Arrodes

"Great master, your loyal and humble servant would like to greet you. Is there anything I can be of help to you?"

It was confirmed. This is the magic mirror Arrodes. In the novel, Arrodes has abilities encompassing the five pathways of the god almighty group and was a major source of information for Klein. Klein guessed that Arrodes came from the chaos sea and thus saw a 'pillar of support' in him. It also had a certain connection to the chaos sea which Adam used at the end of the novel. Considering the mirror's obvious bootlicking which it would not have should to others except great old ones, it may be safe to make the assumption that I was involved in the god almighty's revival plans. I thought about how to answer and then decided to ask some of the more pressing questions. I decided to ask about my current status first to be sure, after all you might never know when something is wrong with you in this crazy world, especially if you are dealing with cosmic beings.

"Has this body or my spirit been corrupted or influenced in any way that you can detect, Arrodes?"

"There does not seem to be any influence or corruption that I know of other than your physical body having a weak vitality. Oh, something to take note of would be the divine object present in your consciousness that radiates the same power as the underground. It seems to be a uniqueness, though I am sure your exalted self must already know that."

I breathed a sigh of relief hearing the first sentence the sentient mirror spoke but nearly jolted in surprise at the second. Ignoring the mirror's flattering behaviour, I thought about what it said. A uniqueness? If I remember correctly, those were the unique characteristics of each pathway. If I already had a uniqueness bonded to me, I won't have to undergo another tedious process to accommodate the uniqueness later on. Although, it was something too far away to worry about.

Additionally, this means that my sequence pathway is already decided. And as expected, if it has a connection to the underground, it must be one of the god almighty group's pathways. It seems my thoughts about possibly changing to some different pathway were rendered useless now. Well, no point crying over spilt milk. Ha, I seem to be taking this news rather well. I'll take that as an improvement.

"Based on the principle of reciprocity, you can ask one more question, great master."

The mirror then interrupted my thoughts from further indulging in pride. Hmm, it seemed to have communicated in the form of a question when I just picked it up and I answered with another question. So it will have to ask another question to satisfy its conditions? Haa, staying in the chaos sea for so long seems to have dulled my thought process. Thinking about unrelated nonsense when there are more important matters to consider due to finally having a conversation. Strangely, the first conversation partner in my new life to have my first chat with is a mirror. I wonder if the queen in snow white ever felt strange talking to a mirror as well. Shaking away these thoughts while my face remained indifferent on the outside, not pointing to my inner thoughts at all.

" Do you know which pathway the uniqueness belongs to?" I asked showing no concern as to whether the mirror will doubt that he is just a clueless dummy even if the mirror presumed that he knew already.

"It shows the characteristics of the visionary pathway."

As expected, Arrodes seemed to have no doubts behind the question. It seemed to have convinced itself of his underlying reasons for asking this question under the guise of his illusory greatness. If I was in the world of overlord instead of the lord of the mysteries, this could have easily been a 'sasuga ainz-sama' moment.

I got distracted again." You may ask your question now."

"Is 'Arrodes' the name your exalted self has bestowed upon me?"

My eyes narrowed at that. Although it was not clearly stated how Arrodes got its name in the novel, my guess would be that someone at the level of 'above the sequence' would give it a name that it would accept. It might have been the god almighty or lord of the mysteries as this mirror only seems to truly respect such figures. It was not the ancient sun god who named it. Then could it have been named even before the two great old one's fell? Although it might have just gotten its name naturally just after it was created from the chaos sea in the book, this did not seem the case right now. So maybe this was some sort of AU version of LotM or I had transmigrated before ancient sun god woke up? Putting the assumptions aside, I answered.

"Yes, that was the name I felt to be suitable after looking at you." After all that was the name I had read earlier.

"Your wisdom knows no bound great mas-"

"Has the ancient sun god already fallen to his followers?" I quickly cut it off before its praise.

Arrodes was silent for a while and then replied, " I….don't seem to know to know any sun gods who have fallen in the pantheon's that I have knowledge of. But those inferior gods can't even come close to your great self who has the authority of the sun, great master. May I know more about which ancient sun god you speak of?"

Leaving aside that I have no authority over the concept of the sun as sequence 0 is too far away for me, the information contained in Arrodes' reply was ridiculous. What does it mean by pantheon's of gods? Has the apocalypse already finished and a new era has begun with the number of beyonder characteristics increasing so much from fallen outer gods that it can lead to the creation of different pantheons now?

Or maybe I was wrong all along to assume this was the LotM universe. Maybe this is a mashup of different unrelated worlds. If I am in high school dxd which has a lot of godly pantheon's I will castrate issei as early as possible to relieve the constant ups and downs I am going through.

I decided to confirm if this was really not LotM as had thought.

"I thought 'He' was someone in a similar situation to me but apparently not. Now…tell me about the current situation of the outside world."

"Great master, it is currently April 1986 according to the human calendar and we are located in Chernobyl, Ukraine. I don't know much more information about powerful entities in the outside world now as we are in this isolated space but they don't seem to be very active on Earth and only exist as legends or myths."

April 1986, Ukraine? Isn't that when the Chernobyl disaster happened? So this is indeed some modern world. While I could have come before the apocalypse and first epoch which corresponds to modern earth history that I know, there were no 'powerful entities' or 'divine pantheons' active in my previous world. And as far as I know, only great old ones like the lord of the mysteries and god almighty were active on earth before cataclysm of the pre epoch modern era in the novel. They also only indirectly spread their influence on the world as they were asleep. There was no mention of pantheon's in the book. So this is definitely not the world of LotM.

This again brings up the question. Where am I?