神々のいない星で / On A Godless Planet (Kawakami Minoru's EDGE series)

[Cosmic Eagle]

https://kakuyomu.jp/works/1177354054887891136

Finally finished reading the first 5 chapters released so far. The story connects AHEAD and GENESIS. Already one can see references to terms found in both Chronicle and Horizon

Spoiler:

The plot is as follows.

It is the year 3203AD. Humanity has taken to colonizing other star systems in an age of space exploration. The MC, Sumeragi Izumi initially finds himself in what he thinks to be a game where he is the only human character and the rest of his senpais are all god characters. Turns out it's no game and is actually real. He is indeed the only baseline human and everyone else is a divine entity.

The reason for this is that their colonization fleet is now in a star system with what is stated to be a wild and disruptive ley line system and is thus inflicting losses on their machinery. It was found that through prayer, the colonizers could buff themselves to withstand the star system's wild ether energies by tapping into Earth's own ley lines. Shinto prayer is the most effective as the colonizers of this fleet came from Japan.

The ley lines on Earth were discovered in the early 2000s when traces of other worlds that had fused with Earth were also observed (note the Chronicle references). Anyway, back to the present, a plan to teraform the hostile star system using raw ether energy from Earth was created. Using Earth's spiritual traditions and legends and its ley lines, the colonizers would create gods (essentially controlled masses of ether information with "god" being a form which manifests said information). Then, said gods would enter the worlds of this star system to tame its rampant energies in the image of Earth's myths and legends, essentially a divine teraforming of the star system. Thus the "Stars without Gods" would be where the colonists would recreate the gods and legends, thus giving the local ether a stable and hospitable form. The project's name is "The Stars with Gods."

The MC is the only normal human active (every other human colonist is in cold sleep. The AI called Balancer runs everything with the gods meanwhile) but he is vital since as a baseline human his faith empowers the god colonists' divinity allowing them to "level up."

For the "home base" world at this point of the story, the time period they model it on is 1990s Earth. It functions as the base for all the gods

Oh and like in Chronicle and Horizon, the names of the god characters are power. Honestly it feels like these are the forerunners to the ether-based divine entities we see in Horizon


Character sketches: https://twitter.com/kawakamiminoru/s...68386801451009

[Cosmic Eagle]

Chapters 6, 7, 8 and 9 just got released.

Ch 6:

Spoiler:

Sumeragi and Balancer is on the world currently undergoing terraforming. It is largely a molten ball however, a patch of land had been created by his senpai god and it is revealed her power is also what's protecting him from the hostile environment. His presence as her faithful also raised her divinity level and she can thus expand the piece of land she had created.

Balancer and senpai explain how she does it as changing the "phase" of the ley-line ie the "form" imparted on the geography by the ley line. The ley lines permeate the world including spacetime and are analogous to currents in the ocean if the world is the ocean. These ley lines are comprised of ether flows and pervade everything including all life forms.

Every entity has a "mould" which is equivalent to the "phase" mentioned earlier that imparts the entity its form. In humans, this "mould" is acquired during the gestation process in the womb. When filled with ether, a form that manifests this "mould" comes into being like a water balloon and since ether is everywhere, the "mould" of entities can normally maintain their forms. Without the "mould" the ether can neither be anchored nor maintain directionality and can only be dispersed without ever stopping.

For physical features like the world they are on, it also has a massive "mould" known as a "phase" that plays the same role. The laws of physics etc all come about due to the play of ether so to manipulate ether is to manipulate space, physical laws and everything else to whatever one wishes.

Senpai also tried to demonstrate the process to Sumeragi, producing some scattered light but she said it was a failure. Turns out it was her failing to control the influx of Sumeragi's passions as she tried to change the molten ground into solid rock and ended up creating solid light instead. Balancer remarked that it would have been forced to intervene if something more uncontrollable like a black hole were to have been produced.

This is difficult for humans to carry out despite the fact that magic techniques allow this as they are inefficient. The AI can construct the system to do this from scratch but as it renders humans irrelevant they decided to utilize the gods instead.

Ch 7:

Spoiler:

Largely talks about why they are cooling the planet. It is to get the water cycle going so oceans can be formed. However on top of the physical effects it also has the effect of adding more phases to the planet since you now have oceans and solid land. Unfortunately though, senpai can now create only 30 m^2 of land at a time when the planet is roughly Earth sized. So the rest of the games club turn up (obviously they are all gods as well) to lend a hand.

Ch 8:

Spoiler:

Introductions for the games club members. Turns out they have their own planets to terraform and are quite advanced in terms of progress. Yomoji handles his own planet while the rest work on another. Shifu, Kuwajiri and Raidou are Norse deities (Shifu being based off Sif and Jarnsaxa, Raidou being based off Thor and Kuwajiri being based off Kvasir while Yomoji is basically based on the Abrahamic God (he laughs this off saying there are tons of other "One True Gods." However, terraforming isn't as simple as filling in the major physical features like oceans, mountains, forests etc since Yomoji demonstrated he could do that in one go. There needs to be finer details like its rotation, position and composition. Also, the role of directing the terraforming has to be by Sumeragi and not the gods. Yomoji helps with the heavy-lifting on astronomical scale things like position and rotation.

As for the state of the planets. They were originally habitable but as mentioned in the earlier chapter the original spirits that made up the will of the planet retaliated and turned the worlds hostile to the newcomers.

Something of note is also raised. Sumeragi remarked on the dragon encounter at the start and how he seemingly died in what he thought was still a game when the issue of the hostile planet was raised. So how is he still alive and what was that situation with the dragon all about? No one answered him however.

As for why Yomoji can't just do everything for them in 7 days as in the Bible, but he can't because the nations of Earth had planned to divide up the planets in the star system amongst themselves. But due to the hostile planets requiring the gods to be called in, obviously the world religions will also now determine whose terraformed land belongs to whom so Yomoji can't do everything himself. Likewise with the Norse gods. If they do too much, the world's phase will become the god's divine ground so they'll have to be careful as the world they are on is assigned to Shinto.

Ch 9:

Spoiler:

They are back in the stone house that Senpai raised earlier. Usual lewd jokes open the chapter. Senpai goes to brew tea. Sumeragi notices that the walls had been covered with something resembling a flowery relief as well as flooring similar to wooden boards. It was a closet of some kind. The stone of the front had been made into fusuma screens and behind was a cave. Turns out that's her divine ground.

They then talk about 権術 which is the means by which gods organize their divine authority. Gods can directly mainpulate ether but to start up that process requires its own appropriate protocols. 権術 is the set of methods that systemizes those universal protocols. Also, Shinto gods can borrow the authority of their fellow gods since the horizontal connections among Shinto deities are close although apart from Senpai few other Shinto gods have manifested yet.

Gods can also bring stuff from the main holding dimension where they reside in to their individual domains since they rule those domains but they cannot bring them beyond the boundaries of their domains.

As for Senpai, her divine rank is originally only that of an earthly god who was mentioned only once in the legends and was unable to impose her authority on anything apart from herself so she had to directly manipulate things (ie touch directly) and when prayed to, she would also be unable to respond. In game terms, the only way she can gain EXP is to keep directly handling and transmuting magma to land.

So she made the stone house as a challenge to gain a stable amount of EXP and when the roof was finished, she rose one rank in divinity becoming able to gain followers despite having no home ground. But even then, she could not call Sumeragi to this place without being able to protect him from the planet's harsh conditions. Thus she continued working on the area until she rose in rank again and became able to designate a divine ground of her own which was the stone house.

She was anxious how Sumeragi would see the house but was overjoyed he liked it since she had laboured on it for the sake of bringing him over. She literally cried a lot over it.

Later, Sumeragi apparently dies after getting run over by a dumpster on the highway within the school area. Omokane says that it was just as he is finally realizing who he is, what is going on and what he should do as Shinto's representative. She also again says Senpai is actually the strongest god.

As Sumeragi is dying he sees Senpai who implores him not to forget and she also asks Balancer to explain as this is "out of the schedule"

[Cosmic Eagle]

Rough sketch by Satoyasu of the characters:

https://kakuyomu.jp/works/1177354054...54054888187647


Sumeragi looks very much like Toori while Yomoji looks like.....Kawakami's own self depiction on his books lmao.

[Cosmic Eagle]

https://kakuyomu.jp/works/1177354054...54054888093885


Explanation of Ether vs Ley lines.


Interesting how Kuwajiri mentions the events of Chronicle as being the catalyst for widescale discovery of the fundamental principles underlying reality as well as Asama essentially saying human Ether manipulation techniques are more refined in Genesis era than during the Age of Gods although that could be for humans only.

[Cosmic Eagle]

Just noticed that Js06 is TL-ing this so I no longer need to post chapter summaries. Shall directly reference events in the chapters themselves in future then

[lexlexz]

I heard of the horizon but not of chronicle is there a tread of that one?

[Cosmic Eagle]

https://forums.animesuki.com/showthr...ri+no+chronicl

Pretty dead though

[Cosmic Eagle]

https://twitter.com/kawakamiminoru/s...488741888?s=19


Dengeki published it