“Random? You gotta be kidding me! Fucking random?!”

I raged, face red, frothing in my mouth. God shrugged and kept throwing the girls’ panties and bras into the washing machine. He disapprovingly grimaced at a tiny thong and threw it into the machine along with the matching, equally tiny bra.

We were in the basement of the villa. God and me, just the two of us. I had helped him carry the laundry basket down the stairs. Because what with the goddesses being busy, he was the only one whom I could talk to.

“Well, not truly random. They first narrowed it down to those with the strong will to live.”

“And they robbed me of that very life!” I stomped my feet.

“Urgh!” He grimaced again, looking at a stain that would instantly shatter anyone’s fantasy about a cute teen goddess and her hygiene. Into the washing machine, the panties went.

“I gotta talk to Iris about wiping properly. Again.” He sighed.

The sight of this fat boy doing the chores for the girls replaced the rage in me with sympathy. I had no right to yell at this dude; he had no part in the goddesses bringing me here. I shut my mouth and watched him with compassion.

He was fat and friendly, with good laughs and a round likable face. He was generally nice to hang with. This God was that kind of a dude, your everyday best friend who just happened to like junk foods a lot. Over the past several days, he had explained to me how he came to be. It was not his choice. Nor was he birthed by some divine celestial being. He just popped into existence because down there enough people had begun to believe in God. Dude was the personified summative representation of what the girls, the goddesses, were to the people of the world. A brand mascot, so to say. A logo.

And that posed a problem for the divines. Dude was redundant in whichever field he looked into. Not that he could actually do anything. Because he was the general summation of all that is divine as attributed by the people, he actually had no power whatsoever. At all. Anything divine he tried to do was automatically and instantly countered and nullified by the contradicting divine force the believers assigned to him. Basically, he was just a messy jumble of whatever people attributed to God.

“Iris, for example,” He had once tried to explain, “gives lives, and Eris takes lives away. But they schedule things together, so they never do it at the same time on one single poor guy.” I recalled God then pointing at himself with a somewhat saddened face. “Put Iris and Eris into one fat body; that’s me. Can’t do jack-shit about anything.”

So there he was. An utterly useless fat boy was living with a harem of pretty girls shamelessly totting around the paradise villa in their see-through robes. First seeing the girls I thought I was in heaven, but alas I got it all wrong. The girls were mean, cruel and mischievous. It wasn’t that they were evil. They were just so entitled they did whatever they wanted without any regard to the consequences of their actions. ‘Spoiled brats with divine powers’ would be the perfect description. So, suddenly coming into existence amidst these girls, God had had a very rough start. Eventually, they got bored of bullying him and were about to kick him out of the villa. Dude begged and pleaded and took up the job of doing chores and running errands to earn his place in the villa.

“And they are OK with you handling their panties?” I asked, eyeing the contents of the laundry basket.

“Welp, they don’t see me as a man, it seems.”

God was finishing up. He put the detergent in and started the washing machine. I knew I was in a different realm than the one in my previous life. Still, I had never imagined divine celestial beings lived in a huge villa filled with appliances and TVs and BBQs and Jacuzzi. With a grunt, he stood up and stretched his back.

“So, what exactly am I supposed to do?”

I asked, wiping the dishes God handed over dry. I was helping with the dishes in the kitchen.

“As it stands, Firis is gonna disappear soon. So they figured she needs an anchor to hold her in place.”

“And that’s me?”

“Yup.” He nodded. “But only as a temporary measure. Until Firis has a whole new legacy. A legacy that reaches the myth level.”

I was baffled. How the heck was I supposed to be an existential anchor for a divine goddess? God seemed to have read my mind.

“A firm, unwavering belief that she, a goddess, exists. If there is even a single soul who has this belief, belief so strong it’s borderline fact… and that soul walks among the people? She won’t fade.” He winked at me sideways. “That’d be you.”

I thought about it for some seconds. Then it hit me.

“Hang on!”

“Yup. They are sending you down there. The anchor,” he pointed downwards, “has to be amidst the mortals.”

###

I had read a fair share of isekai mangas and watched more than enough animes, but never had I imagined I would wake up from my death to what could only be described as sexual molestation. There was the sensation of a… hot discharge, and I jerked up from death, only to find a bunch of scantily clad girls rough handling my second-in-command.

“Whoa! Something came out!” One of the girls shouted excitedly.

“Do it again!” Another girl was shouting.

Stunned and puzzled, I looked around the room. Apparently, I was lying naked in a massive bed that smelt of lavender. It was a lovely room, reminding me of the fancy resort by the seaside I had once visited with my family. The girls were young and extremely pretty. Better, I could see their fancy lingeries and smooth curves beneath the see-through silk robes, which gently swayed with the light breeze coming in through the open window. The breeze carried a hint of seawater, and it was pleasing. Their faces were gathered around my raging Jalapeno, and the whole experience, to be honest, was the closest thing to actual sex I had ever had in my short-lived seventeen years of life. My life, which had ended rather too abruptly.

I was immediately reminded of a foreign religion; something about the paradise and forty-nine virgins. I wasn’t sure about the girls being virgins, but I was one for sure. ‘Not any longer,’ I hoped, taking in the pretty faces.

‘Wait, aren’t they minors?’ I wondered, seeing how young the girls looked. They looked maybe thirteen? Fourteen? Fifteen max?

Furthermore, I worried a bit about the fat boy standing in the corner, looking at me apologetically. I was worried he might be a part of the forty-nine virgins business. That would surely suck because I didn’t swing that way. I mean ‘suck’ as in ‘bad’, not the act of sucking something.

“Hey, you think you can make things come out, too?” One of the girls turned around and asked the fat boy who blushed and nodded.

And that was when I learned the goddesses engineered my death and brought me to their realm. Motherfucking bitches.

###

“Look, I can’t reschedule my draught!” said Paris, the goddess of disasters and calamities, putting her piece of bread back down on the table.

“But, Paris,” Eris, the goddess who takes lives, leaned in, pushing aside her plate of smoked ham and olives and cheese God had prepared. “A draught right after an epidemic will only cause further delay!”

“Yeah! Besides,” Iris, the goddess of creation who gives lives, chimed in. “How come you have two events scheduled back to back? It’s very selfish.”

“Ladies, please-” God tried to calm everyone but was immediately yelled at to shut up. He miserably shriveled up in his chair.

I noted the weather was perpetually lovely here in the heavenly realm, but today was extra sunny and pleasant. We were having lunch in the patio. I had helped God set up the table and bring out the plates. From their rooms and dens, the girls came out one by one, and what started with a simple question about Firis’ state soon turned into a full-blown argument. An argument regarding when to send me down unto the mortals.

Apparently, they were not so keen on sending me down right now because of the ongoing global epidemic of some highly fatal virus. They did not wish to risk me dying so soon after getting there. The plague, according to Paris, was scheduled to end in three mortal years. And then she had a five years long draught ready to go at the place where I was supposed to be born. The other girls were not very happy about the arrangement because whatever Paris unleashed unto the world would reduce the chance of my survival, which in return risked Firis fading away to non-existence.

“How about… Paris and I swap?” Miris, the goddess of prosperity, suggested. “I have good harvests coming up at-” She named few weird sounding places.

Paris ran the names of the places in her head, thinking. She shook her head.

“No, it’s too soon for them to have ANOTHER draught.”

“Aw, come on, Paris. You want Firis to fade to nothingness?” said Iris.

“What? No!” Paris snapped, but it was clear she was toying with Miris’ suggestion. “It’s just that… wouldn’t it be too mean to give them two draughts in ten years?” She asked, her eyes darting around the table, trying to gain sympathetic supports.

Up to this point, I was silently going through my meal, but at this, I had to choke, coughing out a large chunk of bread. I calmed myself down by gulping down the whole glass of grape juice. The girls were eying me.

“Look, Paris, I understand you are trying to be considerate to those souls. But I find it very hard to swallow seeing that coming from the goddess who plans an epidemic and a draught back to back.”

“Hear, hear,” Eris seemed to agree with me. Not that she’d complain about people dying, what with her being the goddess of death and stuff.

“Let’s look on the bright side.” Iris chimed in with a smile. “Paris switch with Miris, and our boy here gets born in the bountiful time.”

“Unless you send me to those draught places Miris mentioned.” I had to make sure they didn’t send me somewhere bad. The girls smiled at me sweetly, and that sent chills down my spine. Were it not for Firis’ sake, they would absolutely send me smack dab in the middle of a catastrophe just for the heck of it.

“Look, why not just give me some invincibility and stuff? Then you won’t have to worry about me dying.”

I thought that was a legitimate request. Shouldn’t I get some ‘skills’ and stuff? Wasn’t that how this isekai business worked? My hope dwindled at the sight of the girls looking puzzled.

“How would that serve our goal?” Iris asked back. “We need a mortal to be the anchor, not some semi-divine munchkin.”

I buried my head in my hands, upset. This was so unfair.

###

Sometime before I was to be sent to the mortals, the girls took me to one of the bedrooms on the upper floor of the villa. By the window was a large bed with a petite girl sleeping. She was as pale as marble, clearly not very well, and the paleness starkly contrasted with the thick dark eyebrows. She had long silky brown hair combed to perfection; it seemed the girls were tending to her with utmost care. The nose was small yet pointy, and the breathing was weak. The thin, grayed lips were slightly open, baring just the tip of her pearl-like upper incisors. Just like the other goddesses, she was pretty in her own way. So pretty, it took me a considerable effort to move my eyes away from her.

The room was modest and straightforward, with typical girl stuff dotted around the room, on the window still, and the desk at the corner. Everything was so neat and cute. So it was rather strange to see a suit of crimson plate armor propped up in front of the wall displaying swords and maces and spears. They looked menacing, but one long sword grabbed my attention. It was long, about three feet or so, but the most striking feature was the blade; it was as if the blade was made of diamond, somewhat transparent yet somewhat opaque. Sparkling so brightly, yet there was a mysterious fluid-like swirl of shadows within the blade itself. The girls noticed me looking at the sword, and one of them put a white veil on it. I shook my head to focus on the sleeping girl in the bed.

“What’s wrong with her?” I asked.

“People stopped believing in her divinity,” God answered from my side. He had a jug of water with him, which he used to water the flower base on the small bedside table. The girls gently sat on the bed around the sleeping friend and watched her tenderly. Iris took the ill girl’s hand and squeezed softly.

“Firis, the boy is here.”

And slowly, with a moan so weak it was barely audible, Firis opened her eyes. The eyes were a mystery. Of ever-changing colors depending on the angle, like the glossy back of a beetle. And those eyes locked onto me, and suddenly I found myself under the burning red sky lying on muddy ground littered with severed limbs and mangled corpses. I gasped and jumped up. Everything was on fire, and the air was scorching hot and filled with black smoke, which made it hard for me to breathe. And up ahead, between two huge heaps of dead bodies, stood Firis facing me. She was wearing the crimson armor from the neck down and stood firmly with legs slightly apart, lips taut, and the strange eyes were piercing me like a set of sharp daggers. The turbulent hot air made her long hair flail like mad.

Firis mouthed something, but I could not understand a single word she was saying. She tried one more time, but seeing my confusion, she gave up, and instead, she beamed a smile so blindingly bright I had to blink. And before I knew it, she was right in front of me, so close our noses were almost touching. There was something fascinating about her oil like iris yet at the same time so frightening it made me tremble with instinctive fear. She said something again and pushed her face in slowly. Eventually, we bumped our foreheads… And I was back in the room, confused and sweating. I hurried my eyes down to find Firis was in bed, eyes closed, and sleeping. But there was ever so slight hint of a smile on her lips.

“Did you guys say hello to each other?” Iris asked, wiping sweats off my forehead.

“I think so,” I tried to make sense of what just happened. “I hope so.”

Soon after the meeting with Firis, I was sent to the mortals by means of reincarnation. In flesh and blood, I was to be the unwavering beacon and thus anchor Firis’ divine existence to the reality, stopping her from fading away into nothingness. That kind of made sense. There was not a single ounce of doubt in me. God and the goddesses were real. Firis was real. She would continue to exist because I knew for the fact that she was real.

But I was an emergency measure, though, with the temporary nature. For Firis to fully recover, the world had to recognize her divinity. There had to be her legacy and myths revered by the mortals. I had had no idea how that was going to be handled. That was until Firis herself came down to build her own legacy.