“It’s the orphanage where my father grew up. He was a foundling…” To my mounting horror, I saw a baby basket with a cute infant inside it materialize in front of the building. I recognized those features. “No way! My dad can’t be a sentient space rock!”
“Why don’t we sit down and try to watch the rest of it as calmly as possible?”
He helped me pick up my dropped snacks, and we sat back down. He took my hand and squeezed it, offering his support as we silently watched the movie fast-forward to when my dad grew up and left the orphanage in Sweden to seek his fortune abroad.
I couldn’t believe my eyes. “What the..? Are there aliens on Earth?”
The projector showed a series of still pictures showing my father with some strange-looking people. First, there were transparent, ghostly presences that he took a package from and delivered to a tree in a swamp. Second, he drew some kind of magic circle in an empty basement. Third, he took dictation from what looked like a green blob of slime, writing down the message using a silver stylus on a jade tablet, which he then threw inside a volcano.
The places he went to weren’t familiar. Were they even on Earth?
Then, I sat up straight on my chair as my mother’s picture flashed on the screen. She was, as usual, radiantly beautiful.
“There she is,” I said with a sigh, gesturing at her photograph. “My mother. She actually looks even better in person.”
I was quite familiar with the next series of photos shown since they were in one of my mother’s numerous photo albums. Suddenly, I remembered that all of those albums had disappeared after their deaths in a car accident. Was it because they were preparing this slideshow presentation?
The photos told the story of their romance, which, of course, I already knew by heart. There were pictures of them dating, getting engaged, and marrying at a simple ceremony at the Registry of Marriages in Singapore.
It was basically a family slideshow now as the timeline progressed to my mother’s pregnancy and my birth.
“That’s you? You were such a beautiful baby!” said Prince Baiyu. He was staring up at the domed ceiling with a rapturous look on his face, and he even made several cooing sounds at the cuter pictures of my younger self.
“Aren’t you even going to mention all the weird things in the pictures? The cars? The airplanes, computers, and stuff?”
“I don’t know what those things are, but I know you were adorable.”
“I was, wasn’t I?” I was bewildered when the slide show ended with me in my teens. The projector stuttered to a halt, and the screen went dark. “Hey, wait a minute, that doesn’t answer any of my questions. So my father is a rock, what does this mean?”
Prince Baiyu turned to me. “It means you’re the child of a god.”
“A god?”
He shrugged and patted me on the head. “His nickname was ‘GodIAm,’ which would seem to indicate that he regarded himself as a deity.”
I frowned. No matter how much I thought about it, that just didn’t make sense. “But there was nothing extraordinary about him! I’m sure he was fully human. I mean, whenever I caught a cold, he caught it, too. I’ve seen him bruised, bleeding, and there was this one time he accidentally fell into a pit of dung! That’s a god?”
Prince Baiyu’s lips twitched. “Think back. There must have been a few signs.”
I put the snack packets and drink bottles away while I thought about it. “I honestly can’t think of any.”
“None at all? Perhaps he’s a god who descended to the mortal world to experience the transient nature of life.”
I looked up at the dark dome. “I think, based on what we saw, that my father is a very minor type of god. Maybe he can’t do much.”
“Is that what’s bothering you?”
“No. I’m upset that he never told me! Why the mystery? And if I was sent to your world by my own father, why wasn't I told why? Where is he now? Is my mother really dead?” That last part got me a little choked up, and my eyes misted over. Seeing the pictures of all three of us happy and smiling, traveling all over the world together, had affected me more than I first realized.
Prince Baiyu put an arm around me, and I buried my face in his neck. After crying for what seemed like an eternity, we got up and left the room.
When we passed through the door, instead of ending up back in the bell tower's portal, we found ourselves in the Mysterious Glade, where Eggy was rolling around in his egg form.
“Hey!” With a glad cry, I ran to catch the rolling egg, but when I tried to grab him, my hand passed through him, and the egg disappeared. I wasn’t dismayed, however, as I heard the distinctive pinging sound of a System notification.
[You have received a message from your friend GodIAm.]
I quickly clicked the message icon to open it. After poring over it in amazement, I mentally pressed the [Accept] button for the quest and read the text out loud to Prince Baiyu.
[This is a message from your father:
This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
By now, you should already know that I am GodIAm and I am god. Because I am GodIAm and if you ask whether "AmIGod?", the answer is yes. Because I am God, GodIAm!
But I mean god in a general sense, meaning a supernatural being that exists outside the mortal world.
I was born and grew up in the space between dimensions. There is no proper word for what I am, but the closest would be “voidling.” From my earliest days, I traversed unfathomable distances to absorb cosmic energy and dark matter. As a wanderer between realms, I specialize in travel and work mainly as a messenger for beings who can’t easily leave their local area of influence.
Yes, I work. There is a robust god economy where we exchange items, energy, lifespan, and, most importantly, favors. I came to your world purely by chance. One of the Earth’s genius loci had a job for me and offered to pay me with a human incarnation. It was a relatively inexpensive job, and thus, I was born as a normal human with no outstanding features. I only meant to experience the fleeting mortal world on a whim, but something incredible happened.
Your mother happened.
Violet, I can’t see you rolling your eyes, but I can imagine it.
Suffice it to say that the very first day I met her, I started researching the best way to turn a human immortal. Earth did not permit it, but there were worlds where the local gods allowed for some rare and difficult methods of uplifting humans. I called in all my favors, and the day your mom and I got married, I managed to receive approval to transfer her soul to a magical realm where humans can cultivate the qi in their bodies to extend their youth and lifespan. A friendly local god even offered to lend me its netherworld pocket dimension to use during the soul’s adjustment period.
Your mom, of course, knew everything. She agreed to reincarnate with me into this new world after our human bodies died. I prepared everything as best as I could, but another unexpected thing happened.
You happened.
Call me crazy, but I never thought we would have kids. Voidlings like me don’t reproduce easily, and it’s always by fission. I had no idea my mortal body could produce someone like you!
Yes, you are a demigod.
Since you were conceived while I was in a human body, you turned out to be mostly human with some deeply buried but powerful godly features.
If you’re reading this, it means your mother and I died before you turned eighteen, and we weren’t able to tell you in person, which is a great pity. We knew this was a possibility because a divination made at the time of our wedding uncovered your mother’s fate of dying young.
Edit1 - A message from your father:
I prepared the previous message a decade ago. I have removed the sections that no longer apply to your situation. I had it all planned out. You were only supposed to be alone in your new world for a day or two, but it all went wrong when we died.
Now that I am sending this message from the netherworld, every word costs lifespan, so I will be brief.
As a voidling, I only had an intellectual idea of death. Experiencing it myself in a mortal body turned out to be much more difficult than I expected, and it has taken me this long to recover. This delay meant that my plans were all for naught.
Your mother and I are fine. We are resting in the pocket dimension in a paradise world.
When I died, this released a burst of godly death energy that opened a path to the new world you are now in. All three of us should have used it, but neither your mother nor I was in any condition to do so. Therefore, you were left orphaned on Earth.
That is when the powers-that-be of your new world took action and transmigrated you themselves.
I should explain about Adventure Incarnate.
The veil between worlds is not easily pierced. I had to gradually thin out parts of it to pave the way for us. The simplest thing to start with was stories and ideas. Adventure Incarnate was the result.
The powers-that-be of your new world agreed to help us because their demigod population had ascended millennia ago, and the atmospheric qi of the world they left behind had fallen to a level that was unable to sustain their descendants. Our moving there will naturally raise the local energy level.
Unfortunately, all my preparations are now in disarray. The bodies I made are now unusable since I wasn’t able to deploy them fast enough, and the netherworld’s energy has degraded them too much.
The gods of your new world did a divination and transmigrated you into the body you are using now, with a System to help you out. The System is the result of your own inborn godly nature that you inherited from me. You’re still very young as a demigod, and the System is helping you learn how to use your power.
Now to the most important stuff:
You can wait for me and your mother to appear. This should take around twenty to twenty-five years of your local years.
Your other option is to accomplish the task I was supposed to do. You have been dreaming of a dragon. He will be born soon, and if you agree to take care of him, the gods of your world will give you a stone and a seed. Plant these in your farm and they will grow into bodies for your mom and me. This should take a few months.
Edit2 - A message from your mother:
Dear,
When I found out that I was going to die young, I resolved to travel around the world and enjoy everything that Earth has to offer. If you’re mad that you weren’t told about your dad’s origins, you can blame me for it. I wanted you to live a carefree life as a normal human girl. We had fun, didn’t we?
Love,
Mom
Edit3 - A message from your father:
P.S. Yes, I was GodIAm. Every time you complained about your parents, you were complaining to me!]
[Quest Available: A God is Born]
[A God is Born:
Adopt a dragon child.
He will descend from the heavens once you reach level 60 Farming.
Reward: Mysterious Jade Stone and Crimson Pearl Flower Seed]
Prince Baiyu looked befuddled by the torrent of information. “That’s a lot to understand. You’re a demigod?”
I threw my arms around his neck.
“Who cares? The important thing is that my parents are alive! They’ll be joining me soon!” I squeezed him, and then the joy bubbling up inside me was almost too much for me to contain. I let go of him and yelled up into the sky, “Give me that little dragon boy now, please!”
A System notification popped up.
Author's Note:
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