When I clicked on the app link to Norbo Maps, a message popped up in front of my eyes.

Would you like to navigate to this location?

I pressed yes, and then another message appeared.

Would you like to turn on automatic navigation?

As opposed to manual navigation? What a dumb question. I tapped yes, and then my awareness instantly began to fade. There was a strong tug on my body pulling me in every direction. My senses seeped and fizzled away like water in a frying pan as I felt the essence of my being disperse into nothingness.

Automatic Navigation has been completed successfully.

An unknown span of time later, there was a change as my senses gradually began to restore. Light blinded me while the gentle caress of wind agitated my cheek. Pain radiated throughout my entire body and I hunched over, scratching at my head. Vibrant, green grass and moist, fertile soil cushioned the impact as I fell to my knees.

I desperately cast my eyes around in search of some form of visual stimulant to focus on. I needed something to distract from the pain, and I certainly found plenty of ‘somethings’ to suit my needs.

I couldn’t help but gasp in amazement at the sights that I found.

Before my eyes was a vast and endless expanse. Though there was no sun, the sky was the same rich array that made up the most magnificent of sunsets. Purple merged with orange, yellow, and blue in a symphony of color. Fluffy white and lavender clouds decorated the sky, while a seemingly infinite number of stars twinkled brightly despite the obvious daylight. Small, glowing white threads stretched between the stars, splitting the heavens into large regions.

As I focused my attention on a single star, visions of an unknown world began to fill my mind and I watched in a stupor as countless eons flashed by in an instant, an impossible amount of information contained within.

I forcefully wrenched my eyes away from the star, severing the connection. Due to the extremely vast flow of information, I wasn’t able to comprehend almost any of it, but I understood the essential point; each and every one of these stars was a world with all of its time and history contained in a single point.

Turning to attention to my situation, I realized that I was lying on the ground. I reached out and pressed my palm against the dirt, marveling at the smooth and natural sensation. I pushed myself to my feet and felt the prickly feeling of my legs going numb. Stumbling slightly, I returned to my knees and once again looked around at Meridian while I waited for my body to adjust.

While viewing the world in front of me with my two eyes, I could simultaneously see the world from an aerial perspective, similar to how I existed over Hanulfall. Beneath the gorgeous sky were enormous mountains topped with the purest snow amidst endless plains, forests, oceans, deep valleys, canyons, and ravines. Rivers and lakes dotted the landscape, some of the lakes containing floating icebergs and thick layers of ice while others were softly boiling. In one spot, a boiling lake and a frozen lake were close together and the gap between them was covered by a heavy storm of rotating winds.

All of this was present and visible from just my immediate surroundings.

“Just what kind of place is this…?”

“This is Meridian, the headquarters of all Overseers,” a familiar voice replied.

My eyes followed the voice to the source, and I flinched with horror.

Without my noticing, a human-sized insect-like creature had approached me. It looked to be a twisted cross between an ant and a butterfly, its body separated into three round portions, each having two limbs. The three sections were combined in the shape of an ‘L’, with four legs on the ground and two presumably serving as arms of some sort. The upper region of its body supported a small, pitch-black head with beady eyes and sharp-looking mandibles. Radiant and gorgeous wings extended behind the creature from its back.

I shot to my feet and stumbled backward. Instinctively, I tried to reach for the gun that I used to keep hidden at my waist.

“Relax,” the familiar voice ordered. “I expected a stronger-than-normal reaction since you were a mortal not too long ago, but this is a bit much, don’t you think? If a man tries to kill her on sight, a girl might get a little self-conscious about her appearance.”

I could practically feel the cogs turning in my head. The voice was extremely familiar. It was a bit distorted but it kind of reminded me of…

“Jocelyn?”

“So you do recognize me! I’ve personally always thought that my corporeal form and my domain manifestation are similar enough but you wouldn’t believe how often people tell me they are nothing alike! There was this one time, three centuries ago...”

I stared at the goddess insect thing for several seconds, barely registering anything that she was saying as my mind desperately tried to reconcile the two images. I searched my memory of our first encounter for anything insect-like but I just couldn’t see it.

“Wow…” I sighed. “That was a bit unexpected.”

“I know, right?” Jocelyn agreed enthusiastically. “How could they confuse my beauty with an eldritch horror? I mean, sure, the mandibles are a common trait for eldritch, but have you seen these wings?”

She fluttered her gorgeous wings a few times.

“I mean, sure…?” I muttered, a bit of uncertainty in my voice.

Her wings did look great, but I was having a hard time getting past the mandibles, the beady eyes, or the creepy insect body.

Though she likely noticed my discomfort, Jocelyn seemed unfazed as she continued speaking.

“Anyways, we should start walking soon or we’ll be late for the meeting. I was waiting for you to appear so I could show you the way!”

She reached out and grabbed my arm. Before I could let out a word of protest, she flapped her wings and we shot up into the sky.

“Hold on tight!” she called out.

I reached up and clutched the claw holding my arm like it was my only hope of survival. My vision blurred as we accelerated even faster. A sharp pain resonated in my ears and the world spun as a wave of vertigo dominated my senses.

Wasn’t she supposed to be showing me the way? I was absolutely certain that I wouldn’t be able to replicate this trip by myself in the future. Maybe I could get her to send me the Norbo Maps link for automatic navigation…?

Jocelyn’s voice resounded in my head. “We still have several minutes before we arrive! Do you have any questions?”

I opened my mouth to respond, though my voice came out a bit distorted. “Your chat message earlier referred to this meeting as a ‘world conference’. Could you explain a bit more about the organization of Overseers?”

Jocelyn clicked her mandibles together. “I suppose there is no harm in giving a general outline. The detailed upper-level information is a no-go but you do need to understand your own position.”

Our speed slowed ever so slightly as we shifted directions to avoid an incoming eastern dragon. Flying beside the dragon was a small monkey carrying a golden gourd.

Jocelyn motioned up toward the endless expanse of stars in the sky and began to speak aloud. “Every star up there is a world, and the white boundaries define regions known as ‘districts’. A group of districts is referred to as a ‘zone’, a group of zones is a ‘dimension’ and, as you likely guessed, all dimensions are ruled by the Supreme Existence.”

I took a moment to organize them in my head: worlds, districts, zones, dimensions, Supreme Existence.

“Within every level of the organization, there is a leader who directly reports to the leader of the above level. A world conference is a meeting at the lowest level where a world leader both passes on instructions from the higher-ups to those under their stewardship and leads a council to better accomplish our goals.”

That actually made a lot of sense. Essentially, there were too many gods and worlds, so the Supreme Existence delegated tasks to Dimension Leaders, who in turn delegated to Zone Leaders, and so on and so forth down to the individual gods who were building up their power, reputation, wisdom, and experience on every individual world.

I could get behind a structure like that. Nice, simple, and well-defined while still leaving room for individuality and a certain degree of autonomy.

“So what about conflicts between gods?” I asked. The answer to this question was important. It was almost certain to become relevant for me in the near future.

Jocelyn giggled, her mandibles shaking as they clicked together rapidly.

“With this kind of hierarchy, did you assume that most gods follow the rules and gather souls out of loyalty?” she asked, amused. “Oh, heavens no. Gods do so out of fear. However, it is not a fear of reprisal, oppression, death, or any such notion that drives us.”

“Maybe it's different for gods, but I have a hard time believing that. Every being fears death on some level, right?”

Jocelyn shook her head, the edges of her mandibles twitching. “It’s easy enough to prove. Try to strike me; it doesn’t matter how hard you swing, it won’t change anything.”

Well, that sounded like a challenge. I coiled my arm back and folded my fingers into a fist. Thrusting forward, I half-heartedly struck her arm that was pulling me through the air. Just before contact, I encountered a strange wall that absorbed the force while holding my arm in place. A moment later, the wall released my arm and faded away.

I raised an eyebrow at the strange phenomenon.

“We cannot harm, let alone kill each other,” Jocelyn explained. “When there is a conflict between Overseers, we resolve it within our churches. Even if a church is entirely destroyed, it merely gives the other Overseer something to focus on for the next few centuries. Rather, some bored gods will intentionally spark conflict as the destruction of their church gives them an excuse to request transfer to another world.”

“Are there no instances of gods killing other gods?”

“You mean like those in the mythology and stories of your world? Most worlds have such stories. They are fabrications created by the inhabitants. That isn’t to say that gods have never died. Allow me a moment to investigate the history of your old world… Earth, was it?”

She focused her eyes up into the sky, searching. “That one… ZDX047, District 12, World 6… that’s quite close to Hanulfall!” she muttered. “A rather unremarkable history, for the most part. However, the amount of change that Earth experienced in a measly two hundred years is unusual and the order of development was strange. Space travel at that level of technology? How peculiar… ah, I see. Transmigrators meddling in technological affairs. That explains a good deal.”

She read all of the history of Earth in a few moments and understood it all?! And there were transmigrators? Who, when, how, and why?! I wanted to pursue that topic a bit further, if not only to satisfy my own curiosity, but she continued with her explanation before I could ask any questions.

“There are a number of gods who have died in connection to stories in your world. Let’s see… ah, the God Wolf Fenrir? There are a number of truths in that story. And I don’t know how much you heard about him, but Cerberus was a nasty little puppy. He ate two Overseers before Hera eventually put him down for being too aggressive. Leviathan, the Kraken, the Sphinx, Azi Dahaka, Vetala… these were all monsters granted holy power and increased intelligence through the Overseer system.”

Monsters that killed gods. Was that the real source of the divine decree to hunt monsters? Were the other gods afraid for their personal safety?

“Divine monsters will occasionally kill gods if given the opportunity. A few of my friends died on Earth because they got overly emotional and manifested in front of beings that could kill them.”

“So could Overseers fight if they were both manifested on a world?”

Jocelyn glanced back at me and her beady eyes gleamed. “You really seem to want to fight an Overseer.”

A bead of sweat formed on the back of my neck, but it dried immediately due to the insanely fast speeds we were traveling at.

“Well, I don’t really care if you get in a fight as long as you clean up after yourself,” she assured, seeing my nervous expression. “To answer your question, if the two Overseers were equal in rank, neither would be powerful enough to harm the other. It is very hard to kill a god.”

‘Two Overseers equal in rank’? I made note of that important distinction. Whoever the World Leader was, I needed to stay on their good side for as long as possible.

“You claimed that all entities fear death on some level, right? Overseers do not act out of a fear of death. We fear repetition and stagnation.”

“You can be afraid of both death and stagnation. They aren’t mutually exclusive,” I pointed out.

“It’s different for us. Initially, we grow as our churches grow. Our power has some form of increase and our nature evolves to match. However, there is a limit every Overseer reaches when they can only rule one world. You’ll understand when you reach my age. I didn’t believe the things that older gods told me until I experienced them myself. When you have been stagnant for millennia, wallowing endlessly in the ordinary, it starts to weigh down on your very being. Conversely, gathering souls is a work that we can participate in. It gives us purpose while promising change for our efforts.”

I took a moment to organize the explanation in my mind.

So, long story short…

Gods did what they were told because they were bored?