Lower levels of Little Garden. The NoName base.
What should have been a morning filled with the fragrance of earth and the vitality of growing crops was now shrouded in an eerie, dead silence.
Suke stood beside a stretch of newly cultivated greenery — still faintly carrying the scent of Stardew Valley — one eyebrow raised.
Just as he and Shiroyasha had expected, Alger was gone.
Together with Athena, the two had merged as one within the realm of mythology, and through the "Divine Fall," had descended upon the Land of Return.
"So it begins..."
Suke turned over what he had witnessed in Tsukishiro Yuki's world. The convergence was accelerating, and its effects were growing ever larger.
If his senses weren't mistaken, the destination of the Divine Fall should be the very world Tsukishiro Yuki inhabited — that place known as the Land of Return.
"Lord Suke, are you not the least bit concerned?"
A woman's voice rang out, carrying a note of gravity.
The void rippled faintly. Out stepped Shiroyasha, resplendent in ornate Japanese garb, her snow-white hair and golden eyes catching the dim morning light.
Even in this remote outer gate of the lower levels, the aura she carried — the dormant authority of the one once called the "Night-White King" — coiled beneath the surface, unspent, difficult to meet head-on. Suke's guess had been correct: she had already reclaimed her spirit-class authority as a Star Spirit from the Buddhist sanctuary. Extraordinary times called for extraordinary measures.
She snapped open her folding fan, gold pupils reflecting nothing but solemnity.
"That boy Indra has returned to his duties — he's assembling his Heavenly Army, preparing to cross realms and capture the fallen divine body of Athena."
"But regardless, the phenomenon of Divine Fall is growing more severe by the day. Bear in mind that Athena is a three-digit entity — if even she has Fallen, perhaps the rest of us won't be far behind."
Shiroyasha snapped her fan shut and drew her fingertip sharply across the void.
A massive circular mirror, constructed entirely from golden solar radiance, slowly unfurled across the hall of the mansion, its surface displaying the scene at the site of the Divine Fall.
Within its reflection was that very sight: the dark crimson sky splintered with web-like fissures, as two Tokyos from entirely different world-views silently fused into one.
And the silver-haired, crimson-eyed goddess — formed from the fusion of Athena and Alger — radiated a devastating divine pressure; the mere aftershock of her existence was enough to turn swaths of living creatures into stone.
"That is concept-level Petrification. She is stripping the fate from every living thing in that city."
Shiroyasha turned to Suke, seeking the opinion of this visitor from the world that stood as Little Garden's counterpart:
"A Divine Fall of this magnitude — the news can no longer be contained. If word spreads, the entire Little Garden could descend into chaos."
"I may enjoy my jokes, but that place is ultimately a part of human history. If more and more human-history world-views are destroyed by the Divine Fall phenomenon, the very foundations of Little Garden will begin to shake."
"I now seriously suspect that those spirits appeared in Little Garden precisely because they sensed this... sigh, and to think some gods and Buddhas are still circulating the claim that those very spirits are the root cause of the Divine Fall themselves."
"I wonder what thoughts you might have, Lord Suke?"
At that, Suke merely smiled.
"No need to rush. I have it handled."
"Besides..." Suke lifted his head, his gaze drifting to the tiny black speck at the very core of Athena's divine domain within the solar mirror.
"Who told you that only humans were defending that place?"
Shiroyasha's brow furrowed slightly — then she snapped her head around, golden pupils locking onto the image.
Atop the ruins, previously obscured by the glare of divine radiance, a girl in a casual sundress — one hand even steadying a sun hat on her head — stood quietly, placing herself between the rubble and Nikaido Hiro.
Her long hair, white as snow, appeared utterly pure even beneath the dark crimson sky.
And in that instant, Shiroyasha's pupils contracted sharply.
She felt it.
That spirit-class authority — one she was absolutely, utterly familiar with — belonged to an Omniscient and Omnipotent deity from a single world-view. And yet, it towered so far above even that.
Around that snow-haired girl, a vast, sacred aura carrying the air of absolute dominion was slowly rising.
It was not the omnipotence of a three-digit entity. Nor was it the "absolute authority" of a two-digit one.
It transcended the confines of any single world-view, and yet encompassed all authority within itself — surpassing the Omnipotence Paradox, achieving the effortless replication of miracles at will.
"This... this is..." Shiroyasha's hand tightened around her folding fan.
That was the aura of the Lord — akin to the two-digit Saint Child and the three-digit Holy Father of the Christian pantheon within Little Garden.
And yet, outside of Little Garden, in the wider world, there existed another Lord — one no less formidable than They?
Within the image, the snow-haired girl — Tsukishiro Yuki — simply parted her lips in an unhurried tone. Her voice cut through the barrier of space itself, reverberating throughout the NoName mansion:
「God hath decreed: upon beholding the Divine, all false gods shall retreat ten thousand leagues.」
BOOM——!
In that instant, the previously unassailable Athena — the very moment that girl spoke — had her entire divine form frozen as if someone had pressed a pause button.
All her divine radiance, all her Authority, all her majesty — before that girl, it was like remnant snow meeting a blazing sun.
There was no fierce struggle.
Tsukishiro Yuki simply raised her hand. The index finger beneath her black silk gloves touched the void with the lightest of taps — and Immeasurable Light enveloped her opponent.
That fallen goddess Athena, who had presented a genuine threat even to Indra — a three-digit divine king — now looked like a sparrow with broken wings, unable to utter even a single cry, her spirit-class authority plunging into dead silence in an instant.
Shiroyasha stared at all of this, dumbfounded.
Not astonished by the disparity of power itself — but by the absolute suppression at the level of fundamental existence.
This suppression was categorically not part of Little Garden's spirit-class system. It was something far more profound, something that struck at the very essence of being —
Like the Lord God stepping onto the soil of Greece and negating all living beings as fallen angels, casting them down.
What made Shiroyasha's heart skip a beat even more was this: after dealing with Athena, Tsukishiro Yuki did not withdraw the Immeasurable Light.
As if sensing something, she tilted her head slightly — first glancing up at the sun hanging high in the sky. Then her pair of pale blue eyes, cutting straight through Shiroyasha's observation mirror, looked directly outward from the other side.
She studied them with initial wariness. Then, upon spotting the farmer behind Shiroyasha leisurely peeling fruit, her eyes brightened just slightly. A faint smile touched her lips.
That smile stirred something strange even in Shiroyasha — the Solar Star Spirit who reigned supreme at the center of all world-views within Little Garden.
"She can see us — though she doesn't appear to harbor any ill intent."
"Do you know her?"
Before Shiroyasha could say another word —
Creak.
At the inner room door of the mansion, a door leading to parts unknown was pushed open from within.
The girl in the casual sundress, one hand still steadying her sun hat — Tsukishiro Yuki — strolled out from the inner room with the unhurried ease of someone who had just woken from an afternoon nap.
In her other hand, she was dragging an unconscious girl —
That girl had silver-white short hair, and a refined face that, even in unconsciousness, carried a three-part air of majesty. It was unmistakably the very Defiant God who had, moments ago, been rampaging unchecked through Tokyo: Athena.
This deity — born of the fusion and fall of two three-digit divine authorities within Little Garden — was now being dragged unceremoniously across the floor.
"Animus, this shouldn't count as barging in uninvited against your wishes, should it?"
"You really are something, you know that. The territory on this side is all mapped out, and yet you still didn't bring me along... I'm so jealous of Little Abi — is she stuck to your side every single day with both conditions met?"
Tsukishiro Yuki released her grip without ceremony, dropping Athena at Shiroyasha's feet, then settled herself with familiar ease onto the armrest of the sofa beside Suke.
Having finished her complaints over the two days of separation, her gaze — carrying a measure of wariness and open appraisal — turned toward Shiroyasha:
"Aren't you going to make an introduction? Who is this..." A pause. "Don't tell me you've been out collecting flowers and stirring up trouble again, Animus?"
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