"Just one thing before that."
"Y-Yes?"
Looking at Damyu, who was tense with anticipation, I asked something I had been curious about for a while.
"What exactly is the difference between a Great System and other worlds? I mean, I know the criteria for distinguishing them is that they're vast or that they can exert influence without direct contact, but... is that all?"
"The Great System targets the physical‑realm."
"What?"
I furrowed my brow at her incomprehensible words, and she, perhaps taking it as anger, hastily continued.
"W-We merely break our own heart‑realms. In my case, everything I touch becomes a swamp, and anyone who falls in dies."
"Isn't that also breaking the world?"
"The swamp appears because my broken self touches the world; it’s a matter of causality."
"To use an analogy, I am a human who has caught fire. Everything my hand touches will burn, but that is a change that occurs because my broken self has touched the world, not because the world itself has changed..."
"Then what am I?"
"The fallen ones of the Great System twist not only themselves, but the world itself."
"Their very existence encroaches upon the physical‑realm."
"For us, our own heart‑realms are our hells, but for the Great System, they turn the world they live in into a hell."