Hey, you drunk goddess. Where’d you bring that wine bottle from, eh? You didn’t go steal it from the kitchen’s wine cellar again, did you? You know I’m the one Crea will shout at later?

From how she was speaking, was Suika personally acquainted with the erosion god?

“Did you two know each other?” I asked.

“Hm? Jusht a little. He was sooooooooo annoying, hic!”

Certainly didn’t sound like the nicest guy in the world, though given he’d become a fallen god, that wasn’t much of a surprise.

“What kind of crime did he even commit that got him stripped of his rank?”

“Same as the servile god. He tried ta interfere with the surface realm. It was fer a different world than this one, though,” Uncle Kousuke explained between sips of green tea. By that, he meant using divinity to greatly affect the surface, right?

“The world ended up so messed up that the god of destruction had no choice but ta completely wipe it. Many species were goin’ extinct at an unnatural rate, and when we looked into it, it turned out to be the work of the god of erosion. Turned out he had descended to the surface by himself,” he continued.

“Ahhh, that’s bad. He was never getting away with that, riiight?” Suika chuckled away.

I doubt it was very funny to the people whose world got destroyed.

Still, did that mean if they hadn’t looked into it, the god of destruction would’ve exterminated the world and essentially covered up evidence of the god of erosion’s involvement without their knowing?

“Naturally, there was no room to argue for extenuating circumstances, so the guy had his divine status revoked, and he was branded a fallen god. The moment it was decided he would be sent to Cocytus, he went berserk and tried to escape. The god of destruction was present and got rid of him with one strike. Well, I guess he didn’t entirely get rid of him, but you get the idea,” Moroha explained.

It was crazy to think that the god of destruction could eliminate any one of us so easily...

“That is his job. He has the power to destroy any god other than God Almighty. If he really wanted to, he could get rid of all of us in one fell swoop. Though he’d need a justified reason to do so, of course.”

That meant any one of us could be killed if a reason existed. He seemed to be quite extreme from what I’d heard—he wasn’t destroying worlds as he felt like it, was he?

Oh, wait...

“Uh, so, I was actually asked to become the next god of destruction...”

“HUH?!”

Every god present couldn’t hide their surprise. I was pretty sure I heard Sousuke’s voice as well. He was able to speak this whole time?

“Touya as the next god of destruction... Maybe that’d work.”

“Mmm, as his big sister, I say no. I don’t want a violent little brother.”

“I think he’s got the talent for it, though.”

“True. He doesn’t generally like using his abilities, but when he does, he doesn’t hold back.”

“Nyah hah hah, Touya being the destruction god would be shoooooo fun, hic!”

“A destructive power is still one’s own power. We’ll need to make sure ya get in the trainin’ so you can control it, lad.”

Hang on, I’m not actually going to take the job. And Sousuke, quit playing such violent music.

“This aside, make sure you watch out for the fallen god’s power. As the name implies, by the time you start to notice it, it can already be too late, and that would be the worst.”

“I’ll try my best to not let that happen...”

“Even though the kids are going to have to be the ones to deal the killing blow on the fallen and wicked gods, you guys can still support them so long as you don’t use your divinity, y’know?”

With or without Karen’s urging, I fully intended to do just that. In that case, though, couldn’t Moroha and Uncle Takeru help out as well?

“If we dare fight with the wicked devout, they won’t stand a chance whether we use our divinity or not. If we aren’t careful, the fight will be over in a single shot—and that will undoubtedly be considered as us violating the rules.”

“Sorry, man. Adults shouldn’t get involved in a child’s fight. We don’t mind helping take out the rabble, however.”

Ugh, why are the broken characters so useless?!

I had to admit that I doubted the other gods would approve of them beating up the wicked devout first before having us deal the finishing blow. Someone would definitely find some reason or another to put in a complaint.

Nothing was ever easy with these guys, huh? But in all fairness, we were very much in a situation where we were having a blind eye turned to gods getting involved with an issue that should be solved by the surface humans so long as no one used their divinity.

“Plus, this is your job as this world’s caretaker. We can help a little, but if you leave all the work to us, you’ll come across as an incompetent god. Don’t run from trials that will only make you stronger, lad.”

“Ngh...”

Uncle Takeru with the blunt, honest truth... I forgot that this counted as my work as a god.

Isn’t this a bit much for a new employee’s— I mean, new god’s first task?

Not that complaining was going to get me out of it, of course.

◇　◇　◇

“All right, let’s leave it here for today.”

“Yes, sir...” I whined, spreading out on the ground of the training area after getting thorough training from Uncle Takeru and Moroha.

“Ow... [Refresh]...”

Upon casting the spell, the fatigue left my body, and the pain gradually lessened. When it came to training, muscle tissue grew thicker and stronger through its repeated breakdown and recovery, but if you healed it with magic, you didn’t receive those benefits. My training right now was more to help me acquire skills, so it wasn’t a big deal if I didn’t acquire muscle in the process. Plus, I could deal with that using strengthening magic anyway.

But now that I’d achieved divine status, would my body even grow anymore? I remembered the kids saying I looked a little different in the future, so maybe it would. If I recalled correctly, a human body hit its peak growth between twenty and twenty-five years of age, but I wasn’t human anymore, so did my body even follow that rule?

“Why is a Sovereign doing such things?”

“Hm?”

I heard a familiar voice speak to me in an unfamiliar tone, and I lifted my head to look around for the source. Standing at the edge of the training field was Leylle.

No... This isn’t Leylle. Judging from how they spoke and that poker face of theirs, it has to be Halle.

“Dunno if it’s the answer you want, but I’m just doing it to get stronger.”

“But you’re the Sovereign, are you not? What strength is required of you? Should you have a notably skilled general under your command, there should be no need for that.”

“There’s some things I can’t leave to other people.”

I levered my upper body up and looked toward Leylle—no, Halle. She...no, he was looking at me as if he didn’t like my answer.

“Were the Sovereign all-powerful, the people under their rule would be content. However, when that Sovereign must one day inevitably leave their position, there will be none who can sufficiently take their place. And as a result, the world will fall into endless strife and turmoil. Should the Sovereign not ensure they leave things in the capable hands of the competent?”

“Are you referring to what happened with Melle?” I asked. I saw Halle hesitate. Spot on, then.

Sure, that was one way of dealing with it. I was frequently told by Kousaka to stop taking care of everything myself.

“...My sister was a brilliant Sovereign. Nothing ever went wrong when the citizens followed her command. It is for that reason that they sought the same thing from me. However, the moment they realized I could not fulfill what they wished of me, they all began doing as they pleased. Phrasia fell into constant strife and turmoil. I was unable to become her replacement,” Halle said, his voice fading into a self-deprecating mutter.

This must have been what Kousaka warned me of—that if the one at the top was too talented, the organization as a whole could very easily crumble. If an autocratic president continued to heavy-handedly run a business, you ended up with nothing but useless bootlickers filling your ranks, leading to the gradual decline of your company’s growth in capability, making it impossible for employees to nurture a sense of autonomy and responsibility.

The Odas quickly fell to ruin after the Honnoji Incident for similar reasons. Oda Nobunaga was an outstanding leader who no one could replace. The moment he was dead, his clan fell apart. However, it likely didn’t help that his successor, Nobutada, lost his life in the same battle.

“Do you hate Melle for forcing the role onto you?”

“My sister? I...don’t know. I certainly hate Endymion, at least.”

Oh no, Ende, looks like you’re still not out of the woods yet.

“When my sister first disappeared, it felt as if I had been abandoned. First came sadness, then anger. Most of that was directed at Endymion, but...honestly, I felt the weight of the title of Sovereign. Upon being given that role, I was once more made painfully aware of the greatness of my sister, and was made even more painfully aware of my own powerlessness.”

You did often hear stories of successors who had to go to extreme lengths in order to finally be respected at the same level as their great predecessors. Having taken up the crown after Melle, Halle’d had no choice but to fight the pressure of the unreasonable expectations being placed on him by his subjects.

“Upon becoming Sovereign, I finally understood what my sister must have been feeling. You have the motivation to work hard for those who need you, but you can’t help but wonder why you need to work yourself to the bone for those who only care about your power. To them, anyone would suffice as Sovereign, so long as they had sufficient power. Perhaps that was the reason my sister and Endymion resolved to cross worlds.”

“I do think it would be difficult to want to dedicate your life to people who weren’t even truly looking at you...”

I sure wouldn’t be able to find the motivation to be grand duke if the people of my country were entirely indifferent toward me and even those close to me in the castle never truly cared about me. I’d definitely abdicate the throne, go to another country, and enjoy my life there instead.

Some people might accuse me of being irresponsible as someone with power and authority, but what was the issue with me living my own life? I wasn’t self-sacrificing enough to live purely for other people. Those who were had to be what we called saints.

Thankfully, both here and around the world, I’d made proper bonds with many people. That was why I had come to love this world. I had people that I wanted to protect, so I was able to work hard. Halle likely didn’t have anyone like that in his life. I’d heard that, for better or for worse, the Phrase were very much a meritocracy. No doubt a ton of people saw that Halle was inferior to Melle, and that was what led to the chaos in Phrasia.

“My sister... She smiles now. Not just her, but Ney and Lycee as well. She has a daughter named Allis, and she looks like she’s living her life so much more than when she was Phrasia’s Sovereign. I can’t help but think that...she looks really, truly happy. When I think about how Endymion was the one that granted her that happiness, I feel this bubbling rage, but...I also think this is for the best.”

Halle really did love Melle. He had all the right to be mad at her for dumping the title of Sovereign onto him, yet he was glad about her happiness.

“I said I understood my sister’s feelings, right? This body belongs to Leylle, and I am little more than the remnants of the Sovereign Halle, but I want to tell him to abandon the title of Sovereign just as his sister did. He should abandon the title of the one who exists to be used like a puppet. However, I know that it is likely my core is already shattered back on Phrasia, and I have been reduced to nothing but a corpse.”

Was the real Halle back on Phrasia still alive? Though he was created by Yula, given that he was able to give birth to a new power in the form of the Quos, I highly doubted he was an incompetent Sovereign.

“Mngh, it feels like Leylle’s about to wake up. Sovereign of this kingdom, I express my thanks for accompanying me for this talk.”

“I’m not the Sovereign, I’m Touya. Touya Mochizuki. Learn the name already.”

“I see. In that case, may we meet again, Touya.”

Halle flashed a smile at me before his eyes slowly closed. Next thing I knew, Leylle’s eyes snapped open and she started blinking furiously.

“Ahuh? Wha—? Where is this?”

“You’re at the castle’s third training field.”

“Oh, Grand Duke!”

Leylle was naturally surprised upon suddenly finding herself standing somewhere she didn’t remember walking to. Honestly, Leylle and I hadn’t really talked all that much since she’d come here. Apparently, whenever Halle was in control of her body, Leylle only had vague memories as if she had been in a dream, even though Halle seemed to perfectly remember whatever Leylle saw.

“Huh? I was lost, and then I...”

“There you are! Leylle, haven’t I told you not to wander too far away?!”

Dashing at full speed toward us from the other side of the field was Allis. Kuon was also power walking behind her. She was like Leylle’s guardian—she really had become like her older sister.

“Sorry, Allis...”

“So long as you’re safe, it’s all right. I was just scared ’cause I turned around and suddenly you weren’t there.”

It turned out Allis had come with Leylle to visit Kuon, but then Leylle suddenly disappeared. Or rather, Halle’s personality had taken over and come to find me. Allis seemed to remember something as she turned to look at me.

“Your Grace, is there any chance you could make a smartphone for Leylle?”

“Oh, wait, did I not give her one?”

If Leylle had had a phone, Allis would’ve been able to just call her. I’d sealed Leylle’s echo with [Prison], so Allis couldn’t sense where she was that way anymore.

I took out an unregistered phone from [Storage] and handed it over to the girl.

I was going to exchange contact details with her while we were here, but Allis stopped me; she said that the one who should be first in Leylle’s phone contacts was her older sister.

Okay, okay, off you go.

Kuon came over as I was smiling fondly at them.

Wait, why is he wearing glasses?

“Father, there’s a guest here to see you.”

“A guest?”

“I came to find you because your phone’s turned off. They’re currently waiting in the reception room.”

Right, I’d turned my phone off during training. But I was pretty sure I didn’t have any plans to meet anyone today. Who the hell was it?

“They called themselves Glassie, and they’re quite forceful... They’re who I got these glasses from. As a sign of goodwill, apparently.”

“Oh.”

I instantly knew who it was the second Kuon explained the situation to me. There was only one person I knew who was like that. But what reason would he have to come here? I wasn’t sure, but I might as well meet him for now. If I wasn’t quick about it, everyone in the castle would be forced to wear glasses.

◇　◇　◇

“Oh, Master Touya. I believe your wedding was the last time we met.”

“Um, yeah, it’s nice to see you again...”

When I entered the reception room, the god of glasses was waiting for me with under-rim glasses on. Whether out of habit or him consciously doing it for the effect, he pushed them up with a finger, the lens letting off a mysterious glint.

He looked like an ordinary young man in his twenties with long black hair, but his glasses had this sheen to them that made them unnaturally stand out. Those glasses must have been his main body.

“I’ve already made a round trip of the neighboring countries to inform them of the wonder of glasses. Henceforth, I would like to concentrate my efforts on popularizing them around the world. As such, I have come to you for assistance.”

“What? What kind of assistance do you even want from me?” I asked, confused. As if he’d been waiting for me to ask that very question, the god of glasses’s...glasses gleamed once more.

“Of course, I wish to use you as a walking advertisement! If I were to place glasses on you, the most popular man in the world, then surely people all over will begin wearing glasses too!”

“Are you kidding me?”

To think that what had awaited me was a pushy glasses salesman.

◇　◇　◇

“To begin with, glasses are used to assist with abnormalities in vision such as nearsightedness, farsightedness, and astigmatism, and to shield the eyes from strong light. As such, glasses come in all manner of styles, and no two glasses are the same. Actually, scratch that; there are nonprescription glasses—glasses purely for show—that can be mass-produced and are therefore the same. However, if everyone were to wear glasses with the same frames, it would lead to the complete erasure of individuality. Everyone has his or her own pair of glasses that fits them perfectly—no one in this world looks bad in all glasses. Simply by wearing them, one can look intelligent, increase how sincere they look, and even increase sexual appeal. They are practically a sacred treasure for one’s face. That is precisely why I cannot help but pity those who do not wear them. People are unaware. They are unaware of just how much they are missing out on their own charm born from the gap between when they are wearing glasses and when they are not! ‘I thought they were some violent delinquent, but they were actually kind!’ ‘He’s so cool, but he has the sweetest smile!’ ‘She’s usually so flamboyant, but now she looks so homely!’ You can create these exact character gaps with a single pair of glasses! Glasses are a part of one’s face, a tool that adds vibrancy to your whole look! Even those who barely make an impression at all can show off their personal appeal with a simple pair of glasses. In a way, it’s just like a girl’s makeup. In other words, not wearing glasses is like leaving one’s face naked. That, in and of itself, can be a way of showing off one’s natural beauty, but that does not mean we should neglect the effort to look beautiful. Whether man or woman, we are all attracted to that which is beautiful. And if that is the case, then everyone should wear glasses! They should embrace their own beauty and look at that which is beautiful with their beautiful, clear glasses! Glasses can even give the impression that one is pure, tidy, and innocent. A woman has nothing to lose by wearing them, don’t you agree? In this world, glasses are still a luxury item, yet to spread to the common people. And so, I will simply spread them around the world myself! I will make no use of my divine powers. I will spread them around the world as a fellow human being! As an evangelist of glasses, I travel the world and inform everyone of their wonder! That is why I have come all this way to ask for your assistance, Master Touya.”

“I-I see...”

Could you be a bigger yapper?!

Glassie, the god of glasses, had gotten so engrossed in his speech that his divinity was leaking out. The maids in the room had to leave because it was affecting them!

Honestly, it was strange that his divinity was leaking out like this and yet none of the other gods came to check what was happening. They’d definitely realized the god of glasses was here, right? They knew and that was exactly why they didn’t come, right?

Damn you, don’t shove your annoyances off onto my plate!

“Are you listening?”

“Oh, uh, sorry... W-Well, I pretty much get what you’re trying to say. Glasses are still seen as a luxury item in this world, so only a handful of nobles actually wear them. Back on Earth, there were plenty of people who didn’t wear glasses and instead wore contact lenses, but—”

“Contact lenses?” the god of glasses practically spat out, narrowing his eyes, his face contorting as he looked at me. There was a dark and gloomy light within those sharp eyes.

Oh no, I said something I shouldn’t have, didn’t I?

“You’re not one of those, are you? A foolish supporter of those foolish lenses you insert into your eyes, I mean. Are you telling me that you think inserting a foreign object into an organ as sensitive as your eye will end well? This world has healing magic, but even that is not all-powerful. You may be able to heal a wound to the eye, but you cannot cure the growth of bacteria. Make one wrong move and you can even blind yourself, yet you claim that such horrors are on the same level as glasses? Abandoning one’s captivating glasses and replacing them with contacts is like going to fight an enemy buck naked with not a single piece of armor on your body! If you have bad eyesight, then wear glasses! Even if you don’t have bad eyesight, wear glasses! They are a companion that will accompany you for life! Contacts are the heretic’s path! Glasses are the most supreme existence in this world, the ultimate item with infinite possibilities!”

“Wow, amazing...”

I couldn’t think of anything else to say to the glasses god monologuing with rabid eyes.

Gimme a break, seriously...

The god let out a breath and said, “My apologies. I became a touch enraged.”

“Only a touch?”

“I had a flashback to a fight I had with the god of contacts a thousand years ago, so I couldn’t help it...”

A god of contact lenses actually existed? Would contacts even have existed a thousand years ago?

“You’re thinking purely in Earth terms. There are other worlds with thriving civilizations that developed contact lenses well before Earth, you know? No matter the world, however, glasses were always made first! That said...there are civilizations that ended up so advanced that sight correction operations became possible, so both glasses and contact lenses decreased in usage...”

The god of glasses slumped over in sadness. Apparently, when humanity progressed far enough, everyone stopped having bad eyesight and glasses became a fashion item. Even that eventually started to go out of fashion, and everyone stopped wearing them. It was true that no one really wore monocles back on Earth anymore. No matter the world, some things trend while others fall into disuse.

“There are worlds where the races that live there do not need glasses or contacts either. Worlds like this with this level of civilization are the ones best suited to spreading the gospel of glasses. Oh, returning to why I came here, this is why I would like your assistance in doing so.”

“Mmm...”

Honestly...I couldn’t give two flips! It didn’t matter to me whatsoever if glasses became popular or if they died out. Actually, wait, no, the latter might be a problem; there would be people out there with bad sight that would suffer from that, especially the common folk. There would most definitely be many commoners who would benefit greatly from glasses being sold at an affordable price. In that sense, I didn’t think it was such a bad idea.

But if that was the case, we’d need to start by spreading the technology of lens grinding more widely. I was pretty sure we could easily share it between countries by holding a technological conference with the alliance. We did have an expert right in front of us, after all. We could start by spreading it among the nobles and upper classes, and then finally make cheap, affordable glasses that could go to the commoners.

For nonprescription glasses, people didn’t need to know how to grind lenses, and we could probably get it trending among people without bad eyesight as a fashion accessory...

“But, eh...I doubt me wearing glasses is going to magically get them trending.”

“Really? But I thought using famous people as a walking advertisement worked.”

“Famous? Well...I guess I am famous to some people. But if you’re wanting glasses to start trending as a fashion item, you should get a girl as a model.”

Putting glasses on someone like me with the most normal face ever wouldn’t have much of an impact. If anything, it would just power up my plainness. In that case, why not get a beautiful lady to increase how captivating it looked?

“Hm. Then may I ask your wives for assistance?”

“Huh?”

“I saw your wives at the wedding ceremony, and they’re all beautiful women. Were they to model my glasses, their beauty would be even further emphasized. They would make for the perfect advertisements. How does that sound?”

“Using the girls as walking ads? Hmm...”

I was sure they’d look good in glasses, at least. I’d even seen Linze wearing them once before, back when she was using my translation glasses. They really did suit her.

“Let’s bring it up with them for now,” I said. “But if they say no, you better not force them.”

“But of course. Thank you.”

To be honest, I’d like to see them all wearing glasses too. Maybe not as an ad, but they might like wearing them as a part of their outfits. Anyway, we could only ask and see.

◇　◇　◇

“So? What do you want us to do?” Elze asked, tilting her head.

“You know that there’s that joint wedding party in Allent for Dauburn and Zadonia happening soon? Apparently, he wants you guys to attend the party wearing glasses so you can help advertise them.”

The young kings Hakim of Dauburn and Frost of Zadonia were betrothed to princesses Ariattie and Leticia of Allent, respectively. They’d already had their marriage ceremonies in their home countries, but they made the decision to hold a wedding party at their wives’ home country as well.

Naturally, we had been invited. Or more accurately, if I wasn’t there, there was no way to get each country’s representatives gathered in one place. The only one who could use teleportation magic besides me was the pumpkin-pants prince of Panaches.

That led to the plan of having the girls wear glasses at the party in order to try to market them to foreign countries.

“Glasses? I have no problem with my sight, I do not,” Yae stated, clearly perplexed as to why she was being told to wear them. It wasn’t too surprising—I hadn’t seen many people wearing glasses in Eashen, so it was purely viewed as a tool for correcting one’s sight over there.

“Glasses are not only worn by the visually impaired, my dear. They can draw out one’s beauty as well. You look as if a pair of oval lenses would suit you.”

Glassie leaped right in to clear up Yae’s confusion, instantly pulling out a pair of glasses with oval lenses. It looked like an average pair of glasses you’d find on Earth, with thin metallic frames.

Though she looked unsure, Yae slipped the glasses onto her face.

“H-How do I look...?”

Hng! To have Yae timidly asking me how she looks with glasses on! So cute!

The god of glasses seemed to have caught my reaction, as he let out a laugh.

“Powerful, aren’t they?”

“Ugh... I have no choice but to agree!”

Yae usually had an athletic feel about her, but the moment she put on those glasses, she suddenly had an intelligent vibe. I felt like I was looking at a studious literature student all of a sudden.

So this is gap moe!

“T-Touya-dono? Is it strange, is it?”

“No, definitely not! It really suits you! You look so cute! You have a totally different vibe from before, but that’s not a bad thing!”

“D-Do you think so, do you? Hehe...”

An embarrassed Yae in glasses looked so cute!

Man, these really are powerful... My heart’s beating a mile a minute because of how different she looks.

“D-Does it change you that much? Maybe I should try some on,” Elze muttered, beginning to be tempted.

“Hmm, it seems like you’re usually quite lively. How about some Wellington frames? I think this should give you a different image.”

Elze took the glasses the god recommended to her and slipped them on.

“H-How do I look?” she asked, trying to gauge our reactions as she gazed at us with her black, slightly rounded square-frame glasses.

Wow! She looks a little like a class president!

The usual rowdy Elze had calmed down, giving way to a diligent student. She had the image of a nagging but kind and put-together girl.

“You’re freakin’ adorbs, class prez!”

“C-Class...prez? Is that your way of saying it suits me?”

“Of course! A completely different side of you is getting to shine!”

“Really...? Well, I guess it doesn’t feel bad.”

Crap, even wearing glasses, my wives are adorable. All it took were some glasses to bring out a whole new side of them. Is this the magic of glasses?!

The god of glasses slapped me on the shoulder from behind, face smug as he gave me a thumbs-up. Why did his attitude piss me off so much? I kind of wanted to smash his glasses.

“This looks fun. I want to try some on too!”

“Me too! I wanna wear the same ones as mommy!”

Sue and Steph ended up curious themselves. Wearing the same glasses as your kid sounded cute.

Maybe I should wear the same ones as them...

“I want to wear the same ones as you too, mom!”

“Wait, I’ve got to wear them too?”

Seeing Sue and Steph go for matching pairs of glasses, Linne forcefully shoved some toward Linze. The rest of the mother-daughter duos wanted to do the same, so Glassie was taking out glasses one after another and passing them around as if he had been waiting for this very moment.

Before long, almost everyone in the room was wearing a pair, turning the room into one densely populated by people with glasses.

Hang on, if everyone wears glasses, won’t this become the new normal? There’s nothing exciting about that.

The way someone wearing glasses let them stand out was being erased by the glasses themselves.

“You really don’t get it, do you? It is the exact same situation as when everyone’s faces are bare. In fact, by having everyone wear their own unique pair of glasses, their individual charm points are further brought out, and a new sense of individuality is born. Is this not how humans should truly be? Glasses really are a part of one’s body!”

I had no idea what he was trying to say. I was almost convinced by his spectacle doctrine, but too much of anything was definitely a bad idea. They were literally just glasses. Regardless, it was rare that I got the opportunity to see the girls with glasses on, so I made sure to at least take a picture.

“...There’s something cast on these, isn’t there? These aren’t normal glasses,” Leen remarked, picking up a pair of Boston frames—glasses characterized by their inverted triangular shape. Had she seen something with the special sight granted to her by her fairy lineage?

“Oh my. Good eye, as I expected. I certainly have many pairs with magic cast on them. The one you hold right now, my dear fairy, is enhanced with Magnification.”

“Magnification?”

“If you slide your finger along the temple of the glasses, you can magnify your vision.”

Leen did as Glassie told her, and then her eyes widened.

“What a convenient tool. You can basically use it like a telescope, yes?”

She was sliding her finger along the side while gazing out the window. She must’ve been playing about with the magnification.

“Mother, let me try them on too!”

Naturally, her artifact-loving daughter couldn’t keep quiet with this in front of her. Quun was practically jumping at Leen to get the chance to try them on. Leen had a wry smile on her face as she handed the glasses to her daughter, who immediately put them on and was excitedly sliding her finger along the temple as she looked out the window herself.

“You’re not spreading enhanced glasses everywhere, are you?” I asked.

“Of course I’m not. I want to spread glasses, not magic items.”

I was relieved to hear his answer. If glasses like this were spread without regulations in place, there was a chance they could be used to commit crimes.

“I have plenty of other types of enhanced glasses. This is Appraisal, this is Heat Sensor, and this is Beam,” Glassie continued, placing three more glasses on top of the table.

Okay, Appraisal and Heat Sensor are easy enough to understand, but what the hell is Beam?!

“As the name implies, these let out a light beam. You could burn away something as trivial as an Orc in a flash with them. The downside is that the beam is so bright that it damages one’s eyes...”

“Maybe put away the dangerous ones, okay?!”

A glasses beam?! It sounded cool, but it definitely came across more like a gimmick than anything practical. The other two at least seemed sensible...

I put on the Heat Sensor glasses, ran my finger along the temple, and suddenly I could see heat sources glowing red, just like thermography. I felt like I’d become the Predator like this. It seemed it was possible to switch between the modes, at least. When you tapped the frames, a visual would appear indicating the swap.

But when would you even use glasses like these? When you were out hunting at night? Then again, I could see intelligence knights making use of these. Perhaps I’d take them.

But what about the Appraisal glasses? I repeated what I’d done with the Heat Sensor glasses, putting them on and running a finger along the frames. Some kind of crosshair appeared in my vision, moving wherever I looked, almost like a mouse cursor.

When I lined it up with a painting on the wall, it beeped and an explanation appeared like a text bubble in a comic.

“Painting: oil painting.”

Well, yeah, I can see that.

I turned my gaze toward the door this time.

“Door: wood.”

And I can see that too!

Could these glasses only appraise things by their outside appearance?!

“It explains whatever it sees based on the wearer’s own knowledge,” Glassie explained. “As such, it cannot know what its wearer does not know.”

“Doesn’t that defeat the purpose of an appraisal...?”

If all that came out was information that you already knew, you wouldn’t need to appraise it to know what the item was. When I looked at that painting on the wall, my knowledge amounted to “that’s a picture” and “that’s an oil painting,” so that was the information the glasses showed me. If I’d known who the painter was, or what year it was painted in, the glasses probably would’ve gone, “Painting: oil painting drawn in XXXX by the artist known as YYYY,” instead, but if I had that info already, I’d have no reason to appraise it.

Was there any point in an enhancement like this? Maybe as something to pull forth any memories you’d forgotten, like if you met someone who seemed familiar but you just couldn’t remember their name. Use the Appraisal glasses and you’d know who they were right away.

You know, maybe these are useful after all.

When it came to all the royalty and nobles I had to meet on a regular basis, I was quite often faced with the situation of not quite remembering who they were.

I tested it out by hovering the crosshair over the spectacled Yumina.

“Yumina Brunhild-Mochizuki: Female. Divine ward. One of the Grand Duke of Brunhild, Touya Mochizuki’s wives. Maiden name: Yumina Ernea Belfast. Has an affinity for Wind, Earth, and Dark magic. Possesses the Mystic Eye of Intuition and the Mystic Eye of Foresight. Eldest daughter of the king of Belfast, Tristwyn Ernes Belfast, and his queen, Yuel Ernea Belfast. Her younger brother is the first prince of Belfast, Yamato Ernes Belfast, and...”

Okay, okay, stop already!

All the information I knew about Yumina came tumbling out. It really did just display the information you knew. Honestly, I couldn’t decide if I actually thought it was useful or not.

“You don’t appear to view them that favorably, do you? Then what about these?” Glassie asked as he handed me a pair of yellow plastic frame glasses. These didn’t have another weird enhancement, did they?

As suspicious as I was, I tried them on. They...seemed to be a normal pair of glasses. Was there a switch on the frames like with the Heat Sensor ones? I slid my fingers along the temple while I looked at my surroundings, but there didn’t seem to be anything—

HANG ON!

When I turned to look at Lu, her clothes looked...slightly see-through? Huh?! I slid my fingers further along the frames, and suddenly, her clothes disappeared entirely, leaving only her underwear.

“Those are glasses enhanced with Transparent. You can look through obstructions with ease—”

“Hmph!”

“AAAAHHHH!”

I snapped the glasses in half.

“Wh-Wh-What are you doing?! To destroy a pair of glasses is a blasphemous act even for a god!” the god of glasses wailed with tear-filled eyes. He really didn’t understand that I’d just saved his ass.

“Touya? What are you doing?”

“I think I heard something about them being enhanced with Transparent...”

Crap!

Behind me were Yumina and Linze, looking at me with frigid glares. I felt as though I could see their menacing auras radiating from them. Even the god of glasses could only gasp in fright when he saw their eyes, sweat beginning to pour down his face.

“N-No, you misheard! Not Transparent but, uhhh, Talent! Seems like the glasses couldn’t withstand my innate talent and broke! I thought Elze would like to try them on, but guess that isn’t happening now! What a shame! You don’t have any more of these, right?”

“R-Right. I generally only keep one of each type of enhanced glasses. I...have no more.”

“...I see.”

“...Is that so?”

The heavy pressure exuding from Yumina and Linze disappeared all at once. They seemed convinced for now, luckily. When the two returned to the kids, both me and Glassie let out the breaths we’d been unconsciously holding.

“That was close...” I breathed out. “If the girls had learned these glasses existed, you’d have been a goner...”

“You have some frightening wives, Master Touya... W-Well, let’s be thankful that it never turned into anything worse, shall we?”

“Don’t act like you’re innocent here. You’d have been the one getting hung out to dry, you know?”

“Me?!”

I mean, yeah, I wasn’t the one who made the glasses. If I’d acted overjoyed upon learning of their existence, though, it would’ve been a very different story... I was pretty sure the goddesses would’ve gotten involved as well. Glassie would’ve had no escape. I doubted the girls would wear the glasses to the party after something like that either. He should be thanking me, seriously.

“Don’t make glasses like these again, okay?” I warned him.

“I-I understand...”

Sweat still pouring down his pale face, the god of glasses nodded his head. Whether human or divine, women were not to be made enemies of. That was the truth of the world.

◇　◇　◇

The sales pitch for using the girls as walking advertisements for glasses at the wedding party was a surprising success. It turned out that even on the Western Continent, where technology was much more advanced, glasses were still seen as simple tools for sight correction. It appeared no country viewed glasses as a fashion accessory.

The grand duchesses of Brunhild, known across the world for having introduced new sweets, meals, fun toys, and useful gadgets to the world, were now all wearing glasses despite their sight being more than fine.

That meant this was the first time that glasses were perceived as a fashion item. In which case, there was no reason the royal family and nobility wouldn’t jump on it, especially the women. What was more, for the people who did wear glasses for their sight, it gave them the idea of having more than one pair that they could wear depending on their mood.

I chose that moment to lay out a selection of glasses on a table, and that immediately caused a glasses boom.

I first gifted a pair of glasses to each of the princesses of Allent, given this party was for them. The contrast with the usual appearances of their wives struck the two young kings of Dauburn and Zadonia right in the heart—I knew exactly how they felt.

After that, everyone tried to look for a pair of glasses that they liked, excitement spreading among the wives and young ladies in attendance. I decided to leave that part of it to the girls, while I recommended bifocal glasses to the elderly that were present. The lens of bifocal glasses contained near, far, and intermediate lenses combined in one. By shifting your sight up and down, you could see both further away and closer.

The emperor of Regulus was having difficulty focusing his vision in his old age and was thankful for the pair of glasses he was given. He’d had the issue for a while, but it had apparently been growing much worse recently.

Wait...it isn’t because I gave him a smartphone, right? There is a way to magnify the text...

Originally, I didn’t care all that much about whether or not glasses started trending—it had nothing to do with me. Or so I thought. But with this realization, I was starting to feel as if I were partly to blame. You couldn’t heal worsening eyesight with [Recovery], after all... Not unless it was the aftereffect of a disease like with Sue’s mother, anyway.

It wasn’t exactly intended as a way to make up for what I’d done, but I gave the rulers of the Western Continent instruction manuals from Glassie detailing how to grind lenses. The techniques had already been developing over this side of the world, but each factory generally kept its processes secret, so to have me so casually hand over the instructions surprised all of them. In return, I asked that they introduce me to any lens craftsmen who would be willing to move to Brunhild—if we didn’t become proficient at creating glasses without divine assistance, it would never spread to the common people.

“So wait, where’d the god of glasses go?”

“He went to Allent. The nobles over there have already started wearing glasses more, so he wants to spread the gospel of glasses over there for now, he said.”

I explained everything that had happened to Karen and Suika when they very conveniently appeared after the god of glasses was already gone.

“Anyway, where did you two get off to, forcing the god of glasses on me like that?”

“He’s so long-winded, y’know... It’s such a pain. He always tries to recommend these weird glasses whenever he sees us too,” Karen complained as she pulled out a pink pair of heart-shaped sunglasses from her pocket dimension. I’d seen sunglasses like those in manga, but apparently they existed in real life too. Honestly, it kind of fit the goddess of love perfectly.

“Hey, they don’t look so bad. I think they’d suit you, actually! Pfft—”

I couldn’t hold back the laughter when Karen slipped the glasses on. She looked so shady! The goddess immediately slammed her fist into my solar plexus as I tried to hold the laughs back.

“Guh?!”

“You’re laughing way too hard, y’know.”

Ugh... At least it stopped my laughing.

“Karen’s are fine, but he left me with these...”

This time it was Suika slipping a pair of glasses on. They had thick eyebrows, a red nose, and a little mustache; it was a pair of nose glasses.

“AHA HA HA HA! THIS IS AMAZING!”

I couldn’t help but start rolling on the floor in laughter. It was the perfect pair of glasses for a drunkard like her!

“Gwuh?!”

“You’re laughing way too hard.”

Ugh... Don’t punch me in the same place!

“Well, I’m relieved he’s gone. If he’d ended up settling down here, Brunhild would’ve become known as the kingdom of glasses, y’know.”

“The thought of that’s gonna give me nightmares tonight...”

I supported the idea of ensuring that all citizens had access to glasses, but not the idea that everyone should wear them. Even the girls took off the glasses once they returned from the party, though they said they’d wear them for a change of pace here and there.

Elze and Yae said they’d wear Appraisal glasses in future, since they were pretty bad at remembering names and faces. That definitely was one of the ways they could find use.

We’d handed out glasses to the children, but they didn’t care about them so much that they’d go so far as using them as a fashion item. The only kids that still wore them sometimes were Quun and Yoshino. They were the two that really cared about their fashion. Yoshino had also been using some glasses with a scope function to help aim with her harpbow. Those were the kind of enhanced glasses I was thankful for.

“By the way, about the Spatial Translocation usage you asked about the other day...”

I felt myself lean forward expectantly at the topic Karen suddenly brought up. Thinking it would be nice to let the kids visit Earth once everything was over, I’d asked her about using Translocation to teleport everyone there. It was already possible for me to do it myself, but there were all kinds of minor restrictions like not being allowed to go in my current form or not being able to use most of my powers while over there—if I used my powers as I pleased while on Earth, then I’d be as bad as the god of erosion.

“The brief answer is yes, there’s no problem for you to do that. But with your abilities, you may end up missing the mark a little, y’know.”

“Missing the mark?”

“Spatial Translocation is a divine skill that allows its user to cross worlds, but it also lets you cross time, y’know. Not as freely as the space-time goddess...as Grandma Tokie, but it’s possible. It isn’t such a big deal if you’re only moving around this world, but if you’re going to a different world entirely like Earth, you have to make sure you focus enough as you make the jump, or you could end up going off course on the time axis, y’know. You could end up in some time like the Edo Period by accident.”

Ending up in a completely different time would definitely be bad... Maybe I’d be better off putting in a request to God Almighty like I did for our honeymoon trip. I’d rather make it there with my own strength, but I didn’t want to risk our lives just to do it. Or well, maybe Grandma Tokie could give me some special training.

“And about using Spatial Translocation to infiltrate the wicked devout’s ship...”

This was the important one. If this one didn’t work and we couldn’t solve the problem of the wicked devout, then we couldn’t even go to Earth in the first place. I’d asked Karen if using Spatial Translocation to cross the barrier and enter the Ark was considered breaking the divine rules. I wouldn’t be directly influencing the surface realm with my abilities, so I’d think it would just barely count. I needed to get a clear answer, though, or we couldn’t start formulating a final battle plan.

“They’ve said it’s fine for you to use it so long as you don’t have Spatial Translocation affect the wicked devout themselves directly, or use it as a form of surprise attack for either yourself or your wards.”

In other words, it was fine so long as I didn’t use it to directly teleport the wicked devout or use it to teleport us to launch a surprise attack.

Basically, any attacks using divinity were forbidden. It was most likely meant in the sense that divine powers shouldn’t be used in a fight on the surface realm, and that apparently seemed to include using Translocation to suddenly appear behind the wicked devout and deal the killing blow. The ability wasn’t being used on them directly, but it was still viewed as a battle tactic using divinity.

However, if we only used it to infiltrate the Ark, they were willing to turn a blind eye.

“You’ve got it right, y’know. But you really shouldn’t use your divinity to take down the wicked devout, okay? I’m being serious. Even God Almighty won’t be able to vouch for you if you do that. Worst case, you could be sealed away for thousands of years, y’know?”

Yeah, no thanks. I’d rather not be sealed up for that long. All I had to do was avoid using divinity during the fight, right? Then again, maybe I shouldn’t be fighting on the front lines to begin with...

Okay, I’ll take up a support role this time, then.

“But will you reeeeeaaaally be okay? There are times when you get really mad...”

“Right? You’re usually so goofily happy, but the moment anything happens to the girls, you enter search and destroy mode, so I’m worried, y’know?”

“Hey, who are you calling goofy?!”

Karen and Suika were right, though. The moment anything happened to my wives or kids, I was pretty sure I’d beat the offender to a pulp. Except I wasn’t allowed to do that this time, unfortunately.

“This is why gods don’t tend to go to the surface themselves, but instead grant a sacred treasure to a hero, y’know. If you let your anger get the better of you, you could end up destroying a whole world. There are plenty of examples of people inciting a god’s wrath that’s resulted in some pretty bad outcomes, like a whole continent being sunk under the ocean, or a city burned to a crisp in one quick moment, y’know.”

Pretty bad was an understatement... I really didn’t think I would ever go that far, though.

“Reallyyy? Your kids are the ones using the sacred treasure, right? If they end up in trouble, you seem like you’d go out there and go boom the enemies!”

She isn’t wrong...

“A parent shouldn’t get involved in their children’s fights, y’know? I’m not saying you shouldn’t help, but at least believe in them. Overprotectiveness can stunt a child’s growth, after all.”

Karen likely wasn’t talking about just my own children this time, but everyone in this world. She was probably trying to say that I shouldn’t help with absolutely everything that went wrong, but...that wasn’t always something so easy to do.

“I can’t crush it?! What’s going on?!”

“The cause is unknown, but it appears the wicked vessels have been sealed. Not entirely, but... Hm?!”

The gold crown calmly analyzed what was happening as the iron mask woman panicked, but the moment his red camera eye noticed Gold standing behind me, he came to a stop.

“There’s more than one Gould?!” the feather mask woman exclaimed in surprise. With such a reaction, it appeared they hadn’t known about our Gold. The wicked devout’s crown appeared to go by “Gould” instead... Had he simply not told them of the existence of another gold crown, or...?

Gould was staring at Gold, Gold also frozen where he stood.

“Is this the same unit as myself...? No. I can confirm differences,” Gold remarked. Those differences must have been the two small swords and the cape-like part on his back. Gold had those, but the one on the wicked devout’s side didn’t. Gould’s eyes were red, while Gold’s were blue. Besides those differences, the two were practically the same unit.

“A second Seraphic?! What is the meaning of this?!” Gould exclaimed with the exact same voice as Gold.

A Seraphic? Was he referring to Gold? It was in that moment that I realized I was detecting both panic and surprise, two very human emotions, in Gould, something that should’ve been impossible for a Gollem.

◇　◇　◇

“Impossible! This should be the only Seraphic! Why? Why does another one exist?!” Gould’s mechanical voice trembled as he looked at Gold.

Based on his reaction, it seemed he hadn’t known about Gold. Had he lost his memories in the way Gold had? No, that would make no sense—if he’d lost his memories, he wouldn’t have said those words.

“I don’t know what’s got you so rattled, but I need you to stay still for now. [Prison]!”

I cast the confining magic as I’d done on Indigo. Now there was no escape.

“Hm?!”

Gould took one of its tiny fists and tried to break the barrier.

It’s useless. This barrier isn’t so flimsy that a pathetic little punch like that will damage it.

“Veraenderung.”

“Huh?”

After Gould muttered some short word, the armor of its right hand began to warp like melted candy. The soft gold plating enveloped his right hand and then morphed into a conical shape, almost like an ice pick.

“Lanze.”

Gould turned and tried to stick his gold ice pick into the [Prison]. The sound of metal striking rang out, and then suddenly, my [Prison] cracked.

“No way!”

As surprised as I was, Gould paid me no mind as he thrust his ice-pick arm back into the barrier again. This time, my [Prison] shattered into pieces.

You’re kidding! Is there wicked divinity in that thing’s body?!

We were the furthest away from the sacred treasure, but the distance was about ten meters at most. Even if its power wasn’t completely neutralized, he shouldn’t have been able to destroy my [Prison]! He’d have to have the same amount of divinity as a mutant to do that!

We knew for a fact that our Gold contained no divinity—the research team examined him and found nothing.

That means Gould’s been modified in some way, huh?!

Now free of the prison, Gould charged toward me with his ice pick.

“Envelop, O Wind! Gentle Embrace: [Air Sphere]!”

“Mmm?”

Gould’s right hand lost its momentum about fifty centimeters away from me, coming to a stop against the air cushion I had created. The next moment, his small body was sent catapulting into the opposite wall. My [Air Sphere] broke at the same moment.

That was close!

If he’d been charging any more fiercely, I’d have been turned into a shish kebab.

“Veraenderung: Axt.”

Gould stood back up, turning his ice pick into an axe.

Ugh, he’s got more forms!

I took out my Brunhild and changed it into Blade Mode, using it to block the golden axe he swung down toward me. The strike was so heavy that I couldn’t help but wonder where such strength was hiding in such a small body.

“[Power Rise]!”

I increased the power of my muscles and pushed the axe away from me. Gould was once more flung toward the wall, but this time he kicked his feet into it and spun around in the air as he landed lightly on the ground like a cat. His red camera eye fixed in on me, and then it turned to Gold behind me.

“Tell me. Are you the master of the Seraphic?”

“No. Gold’s master is someone else.”

It wouldn’t be good for him to learn that Steph was his master, so I tried to avoid the topic.

“Gold... Seraphic Gold? High Master, Code 1876239. Unlock: emergency shutdown, Seraphic Gold.”

Suddenly, what came out of Gould was a smooth male voice. Not a mechanical one, but one much closer to a human’s. Was it some recorded audio?

Before I could stop and wonder what was happening, the same voice spoke to us.

“High Master, Code 1876239. Unlock: emergency shutdown, Seraphic Gold... No reaction. Probability of initialization process activation having occurred: ninety-eight percent.”

Initialization process? As in, the initialization process that Steph had accidentally activated in Gold? Did that mean he was saying some sort of command code toward him?

God, this could’ve turned out much worse if Steph hadn’t wiped his data.

“I’d appreciate it if you didn’t do anything too crazy here. If you make Gold’s master cry, then I won’t let you get away with it,” I threatened.

“I do not care.”

Suddenly, a loud bang, as if a metal ball had collided with something, rang through the room. When I turned around, the inside of the [Iron Wall] I had put up was all warped. Another similar sound rang out and the wall further warped, caving in toward us. Was someone trying to enter the room?!

Don’t tell me there’s one more wicked devout!

No, there was no way. I’d searched the whole Ark, so there shouldn’t have been any more of them around. That said, there was a chance [Search] didn’t pick them up because they looked nothing like the wicked devout!

I stayed on high alert as the metallic wall I had created came flying inward. What flew in was a golden bird with four wings. A mechanical one, at that. Was it a bird Gollem?!

“Come, Cherubim.”

The gold bird Gollem twirled in a drill movement as it maneuvered through the room toward Gould. It then circled behind Gould, tilted its head against his back, and its feet then folded into its body as it attached to the enemy crown.

Is this what the research team was talking about?! The Gluttony Slime that was turned into orichalcum and used to craft gear for the gold crown?!

With his four wings spread out, Gould floated into the air. Due to the glass ceiling, he could only go about two meters, however.

“Gluttony Feather.”

Four golden feathers, one from each wing, shot out toward me like missiles. I was about to strike them down with Brunhild, but suddenly, I was hit by a sense of unease that made me change my weapon to Gun Mode at the last minute and shoot them down with phrasium rounds instead. The moment my bullets hit the feathers, they began to morph and wrapped around the bullets.

No, rather than “wrapped around,” it was more like they ate the bullets whole. If I’d tried to strike them down with Blade Mode, Brunhild might’ve been consumed by the feathers...

Good thing I realized something was off.

The slimy gold substance plopped to the ground, wriggled about for a moment, and then took shape as feathers again and returned to Gould’s wings.

They’d definitely eaten the bullets—there was nothing left where they had been.

“Is that something you made with a Gluttony Slime that you turned into orichalcum?” I asked the Gollem directly. He looked slightly surprised at my question—what a humanlike crown. Even Gold struggled to express that much.

Was this the difference between a Gollem that had been initialized and one that hadn’t? Well, assuming that they were both the same kind of unit, of course. If that was the case, just how many experience points were in those parts that were wiped? Whatever Gold had lost, Gould still had. There was the chance he could fight like a human with sneak attacks, feints, and rear assaults.

We’ve definitely gotta be careful here...

“You are dangerous. You will interfere with our plans. I will now eliminate you. Gluttony Feather.”

It seemed he’d decided to stop holding back, since this time several feathers detached from two of the wings and homed in on me again.

Hmph, now that I know what it is, I can deal with it easily!

“[Gate].”

I deployed a gate in front of me, teleporting every last feather he threw my way. I’d sent them to the uninhabited wastelands of Isengard. Gates couldn’t be opened through a barrier, but if it was somewhere that was visible, or if you yourself were inside the barrier, it was perfectly possible to open one.

“What a shame, you’ve run out of so much of your ammo. Why not fire the rest?” I taunted. Most of the feathers were now missing from those two wings. I’d thought to myself that he wouldn’t be able to fly if he used the rest of them, but when I paid closer attention, I noticed that he wasn’t even flapping the wings to stay afloat to begin with, so it probably wouldn’t make much of a difference.

Just then, the wings on Gould’s back began shining a dark gold.

“Reverse.”

“What?”

Suddenly, the [Gate] that I’d closed opened back up, and the feathers shot back through and returned to Gould’s wings. I felt like I was watching a movie in reverse.

“No... Is that your crown skill?!”

Crown skills were the abilities inherent to the crown Gollems, a power that required their master to pay a price. Doc Babylon had said that a gold crown made of a Slime that’d been turned into orichalcum could take the price of a crown skill like a mana tank. If what was on his back was what we suspected, then it must have been taking the price for him.

But Gold said that the gold crown didn’t have a crown skill. What was going on? Did his memory of it disappear together with the initialization process?

Well, whatever the reason, Gould could clearly use a crown skill, and it was the exact same type of time manipulation as the black crown, Noir. I was pretty sure he couldn’t use it at will, however. If he could, he’d have used it plenty of times before now. It was also worth noting that I wasn’t personally affected by the reversal of time.

Either he could only use it on himself, or there was a limit to its range. Or...he didn’t want to pay too big of a price. As if to confirm my theory, several of the golden feathers lost their sheen and fell to the ground before crumbling into dust. Was that the price of the crown skill?

In other words, each one of those feathers was a substitute that paid for the use of the crown skill. Without those, the only thing left he could use to pay the price with was his own body. No wonder he had to be careful about how he used it.

“Still, time manipulation is a scary beast...”

I could use all kinds of space-time magic; [Gate], [Storage], and [Accel] all came under that. If I asked the time spirits nicely, they might be willing to fiddle with time a bit for me as well, though I was pretty sure the range would be limited to the area around me. That said, it went without saying that the only one who had the power to affect the whole world was the goddess of space-time herself, Grandma Tokie.

It was likely Gould could only affect time related to his own body, or any area that he had control over. There was no way he’d be able to stop or slow down my time, right? Even without thinking about the range he could control, I knew he couldn’t use it so freely when he had to consider the price as well. The only reason he’d used it here was because he’d weighed the possibility of losing a large number of feathers against losing a few and decided it would be much better to rewind time.

Still, if we inflicted a fatal blow on him and he just turned back time, it would be as if we never did a thing to him. Though, if we were stubborn enough about it, he’d eventually run out of feathers to use...

“This one’s gonna be a hassle to take down.”

I tightly gripped Brunhild and glared at the small gold Gollem floating in the air.

◇　◇　◇

“You little...! Hurry up and get smooshed already!”

A metallic orange mace swung mercilessly toward the small girl.

“[Power Rise]!”

Frei took the round shield she had pulled from her [Storage] and blocked the mace. The shield had a star drawn in the center of the double circle, almost as if it were the shield of a certain American superhero. The small girl was able to control it at will, blocking, repelling, and deflecting all attacks that came her way, no matter the angle.

Thanks to Yakumo’s sacred treasure, the gravity effect of the woman’s wicked vessel was weak enough that Frei could handle it. Though even in its weakened state, any regular person taking the attack would no doubt have their arm completely shattered. Watching her daughter take such heavy hits, Hilde couldn’t help but feel frustrated; the mace-wielding woman had presented several large openings so far, so if Hilde wanted to strike, she very well could have.

However, that would then mean that a divine ward had taken down a member of the wicked devout. Due to that issue, her role here was purely as Frei’s support—unless her daughter was on the verge of danger, she was to stay put. Even Frei had been very clear about that.

“I’ve not awakened to my divine trait like Yae has, so I think it would be perfectly fine for me to fight...”

Though when she saw Frei look so happy despite the circumstances, she also realized that she might be disappointing her if she interfered.

Hilde glanced at the other pair that was fighting a distance away. Under Yae’s watchful eye, a boy even smaller than Frei was holding a silver shortsword. A ring-shaped object was shot at the boy—Kuon—from his opponent.

The ring was a shimmering dark green chakram flying straight for Kuon like an arrow. Kuon took Silver and deflected it with a horizontal slice without showing even a hint of panic. The deflected chakram flew off in a random direction, but then it stopped midair and shot back toward its wielder. The woman wearing the gaudy feather mask caught it with two of her fingers and gave a bewitching smile.

“Not half bad, little boy. It’s not every day I find someone who can deflect Viridian.”

“I feel honored to receive your praise. I have been putting in quite the amount of training.”

“Quite the amount, you say? Are you aware that being too modest can end up being annoying instead?”

Peacock, the wicked devout now fighting Kuon, spun the chakram with her two fingers and then threw it up into the air.

The chakram split into several more chakrams that began swirling around her.

“How about this, then?”

Peacock took the ten chakrams orbiting her and fired them all toward Kuon at once.

Ten simultaneous attacks—no matter how you looked at it, there was no way to avoid them all. It seemed as if a magic barrier would be able to deal with them, but in reality, Peacock’s chakrams would slice through even that. The wicked devout pictured the boy collapsing in her mind’s eye, blood gushing from his body, but then what she saw instead was something unbelievable.

At some point, Kuon’s right eye had turned an orange-gold. Kuon swayed his body to the side...and a chakram narrowly passed by his right shoulder.

He lifted his left hand a little...and a chakram passed through the gap between arm and flank.

He raised the sword in his right hand and swung to the side...and a chakram was deflected. He bent forward slightly...and a chakram passed right over his head.

“What?!”

Kuon dodged the rest of the chakrams with similar small but controlled movements, and Peacock could only look on in disbelief.

“I failed to dodge two of them, I suppose,” Kuon muttered in disappointment.

“Now hang on, kiddo, you just dodged eight of those things! That’s pretty impressive, if ya ask me!” Silver said.

As Kuon had said, he had technically deflected two of them with Silver, not outright dodged them. Even with his Mystic Eye of Precognition, there were things he simply couldn’t evade.

Since there were only two he knew he would be unable to avoid, he simply deflected them with Silver, but had it been any more, he would’ve likely used either his Mystic Eye of Compression or Immobilization.

“What a creepy little boy!”

“I apologize for disturbing you.”

Peacock split her chakram into ten and threw them at Kuon again, to which Kuon repeated what he had done, dodging all except two that he deflected with Silver.

At a glance, Kuon was the one at an advantage, but using his Mystic Eyes repeatedly would tire him out. Any time he tried to get closer to Peacock, she would simply fire her chakrams again, so he was left completely unable to launch a counterattack. He might have had a chance if he combined the usage of different Mystic Eyes, but Kuon’s goal here wasn’t to take the wicked devout down, it was to buy time while Yakumo dealt with Indigo, so he decided it was best for him not to risk anything.

Yae was also thinking similarly, keeping a close eye to ensure Peacock wouldn’t interfere with the fight with Indigo.

Kuon glanced at his older sister within the [Prison], continuing to deal with the chakrams being thrown at him all the while.

◇　◇　◇

Indigo tried to slash into the semitransparent barrier that surrounded him with his wicked vessel, Deep Blue, while dodging the crystalline katana being swung his way. Metal bouncing off the barrier was the only sound that could be heard; not a single crack was being made in it.

“What is going on here? There’s a barrier that Deep Blue can’t break...? No, has Deep Blue lost its power?”

Indigo continued to dash around the confined space as the drawn sword chased its target. Yakumo firmly pushed the harpbow back into her sash when it began to fall out. The impatience at being unable to find the opportunity for a finishing blow almost made her turn the sacred treasure into its katana form to strike the man down regardless, but she knew if she did that, the wicked devout outside of the [Prison] would no longer be in range of the Divinity Neutralization.

The only time you should do that is when you know for certain you can take him down, Yakumo told herself. Don’t get impatient. Watch your opponent’s movements and slowly but surely stop them.

“[Gate].”

“Hm?!”

Indigo bent his body back to avoid the tip of the sword that suddenly appeared from the distortion in space behind him.

“Spatial magic?! A little unfair that you can still use your magic while we can’t use our weapons, don’t you think?”

“If it means I can protect what is important to me, I feel no shame in being called a cheat or a coward.”

Yakumo knew her parents would tell her that if petty pride or a sense of justice endangered those you loved, you should just throw them away. Were it a fight concerning yourself as an individual, then of course, one should fight fair and square with their pride on the line. However, in a fight to protect someone or something else, trying to see something like that through was just a means of self-satisfaction. It was important to not get one’s priorities wrong.

What Yakumo wanted to protect was her family, the people of her country, and the people in the world working hard to live each day to its fullest. If it was to protect them, she would use anything at her disposal, even if it was deemed unfair. She felt no hesitation in doing that.

“Complaining about cheating and being a coward is but the drivel of the loser, you say? Very good. I agree.”

“Wha—?!”

Indigo took out something akin to a spray can from a pouch hanging from his waist. He then pulled out the pin and threw it on the ground where it suddenly released a plume of vivid purple smoke that filled the inside of the barrier and cut off Yakumo’s sight.

“What a crafty move...! Kokonoe Secret Style: Hurricane Storm Flower!”

Yakumo swung her magic-enhanced blade sideways with a battle cry, causing a small whirlwind to billow forth from the sword’s tip, soon transforming into a large tornado that sucked in the purple smoke.

The [Prison] that Touya had erected could freely specify what was allowed in and out of its walls. Naturally, blocking the air would cause those inside to suffocate, so it was permitted to pass through.

With the purple smoke now driven outside of the barrier, Yakumo could see clearly again.

“What?!”

And yet, it was Yakumo who sounded shocked. As she readied her sword, she suddenly realized that Indigo, the wicked devout wearing the diver suit, had vanished without a trace.

“He’s gone?!”

Yakumo was dazed by the man’s disappearance. Everyone had worked so hard to drive him into a corner, yet right at the very end, she had let him escape.

The plan has failed. Everything was all for naught because of me. What should I do? Should I ask father to release his [Prison] and have him conduct a [Search]?

“Yakumo! Calm down!”

Amid Yakumo’s panic, her mother’s voice reached her ears. She flinched, and then turned toward Yae, seeing her mother’s strong gaze aimed right at her.

Right. First, I need to calm down. These are exactly the times when I must keep a clear mind. Take a deep breath...and then think. Father’s [Prison] can’t be broken with anything but a divinity-enhanced attack, and right now, their divinity is sealed by the sacred treasure. That means his teleportation magic should be sealed. But then, how did he disappear?

“He...disappeared?”

Yakumo’s eyes widened in realization. She heightened her senses, feeling even the slightest distortions of the air from the edges to the corners of the barrier.

“There!”

Yakumo threw two kunai from her pocket. One bounced off the [Prison], but the other deflected off thin air. At that moment, Indigo’s figure reappeared.

“You’re sharp. It appears I should’ve attacked you directly rather than waiting for this barrier to be dispelled.”

Indigo’s legs were still invisible from under his knees. Whenever he moved, Yakumo could see a slight border surrounding his legs against the background. Apparently, his diver suit was enchanted with some kind of illusion magic.

“I’m glad I got those upgrades from Scarlet.”

His body once more dissolved into the background. Yakumo immediately sank back, taking position at a corner of the [Prison] to eliminate the risk of being attacked from the rear.

Suddenly, Indigo appeared in front of her, swinging down his metallic blue hatchet. By the time she’d blocked, deflected, and moved to counter, Indigo was already invisible again. In a situation like this, where she was the cornered one, she couldn’t afford to let her guard down for even a second. She concentrated all her senses on her surroundings so that she was prepared for an attack no matter where it came from.

Yakumo felt a slight disturbance in the air, and then suddenly a harpoon was flying toward her out of nowhere.

“Ngh!”

Though she’d managed to quickly swat it away with her sword, Indigo took that opportunity to appear and do a follow-up attack. Still in the middle of her swing, Yakumo was unable to bring her blade back to block the blow. She rolled to the side instead, just narrowly missing the strike. And as she was rolling, she used her arms and legs to push herself away from Indigo.

A few hairs that had been slashed off scattered around her, a cold sweat running down her cheeks. That had been incredibly close. If she had dodged the harpoon instead of deflecting it, she would’ve been able to counter Indigo. A minor error of judgment could completely change one’s fate in this battle. She had to be careful.

“That was very close. I won’t miss next time.”

There was suddenly something akin to an ejection device fitted to the armored part on Indigo’s left wrist. A harpoon was once more set in place as Indigo’s figure disappeared once more. Yakumo sharpened her senses and concentrated her spirit. Her opponent’s body had not actually disappeared—he had simply become invisible. The enemy she had to cut down was definitely there.

Time passed ever so slowly. The moment the situation changed was immediate.

A harpoon was shot out from thin air diagonally to Yakumo’s right, and at the same time, Indigo attacked with his hatchet from the diagonal left. The ejection device on Indigo’s wrist was missing. Yakumo had seen through his tactic of placing the ejection device on the opposite side of where he intended to attack to have it fire automatically so he could carry out a pincer attack. If she deflected the harpoon, she’d be slashed by the hatchet. If she guarded against the hatchet, she’d be pierced by the harpoon. Thus, the only appropriate course of action was...

“[Gate]!”

“Guh?!”

Indigo recoiled from the sudden stab from behind. When he turned his gaze down, he saw that the sharp harpoon was sticking through his stomach.

“How did you...?!”

The harpoon that should’ve hit his enemy had pierced right through him instead...and from the back of all places.

Yakumo had used [Gate] to both avoid the harpoon and attack Indigo at the same time. The harpoon had been teleported from in front of Yakumo to behind Indigo, piercing through him with the exact same momentum. Dark gold particles gushed out like blood from the wound, but it did nothing to deter Indigo from swinging down his hatchet on the small girl.

That was the moment Indigo realized Yakumo’s weapon was no longer the phrasium katana she had been using before. It was a katana with a platinum sheen that was radiating divine energy.

“Kokonoe Secret Style: Lightning Flash!”

The sacred sword was swung horizontally, cutting Indigo’s wicked vessel into two. The shattered pieces of the weapon clattered to the ground, losing their blue shine and melting into a sludge that emitted black smoke.

“Heh heh... So this is it for me, is it...? Everything’s down to you now, Scarlet... Glory to the wicked god of destruction who will end this world filled with falsehood and deception!”

With those last words, Indigo crumbled to the ground, a pile of sand spreading out from the dismantled diver suit.

Having confirmed his death, Yakumo fell to one knee.

That was close...

If that harpoon had been even a second slower in piercing Indigo, he might have dodged her blade. Somehow, though, she had won. With this, there was no need for them to fear the wicked devout teleporting away.

“We somehow managed...I think.”

Outside the [Prison], her mother was giving her a small nod, a smile on her face.

◇　◇　◇

“Enemies approaching!”

To the south of Lassei, an army of Kyklops was about to climb onto land from the coast near Isengard. Linze, who had been patrolling the coast with Helmwige, changed direction and flew toward the allied positions the moment she spotted them.

“It isn’t just the Kyklops! There’s a colossal unit I’ve never seen before among them!”

“I can see it from here too. It really is quite big, even larger than the Overlord... More than two times bigger, actually.”

The first to respond to Linze’s report was Leen, who spoke from inside her Grimgerde. The unknown unit was smaller than the Gigantes, the ancient weapon they had once fought, but it still seemed close to one hundred meters tall, and it was headed in their direction. Like the rest of the Kyklops, it only had one eye, but there was also something on its chest that resembled one too—most likely it wasn’t just a design, but some sort of weapon.

“Mother, it being big doesn’t mean it’s better. Each frame has its own appropriate size. There’s no point if it’s so big that it slows down its movements or puts strain on the joints and engine,” Quun commented from behind her. Leen could tell without even turning around that her daughter had a smug look on her face.

“I can’t say how much strain is on its joints, but it does seem to be walking fine.”

“Of course it is. If it couldn’t do that, there’s no way they’d send it out for battle. Either they’re using some kind of seal magic that lightens its weight or they’ve strengthened its durability. With something of that size, though, even its weight becomes a weapon, so I don’t think they’d try to lighten it... Actually, wait, if they could freely make adjustments to its weight with [Gravity] depending on the situation, then...”

Leen left Quun to mutter away to herself as another transmission came from the Helmwige.

“The Kyklops in the rear have fired divine venom into the air!”

A sound akin to fireworks exploded in the sky, and suddenly there was gold powder being scattered above them. The girls had made sure to get changed into their battle suits already, so they didn’t suddenly feel unwell, but the problem was the effect it had on their Frame Gears...

“Heh heh heh... Don’t think the same trick will work twice. War is a back and forth battle of arms development. Know that those who fail to prepare countermeasures will become the losers!”

Quun operated the console at the back of Grimgerde and confirmed the frame’s output. After a moment, the result was displayed on the monitor.

“Output decreased by eighteen percent! Take that! We managed to get it under a twenty percent decrease! That is a victory for the research squad!”

Quun let out a shrill laugh of joy. Leen let out a small sigh at her daughter’s bizarre behavior. To have managed to bring it down to such a percentage after what was previously a forty percent decrease was definitely something to be happy about, but she did wish Quun would calm down a bit.

Letting out another sigh, Leen opened up the channels to the rest of the Valkyries.

“Is it all right if I start how we always do, with a little Full Burst from Grimgerde?”

“Yes, please. It would do wonders if you could thin them out a bit,” Yumina responded.

“Indeed. We will take over while Grimgerde is on cooldown,” Sue reassured her.

Grimgerde was a heavy ordnance unit, so the strength of its Full Burst was at the top with the Overlord, but it required a several-minute cooldown period in which it was left vulnerable following usage of the weapon. As such, Grimgerde’s role in battle was to begin it with Full Burst, enter cooldown, and then once it was back up, support everyone else from the rear.

This time too, Grimgerde was standing right in front of the incoming enemies, all weapons deployed.

“Eat this. Full Burst!”

A storm of phrasium bullets flew into the Kyklops in front of them. Usually, they would’ve been hit by the bullets and their numbers would greatly decrease.

“Huh?”

And yet, several Kyklops lined up in a row, acting as a shield for the Kyklops behind them as they took all of the rounds.

Naturally, those Kyklops that stood in front were full of holes in seconds. But even once their functions had stopped, they remained in place, ensuring none of the remaining bullets made it through to those behind them. Or perhaps it was more correct to say that the Kyklops that were both beside and behind were supporting them to make sure that they didn’t fall; they were quite literally using the Kyklops at the front as a shield, allowing them to withstand the Full Burst.

Thus, the Grimgerde only managed to defeat a dozen or so Kyklops with their initial assault. That was less than a third of what it usually managed to clear.

A puff of white smoke containing traces of the glistening ether liquid released from Grimgerde as it came to a stop. Overlord and the Chevaliers immediately stepped in front to protect the vulnerable frame.

“I’m shocked. Who knew they could manage to team up like that?”

“Could it be that even though they look the same, what’s inside is different?”

Elze and Linne—who’d swapped with Elna—observed from inside the Gerhilde.

The battle between the Nereids and the Kyklops in the sea had already begun. Sometimes, columns of water would shoot up into the air due to the torpedoes released by the Nereids.

“No, more than what’s inside...it’s like the chain of command is different. Before, their commander used to give them simple orders like ‘Advance’ or ‘Fight,’ but now that commander is gone, and there’s a new commander who’s able to give them more precise commands like ‘Advance while protecting the others’ and ‘Start attacking from whatever looks weakest,’” Quun responded from within the immobile Grimgerde. “They may be using a command system that’s even better than the Soldats. If so, should we expect them to move differently than before? Because of their new commander, they’ll be able to fight in a more skilled and logical manner, just like a real army... They could control multiple Gollems as if they’re their own limbs and—”

“Basically, this won’t be as easy as it has been in the past,” Leen swiftly said in conclusion, cutting off her daughter’s long-winded rambling.

“Put simply, yes, that is correct...” Quun relented with a pout.

“We’ve identified a unique red Kyklops that’s different from the colossal one. I believe that to be the wicked devout,” Linze notified all the Valkyries. Upon hearing that, Yumina looked through Brunhilde’s rifle scope and caught sight of it within the rear lines that were just emerging from the sea. Its metallic red body reflected the light of the sun. Compared to the other Kyklops, it was much slimmer, more like a Frame Gear in stature. That said, it still had a single camera eye just like the others, and it held a rapier the same color as its body.

She’d seen that rapier before. It was the same as the rapier wielded by the wicked devout who had intervened in their infiltration of the Gandhilis ruins and ran away with the Ark. It was the one who wore a black coat, black-shaded goggles, and a plague doctor mask.

If he was the one leading this army, then...

“Shall I try and snipe him?” Yumina asked, hovering the crosshair right over the red Kyklops’s head. It was quite far, but not so far that she couldn’t hit him. In fact, he might not even have his guard up at this distance.

She began to pull the trigger...and then stopped. Just as she was about to fire, her divine trait, her Mystic Eye of Foresight, activated and showed her the red Kyklops dodging her shot. There were times when the ability activated without her even trying. It tended to happen in situations like this, where it was impossible to do something even if she tried, or at times when she was in extreme danger.

Yumina had begun to suspect that her body instinctively activated it in order to avoid any truly disadvantageous situations. Had she fired here, the enemy would have dodged and most likely grown much more cautious. Her body had tried to prevent her from making their situation worse.

She moved the camera from Brunhilde’s rifle scope.

“Sakura, support magic, please. Engaging enemies now!”

“Okay...”

Two symphonic horns were equipped on the shoulders of Rossweise, looking like cannons, while several magic speakers were deployed from the frame.

“Yoshino.”

“Let’s do this!”

Following the lively rhythm of the drums, Yoshino’s guitar joined in. The girls in the Valkyries chuckled as they recognized the song. Written in the 1960s, the song was later used as the theme song for a megahit American romcom. The girls greatly liked the song after watching the movie themselves—had they chosen the song knowing that?

Soon after, Sakura’s singing began. The lyrics, which praised a pretty woman, stimulated the ether liquid inside the Frame Gears, increasing their output.

“Soldiers of Lassei! Advance!” the Grand Potentate of Lassei commanded his men from inside a loaned Knight Baron of his own. Upon his order, the Frame Gears began an earth-rumbling assault on the army of Kyklops.

Most of the Brunhild knights were deployed in the Nereids for this battle, so the majority of the Frame Gears on land were being piloted by Lassei knights. Lassei had always been a country that prided itself on its military prowess, and they viewed Frame Gears as just another weapon, so they had put in much training with the Frame Units.

Once they had grown accustomed to operating them, they were able to move them as if they were an extension of their bodies, their combat skills within them improving so much that even the Brunhild knights struggled against them. Such a trained knight order would have no trouble against the Kyklops.

“I got the first kill!”

The second prince of the Military Kingdom of Lassei, Zanbelt Gal Lassei, a man who had once challenged the god of combat and had his nose completely shattered, had indeed pierced a Kyklops with his Knight Baron’s spear. However, despite being stabbed right in the stomach with Zanbelt’s spear, the Kyklops’s movement never stopped, and it immediately went to swing its mace down.

“Die already!”

Zanbelt let go of the spear and instead punched the Kyklops right beside where he had stabbed it. The Kyklops’s armor warped as it lost its balance and fell.

“Punching gets the job done so much faster!”

Gripped in both hands of Zanbelt’s Knight Baron were some simple weapons made from phrasium. They were knuckle dusters, a weapon fitted to four of a hand’s fingers to increase the power of one’s punches. It seemed the people of Lassei loved fighting barehanded and had asked for weapons similar to Elze’s Gerhilde.

Those knuckle dusters were what Touya had decided on as the perfect choice. Knuckle dusters were a simple weapon—you just gripped them and then punched. In order to strengthen them even further, they had four sharp rivets, turning them into truly deadly weapons.

After having taken down the Kyklops, Zanbelt was so happy he was caught off guard by another Kyklops swinging down its mace from beside him.

“Shit!”

Zanbelt moved to sacrifice his arm to block it, but before he was hit, there was a loud crack and the Kyklops who had been moving to attack him suddenly went flying.

“Why are you getting all distracted? Pay attention to your surroundings!”

“Boss!” Zanbelt cried out in joy at seeing the familiar red Valkyrie. The one who had sent the Kyklops flying was Elze in her Gerhilde.

After being thoroughly beaten to a pulp by Takeru, Zanbelt began calling both Ende and Elze “Boss” as a show of extreme respect, since they were both Takeru’s students and all, but neither especially liked being referred to in such a manner. When they told him to stop, though, he wouldn’t, and in the end, the two simply gave up.

“Don’t just stand there, get moving! You need to be aware of what your allies are trying to do!”

“Y-Yes, ma’am!”

At Elze’s scolding, Zanbelt readied his fists again. Gerhilde’s camera eye looked up at the gigantic Kyklops in the rear.

“We need to do something about that big ol’ hunk of junk.”

“Mama Elze, I want to fight too!” Linne cried out in boredom.

“Afterward, ’kay?” Elze called back to the girl as she punched through the Kyklops.

Right now, Elna was riding in the Helmwige with Linze while Linne was riding in the Gerhilde with Elze. At some point, they’d decided that was how they’d pair up while in the Frame Gears. Elze thought it a good judgment, given if something happened to her, she wasn’t sure if Elna would be able to handle Gerhilde well in her place. Linne’s style of fighting was much closer to Elze’s, while Elna’s situational awareness was more like Linze’s.

Elze was very fond of her daughter Elna, but Linne was just as precious a daughter to her.

“All righty, time to get moving.”

Elze rang her fists together before firing them at the Kyklops charging toward her.

◇　◇　◇

“Crusher!” Elze roared as she held out Gerhilde’s arm, shooting a phrasium spike that gouged into the chest of the Kyklops in front of her. Its chest was pierced by the sheer destructive power of the shot as it fell to the ground.

Another Kyklops swung its mace from behind, but Elze easily dodged it with a duck before countering by spinning Gerhilde’s right leg backward like a sickle and sweeping it across its legs. Lu was watching Elze from directly behind in wonder as the girl showed off how easily she was able to carry out a rear kick in her Frame Gear.

“She’s very...excited, isn’t she?” Lu muttered as she watched how lively Elze was despite beating up enemies on the battlefield.

“It’s Mother Elze. Of course she is,” Arcia fired back, confused that it even surprised her mother by this point.

In fact, Lu was gracefully dodging enemy attacks in Waltraute even as they had that conversation. Thanks to the booster unit installed on the back, the Waltraute had the swiftest maneuverability of the Valkyries. Talking purely in terms of speed, that crown would go to Helmwige in its aerial form, but on land, Waltraute was far faster.

Using that speed to swiftly approach the Kyklops, she raised the two blades of the Waltraute and slashed both down at once.

“I’ll turn them all into mincerobot!”

Having been slashed from the shoulders to the waist, the Kyklops split into three and fell apart on the ground. Lu immediately dashed up to another Kyklops and cut it down with a cross slash, splitting its torso in half. Leaving the enemy to fall to pieces, she sped up toward her next target—when suddenly, all of them were shot through with holes.

Helmwige soared past Waltraute at low altitude before changing back into its regular Frame Gear form. The double rifle in its right hand blew fire, and the surrounding Kyklops exploded one after another through the infinite loading allowed by the teleportation magic and the mana-infused shell bombardment.

After defeating the most immediate Kyklops, Helmwige morphed back into its aerial form and took the opportunity to slash through two more Kyklops with its blade wings as it soared back into the sky.

“She’s...really quite ruthless, isn’t she?”

“It’s Mother Linze. Of course she is.”

Once more, Arcia was confused that her mother was even surprised by this point.

For all the kids, the scariest mother to anger was most definitely Linze. Not because she would scream and shout, but because she would thoroughly scold them with a perfect smile on her face. She showed no mercy. She would tell them in great detail why she was mad at them. What did they do wrong, and what should they avoid? Why did they do that? Did they not think this would happen? Why had they not reflected after their previous scolding? Did they realize how much trouble they’d caused everyone around them?

Even if they earnestly apologized, she would question if they really understood what the problem was, if they’d truly reflected, and if they could prove what they would do to make sure the same thing didn’t happen again. It never ended.

Linze very rarely got mad, but after the kids invited her wrath once, they firmly swore they would never make that mistake again. Arcia had been scolded by her once before herself, and she’d greatly reflected after that moment—she didn’t want to have to go through that again.

“Mother, one from the right.”

“Got it.”

At Arcia’s call, Lu turned the Waltraute right while swinging her left sword around, slashing it right into the Kyklops’s side.

“What?”

Lu’s eyes widened in surprise. The Kyklops had firmly gripped the sword she had just embedded into it. Actually, no, it was because the Kyklops had gripped it that the sword hadn’t slashed all the way through.

Having never had that happen before, Lu’s response was delayed. Aiming right for that moment, another Kyklops charged to stab Waltraute with its spear.

“Ngh!”

Lu let go of the sword and dodged the spear, but a mace-wielding Kyklops was ready and waiting for her near her landing spot.

I can’t dodge this!

Just as Lu went to use Waltraute’s left hand as a shield, the mace Kyklops’s head suddenly exploded.

“Are you all right, Lu?”

“Yumina! Nice timing!”

Yumina’s cover fire allowed Lu to collect herself. Turning on the Waltraute’s boosters to full, she stabbed her other sword right into the spear Kyklops’s chest before immediately reversing and setting her sights on the Kyklops she had failed to completely slice in two. She then slammed her sword into its opposite side and finished off what she had started.

“Whew... That was close.”

Lu breathed out a sigh of relief after narrowly escaping danger. If Yumina hadn’t been around to provide cover fire, she might have lost an arm.

“Please be careful. Unlike the Kyklops we’ve fought before, these ones can coordinate with each other, and they’re not afraid to sacrifice themselves to do it. Make sure you aren’t caught by them. The moment you are, they’ll hold you there while their allies blow you both up.”

“Understood.”

As Yumina said, all the attacks from the enemy would be coordinated, just as the one there had been, and those coordinated attacks would be incredibly reckless. She had to be careful.

Lu picked up the other sword from where it had dropped and pumped herself up again.

◇　◇　◇

“Cooldown complete. I’m going to reboot it now,” Leen said as she stood Grimgerde up after it had finished cooling down from its overheat state following Full Burst. She then immediately hovered toward the approaching Kyklops and shot at them with the Gatling gun on her right arm.

Usually, Grimgerde couldn’t attack at will while any allies were around, as they’d very likely get caught in the cross fire, but if the enemy was big enough, that stopped mattering. Leen dashed across the battlefield toward the giant Kyklops with the eye in its chest, firing her Gatling gun at its upper body as she did.

The giant Kyklops took the rain of bullets without even flinching.

“It’s so tough! It doesn’t seem to be completely ineffective, but...”

From what she could see from the distance monitor, she’d managed to shave off a bit of the outer plating, but not enough to make a real difference.

“They appear to have used quite efficient strengthening magic. I think you could break through if you focused fire on a single spot,” Quun suggested.

“And how long do you think that’s going to take me, hm?” Leen retorted. It wouldn’t be impossible, but it would take far too long. In which case...

Just as Leen went to enact her plan of attack, the giant Kyklops’s chest began to morph. The parts of the chest clattered as they moved and the central eyeball rotated and extended like a camera lens. Suddenly, the lens started sparking and a ball of light started gathering in front of the eye, getting bigger and bigger along with the sparks.

Quun gasped behind her.

“Mother Yumina! Tell everyone to pull back! Get them away from the line of sight of the colossal Kyklops!” she yelled.

“Everyone, fall back! Get away from the front of the giant Kyklops! Quickly!” Yumina immediately called out.

The Frame Gears that reacted fast enough stopped their battles with the Kyklops and scattered all at once, and in the next moment, there was a deafening roar as a massive laser shot right out from the giant Kyklops. That beam of light pierced the ground and continued all the way to the mountain range in the distance.

“Was that...an Upper Construct’s particle beam laser?” Leen wondered aloud, thinking back to her battles with the Phrase. To be precise, the Upper Constructs’ attack wasn’t a particle laser beam, but Touya had taken to calling it that so at some point, it became the default name.

“Cesca, damage report!” Yumina frantically yelled.

“There were fourteen units who failed to escape in time and were destroyed by the Kyklops. However, their pilots were successfully evacuated to the base through the emergency teleport. They are all safe,” Cesca reported from where she was observing the fight in the sky. Leen sighed in relief.

It seemed the automatic ejection was triggered the moment it sensed an abnormality in the frame. It had to have been cut incredibly close. Most likely, upon the pilot themselves realizing they would be unable to dodge in time, the thought support system installed in the Frame Gear made an independent decision and forcefully teleported its pilot.

The part that had extended from the gigantic Kyklops’s chest returned to its original position. Apparently, it couldn’t use that laser repeatedly. Leen couldn’t help but observe how even that was similar to an Upper Construct. Perhaps the part most reminiscent of the Phrase was the way friendly fire was normal, the way they had no sense of camaraderie—no, even before that, it was the mercilessness that they had because they weren’t living beings to begin with.

“Anyway, whatever’s going on, we need to take down that big hunk of metal... Linze! Could you land for a moment?”

“Hm? Oh, yes!”

Responding to Leen’s request, Linze flew back down to the ground and changed the Helmwige into its Frame Gear form.

“Cesca, transfer the Brionac, please.”

“Understood. Transferring Brionac.”

A gigantic cannon appeared in front of them. An anchor was shot out from its body, stabilizing it on the ground. The weapon, which was three times bigger than a Frame Gear, was aimed right at the colossal Kyklops. Leen’s Grimgerde and Linze’s Helmwige supported the cannon on either side.

Meanwhile, Quun’s excitement peaked.

“Th-This is the massive magic artillery, the Brionac! The ultimate weapon for use against Upper Constructs that requires incredibly precise control of magic and uses special drill bullets! I never imagined I’d get to lay my eyes on it in this time! I’m gonna cry! I’m so happy I came here!”

“Thank you for your explanation,” Leen calmly responded. Linze could only let out an awkward laugh as a reply.

It seemed Quun knew of the Brionac, but hadn’t ever seen it in person before; it must have become unnecessary in the future. Leen and Linze boasted the greatest mana capacity among the grand duchesses, but even they could only fire off one shot of the Brionac. Such a weapon was deemed far too unwieldy. In this time, however, it still had its uses.

“Charge at fifty percent...sixty... It’s charging faster than before, huh?” Linze remarked.

Despite it being a casual observation, Rosetta spotted the opportunity to give an explanation and cut in, saying, “I thought something like this might happen, ma’am! And so, I made improvement after improvement to it! Magic science is rapidly evolving! It will never stop!”

Brionac originally took much longer to charge, but the improvements allowed it to charge to full much faster.

“Ready to fire!”

“Let’s do this, then! Fire!”

“Waaait! Mother, let me fire— Ah!”

A gigantic drill fired from the cannon with a loud roar. Just as it was about to strike the Kyklops’s chest, it dodged to the side. Though it managed to avoid a direct hit, its movements were so slow that the drill still managed to hit its left shoulder.

The shrill screeching of the drill gouging into the metal plating could be heard by them all as it penetrated through the limb, the now-detached left arm falling to the ground with a massive thud.

“Ugh, we missed!”

“Only being able to fire one shot is definitely a weakness of the Brionac...”

Leen and Linze recovered their completely expended mana with their marriage rings enhanced with [Transfer]. But even with their strength recovered, the Brionac itself was completely destroyed. There were cracks all over the barrel—no way could it fire another shot.

The gigantic Kyklops’s chest began to morph again; it was going to return fire with its particle beam.

“This is bad. We have to move!”

“Not a problem, ma’am! I thought this might happen!”

Rosetta’s voice once more entered Leen’s ears. Right at that moment, another Brionac was teleported to where they were.

“I made a second one! Now that Grimgerde and Helmwige have been improved, you can fire another shot!”

“You’re the best, Rosetta! An engineer should always have a spare! Oooh, I’ve got goose bumps! I hope I can be like you one day!”

Ignoring Quun getting worked up in the back, the Grimgerde and Helmwige immediately connected to the new Brionac and began charging it with mana.

“Will we make it in time?!”

“We’ll be fine, mother. Look,” Quun reassured her, pointing at the giant Kyklops on the monitor. Since the left shoulder had been blown off, the left side of its chest was all distorted. The gun barrel was getting caught on it while trying to extend.

The Kyklops tried to pull off the part that it was getting caught on with its remaining arm. The distorted part deformed further until it was practically ripped off. The barrel from the center of the chest began extending again...but it was already too late.

“Fully charged!”

“Fire!”

The drill bullet shot out of the Brionac, sending cracks up the cannon. The Grimgerde and the Helmwige came to a stop, only their bare minimum systems still functioning, and they fell to their knees. Rosetta said they could fire a second shot, but she never said the frames would be able to withstand it. Even they couldn’t withstand two consecutive shots of the Brionac.

The all-or-nothing shot that had cost them two strong Frame Gears hit the Kyklops’s extended barrel. The drill ate through the Kyklops’s frame, spinning at high speed into its insides. The [Spiral] enhancement on the drill went wild, pulverizing the Kyklops’s G-Cube—its heart.

With a hole now punched through its chest, the giant Kyklops unceremoniously fell to the ground with a massive rumble. It seemed the fortification and lightness magic had worn off because the impact and its own weight caused it to fall apart in seconds.

“We somehow managed it.”

“I wanted to shoot it...”

Leen sighed and shook her head at her daughter’s complaint.

◇　◇　◇

Elze confirmed that the giant Kyklops had been defeated and grinned.

“Mama Elze, in front!”

“Oops.”

Elze turned her gaze forward at Linne’s insistence.

A metallic red frame was thrusting its rapier at great speed. Any normal pilot would’ve ended up as Swiss cheese, but Elze’s extraordinary kinetic vision allowed her to see each of the sword’s strikes and deflect them with Gerhilde’s phrasium knuckle guards.

“Hmph!”

Spotting an opening, Elze attempted a roundhouse kick, but the red Kyklops jumped backward to barely avoid the blows.

“To think you could even take down Balor...! Dammit, I had planned to at least take down some of the duchesses with it...”

“You should be glad. If that had happened, you would most definitely have seen hell. You’d be begging and crying to be killed.”

Elze sounded like she was making a lighthearted remark, but if any of them had died, that was definitely what would have happened. Their husband pulled no punches when it came to that sort of thing. With his powers, he could likely revive them with resurrection magic, but even if they did come back, he’d never forgive the one who killed them in the first place. He’d break their minds as completely as he could and show them absolute hell. Even if the other party was a wicked devout, someone who was already a dead person, he would inflict enough pain and terror that their soul would be weathered away.

Elze would not deny this. After all, she’d do the exact same thing if her own family were killed, and she had no intention of forgiving the idiot who was trying to do just that right in front of her.

“[Boost]!”

A residue of red magic overflowed from Gerhilde’s multilayered armor. Clad in light, Elze kicked the ground with explosive power. Having approached the enemy in an instant, Gerhilde’s shining fist swung wide.

“How are you so fast?!”

“Need you to go bye-bye for now.”

The phrasium knuckle guards smashed right into the Kyklops. A crack appeared in its frame. Naturally, this wasn’t the end.

“Intoooooo...!”

“Crusher!”

Elze and Linne shouted in unison, launching Gerhilde’s pile bunkers. With a dull thud, the spikes shot right through the Kyklops’s stomach and its back. The frame bounced and slammed to the ground.

“Since we don’t have the sacred treasure, we can’t tackle the wicked devout directly. I’ll just have to hope this is enough to make him run away...”

“If he does come back, I’ll beat him up!”

Elze flashed a wry smile at Linne’s simplemindedness. As a divine ward, Elze was forbidden from killing the wicked devout, but it was okay for her to protect herself. Well, maybe not okay per se. It was a strange gray area. It came down to whether or not it was considered an act of self-defense, an unavoidable attack to protect oneself. Elze thought she’d be able to give the excuse that the other side attacked first, but whether that would fly was a whole different question...

Anyway, the fact that no gods had come flying on over had to mean that it was overlooked. There would be no problems if Linne took the wicked devout down, but unfortunately, the sacred treasure was with Touya’s team, who were still in the middle of carrying out their plan. Even if they could give the devout a good beating, they couldn’t truly eliminate them.

“Ah!” Linne’s sudden exclamation had Elze looking back at the monitor. There, the metallic red frame was shown rising up like a ghost, stomach completely gouged out. Elze clicked her tongue.

I should’ve gone for its chest. That’s probably where its G-Cube was.

Suddenly, she realized that the enemy’s rapier was beginning to flicker with a dim red light. That creepy flashing grew faster and faster until it finally sent an unavoidable explosion of flame right for the Gerhilde.

“Stardust Shell!”

Before the Gerhilde could be engulfed by the flames, small shining star-shaped shields lined up in a regulated formation to create a large shield in front of them. Blocked by those celestial shields, the flames died out before reaching them.

“Whew, that was a close call.”

“Thank you, Sue!”

Behind Gerhilde stood Sue’s Ortlinde Overlord. Had the Stardust Shell come even a second later, Gerhilde would’ve been burned to a crisp.

“Tch! If Balor’s out of commission, then it’ll be impossible to do anything more...”

The metallic red Kyklops slowly edged backward while the surrounding Kyklops moved forward. It seemed he’d chosen to retreat.

They would rather not let him go, but even though they’d defeated the big Kyklops, they didn’t have the trump card to take the wicked devout down.

Guess we need to back off, Elze reluctantly relented. But then suddenly, the space above them started to warp.

A hole opened up and something gold came flying out.

“Is that...Gold?! Wait, no!”

Elze focused her monitor on the gold Gollem that had appeared. It looked exactly like Gold, but the small gold Gollem had metal bird wings on its back and was glaring at them with its red camera eyes.

“Gould...?”

A confused voice came from the metallic red frame. Gould ignored that voice and instead sent countless gold feathers out onto the battlefield.

◇　◇　◇

Going back to moments before...

Inside the [Prison], Yakumo had defeated the wicked devout in the diver suit with the sacred treasure. With that, we could say that we’d achieved our minimum objective. Once we’d finished clearing up the other wicked devout, we could celebrate.

The problem was this gold crown, Gould. He was staring over in Yakumo’s direction despite me being poised ready to take him on.

What is he doing?

It didn’t seem like he was frozen in shock at the defeat of a member of the wicked devout or anything.

“Veraenderung.”

Suddenly, Gould’s right hand changed into that ice pick again.

Crap! Is he gonna—?!

“Lanze.”

Gould flew toward the barrier and stabbed the ice pick right into it. Cracks formed in the [Prison] before it completely shattered.

“Huh?!”

“Yakumo!”

The moment the [Prison] broke, Yakumo leaped away from where Gould was about to strike.

“Veraenderung: Schwert.”

The spear-like ice pick morphed into a sword, and Gould immediately slashed at Yakumo with it as she ran. Yakumo used the sacred treasure to block it.

The two blades collided...and Gould’s sword ate halfway into the sacred treasure.

“Devour: Gluttony.”

“What?!”

Gould’s sword wrapped around Yakumo’s as if it were alive and slowly, the sacred treasure lost its platinum sheen.

What’s going on? Is the sacred treasure losing its divinity? Can Gluttony Slimes consume even that?! Wait, no...

“Hm?”

Suddenly, the gold tentacles wrapped around the sacred katana cracked and dissolved into sand. Gould jumped backward.

“The erosion was blocked...? But this is...?! What an incredible amount of energy! With this...!”

“Did he just say erosion?”

Is it like we thought?!

The crumbled plating of his hand reverted back to normal. Gould’s eyes were filled with delight as he opened and shut his fist.

“Who are you? Are you...the god of erosion?” I asked, noticing how Gould’s behavior had clearly changed. Had a fragment of the god of erosion that had escaped from the Divine Realm taken over this gold crown and was now in control of its Q-Crystal?

“I am both the gold crown and the one who rules the crowns. My previous name was Chrom Ranchesse, the High Master of the crowns.”

“What?!”

This was Chrom Ranchesse?! The genius Gollem engineer that created the crowns?! What was going on here?!

“With this, our wish shall be granted. I will draw out the full power of the gold crown.”

Gould—Chrom Ranchesse—stretched out his small gold hand in front of him.

“Spatial Distortion.”

The space in front of Gould began to twist. With his hand at the center, the surrounding space distorted like a whirlpool and left a large gaping hole.

Wait, no!

Gould jumped into that hole and the space immediately returned to normal. By that time, the gold crown was no longer present.

Was that not...the blue crown, Distortion Blau’s crown skill, Spatial Distortion?

Assuming that the time manipulation abilities present in his wings came from the black crown, Chronos Noir’s, then did that mean this gold crown could use crown skills after all? And those of various types? What was going on here?!

“Grah!”

Out of nowhere, there was a loud bang behind me, and when I turned to face the source, I saw that the woman with the iron mask who had been fighting Frei had slammed her metallic orange mace into the front monitor, damaging it. Was that the power of her wicked vessel? Wait, the Divinity Neutralization wasn’t in effect... Was it because the sacred treasure had its divinity stolen from it?! The weapon no longer had any energy to use its trait!

The footage from the cracked monitor disappeared, and water gushed from the cracks into the bridge like a laser beam due to the water pressure.

“What did you just do?!”

“Didn’t think I’d ever have to press this!”

The woman with the iron mask smashed through the glass cover on the console and slammed the button underneath down as hard as she could with her mace. The next moment, a bright red light began flashing in the submarine and a security alarm began blaring.

Oh, don’t tell me...

“Activating self-destruct sequence. Warning: in one minute, the Ark’s magic reactor will be raised to a critical level and the ship will self-destruct. Countdown commencing: 59, 58...”

“A self-destruct device?! Dammit, you mean it’s the same as Chrom Ranchesse’s lab back in Xenoahs?!”

Why were scientists so desperate to shove self-destruct systems into their creations?!

“Father! We must escape!”

“[Gate]!”

Yakumo reverted the sacred treasure to its original form while I opened a [Gate] to Val Albus. Yae went through first to confirm it was safe, and then the kids jumped in after her. After that came Hilde, and then finally me and Gold. Gold was still standing staring at the space that Gould had disappeared from, but when I called out to him, he obediently came through the [Gate] with me.

Just as I went to jump through myself, I caught sight of the two wicked devout making their escape through the corridor that the gold bird Gollem had created. They probably had an evacuation ship somewhere, or maybe some leftover Kyklops.

With another bang, a huge section of the monitor broke off, releasing even more water.

Shit! It won’t last much longer!

I dashed through the [Gate] into the bridge of the Val Albus.

“Albus, evacuate this area immediately! Full speed!”

“Understood.”

The white whale ship changed direction and dashed through the ocean depths at a speed it had never gone before. There was a brief flash, then a massive shock wave came from immediately behind us. The monitors attached to the probes that had been watching the Ark went dark the moment the explosion traveled through the water; they must have been destroyed in the blast.

We sent another probe toward the site of the explosion.

“I can confirm the destruction of the Ark,” Val Albus reported. “Several pieces of wreckage can be detected. Do you wish to retrieve them?”

“Hmm...”

The most important parts were probably completely pulverized, but maybe we could find something useful from the pieces that were left.

Guess there’s no harm in taking them...

“Father! Look!” Frei shouted. I turned toward where she was pointing. It was a different monitor that was displaying the fight over in Lassei. Pictured was the gold crown, Gould—or, no, Chrom Ranchesse? Well, whichever name was correct, Gould was on the battlefield. Did he teleport there using Spatial Distortion?

He really could use crown skills, and without paying any price whatsoever. I suppose you could count part of the Gluttony Slime being the price paid, but compared to the other crowns, it was much more efficient. What was worse, he’d not just absorbed a fragment of the god of erosion, but even stolen my divinity from the sacred treasure. Even an idiot could tell how bad this situation was getting.

“Father, look at that!”

“What is he doing? Wait, is he...eating the Kyklops?”

Gould had sent out the feathers from its gold wings, and they all turned into Slime as they consumed the Kyklops around them—whether they were broken or still moving. I could understand attacking the Frame Gears, but why their own allied forces? Was it to gain the divinity of the wicked god? Was he trying to absorb not just my divinity, but that of a different god as well? What could he be trying to do that would make that necessary?

“Touya-dono, it is pointless for us to just sit here, it is. Let us go to the battlefield!”

“Y-Yeah, good idea. [Teleport]!”

I teleported everyone to the Lassei coast upon Yae’s insistence. By the time we arrived, the Gluttony Slime feathers were already being recovered by Gould. The only Kyklops left behind was the metallic red one—was that the one with the wicked devout as the pilot?

“Gould? What are you doing?”

“The plan has proceeded to the final phase. I require your help, Scarlet... No, Maestro.”

“Hm?! Heh... Heh heh. Very well, Chrom Ranchesse. I will become your arms and legs as I promised. In exchange...”

“I know.”

“Good.”

Gould held out his right hand and distorted the space again with his crown skill, disappearing into the tear in space together with the metallic red frame. All that was left were the Fishmen and Gollem soldiers. There was a lot we had to think about, but first, we needed to clean up the mess in front of us.

I took out my smartphone and connected to Yumina.

“Begin the cleanup operation. Make sure the Nereids don’t let any of them escape underwater.”

“Understood. Um... Is Kuon safe?”

I silently turned the phone over to Kuon.

“I’m safe, mother.”

“Oh, good...”

She’s such a worrywart, I thought, but I really wasn’t much different myself.

Still, what did it mean that Chrom Ranchesse was Gould? I thought the god of erosion had taken it over... Could even a god—no, a former god’s fragment not keep its consciousness once its main body disappeared? It was as if the only thing Gould had inherited was the erosion ability, which was a perfect match for the Gluttony Slime. The ability to erode anything and the ability to absorb anything...

Almost anything, at least. It seemed the sacred treasure couldn’t be completely consumed, but it did steal the divinity that served as its power source. It was the same as when the old witch-king sucked out all of our mana.

Doc Babylon had once said that my boundless mana was a godsend for a researcher, since it meant they didn’t have to pay too much attention to how much mana they were expending while experimenting. The speed at which Brunhild and the Frame Gears were developed was thanks to both my mana capacity and divine power. Having that used against us by the enemy was a bit of a sore spot, especially because they’d stolen the divinity from the sacred treasure, something that was made by condensing loads and loads of divinity into a weapon.

I wasn’t sure how much divinity had been absorbed from the sacred treasure exactly, but it was more than enough for use on the surface.

“I really messed up... It was a complete oversight to think the sacred treasure would be safe from erosion just because it had my divinity infused in it... I prepared absolutely no countermeasures for the Gluttony Slime...”

That thing absorbed not just physical objects, but energy as well. The Gluttony Slime was originally created as an Artificer that could deal with dangerous objects during the ancient magic civilization, so of course it was made to be able to absorb residual mana. It was born into an era where magic and artifacts were as common as electrical appliances on Earth, after all.

Well, because of that, the country that developed the Gluttony Slime ended up being destroyed, so it was no laughing matter.

“There’s no point dwelling on what has already happened. For now, we should focus on cleaning up what’s in front of us.”

Oof... A six-year-old consoling me feels real bad...

What Kuon said was right, though. Rather than thinking of what I could have done, I needed to think about what I was going to do from now on.

“Oh, right, Silver. What do you think about the gold crown? Is it really Chrom Ranchesse?” I asked. The silver crown was the only one here who knew Chrom personally.

“Honestly...I couldn’t tell ya, buddy. The thing spoke just like him, but it’s not enough to say for sure, y’know? And like, what does it even mean if that thing is Chrom? Ya tellin’ me Chrom’s ghost decided to haunt a robot?”

“Hmm... Do you think his brain could’ve replaced the Q-Crystal?”

“Ew.”

Silver clearly didn’t like the thought of it, but we did have an example of that with the witch-king. It wasn’t impossible. Hell, even Doc Babylon had done something very similar.

I glanced at Gold, who was standing nearby. Gould hadn’t known that Gold existed. Now assuming Gould was Chrom Ranchesse, that would mean Chrom was not the one who created Gold. But then, who made him? It would have to be someone who was as much of a genius to make a completely identical unit.

Were Gold and Gould completely different units, then? Gould had Chrom Ranchesse’s brain implanted inside it, while Gold was the Gollem that had a Q-Crystal installed.

I seriously have no goddamn clue where to go with this.

“If ya ask me, rather than Chrom takin’ over the thing, it feels way more likely that he copied his personality into it.”

“Hang on... Copied his personality? Did he have technology like that?”

“Well...the guy managed to create somethin’ like me. My personality is molded based on my wielder an’ all. Isn’t it super likely he could transfer his personality?”

Now that he mentioned it, Gollems usually had some semblance of a personality formed from all the memories they’d built up over the years, and crowns were no exception to that. But according to Kuon, Silver’s original personality had been that of a murderer. It was through their contract that Silver had turned into more of an obedient minion—and that meant Chrom Ranchesse had managed to plant a moldable personality into a Gollem. With that in mind, him implanting his own personality into the gold crown wasn’t out of the question.

“So...that’s what this is all about.”

Research was being carried out into a technology that would make it possible to digitize oneself using all sorts of information like their thought processes and thinking patterns and create a replica of the person—digital cloning, I think it was called. That technology would allow us to know the thoughts of even dead people. In a way, it was research into immortality.

If something similar had been input into Gould, then it wouldn’t be so incorrect to view him as Chrom Ranchesse himself, would it? Well, the man himself was dead, so maybe it was more accurate to say it was the ghost of him.

“I just remembered... When Steph accidentally erased a massive portion of unknown data from Gold, could that have been Chrom Ranchesse’s personality data?” Kuon asked.

“Wait, it could be!”

If that was the case, then the theory that Gold and Gould were the exact same Gollem actually started to hold water.

But did that mean if Steph hadn’t mistakenly reset Gold’s data, we could’ve had two gold crowns with Chrom Ranchesse’s personality running around? Was my daughter secretly a genius? She totally prevented a disaster before it could happen!

“Hey, kiddo, uh...your papa sometimes acts a little loopy, huh?”

“This is normal. Don’t worry, you’ll get used to it.”

I didn’t like the conversation going on in front of me one bit, but whatever. More importantly, why did Chrom Ranchesse implant his personality in the gold crown to begin with? Did he want to acquire pseudo-immortality or something?

No, that didn’t seem right. According to Albus, when the white and black crowns went berserk, Chrom ended up losing his memories as a price of the white crown’s crown skill. Did he do this to keep a record of his memories? Perhaps he tried to create a copy of himself in order to fight against losing both his memories and his sense of self...

Losing one’s memories was akin to losing oneself. It resulted in the collapse of one’s identity, the disappearance of the foundations of who you were. Could there be anything more frightening? If I had to lose my memories of all the time spent in this world, could I really bear it?

It was in that moment that I truly began to understand Chrom Ranchesse’s state of mind.

Transferring your memories to a Gollem meant that you yourself still had those memories of that process, so you’d know exactly why you existed, but I wasn’t sure if it was something you could so easily separate in your mind. No matter how much you tried to argue against it, a fake was a fake. You were now an artificial existence, a puppet with copied memories implanted inside of you. Was that something a regular person could withstand?

“However, according to Albus, the original Chrom Ranchesse gradually lost his memories due to the price paid for the activation of the white crown’s crown skill, correct? In which case, being the only owner of his complete memories, Gould would be the closest to the man himself, no?”

I understood what the Professor was getting at, but it also felt like a little bit of a stretch. Gould and the Chrom Ranchesse that lived five thousand years ago were ultimately two different existences. Gould just happened to have his memories.

“He truly is the ghost of Chrom Ranchesse.”

“That’s a very fitting phrase.”

It was indeed. A different body that still retained your memories of when you were alive? That sounded similar enough to a ghost to me.

“So does Gold not have Chrom Ranchesse’s memories whatsoever?”

“None. That large volume of data that Steph deleted had to have been his memories.”

In other words, it was as Kuon had suggested. Steph really had prevented a calamity.

“So are Gold and Gould the same type of Gollem?”

“Not quite. It would be more accurate to say that they’re duplicates, I guess?” Doc Babylon responded, putting two images up on the monitor. “On the right is Gold and on the left is Gould from footage Gold captured in the Ark.”

Honestly, beyond the cape and eye colors, they really did look exactly the same.

“Then if we enlarge this...” she mumbled as she zoomed in on their necks—but nothing looked different to me. “Notice anything?”

“Uh...not really? They look the same to me...”

The outline of the plating, the coloring, the exact marks, all of it made them seem like the same type of unit.

“Wait...even the marks are the same?”

“You’ve got it. We’ve thoroughly examined each of them, and they have the exact same marks in more than one place. Even if they were from the same batch, they shouldn’t be this similar unless they were marks made deliberately. That’s why they’re more akin to duplicates.”

In other words, they were originally one unit, but then they made a duplicate using something like what we have in the workshop.

“Think about it for a second. At that time, the Phrase invaded, Chrom’s black and white crowns went haywire, and time and space got all messed up. The world’s barrier was restored, and the Phrase were chased into the dimensional gap, correct?”

I nodded while listening to the scientist’s explanation. But wait, why was she explaining this now?

“What if the gold crown was shot through time at the same time as the Phrase? Don’t forget that Steph originally saw Gold falling through a hole in space-time. And then, perhaps the black crown led to another gold crown being brought through from a different timeline.”

“Oh! Through Noir’s Parallel Shift?”

The black crown, Chronos Noir, had the ability to control time and also to interfere with parallel worlds. He could call forth all sorts of things from all sorts of different worlds and times.

If that power had taken effect...did that mean the exact same gold crown was simply pulled from a different timeline? No wonder they had identical marks. Even if they were from different timelines, they were still the same existence. The fact that they had the same marks had to mean they weren’t taken from too far apart in time, though it was hard to tell if it was from the past or future. In other words, the small marks on Gould and Gold’s plating were caused when they were shot through time.

“But if they were wrapped up in the black and white crowns going haywire, would that not mean that Chrom’s memories weren’t implanted into them?”

“We were working under the assumption that Chrom only implanted his memories after he’d begun losing them as a means to preserve them, but isn’t it possible that he’d actually done it before that? Maybe as a backup in case he had to use the white crown’s crown skill.”

“I understand. You mean that he may have intended to use the memories within the gold crown as a substitute.”

“It’s a pretty crafty way of doing it, but not impossible.”

The Professor and Elluka agreed with Doc Babylon’s hypothesis.

Meanwhile, I’m starting to get lost.

“Here, let’s set up a timeline.”

“Big thanks.”

Was I just stupid?

Doctor Babylon began laying out an estimated timeline of Chrom Ranchesse’s movements.

Five thousand years ago, Chrom created the crown series of Gollems in the Reverse World. The red, blue, white, black, green, and purple crowns were made.

Chrom traveled from the Reverse World to the Upright World with the black and white crowns. Paying the price of the black crown’s crown skill, he de-aged from an old man to a young boy. He then traveled to the United Kingdom of Pillaisula.

Chrom learned magic, had a family, and then the Phrase invaded. He began researching how to return to his original world without paying the price; this led to the creation of the silver and gold crowns. He then transferred his memories into the gold crown to try to use them as a substitute for the crown’s crown skill(?).

The Dominant Phrase, Gila, attacked Chrom’s village. He lost his wife and daughter in the attack. The black and white crowns went haywire.

The barrier to the world was restored. The Phrase disappeared from the world. The murder of his family was reset. Two gold crowns ended up existing in this timeline due to the black crown. Each of them was shot forward five thousand years into the future.

Chrom began to lose his memory as a result of the white crown’s price. His contracts with the black and white crowns were reset.

Four thousand years following these events, the black and white crowns were activated by Arthur Ernes Belfast. A fierce war broke out between this world and the Phrase who managed to slip in through a gap in space-time. As a result, the black crown was thrown back into the Reverse World and the white crown entered another slumber under Lake Palette.

A thousand years later, the black crown was discovered by Doctor Elluka. The white crown was pulled up out of Lake Palette.

Steph discovered Gold. She initialized Chrom’s memory, deleting it from Gold. Gould activated still with Chrom’s memories intact. He began putting his plan into motion.

“I think that about sums it up.”

It did make much more sense when it was all lined up like this, but it did kind of make it feel like Chrom Ranchesse was the cause of everything... Well, if he hadn’t existed five thousand years ago, the world would’ve already been destroyed by the Phrase, so in a way, he was the world’s savior. Still, I was pretty sure the man himself didn’t save the world because he particularly wanted to. It didn’t help that the wicked devout and a fallen god had gotten involved and made everything worse.

“That’s your wheelhouse, isn’t it? Having gods as our opponent is a little much even for us.”

“You’re absolutely correct...”

Right, I’m the one who has to do something about this...

“So then, what did Chrom Ranchesse ultimately want to do?”

“Who knows? He was a prodigy who wasn’t content learning from only his own world, so he traveled to a different one entirely to study magic. Maybe he was just after the knowledge of the world?”

“Like trying to make the ultimate Gollem?”

“The ultimate Gollem, huh...?”

I couldn’t explain why, but that felt a little off to me.

In Chrom Ranchesse’s...Gould’s eyes, I felt as if I could see some deep, dark fire of passion. A ruthlessness that didn’t care about what victims he created. If any ordinary person heard me say that, they’d probably wonder what the hell I was going on about. It was a Gollem, but... Just jumping off of the previous conversation, it wasn’t a case of him knowing that he was a manufactured fake and feeling so much despair that he was taking the world along with him, right...?

Plus, he had the power of the fallen god inside of him as well. It might not just be Chrom Ranchesse’s memories affecting him, but the memories and emotions tied to the god of erosion as well. If that was the case, you definitely couldn’t call that Chrom anymore; it was a weird new combined something.

“Still...I never would’ve thought that idiot Maestro would go so far as to become a wicked devout...”

“No wonder we thought the Kyklops felt similar to his work. Everything suddenly makes so much more sense.”

That plague-mask wicked devout...Scarlet. Gould called him Maestro. That was the name of one of the five great gollemancers, an absolute genius Gollem engineer. Doctor Elluka—also known as the Restoration Queen—the wandering Professor, the Seekers who were an organization of Gollem engineers, and the late witch-king were deemed the five great gollemancers known throughout the world.

“The Maestro was quite the unreasonable man. Since he was always looking down on others to some degree, he barely interacted with people. We just barely managed to be deemed worth talking to for him even at our level,” the Professor explained.

What? Didn’t that mean he wouldn’t talk to most people?

What did he do when he needed to go shopping? No, wait, he could just use his Gollems...

“I hated him because of how rude he was,” Doctor Elluka said. “He was the kind of person to scoff at any work you showed him. He probably sold his soul to the wicked god just to get the gold crown.”

“I didn’t dislike him as much as you, but I did think he felt a bit unstable.”

“To be fair, you even managed to get along with the witch-king, Professor... You really need to find better friends, you know?” Doc Babylon remarked.

“Hoh hoh hoh! I never thought the day would come when I’d have both of you saying that to me.”

This Maestro might have been a genius, but from what I was hearing, he wasn’t the nicest guy to be around. Honestly, I thought magitech engineers all tended to be the same way in some form or another, especially looking at the three in front of me...

Perhaps some things are better left unsaid.

“Maybe they all escaped to Maestro’s laboratory.”

“Where’s that?” I asked.

“The Triharan Holy Empire, in a forest at the foot of Mount Paparika. It’s filled with monsters, and isn’t really a place that’s very habitable for humans,” the Professor said.

“Why would he make his lab there?”

“Because he hates people. He once said that he’s much calmer in places where people don’t gather.”

Damn, he was thorough. What happened to make him so averse to human contact? Was he betrayed by someone he greatly trusted? Whatever the case, we had to make that our next destination.

“I know he hates humans, but that didn’t mean he had to stop being one...” Doc Babylon muttered.

“Can one really not return to being human after becoming a wicked devout?”

“Definitely not. The wicked devout are, by all rights, already dead. Their existence is simply held together by the power of their wicked vessel. The moment that’s destroyed, both their body and soul are destroyed with it.”

They were basically all Undead... It was impossible to turn them back.

“Well, I pretty much quit being human myself, so I can’t really say anything. Changing topics, we’ve confirmed that any important devices or recorded information in the Ark were destroyed in the blast. All we managed to retrieve was the remains of the ship itself and some Kyklops frames. That, and...”

An image appeared on the monitor showing two Kyklops traveling through the sea holding what looked like a torpedo in one hand each. One was metallic orange, the other metallic green... Those were definitely the wicked devout with the iron and feather masks. So they got away after all.

“This was the last bit of footage sent by one of the probes that we had stationed around the Ark. Naturally, it was caught in the blast as well.”

“What way were they headed?”

“Toward Isengard, but I couldn’t tell you if that was their destination or not.”

Isengard was as chaotic a place as ever, which made it the perfect location for people with a bad history to hide. Did they maybe have bases outside of the Maestro’s lab? I doubted they just lived a nomadic life until they got their hands on the Ark.

Just in case, I tried using [Search], but I couldn’t find the wicked devout, Gould, or even the Kyklops with it. Why were they always so good at hiding? If I had the power to spread my divinity over the whole world, I could find them easily, but unfortunately, I wasn’t quite there yet.

Speaking of divinity...

I left the repairs of the Frame Gears to the scientists and opened a [Gate] to Mismede so I could ask Kraft, the god of crafting, about the sacred treasure.

As per usual, he was leisurely carving wood. Though I wouldn’t call the speed at which he finished them leisurely.

I handed Kraft the sacred treasure, and he closely examined it.

“I see now. It’s had its divinity stolen from it, has it? Now that I look at it, the core has certainly been greatly depleted of your power,” he said with a wry smile. “The weapon itself seems fine. If the only problem is that it’s lost its divinity, then just recharge it with more.”

Hearing those words filled me with relief. If it turned out I had to make it from scratch again...I don’t know what I would’ve done with myself.

“Still, can’t say it’s very good that something with the god of erosion’s power managed to steal your divinity. He can use the power of erosion however much he likes now, and if he can do that, we might have another wicked god on our hands.”

“Yup...”

The previous wicked god was created from a servile god, though he ended up being consumed and fused with his own creation. Unlike the servile god, however, the god of erosion was a full-fledged god, even if there was a little “ex-” in front of that. Use a power like that and it would definitely be possible to make another wicked god.

“A wicked god can’t be made that easily, though. Even if you did manage it, you’d need massive amounts of negative energy to let it grow. You know, like deep grudges, hatred, grief, agony... Stuff like that. That’s why people who worship wicked gods go around spreading calamity. That was the case before too, no?”

Was Gould actually trying to revive the wicked god? No, perhaps he wanted to make a whole new wicked god altogether... If that was the reason he was spreading chaos over the lands again, then we absolutely could not ignore him.

We’ll definitely beat him to a pulp.

“The reason we weren’t allowed to touch the wicked devout was because they were wards of the wicked god, but what about a Gollem that happened to acquire the power of a fallen god? There’s no problem with us destroying that, right?”

“Wicked gods are born on the surface, that’s why it is the surface humans that must do something about it. Of course, it’s a little much to ask them to take it all on themselves, so we gods are allowed to support them. However, a fallen god is an escapee from the Divine Realm. As such, the responsibility lies on us. Even when the servile god escaped to the surface, the goddess of love came down to take him back, didn’t she? It’s the same idea.”

Right, it had slipped my mind, but that was the whole reason Karen came down here to begin with. Nowadays, though, she only really came to have fun...

Anyway, basically, that meant that we gods could take erosion-god-related enemies down.

“In our minds, wicked gods we leave, fallen gods we annihilate. We’d have settled the matter with the servile god ourselves as well if it hadn’t fused with the wicked god.”

Huh? Did that mean if a new wicked god was born and fused with Gould, we’d be in massive trouble? We wouldn’t be able to lay a finger on him if that happened... But if it was okay for the divine to attack the fallen god, then maybe we could have Moroha or Uncle Takeru take it down before that happened?

“It is possible, but...are you sure you want to take that option? You’re basically saying that you can’t handle the problems in the world that you oversee. Is that not a bit pitiful for a ward of someone like God Almighty? I can already see those handful of gods who disapprove of you growing more disgruntled.”

“Ah...”

People bad-mouthing someone who only got in because of their connections with the CEO and doing nothing of value was pretty natural...

That was close. Sure, it would make things easier, but I can’t rely on another god to solve my problems.

I had no choice but to rely on the kids to deal with the wicked devout, but I had to be the one to figure out how to deal with the fallen god.

“Do remember that this fallen god is but a fragment. As a ward of someone of such high status, I find it very unlikely that you would lose. You just have to be careful to not get everyone in the surroundings too wrapped up in the battle.”

He was right. Sure, it’d be great if we took down Gould, but managing it by destroying half the world first could only be called a pyrrhic victory. Even if I could win, what was important was how I won. I had to make sure to avoid as many casualties as possible. There were already tens of thousands of victims of the conflict, so I had to keep it from getting any worse.

At the very least, now that the Ark was destroyed, it shouldn’t be so easy for them to launch surprise attacks. I’d like to think they’d lost their ability to mass-produce the Kyklops as well, but it was a little naive to think the Ark was the only factory they had...

Were they making more of them at the Maestro’s lab?

We’d better find it as soon as possible.

◇　◇　◇

The building was in the middle of the forest at the foot of Mount Paparika, near the border with Rephan in the northern part of Triharan. It was a tower that appeared to be around thirty meters tall, roughly the height of Ortlinde Overlord. It was shaped like a rectangular box until around the second or third floor, and then a tall tower curved upward from the left-hand side. In a way, it resembled a lighthouse.

“This is the Maestro’s lab? What a lonely building.”

“Indeed. It doesn’t appear to have changed much since the last time I visited.”

“What boring taste. He should add more spice!”

Doctor Elluka, the Professor, and Doc Babylon all threw in their opinions after I brought them here. I agreed about the bad taste, at least—it felt like some abandoned old ruin. There was even ivy running all over the walls. Still, the Professor said it hadn’t changed much since the last time he’d been here. Did that mean it always looked like this? Did the Maestro just never clean the place?

“He’s never cared about his living conditions,” he elaborated. “Nothing was more important to him than his research and development. All he cared about was the facilities he had access to inside.”

It seemed that was why he ended up with this abandoned tower. Honestly, the foundation seemed stable, so it would definitely serve as a functional place to live.

“What’s the plan? Gonna break in?” Doc Babylon asked, but I didn’t actually have an answer ready. If this really was the enemy base, they should’ve realized we were here by now, yet there hadn’t been a peep. Being aware that there was the possibility they were waiting inside to ambush us, I used [Search] to check for the presence of any of them, but got no results.

Guess I’ll take this opportunity to act out one of those detective dramas.

I took out Brunhild and slowly sidled toward the wooden door with my back against the wall, and then I kicked it at full force, my foot going right through it.

“Whoa, it’s all rotten!”

I really just broke the door itself. The only thing left hanging there was my leg through the hole. That door wasn’t even acting as a door any longer.

Ow, ow, ow, the wood’s sharp...

As I hopped backward in pain, the part I kicked split in two and the door fell inward.

“That door looked about ready to break the last time I came here too. I suppose he never fixed it,” the Professor said, as the only person here who had ever visited this place before.

“Tell me that before I kick the door, please...” I groaned.

We peeked past the destroyed door and saw a place so desolate that it looked completely abandoned. Actually, upon further inspection, there was at least some furniture like tables and chairs around, but beyond that, it was basically empty.

The Professor led us through the dusty, empty space to the area that should’ve been the Maestro’s lab, but there was nothing there either.

“It seems he took everything with him.”

“Aw, does that mean we came out here for nothing?” Doc Babylon asked, disappointed.

It wasn’t completely devoid of things, but it surprisingly lacked much. The place probably would’ve been left to rot without anyone knowing it ever existed if we hadn’t shown up.

We made sure to check the tower too, but he’d taken absolutely everything from there. The top floor seemed to be the Maestro’s bedroom, but all that was left was a simple desk and chair, as well as three empty bookshelves.

“Not gonna lie, when I hear the title ‘great gollemancer,’ this is not the kind of room I expect,” I commented.

“He was very picky with his work, you see. You could try to tempt him with all the money in the world, but he still wouldn’t do anything he had no interest in. On the other hand, if he thought the work would be informative for him, he would even do it for free. He ultimately ended up chasing away most of his potential clients, though, given his thorny personality...”

One of those picky craftsmen, huh?

Maybe a little too picky, if you asked me. Then again, it was because of how picky he was that he managed to get his hands on the gold crown, so he was probably happy in his own way, even though achieving that goal meant giving up his humanity...

“Hm?”

Doc Babylon was looking at the bookcases from all different angles, pressing her hand against different parts of it.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“Does it not look like there’s a bit of a scrape mark here?”

“Let’s see...”

She was pointing at the rock wall beside the bookcase. Right enough, it looked as though something had been dragged across it.

Wait, are these marks from the bookcase being moved?

“Did you not think it a little strange that we had to climb up some really steep stairs just to make it up here?”

“What’s strange about it?”

This tower was four floors, and we’d climbed up stairs that were practically vertical to get up here to the top. The only thing I thought was strange was that it felt like a Gollem engineer should be smart enough to build an elevator.

“Did you not notice? Pay attention to the size of this room, then think about the size of the tower. The room itself is rather small. What do you think that means?”

“Huh? Uh...the walls are really thick?”

“Good answer. But two meters thick seems a bit much for a simple wall, no? It’s not like the place is a fortress.”

Now that she mentioned it...compared to how the tower looked from the outside, this room did feel a little too small.

“Aha, now I see. What you want to say is that this room has empty space surrounding it, don’t you?”

“A space between the inner and outer walls? Could it be...?”

The Professor and Doctor Elluka seemed to have realized something.

Wait, don’t leave me in the dark. What are you guys talking about?

“This has to be it. If I just press along here...”

The small scientist pressed the side of the bookcase, and there was suddenly a little thunk! Then, the bookcase itself started to slide to the side. What appeared on the other side was a flight of stairs that was heading downward. It was a spiral staircase going around the sides of the tower; this had to be what was hiding between the inner and outer walls.

“We going?” Doc Babylon asked. Everyone nodded. We had no idea what was down there, but turning back wasn’t a choice anymore.

Using [Light Orb] to see where we were going, we descended the staircase. I was pretty sure we were already under the first floor by this point. Just what was hiding in the basement?

What awaited us at the bottom was a large room like a warehouse. Stored inside were about thirty or so dusty Gollems—stocky headless humanoid Gollems that were simply left there. They mostly looked adult-sized, though there were some smaller ones mixed in.

“They must be the Gollems that assisted the Maestro,” the Professor observed. “They’re older models, so he probably abandoned them here once he was done with them.”

“I absolutely despise the side of him that is so willing to just abandon things the moment he thinks he’s done with them.”

Though the Professor was calm, Doctor Elluka was clearly furious. I couldn’t blame her. The only reason you’d be able to so easily abandon creations that had spent so long looking after and helping you would be if you truly saw Gollems as nothing but tools. As an inventor who viewed her Gollems as her partners, Doctor Elluka couldn’t see his actions as anything but deeply cruel.

We did a thorough investigation of the place, but found nothing of use. We were definitely looking at a scene from after the Maestro had already grabbed everything he needed. He likely never intended to return here. I could sense the man’s conviction because of how empty the place was.

“Turns out this was all just a wild-goose chase, huh?”

Left with that dismal conclusion, we turned and left the Maestro’s laboratory. A tower to which its master would never return was a lonelier sight than I would’ve thought.

◇　◇　◇

“Hyah!”

Moroha smoothly dodged Yakumo’s powerful strike before then dashing right up to the girl in an instant.

“Watch your toes, kid.”

“Whoa!”

Yakumo’s legs were swept out from under her. Though she lost her balance, she managed to recover and roll to the side, gaining distance from Moroha. Moroha never continued into a follow-up attack, however.

“Kokonoe Secret Style: Bee Stinger!”

Yakumo leaped up and unleashed a piercing thrust. Moroha calmly dodged back.

“[Gate]!”

“Hm.”

The tip of Yakumo’s blade moved into a tiny [Gate] and disappeared before reappearing in the space behind Moroha. Everyone watching thought it would be impossible for the goddess to dodge.

“Not so fast.”

“Huh?”

As if going to scratch an itch with a backscratcher, Moroha took her sword and maneuvered it around her back, stopping Yakumo’s blade with the flat of her sword. And she managed all that without even turning around once.

Does this woman have eyes on the back of her head?!

Having deflected the tip of Yakumo’s blade, Moroha leaped forward and thrust the tip of her sword at the young girl’s neck.

“You’re still thinkin’ too simple, kid. If your opponent can predict where you’re sending your attacks with those little gates of yours, it’s nothing better than a parlor trick. Even aiming for the feet would give you a better chance of success.”

“Ngh... I concede...”

Once Yakumo raised her hands in surrender, Moroha lowered her sword.

Apparently, Yakumo had asked Moroha for more strict training because of feeling her own inadequacy during the raid on the Ark. From where I was standing, she had put up a good fight, but to her, there must have been something that left her feeling humiliated. I didn’t see any problem with it, so I granted her my permission, but I hadn’t expected them to go at it all morning.

“Yakumo, I feel like you should take a break.”

“Yeah! It’s not fair that you get to hog all the training time! It’s my turn!” Frei yelled from beside me, clearly desperate to get out on the field. I guess she was at her limit after having to hold in all her energy for so long.

“I feel so close to figuring this out. Please, just one more round!” Yakumo pleaded.

“That’s what you said last time!” Frei angrily shouted back.

If I don’t force them to stop, this is gonna turn nasty.

“[Gate].”

“Ah!”

Frei and Yakumo fell through the gates at their feet as they reappeared back where the other had been standing.

Take a look at my all-powerful swap-no-jutsu...! Just kidding.

“But, father, I can still...!”

“I dunno what’s got you so worked up, but right now, you’re so exhausted that you can barely move right.”

“Y-You could just cast [Refresh] on me and...”

“Absolutely not. Just rest.”

I immediately rejected her request, and Yakumo sat herself down in defeat.

The girl was right, I could have cast [Refresh] on her and she’d have gotten her stamina back right away, but something like that could have adverse effects on one’s growth. If you had two runners training every day, one casting [Refresh] on themselves every time, while the other let their body recover naturally, the latter would acquire the most natural stamina. Using that magic prevented one’s muscles from developing.

It was one thing to do it to an adult who had already finished their growth period, but using it too much on a child could stunt their growth, and I was certain Yakumo wouldn’t want that either.

“Here I go!”

Having been left to wait for so long, Frei’s first strike toward Moroha was explosive. They were both wielding spears, Frei’s being the sacred treasure. The long reach of the spear put a swordsman at a clear disadvantage, but such knowledge didn’t work against the goddess. She was humming away to herself as she deflected Frei’s barrage of attacks with the spear in one of her hands.

“How much training do I have to put in to reach such a level...?” Yakumo wondered.

“Uh, an impossible amount,” I immediately shot back. Reaching the same level as Moroha? No human could attain that. “That woman is insane on more than one level. At least have Yae as your goal.”

“I doubt I could even win against mother either...”

As much as it was my fault for becoming a god, Yae had halfway stopped being human herself. Then again, Yakumo was a demigod—maybe it wasn’t out of the question? As her father, though, I didn’t really want her to become my strongest child... Marriage proposals would practically disappear.

Wait...maybe this is a good thing.

“Well, just watch yourself, okay? It was thanks to you that our mission in the Ark succeeded, so don’t take it too hard.”

“But the sacred treasure had its divinity stolen...”

So that was what she was hung up on. There was nothing she could have done in that situation. In fact, I was the one more at fault here—I was so distracted by the idea of the fallen god that I’d completely forgotten to create a counter for the Gluttony Slime. I’d already refilled the sacred treasure with divinity and made some adjustments so it wouldn’t ever get its power absorbed from it again, so Yakumo really didn’t need to blame herself.

This girl was the kind of person who beat herself up over the tiniest of mistakes; she was exactly like Yae in that respect. Both were usually very straightforward, but they tended to be too strict on themselves and overthink things. They were always so stubborn when they got something in their heads, but they could afford to be a bit more carefree sometimes. Well, so long as they weren’t as airheaded as Steph was, at least.

Now, what would I do if Yae was in a slump like this?

“Oh, right. Food.”

“What?”

There was nothing better to help clear one’s head than something tasty. The moment I thought of that, I sent a message to both Lu and Arcia.

“And so, you decided to have a curry party?” Yumina muttered in slight disbelief as she looked out over the large carts lined up with all different sizes of curry around the courtyard. That wasn’t a mistake, by the way—what was being served wasn’t the Mismede cully, but actual curry from Earth. Though to the residents of this world, it just seemed like we’d arranged cully into something better.

The aggressive smell was permeating not just the courtyard, but all throughout the castle. It might be a bit tough on everyone having such a strong, mouthwatering smell hanging in the air right before lunch. I was pretty sure I heard a very loud tummy rumble from somewhere.

“They really made a lot, didn’t they?”

“To the surprise of no one, Lu and Arcia had both gone crazy with it... Through trial and error, they continued their search for the ultimate curry...”

The curries on the menu ranged from the usual pork, chicken, and beef curries to the all-familiar seafood, katsu, and veggie curries, and then stranger ones like curry udon and curry ramen. I could also spy some keema, green, and soup curries off to the side. There really were all kinds present.

In fact, it didn’t stop there—Lu and Arcia had their own original curries on display as well. It was absolute chaos. There was a bright red curry among them all, but...

I value my life, thanks...

The moment it became time for lunch, everyone, from the castle’s knights to the maids, impatiently made their way to the courtyard. Usually, they’d all eat in a separate mess area, but today, they all flowed to where we were waiting.

Hang on, don’t some of these people usually bring their own lunch boxes? Is this the true power of curry?

Next to Yae, who was wolfing down some katsu curry, was Yakumo doing the exact same thing. Had she managed to cheer up a bit? My grandpa always said that eating food helped your mood by making your worries feel a little lighter.

I should try some too.

“Oh, father! Try this black curry I made! I simmered the ingredients for days and also added a secret spice!”

“No, you should have my golden curry! It’s made with a mix of golden spices I concocted myself!”

“Um...”

I’d just gone to grab some chicken curry, but Arcia and Lu slid in and held out a plate each toward me.

So, um... Do I have to eat these? Well, just one or two bites shouldn’t kill me...

What? I had to eat it all?

“Which was more delicious?!”

Here we go again...

Somehow, I’d finished both plates and now the two were hounding me for an opinion. They were both delicious! So delicious that I couldn’t decide which was better!

To be honest, I wasn’t so culinary-minded that I could determine the small differences. If I had to pick, Arcia’s was easier to eat, but that could also have been because I had Lu’s curry second, so I might have just been full. If I’d eaten Lu’s first, I’d probably have felt the opposite. Though, the idea of it being easy to eat had nothing to do with whether it tasted nice or not.

“Umm, I’d say this is a draw...”

“Then I’ll decide it with this pineapple curry!”

“I’ll decide it with this dry-curry-stuffed squid!”

They each whipped out another plate of curry.

Hang on, I don’t have to eat more, do I?

Perhaps I made a mistake asking them to prepare this curry party when all I wanted to do was cheer up Yakumo.

I should’ve asked Crea...

If there was no real conclusion to this, then I’d be stuck eating curry forever, but if I chose one or the other, things would definitely get messy.

In the end, I ate so much curry that I felt ill and fell right asleep. The result of the match? I was unconscious, so I have no clue.

◇　◇　◇

Since the day of the great calamity that befell Isengard—no, the world—their country had ceased contact with Lassei to the north and Gardio to the east, both in a political and geographical sense. The cursed thorns that rained down from the heavens and wedged themselves into the earth destroyed the rocks, rotted the soil, and drastically changed Isengard’s surrounding topography.

The land leading to Lassei and Gardio sank to the bottom of the sea, turning Isengard into a small isolated continent. To the north, close to the Lassei borders, there was a lake connected in the shape of a large and small circle, like a little snowman. The two cursed thorns that had fallen there gouged out the earth and water from a nearby river flowed into the lake, creating a much bigger one.

The huge lake, which was about half the size of Eashen, had been nicknamed Lake Calamity. Though the lake was formed by river water flowing into it, it had now become an eerie bright red. However, unlike the red tides caused by abnormal plankton growth, this water was the sharp color of blood.

Perhaps because the curse had seeped into it, no live fish were anywhere to be found. The surrounding areas had become a wasteland, a lake of death where not a single person or plant could be seen.

In the middle of that lake, hovering about ten meters above the water’s surface, was Gould with his gold wings. He was holding some small seeds that he sprinkled down into the lake.

“Wachstum,” Gould muttered as he held his hand over the lake’s surface. Several branches sprung out of the water, growing in the blink of an eye. The branches and roots of the trees grew at an abnormal rate, forming a complex web of shapes.

When the trees finally halted their growth, what was left standing there was a stronghold made of a forest standing in the middle of the red lake.

“So this is the green crown’s crown skill, Vegetative Dominion...”

The man who had spoken those words with a sigh was the plague-mask man, hovering behind Gould with a jetpack. When Gould descended into the plant fortress, the Maestro—no, Scarlet—did the same.

“Put up a barrier immediately. We need to buy time until Porta is ready.”

“All right, leave that to me,” Scarlet said as he pulled out his metallic red rapier and stabbed it into one of the roots. “Summon them, Crimson.”

Several red magic circles appeared in front of him, from which Four-Armed Gollems and Fishmen came crawling out. Following them came a bunch of machinery and magic tools that the summoned beings carried and began assembling.

In no time at all, tall lightning rods were set up on all sides of the tree fortress. Once they were activated, a barrier formed around them.

“Losing the Ark was less than ideal, but thankfully, many of our materials were salvageable from the seafloor. Let us build another factory right away so we can return to our production of the Kyklops.”

Scarlet designated a part of the fortress and began building a mountain of materials. The Four-Armed Gollems once more began to build.

“Schnell.”

Gould sent down one of his gold feathers, and when it lodged into the construction site, the Gollems and Fishmen in a large range around it began moving at a much faster pace. This was the power of the black crown; the penalty was big, so he couldn’t use it too often, but he had no intention of holding back if it would help him move closer to his goal.

“Just wait...I’ll definitely fix this twisted world...”

Deep within Gould’s—Chrom Ranchesse’s—camera eyes were the flames of a terrifying obsession.

◇　◇　◇

“The hell’s that?!” Tangerine exclaimed from the cockpit of her orange Kyklops. Peacock, who was standing beside her in her own green Kyklops, was likely thinking the exact same thing. After the two of them had managed to escape from the Ark with their lives, Peacock had used her wicked vessel’s ability to search in order to find where Gould and Scarlet had gone.

Since they were both wards of the wicked god, they were able to pass through the barrier the two of them had erected.

It was in the north of Isengard that the wicked devout were able to meet up once more.

“What exactly is this place? Did you take over a town of the elvenfolk or something?”

“This is our new base that was created by Gould’s crown skills,” Scarlet answered without turning around. “Our living quarters are on top of the large tree to the south. If you wish to rest, head there.”

He was most interested in the Kyklops the two had arrived in. More specifically, he was interested in the three-meter-long cubic pitch-black container they had brought along with them.

“It was fortunate you were able to retrieve this from the Ark. I was afraid I’d have to build it again from scratch.”

“I was the one who blew the Ark up. If I didn’t make sure to grab at least this much, I knew you’d nag later.”

“That was unavoidable. It is a much better outcome than the Ark falling into enemy hands. The sacrifices may have been big, but as a result, we have acquired a power much greater than the Ark.”

“Oh yeah?” Tangerine skeptically asked, raising her eyebrow. Scarlet turned his gaze to the southern edge of the fortress where a large monolith with a red crystal embedded inside of it stood. Etched into the monolith was ancient magic writing. It was a device designed by Gould and built by Scarlet. A red light was being emitted from the large crystal like a laser, slowly forming a magic circle on the shore of the lake where the fortress was built.

Once it was complete, strange creatures began to crawl out of it. Though they looked human, their bodies could hardly be described as being made of flesh and blood. Like the Cydevils that Gould and Scarlet had created, they were bodies fused with machines, a metal mask sitting on their heads.

Those masks took all kinds of shapes, from dogs to cats to birds to even crocodiles. Each of them carried their own metal weapons like spears or swords or staffs. Mechanical Beastmen was likely the most accurate way to describe them.

“Are these summoned beasts?”

“Rather than beings from the spirit world, they are Undead summoned from the underworld through Gould’s black crown ability. He chose servants who suit our goals and called them through.”

“Are they corpses?”

“Ones fused with machinery, yes. They’re very similar to Gollems, practically Cydevils, really. They aren’t alive, you see.”

The masked mechanical monsters orderly lined up along the shore, and then not a single one of them moved a muscle, showing absolutely no sense of having their own impulses.

They really are just Undead, Tangerine thought.

“Man, if Graphite were still alive, he’d be all over them,” she remarked.

“Perhaps.”

Scarlet’s response was clipped. He felt it somewhat silly to even use those words. The wicked devout already had their souls absorbed by their wicked vessels, so they weren’t much different from the corpses standing over there. The only difference was that they still had their own sense of self.

Still, although it was the only difference, it was a big one. Scarlet had something he wished to obtain even if it meant turning his body into nothing more than an Undead. Even his own life was irrelevant if it meant he could acquire it. And so, he made a deal with the devil. A devil known as Gould.

“Those mechanical soldiers of yours definitely look like a force to be reckoned with, but they’d be no match for Brunhild’s giant soldiers, you know?” Peacock bluntly stated.

“I will figure something out. We’re currently developing a frame different from the Kyklops,” Scarlet replied before guiding the two of them to a building that looked like a hangar. They were both left stunned by the bizarre new mech. Its body was slimmer than that of the Kyklops, with a short torso but long limbs, arms bent into a Z-shape at the elbows, and knees bent in the opposite direction of a human’s. Its hands and feet ended with sharp claws, making it look much more like a beast than a man.

“I’ve named it Baphomet. It can move much more freely than the Kyklops, and can easily exchange what equipment it has. This makes it possible to create all manner of mechs from just the one base.”

Tangerine looked up at the Baphomet’s head after hearing Scarlet’s explanation.

Oh, so the curved horns are meant to be a goat’s.

Naming it after Baphomet, a goat-headed demon, was very appropriate.

In truth, Scarlet had thought up the ability to change equipment after observing the Waltraute, but he was too prideful to admit that fact.

“I had been pondering how to plant combat knowledge into them, but thanks to what you both brought back, that issue has been resolved.”

A Four-Armed Gollem opened the container the two wicked devout had salvaged. Inside it was a transparent case that contained a large round crystal that looked like a massive human brain. It was a Q-Crystal, which was pretty much a Gollem’s brain. That large Q-Crystal stored all of the memories inside the Kyklops’s Q-Crystals—a mother Q-Crystal, you could say. All of the combat data from the Kyklops was backed up inside of it.

Using that, the Baphomets could inherit the data from the Kyklops, as if transferring experience points, allowing them to battle at top condition.

“Where is Gould?”

“Over there,” Scarlet said as he looked over at the central part of the tree fortress where there was a pyramid-like structure that resembled an altar.

“A...ring?”

On top of the pyramid altar was a gold metal ring covered in intricate designs that was about five meters in diameter. It was fixed to a base and was glowing like a sunrise over a mountain. Standing in front of it was Gould, glowing a similar golden light. He held out his small hand to the ring, and part of it began to slide around in a circle. The many inner and outer rings moved one after the other as if a puzzle was being solved. They turned in different directions like the dial of a safe until they all came to a stop. The ring was letting out a low hum, but besides that, nothing else had changed.

However, Tangerine noticed a small light in the middle of it for just a moment.

“What does this thing even do?”

“...Who knows.”

Tangerine frowned at Scarlet’s clipped response. She’d already realized that both he and Gould were hiding something. She wasn’t about to criticize them for that—they were never companions that trusted each other, after all. Honestly, they could do what they wanted so long as it didn’t cause her any problems, but she couldn’t help feeling a little annoyed.

“I’m just gonna assume it’s some experiment. Well, whatever, do what you like. We’re gonna go rest.”

Tangerine went off to the living quarters with Peacock. Meanwhile, Gould was busy trying to figure out what the problem was following the experiment.

“My method is not the problem... Then is it a difference in the output? Are there not enough souls to fuel it? In that case...”

The little mechanical puppet with the memories of a genius Gollem engineer was steadily advancing toward his goals.

◇　◇　◇

“There’s been a Behemoth sighting in the Sea of Trees?”

“Yes. And a very big one, bigger than even an Upper Construct. We can also confirm that it has powerful regenerative abilities.”

My eyes widened at Relisha’s report. A Behemoth even bigger than an Upper Construct? How was something like that missed for so long?

“Its name is the Tree Dragon, Yggdrasil. It’s a Dragon recorded in so few records that no one knows if it even exists. Or, it was, at least.”

“It was previously extinct, then?”

“Yes, and has now supercharged to become a much more troublesome foe.”

In other words, it was another magic beast that had been called through a distortion caused by the wicked devout.

Do they bring anything of value?

As Grandma Tokie’s servants, the time spirits would close up the tear, but we’d have to handle the beast that popped out. I asked Luli if she could do anything given it was a Dragon and all, but Yggdrasil was categorized as a Fiendrake, so it wasn’t under her purview.

“Useless lizard,” Kohaku muttered. Luli refused to take that sitting down and immediately lashed out at her. I let them fight among themselves, but I’d much rather they took it outside.

“The tribes of the Sea of Trees have sent an emergency request for aid,” Kousaka continued, holding out a letter sent through the Gate Mirror. As he said, it was a request from Pam, the chieftain of the tribes, asking for reinforcements.

I’d tried to give them smartphones before, but they didn’t take them, saying they found it too complicated to use. Getting them to at least accept a Gate Mirror was the best I could do. That said, the tribes didn’t make use of written text much, so all the letter contained was a simple “ENEMY HERE. SEND HELP.” It felt kind of like one of those old telegrams from long ago.

The Sea of Trees wasn’t part of the alliance, but they did have a treaty with Brunhild, so we couldn’t ignore them, which meant we definitely needed to provide aid. We were still suffering casualties after the battle at Lassei, however, so we were limited in how much support we could send.

For some reason, when I went up to Babylon to confirm how repairs were going and to explain the situation, Quun turned to me with sparkling eyes.

I’ve got a really bad feeling about this...

“What wonderful timing! I just finished the most perfect weapon!”

“Weapon? For the Frame Gears?”

Previous experience immediately told me that it was going to be some completely bonkers weapon. I couldn’t refuse her, though, so I at least tagged along with her to the hangar to see what she’d made.

“Take a look! Feast your eyes on the vibrating rotary blade, the Chainblade!”

“You mean a chain saw?”

Attached to a massive sword blade were a bunch of small phrasium blades. That big engine on the handle was probably what rotated it. Like I said, it was literally just a big chain saw.

And yet another unexpected gimmick is added to the collection...

“The little fine blades mean this weapon doesn’t specialize in cutting, but in shaving down! It’ll crush the wound so thoroughly that it won’t be able to regenerate easily! I guarantee you that it’ll turn even the wicked god into mincemeat! Calling it a killer of the divine would be no exaggeration!”

Hey, did you forget that your papa’s a god too? And you’re half god? What a frightening creation...

Still, she was probably right that it would work wonders against that Tree Dragon, especially since it looked like it could slice through thick bark easily. Apparently, Yggdrasil was a Dragon made entirely of trees, which was why it took so long for the tribes to notice it, despite it being a Behemoth.

Quite literally missing the Behemoth for the trees, huh?

First we had that stampede in the desert, now we’ve got this Tree Dragon in the Sea of Trees... Did these dimensional gaps never transport from a different place than where they opened? If the creature was pulled from the desert in the past, it would only appear in the desert in the present. If the creature was pulled from the Sea of Trees in the past, it would only appear in the Sea of Trees in the present. Maybe Yggdrasil had lived in the Sea of Trees before being transported here.

Since it was a Dragon made of trees, I’d considered just burning it, but that risked damaging the Sea of Trees as a whole, and live trees were resistant to fire anyway. There was so much water inside of one that heat didn’t travel very easily. Even if you managed to burn its surface, you often failed to burn the insides. And since Yggdrasil was a living creature, wouldn’t its water content be even higher than a regular tree? At worst, we could end up burning down the Sea of Trees and Yggdrasil would come out perfectly fine.

“Take it from me, this weapon is actually really good. The biggest bottleneck is the need to prepare a source of mana separately to use the thing, but you can account for that with replaceable mana cartridges. It won’t immediately slice through things, but in the grand scheme of things, it’s more likely to be able to cut than bounce off. It’s a fun little trinket.”

Doc Babylon’s rare unadulterated praise had Quun puffing her chest out in pride. She was exuding the aura of someone who wanted to be praised, so I gave her a good pat on the head. Admittedly, I was a little worried about how easily she was appeased by a good compliment...

“How many do you have?”

“I have three prototypes and one finished one. Oh, and one that’s made for the Ortlinde Overlord.”

She’d even made one for the Overlord? This Dragon was about to get torn to pieces, the poor thing.

“If you give us an hour, we could duplicate ten more with the workshop.”

It only took an hour to make ten of something like this? That meant they made one every six minutes...

What is this, cup chain saw?

I wasn’t about to deny that it was a real lifesaver, though. Apparently, they were able to do it that fast because the structure wasn’t that complicated. Did that mean chain saws were really simple to make too?

Yggdrasil wasn’t acting up right now, and it wasn’t heading toward any of the villages either, so we did have a few hours of leeway.

“All right, get started on producing them, then. We’ll head out an hour from now.”

“Roger that.”

Leaving the engineers to work their magic, I went to notify the knights to prepare to head out. We’d be the only ones on the field this time, since the tribes of the Sea of Trees weren’t part of the alliance. We’d purely be acting as Brunhild, which was good friends with the Rauli Tribe, home to the current Treelord.

This would also be the first time the knights would get to sortie on Val Albus. It would be faster to just teleport there using [Gate], but I’d never been to the areas near where Yggdrasil currently was, and it also served as good training for occasions where I wasn’t around to teleport people. Now that the Ark was destroyed, there was no need to hide the existence of the Val Albus anymore, so we’d use it as a transport vessel going forward.

Naturally, it had a camouflage feature, so we didn’t need to worry about causing a commotion when people caught sight of it. The fact that it could even avoid leaving a shadow was incredible. They said something about a “refractive index,” but hell if I knew what that meant.

Anyway, it’d be nice to let the knights enjoy their first flight through the air. Or at least, that was what I’d have liked to say, but I was actually going to be using [Gate] to get us and the Val Albus relatively near to the Great Wishing Tree first. From there, it wouldn’t take us even half an hour to reach our destination.

Got the wives and kids notified, so it’s time for me to get ready.

◇　◇　◇

Thanks to Quun’s Chainblade, we managed to take down Yggdrasil without much of a fuss. In the end, the Overlord sawed its head right off. Like Doc Babylon said, it really did seem like something we could get some good use out of... Sure, it couldn’t slice right through something all at once, but in exchange, if you were persistent enough, it was guaranteed to make it through. Wouldn’t that account for the enemies’ weapons too?

If I had to list any negatives, it was that wires and any other threadlike materials could very easily get tangled in it. Yggdrasil’s body had a lot of little vines that were getting all caught up in it. Then again, when it got too wrapped up in the Chainblade, the thing ended up cutting right through them all anyway, so it never stopped rotating. Though, if something like phrasium rope or wire was to get caught up in it, it’d probably be too tough to immediately slash through it and therefore jam the thing. I did make sure to tell the wielders that, of course.

Anyway, we’d learned that we could, in fact, make use of it, so we’d mass-produce more and give it to those who wanted one. The body of the Kyklops were made of a special alloy that used orichalcum—it could be cut with phrasium, so we’d almost definitely find some use for the Chainblade.

The wicked vessels unfortunately would be impossible, however. They might be able to chip them in some way, but they’d immediately repair themselves. Was there really no choice but to use a sacred treasure to take down another sacred treasure? Not that wicked vessels were sacred treasures per se, of course.

On a related topic, we’d discovered a slight mishap with the sacred treasure. We tested using the sacred treasure with a Frame Gear in the fight with Yggdrasil. Thanks to the Optimization trait it had, it adjusted its size depending on its wielder. Linne had been a little uncertain about it, but she’d been able to equip the gauntlets to the Gerhilde just fine. This wasn’t a problem.

The real problem was Quun’s Grimgerde.

The shape of her sacred treasure was a gun, but the Grimgerde’s right hand had the Gatling gun equipped, so she had no way to hold it. Her left hand had been designed as finger Vulcans, so although it had five fingers, it couldn’t do very precise movements, which meant it couldn’t grip things very well.

Thankfully, the Gatling gun was detachable, so it was possible to simply remove it and have her equip the sacred treasure that way, but at the same time, the Gatling gun was the Grimgerde’s main weapon. The thought of removing it seemed to make Quun really upset...

“I need to find a way to equip the sacred treasure without removing my weapons!”

Thus, she managed to find a way to have the Gatling gun slide up to the Grimgerde’s elbow to allow her to hold the sacred treasure. I didn’t think it was all that necessary, but according to Quun, it was important to account for all scenarios. It was a case of, “I thought this might happen!” I would be lying if I said I understood her...

◇　◇　◇

“Got some rare materials, so I thought I’d bring ’em over to you.”

“Oh, now these are certainly something...”

I took the materials that dropped from Yggdrasil to Kraft over in Mismede as a little gift. I was the only one in the present time that had these materials. I was pretty sure Kraft would be overjoyed at getting his hands on such rare wood. Such godly materials should go to a god of crafting, naturally.

“This wood is tough but without any peculiarities or dead knots, and it’s light to boot. You’ve brought me something interesting, indeed.”

Kraft used a broad-bladed knife to swiftly cut a piece of lumber to an appropriate length, then took another fairly large knife to shape it before alternating between a chisel and file to create a wooden sword in a flash. And when I say in a flash, I mean it. It took him about a minute.

He’s insane... That’s even faster than I can make one with [Modeling].

The god went straight back to his wood-chopping station, stood up a stump of wood, and cut it right in two with the sword.

Hang on, someone other than Moroha can cut wood with a wooden sword?!

“Hm, might have sharpened it too much. I was considering making something for your kids, but if I don’t blunt the blade, it’ll be way too dangerous.”

Was he aware that my kids were already using real swords on a regular basis?

After making adjustments, Kraft handed me the wooden sword. I was surprised by how light it was. Not that I thought it would be heavy, but now that I was holding it myself, I could feel how much lighter it was compared to a regular one. It was like the difference between a wooden and a plastic bat. I personally found that if a sword was too light, it would end up being harder to use, but kids like Frei could probably use it no problem...

“How are things going with the sacred treasure? Managing to use it all right?”

“Yeah, good enough. Though it’s my kids using it, not me...”

It was pretty ironic that I couldn’t wield the sacred treasure that I had personally created. Though to be fair, it wasn’t even accurate to say I couldn’t wield it, it was that I shouldn’t wield it. If a ward of God Almighty like myself were to use the sacred treasure, I would no doubt end up influencing the world to a very noticeable degree.

Sacred treasures like Sousuke’s instruments or my smartphones were fine, but it became a lot riskier with a weapon. That said, using the harpbow as a harp would probably fly. Not that I could play the harp to begin with.

“Once we take down the wicked devout and the remnants of the fallen god, I’ll be sealing it away in [Storage].”

“Smart decision. If you try to store it in the Divine Realm’s treasury, you’ll never be able to find it when you need it most, which is unfortunate when there’s no guarantee you’ll never need to use it again.”

Gods came in all shapes and sizes, and some could be particularly troublesome, just like the servile and fallen gods that had escaped to this world. What Kraft was trying to say was that there was always the chance I’d need to get involved in related conflicts in the future.

A battle between gods is no laughing matter...

“Many gods love battle, after all. From gods of martial arts to gods of war... In the past, I would’ve referred to the god of combat like this, but in his case, he puts more emphasis on training others, so he’s less of an issue. He seems to mainly look forward to the growth of his students nowadays.”

Apparently, Uncle Takeru used to have nothing in his sights but pursuing the pinnacle of combat. It took hundreds of millions of years before he started calming down and became who he is today. Even gods were young once.

It wouldn’t feel right to only bring a souvenir back for Frei, so I had Kraft make another wooden sword for Yakumo, and then little wooden animals for the rest of the kids. Naturally, I made sure to pay him for his services. It was a little expensive, but it was cheap when you consider it was made by a god...kind of.

Anyway, I said my thanks to Kraft and returned home with all the freshly crafted creations. While I was walking down the corridors of the castle, I bumped into Hilde, so I asked if she could hand the wooden sword over to Frei—but she refused.

“Didn’t you say it’s a present? You should give it to her yourself.”

That was very true. Frei and Yakumo both happened to be at the training grounds when I went with Hilde, so I handed the wooden swords over to them right then and there.

“Wow, it’s so light! It’s so easy to swing!”

“Thank you very much, father.”

The two happily accepted the gifts and went straight to giving them a swing—weapons really were one of those things you couldn’t help but want to try out the second you got your hands on them. The girls went straight into a mock match. I was glad they looked so happy. Just this once, I would ignore the incredibly violent sounds of their swords, ones that wooden ones really shouldn’t be able to make...

Apparently, everyone else was in the living room. When I headed over, the rest of the kids, except for Steph, Linne, and Yoshino, were having tea and lazing around together with Leen, Linze, and Yumina. I showed the wooden animals I’d had Kraft make and let the children pick whichever ones they liked. Quun went for the bear, Arcia the dog, Elna the small bird, and Kuon abstained.

“I can wait until the other girls come back.”

“What a gentleman! You’re such a wonderful older brother, Kuon!” Yumina exclaimed, then madly pat Kuon. Resigned to his fate, Kuon simply stood there with a distant smile on his face.

“Hang in there, Kuon...” I muttered.

“Mother Yumina in the future isn’t this aggressive with him...” Quun awkwardly said and smiled, having overheard.

Well, Yumina had achieved her lifelong dream (?) of giving birth to a successor, so her enthusiasm made sense, but even she would calm down after six years.

“We’re home!”

Suddenly, Steph, Linne, and Yoshino all appeared in the living room at once. Gold was with them too. Yoshino must have teleported them here. I’d already warned them so many times to be careful where they teleported because they could give people a fright, yet...

“Daddy, here, for you! We found it in the left forest! It’s a present!”

Just as I was about to scold Yoshino, Steph shoved a small wooden box into my face as if to discourage me from doing so. A present? Left forest must have meant the western forest. Guess that was where they’d been out to play.

Brunhild wasn’t particularly home to many strong monsters, but there were wild dogs and wolves in the area, so I’d much rather they didn’t go out on their own like that... Not that my kids were weak enough they would be taken down by some stray animals, of course.

We did have the incident with Kuon and Allis running into the Marchosias, though, so it could be a little worrying. Maybe I was overthinking it, but I did want them to be more alert. That aside...

“What is this?”

“Open it, open it!”

Not even showing a little bit of doubt toward the excited Steph, I opened the lid of the box.

“EEEYAH!”

My hand slipped the moment I saw what was inside. The box fell onto the carpet, and what was inside came wriggling out and began crawling all over the floor.

“AAAAAAAHHHHHH!”

“Oh my.”

Linze and Yumina screamed in unison, while Leen sat there, looking mildly amused.

They were bugs—three caterpillars, to be precise. They were quite big, at least ten centimeters long. Those caterpillars were letting off a rainbow light as they wriggled about at my feet.

“Wh-Wh-What are these?”

“Aren’t they super pretty? I caught them!” Steph exclaimed.

Pretty...? Well, the color sure is something! But ignore the color and it’s just a caterpillar!

“Were you always scared of bugs, darling?”

“I’m not scared, it just gave me a fright!”

I didn’t dislike bugs, really. I just didn’t particularly like them either. I could touch beetles and cicadas fine, but I was a bit more grossed out by larval bugs.

...Sorry, that was a lie. I really didn’t like them.

I was relatively okay with bugs that had a hard shell, but these kinds of caterpillar-like bugs were too much for me. It was weird when you considered I could even squish a cockroach with a slipper perfectly fine.

“See?” Linne said as she turned to Steph with a sigh. “Even if the colors are pretty, everyone hates the bugs, Steph.”

“Really? But they’re so pretty... Daddy, do you hate them?”

“I don’t hate them, I’m just a bit bad with them...”

I was waffling with my words trying hard to not hurt Steph’s feelings after she’d been kind enough to bring them back as a gift. Meanwhile, Leen was crouched down on the floor, picking up the caterpillars and returning them to the box.

How the hell can you grab them with your bare hands?

Then again, she was a fairy who used to live in a forest, so bugs were probably an everyday thing to her.

“Yup, there’s no doubt about it. These are rainbow silkworms.”

“Silkworms?”

As in, they weren’t caterpillars? Then again, silkworms were basically a kind of caterpillar, so it didn’t change much.

“Rainbow silkworms produced beautiful silk threads with a dazzling rainbow luster. It was said that the silk spun from them was greatly favored by the upper classes.”

“Wow... Wait, what’s with the past tense?”

“The elders of my village told us they’d gone extinct around two thousand years ago.”

They’re an extinct species? Oh no...

“They must have come to this time through the dimensional gap with that extinct creature Kuon and the others fought that one time. Hehe, what an unexpected find. You did well, Steph.”

“Yay, I did something good!”

A wide smile burst out on Steph’s face as Leen gave her a gentle pat on the head.

Apparently, rainbow silkworms were bred exclusively by one country two thousand years ago, but they’d all gone extinct because of some experiment. They used to live out in the wild, but after being captured and bred by humans, their vitality gradually weakened. If memory served, even our silkworms had been so domesticated that they couldn’t live out in the wild anymore.

“These were a wild, undomesticated species of silkworm. If we could improve their way of life, the fabric made from their silk would undoubtedly become a mainstay of Brunhild. I didn’t think the wicked devout could be anything but a nuisance, but no, it turns out they can be useful too.”

Leen had a wide grin on her face. I wouldn’t be against turning it into one of our main industries, but that would mean we’d have to look after them, right?

“Don’t worry your little head, darling. I won’t tell you to look after them. Let’s see... How about we start by asking Flora to improve their quality a little? We have to breed them first. Then...” Leen railed off, seeming very on board with the idea of making a business out of the rainbow silkworms’ threads.

As one could tell from her attire, she was quite the fashionable girl. Linze was the one best at embroidery, but Leen would frequently give her own thoughts on designs. There was no way she could give up the chance to have the best quality fabric possible.

Maybe it would be smart to get Zanac involved as a fashion designer... Then again, he’d recently gotten really busy with orders from across the continent for his well-received bridal service that he’d just started up, so would he even have the time to help? He was a merchant in his own right, so I doubted he’d pass up a chance like this if he could find the time, but still...

“Huh... Brunhild is actually famous for its sericulture industry in the future, but I never imagined Steph would be the cause of it,” Kuon muttered to himself with a slight sigh.

I see. So this turns into a big success, huh?

“Still, it’s amazing that they managed to survive. A normal bug would’ve been eaten by the birds by now.”

“Despite their appearance, rainbow silkworms are a type of monster. They have natural magic applied to them in the form of cognition disruption, so birds and other beasts can’t find them so easily.”

“Huh? They aren’t regular bugs? Wait, they aren’t dangerous, are they?”

“From what I’ve heard, they don’t even have any form of venom, so I doubt they’re very dangerous. All it is is magic that makes them harder to detect, after all,” Leen explained. It only made the fact Steph spotted them way more impressive.

“Do you really think a simple bug’s cognition disruption could get past our children?”

“Yeah, good point...”

Our kids had really sharp instincts. Even vague hunches like “I think it’s this way” or “It’s probably this” often struck true. Was this something they came with as demigods? Why did I not have the same level of instinct? Was it because I wasn’t born divine?

“Anyway, let’s return to the western forest tomorrow. There might be more rainbow silkworms. We might even be able to find some cocoons.”

Leen was getting excited again. It was rare to see her like this over something other than magic. It was the same way that Quun got hyped over magic items. Like mother, like daughter.

“Hey! What are those cute little animals you all have?!”

“Souvenirs from father. There’s one for you too, Steph. Which would you like?”

Steph had caught sight of the wooden animals with her sharp eyes and immediately latched onto them. I subtly did a quick search on my phone for more rainbow silkworms while they did that and found that there were a good dozen of them left.

Dimensional holes would absorb everything in their surroundings and spit them out in the future. For all we knew, the leaves and branches around them were from trees that were now extinct. Not that I would be able to tell, since I wasn’t exactly a botanist.

When I showed Leen the results, a very wide smile formed on her face. She was nowhere near as bad as Doc Babylon, but Leen was quite the mad scientist herself... That must have been who Quun inherited it from...

◇　◇　◇

The moment we entered the western forest the next day, we immediately found a dozen silkworms and several rainbow cocoons hanging from tree branches. The cocoons were far larger than I imagined they’d be—was it because they could spit out a lot of thread?

Anyway, I used [Search] to gather every last one of them, and when we gave them to Flora in the alchemy tower, it only took a few hours for her to spin all the thread out of the cocoons, and another few hours for Rosetta in the workshop to turn it into silk. It was a great help, but why did it feel like I wasn’t being told something?

The silk made from the rainbow silkworms was softer than regular silk, and it had a beautiful glossy sheen, giving it that very luxurious feel. On top of that, it changed color when you ran mana through it; the color that came out depended on the strength of the mana. It didn’t take much mana to activate the effect, so even regular citizens would be able to make use of it.

Would the price of the silk be achievable for the common citizen, though? From the way I was watching Zanac break down into tears right in front of me, the answer was probably no.

“This is...! The legendary rainbow silkworm silk, arcobaleno...! I never imagined the day would come when I would lay my very own eyes on it...! Thank the heavens I chose to join hands with you, Grand Duke...! Thank you so much, thank you so much...!”

Suddenly, he was bowing reverently in front of me. Was it that legendary? This arcobaleno silk was only mentioned in a few ancient texts, and although it was known to have existed at some point in the distant past, the fabric itself no longer existed in the world. It had practically become an unknown by this point.

And that made sense—those silkworms were supposed to be extinct, after all. To those in the fashion industry, it was a legendary fabric.

Zanac had been shocked by the moon silkworm fabric that had been kept in Babylon, but his reaction this time was well beyond even that. At least the silk from the moon silkworms was known to still exist, even if it was rare, but the arcobaleno silk was barely found in texts anymore.

“Surely there’s a piece of that silk that’s had preservation magic cast on it somewhere?”

“Arcobaleno silk has natural magic deflection, so it’s impossible to cast any kind of magic on it. No silk would last two thousand years, no matter how carefully you stored it,” Leen explained, having joined me at Fashion King Zanac.

No wonder it’s been lost to history.

“Wow, it really does change based on the type of mana you run through it!”

Zanac picked up the arcobaleno silk and let out a cry of joy upon watching its color change as he ran his mana through it. Though the silk deflected magic, it didn’t deflect pure mana, so even Zanac could immediately change the color.

“It’s beautiful, is it not? Clothes made with this silk can have their color changed based on one’s mood or the occasion. Even without running mana through it, it’s already so beautiful. Noble ladies will absolutely be unable to resist it.”

“Yes, indeed! This will sell just by virtue of being such a luxury silk! Do you intend to turn this into a state business?”

“We want to eventually, but for now, we don’t have enough silkworms. We’ll prepare the silk, so we’d like to ask you to design dresses to sell in your shop.”

“Thank you so much! I will put my heart and soul into its creation!”

Leen and Zanac began their own negotiations, which immediately left me out of the loop. My only involvement with fashion was when Leen would sometimes ask if there was a dress with some image that she had in mind, and then I would look up with my smartphone any dress designs that fit that condition and send them to her.

Bored, I turned my gaze out the window, and suddenly, a translucent girl clad in a jade glow burst through the window, yelling all the while.

“Terrible news, terrible news! Oh, Celestial Spirit King, I have absolutely terrible news!”

It was Aerial, the Wind Pillar Spirit contracted with Linze. She was still in her spiritual body, which allowed her to pass right through the window, so Leen and I could see her, but Zanac and the other staff in the shop couldn’t. They wouldn’t be able to hear her either.

“Is something the matter?”

“No, nothing.”

“Sorry, I’m gonna pop off to the bathroom.”

I stood up and headed for the bathroom, Aerial obediently followed behind, perhaps realizing what I was doing. When I closed the door, I sighed and whispered back to her.

“And? What’s the terrible news? Linze told me you’d gone back to the Spirit Realm for a bit.”

“Yeah, I’d been back talking with everyone in the Spirit Realm, but that’s when the Puretree felt a sudden disturbance. There’s this ominous maelstrom up north.”

“An ominous maelstrom?”

The Puretree was something me and Uncle Kousuke had created in order to cleanse Isengard of the divine venom. It was a sacred tree where spirits lived, and though young, it would apparently one day turn into a spirit itself.

Was Aerial saying that Puretree felt a disturbance? The Puretree sat in a forest around the middle of Isengard. Further to the north, the closest country was Lassei, though they were still separated by an ocean.

“Wait, did something happen in Lassei?”

We did just have a battle with the wicked devout there—had there been some negative aftereffects?

“No. It’s on the same continent, so further south from there. The spirits said it’s too suffocating to go any further, that it’s like the cleansing power of the Puretree is being absorbed, like some abyss...”

The Puretree’s power was being absorbed and the spirits were too scared to go any closer... The answer came to me right away: the fairies were scared of the power of the wicked devout—no, the former god of erosion’s power.

This pretty much confirmed that the wicked devout were currently based in Isengard. If not all of them, at least Gould.

Like an abyss, huh?

“He who fights monsters might take care, lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.”

That was a Nietzche quote, right? I’d become a divine monster long ago, so it was a little late for me. I intended for my mind to remain human, however.

With a wry smile on my face, I returned to Leen.