The ship shudders, groaning with ear-piercing metallic screeches as if about to be crushed into scrap by the invisible pressure outside. We are being hurled upwards with insane acceleration, making my internal organs want to go on strike and spew out of my mouth.

  Beyond the thick tempered glass is an indigo ocean, thick, viscous, and sludge-like like waste oil. The subconscious current churns, roaring down like a flood, carrying tons of fragmented memories and unfinished dreams, frantically trying to drown this tiny ship into the eternal abyss.

  "Quite a sight, isn't it?" I swirl the wine glass in my hand, cross my legs, and cast a glance out the window.

  That dark blue ocean is teeming with things that shouldn't exist. Floating in that viscous muck are tens of thousands of deformed lumps of flesh thrashing about. They are distorted, twisted, sometimes swelling like malignant tumors, sometimes elongating and wriggling like giant tapeworms, desperately swimming against the rapid current. They look like flawed embryos discarded by creation into a dumpster, hopelessly trying to find their way back to the womb.

  "What... what the hell is that?" Kaito presses his face against the glass, his breath fogging a small patch, his voice trembling like a string about to snap. "Can anything actually live in this godforsaken place, Itsuki-sama?"

  "Hmph," I glance at the chaotic mass outside with disdain. "Anomalies."

  "Huh?"

  "Call them Anomalies-in-training before they make the cut," I click my tongue, tapping my finger rhythmically on the velvet armrest. "They are trying to swim up from deeper layers, probably Layer 3 or 4, to surface in consciousness and find a form. The lucky ones become urban legends to haunt humanity; the weak ones get crushed by the current, returning as raw material for this hotpot."

  Kaito shudders, his gaze sliding down to where the deep blue abyss swallows all light, deep and bottomless like a gaping maw.

  "Down there..." He mumbles, swallowing hard. "If we just kept plunging down... would we hit the bottom?"

  Reo, sitting with legs crossed, flipping through a flashy fashion magazine he pulled from somewhere. He looks up upon hearing this, pushing his sunglasses down his nose.

  "Yeah, kid. But that bottom is in a depth you definitely don't want to visit," he replies, voice lazy. "If my memory hasn't aged, that great sewer is the Noosphere."

  "Bingo," I nod. "The Noosphere of the entire Multiverse."

  "But it is best to kill that travel idea right now. The deeper you go, the pressure of the subconscious will crush your consciousness faster than a hydraulic press crushing a watermelon. To reach the bottom of the Noosphere, you have to pass through millions of filter layers like this."

  I point out the window, where a bizarrely shaped monster is torn in half by the pressure of the current, vanishing into the void.

  "Get down there and your soul will dissolve into primordial mush before you can remember your mother's name. Even the Prime Deities wouldn't dare venture there, let alone this scrawny fox body of mine."

  I sigh, gazing distantly into the void. "Even so, the Nexus has never lacked daydreamers wanting to dive into that cesspool to find 'truth'. The result... well, the missing deities list just gets longer every year."

  Kaito pales, but the inherent curiosity of youth seems to always win over fear.

  "Is there... something valuable there, Itsuki-sama? Why do they risk their lives diving into the trap like that?"

  "Because it is the cradle, kid," I lean back in the chair, closing my eyes to enjoy the violent shaking of the ship like a massage chair. "The Noosphere is the starting point for us gods."

  "Huh...?" Kaito's eyes widen to their limit, jaw dropping. "Gods... are born from the Noosphere?"

  "Don't tell me you haven't read the employee manual carefully?" I open one eye, looking at the kid with disappointment. "Surely you must have vaguely guessed the tangled connection between Gods and Anomalies?"

  "Yes sir, according to the documents on GodPedia... humans are the parents who give birth to both Gods and Anomalies. Anomalies are the bastard children, formed from primal fears, pure negative emotions suppressed and discarded."

  "...And Gods are born from beliefs, faith, and the intentional worship of the collective. Because they are nourished by ordered adoration, Gods are much stronger, more stable, and have much more logical thinking than Anomalies."

  "Not bad," Reo closes the magazine, smiling with satisfaction seeing his student finally memorized the lesson. He interlaces his fingers, concluding with a technical term encapsulating the nature of both species:

  "In short, the common name for all entities born from that collective idea is..."

  "Egregore."

  Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.

  "If you take that technical term out on the street and shout it in the face of those old guys over at Olympus, be prepared to eat lightning."

  I huff, tapping my claws on the polished wooden table, visibly displeased.

  "In theory, it is absolutely correct. Us, the Anomalies, or anything spawned from the crucible of human consciousness, all share the Egregore label. But try telling a god that he is of the same breed as those viscous monstrosities out there? It is no different from telling a prime minister that he is also a primate like a monkey in the zoo."

  Kaito scratches his head, face scrunching up like a monkey eating chili. "Then... how do you distinguish? If they come from the same oven, why..."

  "Weight, kid."

  I cut in, pointing out the window where the deep blue current churns with deformed masses of flesh.

  "Negative emotions, fears, are just garbage down here. Humans fear for a moment then forget, or that fear dances around without form. So they can't sink but keep floating, clumping together in these upper layers like oil scum on sewer water."

  I clench my fist, simulating a compressed mass of matter.

  "But Faith is different. It is tempered over thousands of years, packaged by rituals, scriptures, and ordered collective worship. Belief has structure, has weight. It is heavy as lead, piercing through every filter layer to fall straight to the bottom of the abyss."

  Reo folds the magazine, tossing it onto the table with a thud.

  "So that is it. Trash floats to the top, while the essence sinks to the very bottom."

  "But there is a snag, Boss Fox. If you guys are born from that bottom, I should see you... swimming up, right? Like those Anomaly tadpoles trying to surface. Yet that current is full of monsters, absolutely no sign of any newborn god."

  "Business class tickets are different," I shrug, leaning back. "Why waste energy struggling with the current only to be crushed?"

  "Private 'elevator' mechanism?"

  "Something like that," I click my tongue. "But how the transport process from the bottom of the Noosphere to the surface works, even the Board of Directors is clueless. The academic circles of the Nexus have been arguing loudly for millions of years and still haven't finalized the answer. We just know it exists."

  "Interesting, so you don't know when you appear in reality? Then how do you know you were born in the Noosphere, what if you popped out of some dimension?"

  "The R&D guys have tons of fancy measuring equipment for research, not just guessing. They measure the concentration of Faith Points, forecast the output of gods about to come out of the oven down to the decimal. But how to leapfrog from point A to point B without passing through the middle... beats me."

  "Woah..." Kaito gasps, eyes sparkling like he just heard a fairy tale. "Sounds so cool! So... Itsuki-sama, do you remember anything? The moment you were born? Like early memories at the bottom of the sea?"

  "Stop daydreaming, kid. Cut the whimsy."

  I tap my claw lightly on my forehead.

  "Only when an Egregore leaves the subconscious ocean and touches reality does true consciousness arise. I remembered that my first moment was standing in a shrine, surrounded by incense smoke."

  "Hey Boss Fox, your 'faith-powered' GPS has a problem. I smell something burning."

  Reo's sarcastic grumbling slaps me in the face, forcing me out of my reverie to press my eyes against the tempered glass.

  The calm dark blue ocean from before has evaporated completely. Enveloping the ship now is a bruised purple, throbbing like a swollen clot on necrotic flesh. Scattered throughout the space are jagged, zigzagging black streaks, looking as if someone took a knife and slashed the canvas of the universe, then hastily stitched it back with white thread, leaving lumpy scars oozing evil light.

  My tail jerks, fur on my neck standing up.

  "What the..." I mutter, claws tapping on the control panel. "Why did we drift into this scrap yard?"

  "Are you really lost?" Reo crosses his arms, raising an eyebrow over his sunglasses. "Don't tell me you plan to drop us here to save on gas money?"

  "Shut up," I click my tongue, hands moving fast over the hologram screen flashing red. "The autopilot got a bit of interference. Just technical glitch. We haven't crashed, so we're still kicking."

  "Scared the hell out of us," Reo sighs, relaxing into the cushioned seat. "Looking at that tattered space, I thought something was about to pop out and swallow the whole ship."

  "There really is something," I drop a light comment while steering. "...but those Anomalies out there aren't old enough."

  "Eh?..." Kaito, about to drink water, chokes, face pale as a ghost. "Sir... don't scare me..."

  I turn back, baring a small fang in a smirk.

  "The place we are passing through is an old battlefield. A bloody historical relic from 500 fiscal years ago. At that time, the HR department of the Nexus had to work overtime for a whole century to make up for the number of gods wiped out here."

  "Five hundred years ago?" Reo frowns, curiosity overtaking fear. "Where were you then? Don't tell me you were cowering under a table?"

  "I was still hitting the books at the Academy, not old enough to go to the front," I reply, voice trembling slightly recalling the deadly news of that time. "But Zhen Shan was different. That Tiger guy was actually a senior of mine, graduated not long before he had to drag his carcass to the front. Rumor has it his platoon went in with ten people, nine and a half never returned. Surviving was a miracle."

  "That sounds strange," Reo says. "Gods have to go to school too?"

  "If we don't study, how do we get qualified?" I retort. "Don't be ridiculous."

  Kaito shivers, hugging his shoulders. The scene of an entire divine army being crushed is too much for the boy's worldview.

  "Itsuki-sama... what could kill gods in mass like that?"

  "Outer Gods."

  "Outer Gods?" Reo grimaces. "Sounds like a B-grade sci-fi movie title."

  "Well, it is a horror movie," I shrug. "Outer Gods are our natural predators."

  I point out at the purple scars in space outside the window.

  "Who is so formidable? Didn't the Chairmen, CEOs of the big corporations step up to solve it?"

  "They did step up, of course," I sneer. "Without those 'big shots' taking action, this whole Nexus would be flat ground by now. As for who did it, hmm..."

  I bring my face close to theirs, lowering my voice to the lowest level:

  "Azathoth."

  "Luckily the Prime Deities combined forces to kick his ass out of reality's boundaries. Killing him is a long shot. That chaotic mass of flesh is probably still wandering asleep somewhere out there."

  Kaito huddles in the corner of the seat, face drained of all color. Seeing this, Reo shakes his head wearily:

  "Can you stop telling ghost stories? Look at the kid, he's about to faint."

  "What? I'm just spreading historical knowledge," I shrug innocently, then glance at the countdown clock on the control panel ticking madly.

  "Anyway, hold on tight. Class is over. Preparing to enter reality in 3... 2... 1..."