"So, that's the situation in a nutshell."
After Merlin's enthusiastically detailed explanation, the Tarnished finally pieced together what was going on.
Sumer was down to a single city—Uruk—now the last human shelter in all of Mesopotamia.
To resist the endless tide of demonic beasts, Gilgamesh had built a colossal fortress line: the Babylonia Demonic Beast Front, guarding humanity's final stronghold.
Even though the most troublesome pillar of the Three Goddess Alliance had already been dismantled, things were still far from hopeful. The front lines were still being hammered by wave after wave of demonic beasts.
And their side's fighting strength was pathetically thin.
Aside from the Tarnished and "Little Northern," only a handful of Servants were still active. Four had died or gone missing along the way. The remainder weren't enough to face goddesses head-on.
Merlin also rambled about things like the King of Mages, the Holy Grail, and the Incineration of Humanity—terms so foreign they may as well have been nonsense.
But even without understanding the jargon, the Tarnished understood one thing clearly:
This was bad. Very bad.
What they needed to do now was reach Uruk as quickly as possible, meet up with Gilgamesh, and discuss the next phase of the war.
"Alright. I get it," the Tarnished said, mentally organizing everything. Then he glanced sideways at the white-haired mage.
"But why did Gilgamesh summon you? You're useless and trashy. If you're not peeping on people, you can't do anything."
"Hey, hey, don't say it so bluntly," Merlin scratched the back of his head and grinned—completely unashamed, as if he were being praised.
That skin-thick-to-the-sky shamelessness…
Honestly, it felt weirdly normal.
"Whatever."
The situation was already awful enough. The Tarnished couldn't be bothered arguing with this scum. Better to get moving.
"Quetzalcoatl."
He turned to the goddess beside him, who wore that inexplicably knowing smile. "How long will it take to send the civilians back to Uruk?"
"If we transport them by wyvern," Quetzalcoatl said, "we should reach Uruk before sunset."
"Good. Then I'm counting on you."
"No problem."
The warm big sister type agreed instantly—then turned toward the Leopard Person, who was very clearly trying to pretend she didn't exist.
"Then, Leopard Person, I'll leave wyvern command to you."
"W-Wait—!"
The moment she heard "wyvern command," the Leopard Person came back to life at full health.
Before anyone could react, she dashed forward and shrieked, "Does this mean I'm being shoved to the rear line now?!"
"No, I don't want that, meow… I don't want it…"
She latched onto Quetzalcoatl's leg and started sobbing.
This didn't just fail to match the Tarnished's impression of a god.
It had absolutely nothing to do with it.
"Logistics is an important mission too," Quetzalcoatl said calmly.
The Leopard Person's crying did nothing to move her. If anything, Quetzalcoatl looked like she might laugh.
"…No, meow! Kukulkan, I'm your best friend! I don't want logistics, meow!"
"Do you want me to repeat myself?"
Quetzalcoatl's gentle smile turned frighteningly sweet. "Would you rather be used as a cushion… or made into a specimen?"
A very sweet face.
Very sweet.
Big sister is hungry for kids, one bite at a time. Period.
"Eek—!"
The Leopard Person nearly lost her color. Her attitude did a perfect one-eighty as she thumped her chest and declared, "OK! Leave transport to me, meow! Logistics is great! I'm happy to do it!"
Then she bolted straight back toward the temporary camp and started summoning wyverns to move the civilians.
That speed was so professional it would've made real logistics officers feel ashamed—like she was born for this job.
Soon, under her frantic direction, the wyverns lifted off and carried the civilians back toward Uruk.
"Now then," the Tarnished said, turning back. "It's your turn…"
At his call, both his and Quetzalcoatl's eyes settled on Merlin.
Merlin's entire body stiffened. A chill ran down his spine.
"Ahaha… why are you both looking at me like that?"
He talked as if nothing was wrong, while quietly preparing to run.
He'd realized something important: aside from Quetzalcoatl, this "Tarnished" human was also extremely difficult to deal with.
Merlin's usual tricks wouldn't work.
The Tarnished tilted his head, puzzled by Merlin's behavior.
"Why? Gilgamesh didn't send you here just to pick me up, did he? There has to be something else."
The logic was simple.
As one pillar of the Three Goddess Alliance, Quetzalcoatl definitely knew where Uruk was.
Yet Gilgamesh still sent Merlin—the peeping specialist—to "welcome" him.
That meant there had to be another task.
It was experience, learned the hard way from dealing with the Lands Between's endless riddlers.
"…Ahaha. As expected of the Tarnished Gilgamesh praises so highly," Merlin said quickly. "Truly brilliant—"
"Stop flattering me. Speak."
"Cough. Right."
Merlin cleared his throat, forcing the embarrassment down. "Gilgamesh did assign another task. He wants us to find the Tablet of Destiny."
"The Tablet of Destiny? Where is it?"
"Uh… no leads yet."
The Tarnished immediately turned to Quetzalcoatl. "And you? Do you know where it is?"
"No," Quetzalcoatl said with a regretful shake of her head. "I don't know anything about the Tablet of Destiny either."
"Oh."
A completely perfunctory reply.
He turned around and started walking, ready to catch up with the wyverns and leave.
If no one even knew where it was, then searching was pointless—a pure waste of time.
"Hey, hey, hey—wait! Wait, wait!"
After exhausting himself like he was wrestling a bull, Merlin finally managed to block him—only to receive a stare so hostile it practically had a blade edge.
The look said one thing:
You have ten sentences. Explain. Or I'll send you home in a coffin.
Merlin understood instantly.
The problem was, Merlin couldn't just casually use clairvoyance right now.
Searching was one thing. Peeping—no, scouting—was another.
But if he accidentally caught sight of the wrong goddess… or worse, caught sight of Tiamat…
He'd be dead.
And if some Noble Phantasm-level missile decided to descend, he'd be even deader.
Even when he'd located the Tarnished earlier, he'd done it painstakingly, inch by inch, with extreme caution.
Merlin's eyes spun once, sly and quick.
He found an angle.
He dragged the Tarnished aside and whispered in his ear.
"Honestly, we can just look along the road. If we find it, great. If we don't… then that's fate. It'll only cost a little time. What do you think?"
Something about it sounded suspicious.
But when you thought about it, there was a certain logic to it.
Luck if you gain it.
Destiny if you don't.
And the last few days of relaxing had been… pretty damn nice.
"Fine," the Tarnished said at last. "We'll do that."
He'd been fighting nonstop in the Lands Between. Wanting to rest for once—what was wrong with that?
Music on, dance on.
In truth, this was all Merlin's improvised nonsense.
Gilgamesh had only ordered Merlin to search for the Tablet of Destiny. He hadn't told the Tarnished to do it at all.
And there was no grand reason Merlin had been sent out here.
The real reason was painfully simple:
Merlin couldn't find the Tablet of Destiny, and he'd been loafing around Uruk's palace doing absolutely nothing—so Gilgamesh kicked him outside.
In four words—
He was an eyesore.
But after they left…
The land of Eridu began to tremble again, slowly, like an earthquake.
From the massive fissure carved open by the lightning blade earlier, wisps of gray, ashen deathly miasma drifted upward.
A miasma that only belonged to the underworld.
Anything it touched—living creature or tree—withered instantly.
In the blink of an eye, Eridu began to turn into a land of death…
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