Slaughter exists.
After passing through the Survival Domain, following the rugged paths across the open plains and through dense vegetation toward the heart of the Anomaly Domain, the landscape changed completely.
The lush forests were gone. The strange lifeforms vanished.
What stretched before them was a wasteland resembling the bleached surface of the planet, littered with grotesque dark-green corpses. Their blood soaked into the pale earth, staining it red.
As they advanced across the desolate expanse, Shiomi and the others heard gunfire echoing endlessly in the distance, rising and falling like a modern battlefield.
The staccato bursts of automatic rifles.
The sound of bullets tearing into flesh, blood spraying.
The dull thud of bodies collapsing.
All of it intertwined over the barren land.
Slaughter exists.
Standing atop a rise overlooking the plain, they saw the combatants below.
The creatures were even more astonishing.
Identical beings of the same species, expelling fire from lethal organs, spitting out countless chunks of lead as they massacred one another.
They killed. They sneered.
They searched for the next target, then sneered again.
Repeat. Over and over.
The blood soaking into the ground did not even have time to dry before fresh blood was spilled over it.
This was what Taigong Wang had mentioned. The other form of this Anomaly, the counterpart to the Survival Domain.
Its name was the Slaughter Domain.
Killing and mutual slaughter played out here without end.
To Shiomi and the others, who had just come from the Survival Domain, the place they had passed through almost felt like a fabricated illusion, as though it had never been real.
But it was no hallucination.
The Survival Domain was real.
And so was the Slaughter Domain before them.
These twisted beasts wielding the hot weapon known as guns did not fight for the food chain. They killed for the sake of killing.
A world steeped in cruelty and violence.
"Before we entered this Anomaly Domain, Storm Border attempted to observe the interior from above the barrier," Shiomi said quietly. "This domain in the Tunguska Basin showed two distinct colors from the outside."
Green, symbolizing life.
White, symbolizing desolation.
Though the white differed slightly from the bleached surface of the planet.
Unable to clearly scan the interior from the outside, Chaldea had assumed it was merely a difference in terrain. Only now, seeing it with their own eyes, did they understand.
Survival and slaughter.
Life and death.
Two opposing concepts forming the inner and outer layers of this special Anomaly Domain.
"Killing for the sake of killing. Dying for the sake of dying," Taigong Wang said calmly through the communication Mystic Code. "You are all veterans of countless battles. Even so, a battlefield so devoid of meaning must stir something in you."
He was not wrong.
Morgan, Scáthach, and Artoria all wore troubled expressions as they looked upon this domain.
Only Shiomi watched everything with a gaze colder than usual.
"Hard to say." Shiomi let out a quiet sigh.
The lightness he had felt after last night with them had already been swept away. The shift in his mood made him feel faintly apologetic for their concern.
"Hmm. Tenkei-dono, you're calmer than I expected," Taigong Wang commented.
"It's not calmness. I've done something similar before." Shiomi watched the strange creatures racing across the wasteland, locked in endless combat. "Starting a war for no reason at all. Just to keep the killing going. Using terror and death as a means of suppressing the fae in the Britain Lostbelt."
Morgan wanted to say it hadn't been meaningless.
But in truth, that slaughter had been pointless. It had required no grand cause, no justification.
And yet, that meaningless war of killing, sustained for two thousand years, had maintained Britannia in a kind of dynamic equilibrium.
So what about this Slaughter Domain? What was the purpose behind this endless killing?
The question rose unbidden in her heart. Morgan turned her gaze back toward the battling beasts, studying them more closely.
They walked on two legs. Emerald skin stretched over twisted red flesh. Various firearms grew directly from their bodies.
Assault rifles. Submachine guns. Sniper rifles. Even a Gatling gun embedded where a head ought to be.
Human weapons, as if they had sprouted there naturally.
The muzzles were not limited to any single direction. These grotesque creatures could fire from nearly any part of their bodies.
"Even at a few hundred meters, they haven't noticed us up here," Shiomi observed. "They're specialized for frontal combat. No sentry types."
Scáthach's expression hardened. "This Slaughter Domain is dangerous, but if our goal is to suppress the ley lines and push into the core, it shouldn't pose too much trouble."
"No. That's not it."
Artoria suddenly tightened her grip on the Holy Lance and shifted into a combat stance.
While watching the battlefield below, she had also been keeping watch for anything approaching.
A woman in a white business suit was already walking toward them.
No one had seen where she came from.
"Koyanskaya…" Shiomi stepped forward, taking the front position as he faced her. "Couldn't sit still any longer? Decided to come out in person?"
"Yes." Koyanskaya's tone was flat, her gaze cool. "Certain individuals are behaving like cancer cells, steadily eroding my control over the ley lines. Naturally, I had to see for myself where the source of the illness lies. Only then can I treat it at the root."
"Cancer cells, huh." Shiomi smiled faintly. "To be honest, while carving away your control over the ley lines inside this Anomaly Domain and weakening the Anomaly Kin and recreated entities, I've more or less grasped the true nature of this place."
"Oh?" Koyanskaya narrowed her eyes. A trace of bloody killing intent flickered within her smile. "You are, after all, the man who defeated even the great god Zeus. As a god yourself, it would be strange if you didn't notice. My mistake was not seizing the chance to devour you back then."
Shiomi spread his arms lightly. "No. Our mistake was failing to use Orion's power to shoot you down at Olympus… Though, in truth, you probably couldn't have been killed then anyway."
"Hmph." Koyanskaya looked bored. "So becoming a god has made you arrogant as well. No different from those humans who are corrupted by power."