On a Godless Planet:Volume2B Chapter 22
Chapter 22: Ichidant-R[edit]
–Do we have a lot?
●
My plan did not pan out.
…Huh?
My plan had been to arrive at the campsite and then explain what I could about my connection with Neptune. But after we set our things down at the tent site and took a break at the riverside, a certain fact presented itself.
“We arrived late.”
We had arrived at the campsite at 2:12. Because we had all made a certain mistake.
“What do we do for lunch on the first day?”
“I thought we could eat at Tachikawa before we left, but then we hurried out here after Olympus intervened last night.”
“Um, wait.”
I tried to get down to business, but they were focused on something else entirely. But…
“No! You can’t eat my snacks as a meal! I won’t allow it!”
“E-Eshita-san, calm down. No one is trying to fill up on Karamucho!”
“Senpai-san, she was definitely planning to do that.”
“What is she, a kid who was so busy buying snacks for the field trip she forgot all about packing a lunch!?”
“Maybe we should have stopped by the supermarket by the station that’s more a liquor store than anything.”
“I know it doesn’t solve anything in the long run, but we could cook yakiniku for lunch.”
“I was in charge of dinner, but I feel like we aren’t even going to reach dinnertime like this.”
This was no time to worry about dinner.
●
While I was wondering what to do, a hand went up.
“Um, would you like to eat what I brought with me?”
Everyone viewed the cloth bag Neptune opened on the riverside.
The general opinion was…
“Mr. Vomit…if all you eat are these sweet rolls and protein bars, it’ll all come right back up when you take an enemy attack to the gut.”
“This is all food you can eat without heating, isn’t it? I know it’s summer, but the mountains still get cold at night – especially by the river – so you need hot food too.”
“He probably didn’t want to use an open fire on the riverside. He didn’t pack any firewood, but he also doesn’t seem to have any gas canisters.”
“More or less. Thanks to my authority, I am accustomed to the chill of the riverside.”
“What’s that mean? Did you live the same life as the porn magazine I picked up?”
“Kuwajiri-chaaan?”
“Um, yes,” said the knowledge god. “Neptune became an ocean god after the syncretism with Greek mythology, but he was originally a god of rivers and springs. The etymology of his name has a number of theories, but the most likely one is associated with water sources and springs.”
“You mean…?”
“Yes,” said the knowledge god. “Neptune is the one who draws seawater up from the ground and filters it into freshwater. That is his role.”
Douhai-san and the others nodded in understanding, but then another hand went up.
“Sorry, but I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
●
“Oh, sorry, Tooru. We discussed that while we were shopping earlier.”
“I figured as much. I can always get you to fill me in later, so as long as you understand.”
“S-sorry. Ensuring a consensus with our information is my role, so I should have written up a report and sent it to your Revelation Boards.”
“Does it bother you, Bilgamesh?”
“If Ki knows, I see no problem.”
“We should really reach a consensus.”
“Sumeragi-kun and I were together then, so it isn’t a problem for us.”
“That’s right! But if that bastard Balancer did this to me, I’d glare at them with great scorn and enter a battle with them! I’d choose ‘tactics’ and then choose ‘attack a single target’!”
<I wouldn’t bother with ‘tactics’ and simply use ‘attack’ on the ‘ape’.>
“They get sidetracked a lot, don’t they!?”
“I don’t know what you mean either, but to be clear, I don’t mind.”
●
Kuwajiri resumed talking while aware she had made a minor error.
She turned toward Neptune.
“Anyway, as a god of rivers and water sources, did you want to avoid polluting the river or causing negative changes to the environment with an open fire?”
“Eh? Well, you could say that…”
Neptune avoided giving a straight answer, but then Sumeragi looked to the man’s luggage.
“I bet I know. Mr. Vomit can’t cook, but after he came here, he got hooked on sweet rolls and Calorie Mate.”
Kuwajiri saw Neptune reach a hand toward the idiot and the two finally shook hands.
“Just so you know, the camera just spun around the two of us like three times at a low angle!”
“There is just so much good food here. I couldn’t believe it the first time I ate them. Oh, and you are correct that I am hopeless when it comes to cooking.”
“I see you have some of Yamazaki’s Tsubuan & Margarine in here. Now I feel like I understand you a little better.”
Kuwajiri looked and found something she liked too.
“Rose Net Cookies are good, aren’t they? They look like preserved pretzels, but they aren’t that hard and they’re super sweet. Eating one of those with some bitter alcohol is great for getting work done at night.”
“They have these apple pies at the school cafeteria and I always end up buying one. I don’t have any old memories of them, but they still seem somehow nostalgic and they’re always a safe bet.”
“Oh, these peanut butter lunch packs have become a staple at our house. The idea of a nut paste seemed weird at first, but I was shocked to find how good it is. And I was shocked all over again after buying some peanut butter at the supermarket and finding it was something else entirely.”
<That is because the lunch packs are a spread instead of a butter. And peanuts are originally from South America, so they likely did come as a shock to the Mesopotamians.>
“He even has the Marugoto Sausage I like. He must’ve gone to a store directly managed by Yamazaki.”
“S-stop that, Raidou-senpai! You shouldn’t say things as lewd as Marugoto Sausage out in public! That’s an ‘in your head’ kind of phrase! I’m hoping Senpai will say it to me oh-so-kindly at some point!”
“Maaaarugooooto sauuuusaaaage?”
“Not you! Sorry! I meant my Senpai, not any of you male Senpais!”
“Anyway,” said the idiot, taking a breath. Everyone focused on Neptune again.
“Mr. Vomit! Welcome to the Yamazaki fandom!”
“Can we please move on?”
They now had a lot more unnecessary items on this camping trip, so while looking through Neptune’s supplies…
“Are you alone?”
●
She’s sharp, I thought regarding the knowledge god…although come to think of it, there were two knowledge gods present.
“Kuwajiri-san?”
“Eh? Oh, yes. Thank you for all your help.”
“You don’t have to be so nervous.”
I asked my next question to find out how much she knew.
“Are you familiar with Neptune’s family?”
●
“I don’t know anything that can’t be expressed as information, but I know everything that can.”
Kuwajiri responded to Kido while viewing Neptune’s supplies.
“Neptune only packed enough for one, but the myths say he has a wife and son. However, it is possible neither of them have been given a real or virtual manifestation.”
“Do you know the names of his wife and son?”
“The wife is named Salacia. The son is named Triton.”
●
“I see. You did your homework.”
I paused for a moment after that.
I gave Kuwajiri-san some time.
Time to provide any further information she might know.
And sure enough, the Norse knowledge god said more.
“However, it seems Neptune did not have a wife in the original version of Roman mythology.”
“An imaginary wife!? Roman mythology is out there inventing some innovative new genres! That’s wild!”
“Japan also has old stories of a man imaging a wife so hard he dies of madness or a man having so much trouble deciding whether or not he should send a love letter to a woman he has never met that he ultimately dies of madness. So we are in no position to make fun of others.”
●
“Come to think of it, doesn’t the Japanese myth of Susanoo meeting his wife have him notice some chopsticks floating down the river and deciding to visit whoever must live upstream? If you think about it, that isn’t much different from how bandits think.”
“It worked out because he discovered a family that needed rescuing from Yamata no Orochi, but it wouldn’t have ended so well if he had found bandits or the local lord’s base.”
“He definitely would have dropped a boulder on them or hit them with a cow to say hello.”
“Um, what is this strange ‘trust’ you have in him?”
“What’s this, Shamhat-kun? Scared? But we’ve barely scratched the surface of Shinto’s anarchy.”
●
“Shinto is something else…”
“Well, it is the underground member of the mythological world.”
“I-I want to prove you wrong, but I can’t since I’m part of the problem!”
Come to think of it, Senpai-san did do a lot of crazy things.
But anyway, thought Kuwajiri before getting back on topic.
“Neptune was the god of rivers in Roman mythology, but he was apparently also the god of the oceans even further back than that.”
“Huh? How does that work out?”
“Well.” Kuwajiri nodded. “Neptune was a general water god who ruled over the oceans and the rivers, but as the people’s lives grew more diverse, his authority grew more well defined.
“The people worshiped the authorities that affected their own prosperity and jobs, so their worship gave Neptune a more well defined ‘form’.”
“So more than just being a ‘god’ tied to a specific area of land, various different spirits came together and were deified as the ‘god’ of a much larger region.”
“Exactly. But the oceans and rivers are different things, so the people’s worship split. This led to Neptune having the power of the rivers and water sources directly tied to people’s livelihoods and his ocean authority was passed down to the spirits working below him.”
“You can think of that as who I was in the Roman period.”
There was the confirmation.
And then something else had happened.
“Once the syncretism and adoption of Greek myths began, a few of the spirits working below Neptune gained power.”
“Why would Greece’s involvement give some of the spirits more power?”
“Was it the changing times?”
●
Kuwajiri was confident enough to feel impressed, so she let the underclassman knowledge god explain.
She first bowed toward the others.
“When civilizations and cultures changed in ancient times, gods of unimportant lands or phenomena could rise in divine rank once those lands and phenomena became much more important.
“For example, I am seen as a god of education, but my shrine only rose to prominence during the 70s boom in college entrance exams, known as the ‘Exam War’, and this has continued to the present day.”
<As a note, there were actually two Exam Wars. The first one, the one Tenma mentioned, was the Dankai Junior Generation Exam War. Economic growth in postwar Japan led to a baby boom, and the generation of those children caused the Exam War. Before finding a career, they had to get into a college for education, which meant highly competitive entrance exams, and this continued into the 90s.
<Then, the 2nd Exam War began around 20 years later but for the opposite reasons. As a reaction to the baby boom, the birth rate dropped and the competition shifted from getting into a ‘good school’ to ‘when you got in’. Thus, the 2nd Exam War led to competitive middle school entrance exams instead of college ones.>
“Wow, social change is a pain in the ass!”
“So what changed with Mr. Vomit?”
“For him, it was a change in the scale of society. In ancient times, the people never knew if they would have access to farmlands or if they would have stable harvest each year, so rivers and water sources were crucial. But as villages grew more stable and the population grew, the focus shifted from agriculture reliant on yearly harvests to a more important economic activity.”
What was that activity? Kuwajiri looked to the underclassman, so the underclassman looked back and continued.
“Trade. Greece and Rome were linked by maritime trade. And while rock salt could be mined across Europe, salt taken from seawater was important for a stable population. So…”
Her pause meant she was passing this back to Kuwajiri, so Kuwajiri took over with her own knowledge.
“If we focus on his wife and son, the spirit who had taken over Neptune’s authorities that later rose to prominence was the spirit of oceanic concepts like the sea, the deep sea, and salt.”
Who was that?
“Salacia. The ‘sal’ in her name has the same origin as the word ‘salt’. When humans developed a more open world, the spirit of the ocean became just as important as the god of the rivers and water sources that had supported humanity in the past.
“Now, this made Salacia an ocean god, but she was a woman. The Greek ocean god was the manly Poseidon, so this shows us that Rome was a land with a different culture.”
●
“Hey, how would you write the ‘sal’ part of her name in Japanese?”
“I would really prefer to ignore that question, but if you must isolate that part, it would be saru. So, yes, the same as Japanese for ape.”
“Interesting. Hey, Balancer, so all this time you’ve been calling me an ape, you were actually saying I’m as valuable and necessary to humanity as salt? That’s what you meant, right?”
<Your interpretation creeps me out, but I can’t deny that you do get salty easily.>
“H-hey! Can’t you be nice to me for once in your life!?”
<And what will you do if I am?>
“I’ll say ‘i-it isn’t like I wanted to be your friend!’ like a girl who can’t be honest about her feelings and then run away…until I got bored with the bit and came back.”
<Wow, you’re creepy. And wouldn’t that waste your time more than anyone else’s?>
●
You’re both wasting everyone’s time right now, thought Kuwajiri.
…But maybe Balancer needs to relax sometimes.
It was impossible to get by without times to relax.
Time and knowledge were never meaningless. People’s values determined for them if some specific time or knowledge was meaningless to them, so if someone said it was meaningless, it was only meaningless according to their values. Which meant…
…My values consider that idiot to be meaningless.
That line of thought felt like it would only tell her how petty she could be, so she abandoned it. And I could never outdo Senpai-san on that front. And she’s Shinto on top of that…
“Can we get back on topic?”
“Did I imagine a dangerous pause there, or what?”
Shut up. It’s your fault.
“Neptune ruled the rivers and water sources, Salacia controlled the ocean, and the other spirits controlled other aspects of the ocean. That more or less sums up Neptune’s position in the age of Roman mythology. However…”
This was where things got tricky.
“Something happened with the introduction of Greek mythology, especially in the age of Hellenism when Greek culture spread across Europe and even the Middle East.”
“And what was that?”
He had to know since it was about him, but he was asking her to explain it.
“Greece excelled at construction and sculptures. Their means of expression grew more varied as they interacted with the arts of other lands and they learned to create quite a few very skilled sculptures. Not only did this let them ‘give form to the gods’, but it led to the creation of structure, symbolism, and stories regarding those forms.”
She took a breath.
“Neptune and Salacia had sculptures made in this era, which led to the idea that Salacia was Neptune’s wife. With a god and goddess who were often depicted together, it was only natural to view them as a couple.”
●
“Yeah, if you’re together a lot, it usually means you are a couple.”
“I feel like we were a couple from the very start, though.”
“Hold up. So the authority he expelled from himself turned into a girl and then he married her? So did he just marry himself?”
“It sounds like a form of parthenogenesis.”
Kuwajiri watched the idiot and the underclassman shake hands.
“The camera just spun around the two of us like three times at a low angle!”
Shut up. But someone crossed his arms in thought at the recent discussion.
“Do you have thoughts on the matter, club head?”
“You coulllld say that. There’s a siiiimilar story in myyyy mythology.”
That was true.
“His mythology tells the story of Adam and Eve as the first humans. And that story has Eve created from Adam’s rib.”
“For real!? You meant the human race was born from broadly-defined parthenogenesis!? So from playing with itself!?”
“It’s only a similarity, but culturally the humans at the time must have seen it as natural for the gods to create a new being from a piece of their authority or body and then ‘take it back’.”
“In ancient Mesopotamia, when the fighting between cities led different gods to be combined, it was common for split cities to be rejoined.”
“Did it work the same with the wars between the Greek poleis?”
“It did. If we see the gods as symbols of humanity’s cultures and civilizations, then in an age when city-sized settlements fought, it isn’t surprising to find gods splitting apart or being rejoined. It might seem strange from the later viewpoint of established countries where that stopped happening, but mythology includes elements of that bygone era.”
“And as a later mythology, Shinto actually includes an excessive amount of it.”
“You mean like creating a god by eating food and throwing it back up, by eating food and excreting it, or even having your period? It’s like anything at all could create a god.”
<Yes. The idea that you can find thirty gods wherever you find one led to that state of affairs.>
“I can see why Shinto is considered so underground.”
“No, no, no, no! There are gods everywhere, so that’s the correct way of thinking!”
“Well, compared to the ancient mythologies, there were a lot more products and social elements and people understood nature a lot better, so that would lead to more gods. And as much as paper increased the amount of text they could store, there is still only so much space on the page, so the emperor must have demanded they stop making more.”
“That’s a weirdly practical reason to stop.”
“Anyway,” said Kuwajiri. “This long discussion will soon be over.”
“Wait, you mean you’re not done yet?”
“Don’t be stupid. We still haven’t discussed the introduction – or hijacking – of Roman mythology by Greek mythology and the result thereof.”
●
If he thought this was dragging on, Kuwajiri decided to keep it short.
“The introduction of Greek mythology led to two changes in Neptune.
“First, it gave him stories originating in Greek mythology.
“And second, it made him a sea god.”
●
Hm? I questioned Kuwajiri-san’s statement.
“Um, so Mr. Vo-”
I hesitated.
“What should I call him?”
“There is a god in Shinto born of vomit, so you can just call him that.”
“No, no, no, no! There are too many problems with that.”
“There are? But isn’t it his official name?”
“I assure you it is not!”
“B-but I also need to respect the name Sumeragi-kun came up with.”
“But isn’t the ‘tu’ of Neptune hard for Japanese speakers to say?”
“Hard to type too. I ran afoul of that typing up a report earlier.”
“Mr. Vomit it is then.”
“How about Mr. V!?”
“Sounds like something I’d read in Monthly Sunday.”
<While that is released monthly, it is actually called Weekly Shonen Sunday Extra Edition. An official Monthly Shonen Sunday is released in later years, though.>
I wasn’t sure what that was about, but we had settled on a name.
“Um, so Mr. V was originally a general water god, but then he gave his ocean authority to Salacia-san and others, leaving him as a god of rivers and water sources, right?”
But…
“Why would the introduction of Greek mythology make him a sea god? What happened to Salacia-san and the others?”
●
“Well,” said Neptune. “Simply put, it happened like this…”
“Yes.” The Norse knowledge god nodded and spread her arms. “Greek mythology has a lot of stories. While Neptune had his own original myths, when Poseidon’s myths were introduced, all the Neptune myths that could be included were included and the others were thrown out. Either that or they remained as the story of a local spirit instead.”
What did that mean?
“It hurt Neptune that he had given so much of his authority to the spirits working for him. That let him have his myths replaced by the Greek ones while stories that should have been his were given to the spirits instead…but very few were told as myths of the spirits and most were lost.
“As for Salacia, she was reinterpreted as a god of the deep sea and the salt within Sea God Neptune’s ocean.”
“Excuse me.”
The knowledge god turned toward him. The question “what do you want?” was written plain on her face, but after a moment…
“Oh! Sorry! I forgot you were here!”
Do I leave that weak an impression?
●
I screwed that one up, thought Kuwajiri, feeling ashamed.
She was glad she was Norse. If she drank some beer and went to sleep, it would be like it hadn’t happened at all. Well, that wasn’t an actual Norse rule, but she couldn’t get by without relying on it.
Presently, Neptune was gesturing for her to continue, so she supplemented her explanation.
She wanted to do this right to make up for her mistake, so she chose her words carefully.
“Listen. Neptune was remade into a sea god, but the people of Rome still viewed him as god of rivers and water sources. Since that was his original identity, his temple is at the center of Rome, right by the Tiber river and near the famous Pantheon.”
“The Pantheon is that general temple with a bunch of big pillars, right? Then he had his temple in a really good spot, huh?”
After a hesitant “um”, a hand went up.
“Since he became a sea god, did they built his temple on a hill overlooking the sea?”
“So, uh, about that…”
“You see,” said Neptune, pushing his glasses back up. “The Pantheon is located around 25km inland. A view of the sea? Not a chance. And across all of Rome, that is the one and only temple dedicated to me alone.”
“So you’re the kind of unpopular sea god who doesn’t actually visit the sea!? You’re next level, Mr. Vomit!”
Kuwajiri’s attempt to help had backfired.
●
“I-in his defense, his temple received a largescale remodeling after a victory of the Roman navy, so I don’t think he was unpopular.”
“But isn’t the planet Neptune really far away? Isn’t it the furthest one from the sun?”
<That was true in the 90s, but only because a distortion in Pluto’s orbit brought it temporarily within Neptune’s orbit. This lasted from ’79 to ’99, but it all becomes rather moot when Pluto is later downgraded to a dwarf planet.>
“Doesn’t that just mean Neptune has been the farthest planet all along?”
“I’m starting to think Neptune is just really unlucky.”
“Also, the Temple of Neptune is located in an area known as Campus Martius.”
Tenma’s flat tone led everyone to turn Neptune’s way. He pushed his glasses up before explaining.
“Yes, and that name means Field of Mars. My temple was built on land dedicated to War God Mars. Is that a problem?”
●
“How about we drink a beer while watching the river flow by tonight?”
“Agreed. He deserves a drink.”
“Yeeees, let’s do that.”
“Oh, um, thank you.”
Shifu tilted her head while watching a weird new friendship form.
“How did we even end up talking about this?”
“I believe it went like this.”
- Neptune was originally a water god, including the sea.
- ⇩
- His authority as a general water god was eventually clarified.
- ⇩
- His authority over the ocean became its own independent character.
- Neptune’s own authority was reduced to only rivers.
- ⇩
- Hellenistic influence turned part of his authority into Salacia.
- Salacia became Neptune’s wife.
- ⇩
- The introduction of Greek mythology turned Neptune into a sea god.
“He really changed a lot, huh?”
“I thought he just has his myths hijacked, but it’s more like he lost his origins too. That’s pretty rough.”
<That said, as can be seen in the remodeling of his temple after a naval victory, the Roman gods were nature gods in charge of prosperity and blessings. Thus, Roman culture blossomed and expanded rapidly because it ‘had the blessing of the gods’.>
“That expansion led to an inability to maintain order everywhere, so they restricted, regulated, and unified the people’s lives with something other than the law. They used Christianity.”
“I realllly wish they hadn’t done thaaaat.”
“You sure are blunt, aren’t you?”
●
“So,” I said. “Now that we have introduced Mr. V and his circumstances, are you ready to talk about me?”
“Hold on, Kido-chan. I’m sorry, but I think everyone’s pretty tired after all that.”
“I hate to admit it, but I am too.”
I saw Raidou-san, Shifu-san, and the others pulling tent parts out of the cloth bags.
It was nearly 3 PM. It would be a good idea to set up camp now and dinner tonight was my job, but…
“Kido-senpai! How about we prepare an early dinner while setting up camp!?”
“It’s a good idea, but isn’t it a little too early for that? Then again, we did go without lunch…”
While I spoke, I realized everyone had stopped working and were looking to me with obvious anticipation.
“Wh-what do you want from me!?”
“Well, you’ll be cooking dinner, right? Then we’ll do your part in setting up camp and get the table and camping stove set up right away, so can you whip us up something? Something light to go with Mr. V’s sweet rolls.”
“I-I can’t just materialize something I wasn’t planning to make.”
“Oh, then I’ll run up to the liquor store supermarket and buy some ingredients!”
“I was going to accuse you of using that to get out of setting up camp, but it will probably be easier without you getting in the way.”
“Then,” said a voice.
“Sumeragi-kun and I will go buy some extra ingredients together.”
“Yeah, that sound perfect. What about you, Kido-chan?”
When they looked at me that way, there was only one thing I could say.
“I will be the one cooking, so of course I have to go with them!”
●
“I think I’ll go shopping too.”
“Don’t you dare. You’ll only get in their way.”
“But she will be in our way here.”
“How can you two disagree and still both be against me!?”
“The Mesopotamians really are harsh with their own.”
●
Sumeragi-kun, Kido-san, and I walked to the road leading away from Okutama Station.
There was a semibasement liquor store and supermarket located on the corner there. It was a local business and it stocked local vegetables and things like that.
“I can’t spend too much time on it, so I will be making a quick soup.”
Kido-san chose primarily vegetables. Tachikawa had a strong meat-eating culture with a motto of “down with the sanctimonious plant eaters”, so I had never bought all that many myself.
“You’re buying a lot of onions!”
She was clearly buying enough for the group.
It seemed like too much for a late lunch soup, but she grabbed just as much of a few other vegetables and filled the basket carried by Sumeragi-kun.
And she smiled when she checked the spices section.
“Maybe it isn’t very godlike, but I think I will cook something a little unorthodox.”
Interlude[edit]
“I can’t believe how many types of curry roux they have.”
“Most people swear by either the Java Curry or the Vermont Curry, but the Curry Marché is good too.”
“I-is that a request!? I’ll make a note of that!!”
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