The moment he entered the Sea of Imaginary Numbers again, it naturally drew Tiamat's attention once more.
After all, Rovi's current existence had been remade by Tiamat. He bore the mark of the Primordial Mother of the Mesopotamian plain, so it was only natural that the instant he entered, she would sense him.
Yes—Rovi had completed an ultimate transformation, but his defeat of Zeus had relied on a trick. In truth, he was still only at the level of the upper ranks among chief gods, the standard of a God-King.
Weaker than Zeus, and even more so than Tiamat.
He had always been inferior to her to begin with, and on top of that, he carried her mark. Not to mention that after Zeus had "forced" their separation, Tiamat had been searching all this time for some way to enter the present world and find him.
And now he had come. Tiamat was both delighted and overjoyed.
So through the vast, empty imaginary sea echoed the primordial goddess's bright, delighted cry.
Once again, she lifted Rovi into her palm.
Beneath him was still that softness, cloudlike to the touch. Rovi stared fixedly at the enormous goddess before him, now made all the more striking by comparison with his own human-sized form.
Her long hair still spilled loose like seawater, the horns atop her head spiraling back behind her. Her exquisite face gleamed with starlit eyes. Her full chest rose and fell with her "breathing," her waist slender, widening beneath into soft, rounded curves, while an inverted triangle that swept upward covered a single corner with dragon scales, hanging taut as if lightly drawn upward.
Her legs were pressed together as she stood, the insides of her thighs squeezing against each other, slightly deformed by the pressure. Her calves fell straight down into a black sea of chaos opened beneath her.
Tiamat... was very happy.
Rovi did not know how much time had passed for Tiamat's own senses after he left, but he could feel her emotions at this moment.
It was the pure, spotless happiness of seeing him again after so long apart.
But after that happiness came worry she could not hold back.
Because she could tell there was something strange about his current state.
He was "dead."
Not dead in the way of the present world. Not the kind of death from the Age of Gods, where only the soul remained and entered the Underworld.
But complete, total annihilation.
And yet he was clearly here.
"My situation... is a little unusual." His inability to die was something he had no choice about, but now that they had met again, Rovi had no intention of avoiding the subject.
Tiamat had always treated him well, and he felt quite favorably toward this goddess too.
That was enough.
So he told Tiamat everything that had happened on Greek soil.
Tiamat still could not speak in human words, but compared to before, she seemed to understand much more about humanity.
She understood him.
The Seed of Chaos? Her eyes held confusion.
"Yeah, the Seed of Chaos." Rovi nodded. "This so-called chaos is really a 'seed' of both order and disorder."
Atlantis had been a silicon-based civilization that existed in the cosmos.
Its earliest life had been born from a mass of fire.
The flames granted life to machinery, and the machinery drew in energy in turn, causing the seed to flourish and blaze even brighter.
Within the information the seed had given Rovi were countless staggering images: vast Machine Gods, unchecked and insatiable, draining the cores of planets; extinguishing one world after another across the sea of stars; erasing one stretch of galaxy after another; using that immense energy to nurture seed after seed.
The seed was the source from which the Machine Gods gained life, and also the core of Atlantis itself.
Their civilization had been awe-inspiring and majestic, expanding at a pace that almost never ceased. But precisely because of that unchecked growth, it eventually brought about the collapse of the universal energy chain. That civilization, which had developed to its absolute peak, suffered catastrophic damage. In the end, only a single fleet remained, carrying the last seed of that civilization as it fled that universe.
That seed represented evolution.
It could absorb all forms of energy and sustain its own existence.
Whoever possessed it would also be able to let their own machine body undergo continual metamorphosis.
"That's about it." Rovi explained everything to Tiamat in detail. In a way, he was also hoping that this primordial mother goddess might be able to offer him some help.
As the incarnation of the primordial sea born in the planet's earliest days of gestation, Tiamat's knowledge had to reach far beyond his own.
Maybe she would know something.
If he could not resolve the seed's influence, Rovi feared he might never be able to die.
With that thought in mind, he found that Tiamat gave him no answer.
The vast, empty imaginary sea suddenly fell into silence, because Tiamat had vanished. Without him noticing, that enormous figure had become a "divine statue" formed from surging black-and-red seawater turned solid.
And Tiamat herself had appeared in front of Rovi.
Only the size of an ordinary person.
She even seemed somewhat slight and petite.
The ability to freely change her size was something Tiamat had always possessed, but this was the first time she had shown it before Rovi.
He froze for a moment, then saw Tiamat slowly open her arms.
She embraced him.
In truth, she had never wanted to question him too much. She was only worried about his condition.
What she really wanted to say was simply this:
"Welcome back."
"I'm glad you're still alive, and I'm glad that I'm still alive too."
The primordial goddess wrapped both arms around Rovi's back and held him tight.
To her, the very fact that there was someone who could understand her words, someone who could keep her company within this imaginary sea, was itself proof that she was alive.
As the primordial mother goddess, Tiamat's attitude toward Rovi had always been somewhat hard to define.
She had once remade his existence, so part of her saw him the way one might see a child. But because Rovi possessed a primordial power even older than her own, he also stirred in her the impulse of facing a companion, someone walking the same path.
Complicated and hard to name, yet filled with sincere goodwill.
Rovi could feel it.
It was just that... wasn't this a little too close?
It really was close—intimately so. As Tiamat held him, she also pressed her whole body against his. That petite figure rose slightly onto her toes. Her soft fullness pressed against his chest, her exquisite face tilted up beside his ear, and though she meant nothing by it, even that hidden place was plainly visible.
Only a single small scale covered it, thin and delicate, with faint light spilling over it, as if set within filigree.
The goddess's lovely, delicate body also radiated astonishing warmth.
The softness pressing against him was impossible to ignore.
"Aaaaa..." Tiamat parted her red lips and looked at him in puzzlement.
She was asking what was wrong.
"N-no, nothing." Rovi turned his eyes aside and drew a deep breath, forcing down the impulses of a body that, primordial though it might be, was still human.
As long as you're fine. Tiamat smiled again.
But not only did she fail to move away, she pressed even closer, and that soft, wonderful sensation felt as though it were pressing directly onto the nerves of the mortal brain inside Rovi's human body.
The sage of Uruk's breathing stopped for an instant.
It was truly hard to describe what he was feeling.
Still, perhaps sensing his discomfort, Tiamat, though overjoyed for the moment, quickly loosened her arms.
Her crimson lips parted, and she spoke words that startled Rovi with delight:
"The seed... I know it."
"I know Atlantis, and Chaos... because I've seen them before."
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T/N: uhhh no need for the [talking] format for tiamat when she's in this smaller form teehee
uhh decided to bring this back mostly because why hnot im bored