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Outer Gate [500] — Inside a lavish palace not far from the Heavenly Army headquarters
Indra and Mata walked side by side down the corridor leading to the conference room.
Their pace was painfully slow, but their conversation never stopped.
"A guy who's so badly injured he's practically on death's door is still showing up for a meeting?" Mata asked with a teasing smile. "Aren't you worried someone might take the opportunity to finish you off?"
She looked at Indra with open mockery in her eyes. "Those old fossils are all here today because they want to see whether you're dead yet."
"Oh, come on." Indra rolled his eyes, his tone dripping with amusement. "How could such great and noble beings possibly wish for my death?"
"They're only here because they're concerned that a kid who's not even thirty might ruin the fairness of this Godslayer War and send the whole thing spiraling out of control. Purely out of a lofty commitment to justice and fairness, of course. How could you slander them like that?"
"Sure, the youngest among those God Kings is more than ten thousand times Ryo's age, but they're absolutely impartial. I'm certain that under the wise leadership of these God Kings, Little Garden will become an even brighter and more..."
Before he could finish, the doors at the end of the corridor opened on their own.
Beyond them sat the attendees around a great round table. Some lounged lazily in their seats, others sat upright. Some wore expressionless faces, while others looked openly grim.
Almost every pair of eyes turned toward Indra.
Cold. Silent. Hostile.
"Oh!" Indra slapped his thigh with exaggerated embarrassment. "Sorry about that. These injuries have made it hard to control my volume."
"Want to go back and recuperate a little longer?" Mata took another puff from her long smoking pipe, smiling faintly as she blew a ring of smoke into the air.
"No need." Indra smiled. "I think I can manage sitting down for a while."
He walked into the conference room and casually took his seat at the central round table among the scattered rulers.
"Heh." Mata chuckled as she tapped her pipe against her palm, knocking the burned tobacco onto the floor.
Just then, a woman's voice sounded behind her, "Looks like I'm not late."
Mata glanced back.
The moment she recognized the newcomer, her smile turned playful. "Athena. I didn't expect even the missing person herself to show up."
The hottest topic in Little Garden over the past few days had been Algol's ascension into the exceptional Three-Digit rank. The upper layers had been arguing over it nonstop.
As a result, Athena's mysterious disappearance had become another major topic of discussion. Plenty of people were waiting eagerly to see her downfall.
After all, everyone knew that once Algol truly returned, the first person she'd settle accounts with would be this Goddess of Wisdom.
"I received an order from my God King," Athena answered with her usual graceful smile. "As long as I'm still part of the Greek pantheon, attending is only natural."
She walked past Mata and entered the conference room.
Mata took another drag from her pipe, exhaling through her nose. "So Zeus just wanted to make sure you hadn't been killed by Algol?"
She snorted. "What a wonderfully loving father and daughter."
Her narrowed eyes shifted toward Zeus.
Watching him warmly greet Athena as though nothing had happened made her stomach turn.
"Whatever." She muttered to herself. "Not my problem."
Then she stepped inside as well.
...
Inside the conference hall, Indra leaned back lazily in his chair, propping his legs against the edge of the round table as he leisurely surveyed the room like a man waiting for a good show.
The table at the center belonged to the rulers of the various pantheons. It had nearly a hundred seats.
But fewer than twenty were occupied. The emptiness was striking.
Compared to those hundred prestigious seats, however, the surrounding tiers were packed. Tens of thousands of gods and buddhas encircled the central table.
These attendees were mostly Four-Digit beings, with a handful of Five-Digits mixed in.
They had been chosen by the upper-layer deities as representatives.
In Indra's eyes, they all possessed divinity, spirit ranks, and godhood... yet somehow they seemed even more useless than he considered himself.
These middle-ranking gods actually formed the overwhelming majority of Little Garden's divine population.
'Nothing but a school of rotten fish.' Indra sneered inwardly.
Even so, he had to admit these people represented the loudest voices among the gods. Compared to them, the God Kings of the Three-Digit rank were astonishingly few.
The Two-Digits were even rarer.
Excluding rule-breaker Three-Digits, there were only seventeen genuine Two-Digit beings in all of Little Garden. Even including the rule-breakers, the number only rose to nineteen.
But beings at the Two-Digit level were simply too transcendent.
The Little Garden Central Authority prohibited them from participating in any Gift Games within Little Garden. Even ordinary combat was forbidden for them inside its borders. As a result, they couldn't attend the Assembly of the Gods in any practical sense.
"Bad mood?" Mata asked with an amused smile as she took the seat beside Indra.
"The thought that today's outcome has to satisfy that bunch of rotten fish makes me sick." Indra made no effort to hide his contempt for the crowd watching from above.
"Hasn't it always been like this?" Mata sounded almost indifferent.
In Little Garden, where individual strength ruled everything, the upper layers were a world where personal power stood above the masses.
The lower layers worked the opposite way.
On the surface, Demon Lords ran rampant, and the strong preyed upon the weak. But because the lower layers had a hard ceiling on individual power, it was these countless gods who truly managed things there.
They formed the foundation of order. They were the source of the God Kings' authority.
And the place where they deliberated matters of importance was the Pantheon Hall, located near the headquarters of the Heavenly Army.
To the gods below, the God Kings were merely representatives chosen to speak on their behalf. The countless lives in the lower layers were nothing more than human-shaped leeks growing in their garden, waiting to be harvested.
Yet from the God Kings' perspective... those very gods were no different. They, too, were fat fish in a bowl. Human-shaped leeks whose minds could be manipulated at will, supplying Authority and divine power.
Manipulating public opinion wasn't something only humans did. The gods had mastered it long ago.
Indra's eyes dropped to the first agenda item he had just received.
"Discussion Regarding Punishment for Ryo Yagami's Illegal Cheating During the Godslayer War..."
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