Little Garden — East District.
Lower Level, Seven-Digit Outer Gate.
A blue-haired Moon Rabbit girl with long, drooping blue rabbit ears wandered aimlessly through the streets. Her whole bearing was like a salted fish whose bones had been yanked out — utterly listless, drifting along the road with no sense of purpose.
Her black miniskirt and fishnet stockings were as eye-catching as ever, but anyone with a pair of working eyes could tell that this Moon Rabbit girl — a noble of Little Garden, no less — was in a very bad way.
"Another... total failure," Black Rabbit murmured to herself, her voice barely louder than a mosquito's whine.
The Gift Game that had just concluded was supposed to have been the last chance for "No Name" to claw back whatever scraps of reputation they still had.
But the result spoke for itself.
They had lost their name. They had lost their banner. And now, even their last meager savings were being ground away bit by bit in the mud of defeat after defeat. The water rights they had just gambled away were the very lifeline that kept the children of their community alive.
She had tried so hard. And yet reality stood before her like a wall of cold stone.
The community, now staring down an existential crisis, was teetering on the edge of dissolution. That pressure — so dense it had practically taken on a physical weight — was keeping Black Rabbit, the community's only representative who could still be called presentable, from sleeping night after night.
"Are we... really left with no choice but to call for reinforcements?"
Black Rabbit's hand unconsciously drifted to the few unsent invitation letters tucked inside her clothes.
The last gamble.
By sending out summons to another world — at the cost of her own nature as a Little Garden noble — she could pray for a hero to descend and break the deadlock.
But even if a hero truly came, would they really have what it takes, in this Little Garden where the mightiest beings from across the heavens had gathered, to protect this shattered, broken home and see through every challenge?
All Black Rabbit wanted was a quiet life. But the meaning carried by these invitation letters was obviously far more complicated than that.
She let out a long sigh and lifted her gaze toward the distance.
There, operating under the banner of one of Little Garden's greatest Floor Masters, stood the top-tier commercial community of the upper levels — "Kanme."
"I'll go ask Shiroyasha for advice."
Black Rabbit forced herself to stand a little straighter and made her rabbit ears perk up by sheer willpower.
"Even if all I can do is beg that lady for a scrap of advice on how to keep going... even if she just teases me a little..."
She let out a self-deprecating little laugh and quickened her pace.
—
A branch of "Kanme."
A petite, white-haired girl was lounging at ease atop a tatami mat.
She looked to be about eleven or twelve years old, with a pair of brilliant golden eyes that held a surprisingly deep and weighty quality. She was dressed in a gorgeous Japanese-style yukata, its wide sleeves flowing and airy, her entire bearing striking a delicate balance somewhere between childlike innocence and ancient elegance.
This Floor Master known as "Shiroyasha" — outwardly small, inwardly terrifying beyond all measure — was idly fanning herself with a paper fan, looking thoroughly bored.
"Oh? If it isn't Black Rabbit."
Shiroyasha caught sight of the blue-haired girl pushing through the door, and a sly smile curled at the corner of her lips.
"What's this — have you finally come to your senses? Are you here to swap that outfit for our latest minimalist maid uniform design and beg us for a handout?"
"Lady Shiroyasha! Please don't make that kind of joke at a time like this!"
The gloom that had settled over Black Rabbit ignited in an instant. She leaped to her feet like she'd been startled, her blue skirt swishing as she bounced. Those rabbit ears quivered like antennae picking up a distress signal.
"I came here in complete sincerity to ask for advice!"
"And we are giving you completely sincere advice. After all, your figure is the finest in all of Little Garden."
"Lady Shiroyasha! Please stop making jokes when I'm this troubled!"
"Ha ha ha, now that's the spirit I like to see."
Shiroyasha reined in her laughter and took a sip of tea.
"Looking at that long face of yours — has that fellow Indra been pestering you to come back again?"
"Thinking about it, there has been quite the commotion in the upper levels recently..."
"Hm?"
Black Rabbit blinked, momentarily thrown by Shiroyasha's cryptic words. She shook her head blankly. But since it involved the Lord Indra she so respected, she instinctively pressed further:
"The upper levels? Lord Indra hasn't come looking for me recently — what's happened up there?"
"Well, it's a rather interesting piece of news. The secrecy rating is quite high, so for now it's only circulating among those in the four-digit circles and above."
Shiroyasha tapped the tabletop, a playful glint in her tone.
"Several strange little spirits appeared out of nowhere in the upper levels recently. Round little things, harmless-looking, not listed in any Gift Compendium — yet they possess an ability that has the entire divine pantheon trembling with fear. Almost every divine faction has simultaneously issued orders to capture them. It's been a very long time since we've seen a spectacle on this scale."
"Spirits... with an ability that frightens even the gods?"
Black Rabbit's eyes went wide. She could scarcely imagine what manner of existence could instill fear in entire pantheons. Even the most fearsome Demon Lords barely qualified for that description — let alone a handful of tiny little spirits.
"Think of it as a wanted notice," Shiroyasha said, the curve of her lips turning decidedly amused.
"I haven't seen those little things myself, but from what I've heard, they're apparently extremely dangerous to high-numbered beings, while being completely harmless to ordinary mortals without a numerical rank at all."
"One four-digit being from the Greek pantheon ran into these spirits — didn't even get to exchange a single move in a 'Competition' before being stripped of every last Gift and divinity they possessed. Permanently reduced to a mortal, just like that."
"So the upper-level bigwigs are genuinely in a panic. Technically I should be too — but I figure a small-time operation like ours won't attract anyone's attention~"
Shiroyasha said breezily. Having voluntarily slashed herself from the two-digit Almighty Domain, she was more than happy to watch the gods and buddhas run around in circles.
In her estimation, it was likely just some new kind of "Gift" that had leaked in from the outside of the world.
Stripping a four-digit being of every last Gift in a single encounter and reducing them to a mortal...?
Black Rabbit was left reeling. This violated the fundamental logic underpinning Little Garden — and for her, a Little Garden noble who frequently served as a Gift Game referee, the sheer wrongness of it left her stunned and bewildered.
"Even the gods can't do anything about them?" Black Rabbit asked, almost reflexively.
Though she supposed she wasn't really in any position to be worrying about matters this far above her station. After all, her community was already teetering on the edge of dissolution with nothing but a ragged band of the old, the weak, and the infirm. Theoretically, she should be worrying about herself first.
"Indeed. What troubled times we live in..."
"...Hm?"
Shiroyasha had just been about to throw out another teasing remark when her movements froze completely.
Something was stirring in the void — and whatever it was, it was very, very close to the lower levels of Little Garden.
In that instant, the face of the White Night King, who had sensed a certain tremor in the fabric of things, turned an extremely ugly shade.
She snapped her head upward, her deep eyes fixing on the location of the upper levels — which had already descended into chaos.
Something was descending. Sinking. And getting closer by the second.
"Lady Shiroyasha?" Black Rabbit felt it too — something was very wrong.
"—GET DOWN!!"
Shiroyasha's sharp warning cry rang out. In an instant, that tiny body erupted with a divine might that made the very air tremble. She swung her sleeve with tremendous force, and the violent power that burst forth swept Black Rabbit and every piece of furniture in the room clean off their feet.
The next second—
BOOM——!!!!
All of Little Garden shook. Like a hunted beast struck by an arrow, it let out a death cry.
This was "earth-shattering" in the most literal, physical sense — generating tremors of an unimaginable scale that rippled through the entire giant star. Had Floor Masters wielding Almighty Domains not simultaneously intervened from different regions to stabilize the space, countless nations scattered across the surface of that star might have all been painted in the hues of a space-time rupture at the very same moment.
A streak of silver light — carrying a mass that defied all comprehension — tore through the buffer formations laid by the gods and buddhas of the upper levels, ignored the blockades of every Floor Master, and descended with an arrogance that was utterly unreasonable and completely nonnegotiable.
Like an iron cannonball punching through floor after floor of a building, it dropped in a perfectly straight line from beyond the heavens and landed squarely in Little Garden's lower levels.
Even after being simultaneously reduced by the intervention of countless gods and buddhas, the shockwave that remained was still monstrous enough that Shiroyasha herself was forced to personally act, forcibly reinforcing and stabilizing the space containing the "Kanme" branch store.
And yet even so, the streak of light had punched straight through. When the dust and smoke cleared, a massive crater sat in the center of what had once been an elegant courtyard.
"This... how is this possible?"
Black Rabbit collapsed to the ground, her mind a perfect blank.
She had just watched with her own eyes as Shiroyasha moved — had even briefly drawn on the residual divine might of the "White Night King" herself — and yet even that had not been enough to prevent this level of destruction from befalling the Kanme branch grounds.
"Well, well. It seems we have some uninvited guests who didn't bother to knock..."
"Black Rabbit, stay behind me. If things turn bad, you retreat immediately."
Shiroyasha snapped her folding fan shut. Her small body stepped down from the tatami, and every trace of the earlier playfulness had vanished from her expression, replaced by a gravity unlike anything Black Rabbit had ever seen on her face before.
"Oh, come ON — does Mabel have a screw loose or something?!"
"We came here to pick something up, not to declare war! What's with all this drama — does she want to ascend to heaven or what?!"
A male voice that had clearly lost all composure drifted up from within the crater.
"Well, Uncle said that when her things were left here, these people didn't proactively send them back and made her come all the way out to retrieve them herself — so she wanted to... get a little payback on these short-sighted folks..."
A clear, girlish voice followed, sounding a little sheepish.
Under the combined gazes of Shiroyasha and Black Rabbit, an utterly ordinary-looking young man climbed out of the smoke and dust — pulling behind him a white-haired girl of roughly the same apparent age as Shiroyasha, a strange keyhole mark etched into her forehead. The silver key that had been blazing with flowing light was now tucked away.
Suke patted the dust off himself, glanced around at the surrounding environment, and finally made eye contact with Shiroyasha, who was watching him with open wariness.
He blinked — seemingly genuinely surprised that he and Abigail had landed precisely here.
Well, would you look at that.
"Well, well, well — if it isn't Shiroyasha and Black Rabbit?"
"I think I caught something on the way down about some 'wanted spirits' — do you two happen to have any leads on that?"
____
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