is split cleanly in two by two enormous pale violet waterfalls.

The waterfalls stand a hundred meters apart. If you look down along them, you will see the same violet sky below as above. Between the waterfalls, there is nothing at all. Is that space, or the stars?

It often makes me feel as though my world is a bowl broken neatly in half.

I picked up the dining bowl I had just dropped and shattered into two semicircles, tapped them together, and said to my friend, "Like this."

This was not baseless speculation. Books say that if you walk away from the waterfalls, all the way to the edge of the world, you will see a towering mountain wall. The wall has a curve, yet no one has ever climbed to its top.

If you follow the waterfalls outward instead, when you reach the end you will see half mountain wall and half sky.

That really looks like a bowl.

My friend asked, "Then why use waterfalls to separate us? I have always wanted to meet the fruits on the other side."

I happened to have my own theory. "We are probably different varieties. That side looks cold. Thick layers of ice slide down the waterfalls every second."

"Then I prefer our weather."

"So do I."

Dawn was coming. The gathering had to end. Not just us. All around, other Fruitlings who had been chatting together did the same.

Everyone turned back into fruit and bounced away, returning to soil, water, tree branches, or tying themselves to a branch with a thread and letting the wind carry them through the air.

That is the Fruitling way. At night, we turn into little people and gather to talk. When morning comes, we find the environment that feels most comfortable, rest, bask in the sun, and see if we can grow a little more.

Those Fruitlings that mature but fail to awaken become our food, because they cannot speak.

It sounds cruel, does it not, to eat kin who failed to awaken?

But there is a perfect solution. We never eat the same variety as ourselves.

For example, I do not eat NightFury.

No one ever set this rule. No one taught us not to eat our own kind. It simply happens naturally. It feels like we are born unable to consume our own variety.

Perhaps because every Fruitling regularly releases magical fruit spores. When carried by the wind to suitable places, they grow into the same fruit. In other words, they are our offspring, or close or distant relatives.

We do not eat them. When other Fruitlings eat us, we usually do not feel much sorrow either. This ties into a harsh reality. The probability that fruit spores will give birth to a Fruitling is extremely low. If Nuclear Flash gains a hundred new Fruitlings in a year, it is already considered prosperous.

That also means Nuclear Flash is full of every kind of fruit. When something is everywhere, it stops being precious.

The only inconvenience is that this method of reproduction causes fruits of the same type to cluster in the same regions. That is why Fruitlings travel far once a month to gather and store enough food to last about a month, then return home.

Fortunately, transportation is easy for Fruitlings. Since Nuclear Flash has waterfalls that split the world in two, those waters naturally have sources. Rivers of all sizes run throughout the entire world.

They are like the veins of the world, dense and interconnected. You can reach anywhere by riding a leaf. The current is fast, and it is not one way. Every morning, the rivers reverse, the waterfalls pause, and we can see the fruits on the other side of Nuclear Flash.

At night, you do not need to worry about darkness. When the moon rises, every river glows violet, illuminating all of Nuclear Flash.

Many years later, I heard other beings talk about fairy tales. That was when I thought there could be no world in the universe more like a fairy tale than Nuclear Flash.

We were carefree. We were the fairy tale itself.

Not long after hearing those stories, a restaurant owner brought me a bowl of fruit salad, half of it specially chilled with rare fruit.

I shamefully let two tears fall. Damn it. There will never be another dish in the universe more like Nuclear Flash than that bowl of fruit salad.

In every sense of the word.

It felt like returning to the moment the game descended upon Nuclear Flash. As if we had been carefully prepared as a beginner gift pack for someone.

An entire world of fruit, reduced to one bowl of fruit salad. Even if you awaken a divine talent, what resistance can you offer? Clearing the lowest level dungeon takes us seven days.

But something even more cruel awaited us.

Fate, or the gods, left the Fruitlings a single, brutally cruel path to survival.

Racial Talent

Delicious: Consuming Fruitlings that failed to awaken restores a large amount of health and mana. Consuming Fruitlings of the same race slightly increases the level of divine talent. This increase can stack.

Do we surrender, or do we grasp this one lifeline?

The NightFury Fruitlings lined up before the strongest NightFury Fruitling among them. Everyone thoughtfully turned into fruit form and leapt, one by one, into her hands. She was the only NightFury Fruitling with an S rank divine talent.

She was the most gifted NightFury Fruitling. The bravest and most unyielding. The one who fought dungeon monsters desperately every day after dungeons appeared.

Rather than waiting to die at the hands of monsters after dungeons unlocked, it was better to be eaten by our own kind. Perhaps it would give birth to a supreme powerhouse who could protect Nuclear Flash. As long as one Fruitling survived, more could be born in the future.

One NightFury bounced forward to the front of the line. She opened her eyes wide and looked at me as I sobbed and bit into the NightFury fruit. Clumsily, she tried to comfort me.

"Do not cry. Can you satisfy my curiosity? Is NightFury tasty?"

"Sob... it is tasty."

"Is it sweet or sour?"

"...Sweet."

I lied. It was unbearably bitter. NightFury is the most bitter fruit in the world.

Nuclear Flash