Chapter 688: Aqua is Furious! Megumin and Darkness Suffer!
[Chito: Uh, it... it actually exploded...]
[Tendo Kisara: Ugh, this enemy literally stuffed herself to death! What a grotesque way to go.]
[Vivi: Alas, greedy desire was the original sin that led to her demise. It is a cautionary tale for all biological lifeforms.]
[Seitenshi: No, her desire to devour and create a world was why she was defined as an enemy of the Chat Group in the first place.]
[Nami: Well, as long as Ren is there, the outcome was guaranteed. Even if she stopped eating in the middle, she couldn't escape the fate of death. He wouldn't let her go.]
[Ren: You're wrong about that. If she could truly withstand and assimilate the power I bestowed upon her, evolving into something stronger than me, then she would have earned the right to live.]
[Erza: The leap in magnitude is too great; it's physically impossible. That energy density was beyond planetary scale.]
[Shiroyasha: Tch, it's all just his bad taste. Playing with his food.]
[Ren: Bad taste is still taste, don't you have it, you old pervert?]
[Shiroyasha: Hoi! I'm not looking down on your bad taste. Rather, I appreciate your straightforward bad taste! At least it's honest.]
[Shiroyasha: It is far more respectable than those hypocritical, circuitous gods who hide their malice behind benevolence.]
[Ainz: Emmm, I always feel that the bigshots have already moved beyond ordinary people's tastes. Their definition of 'fun' is terrifyingly out of place.]
[Rory Takakura: Haha, relax, Ainz-san. Even if Ren has some kind of twisted hobby, he definitely won't become a hypocritical god. I believe him.]
[Saeko Busujima: After all, Ren-kun dislikes being called a god.]
[Aqua: Wah ah ah ah! I can't take it anymore! Why do you all look down on gods so much?!]
[Aqua: I am the Goddess of Water! Show some respect!]
"Ah ah ah ah!"
A piercing wail echoed through the drafty halls of a certain mansion in the countryside of the Konosuba world.
Aqua, the beautiful blue-haired goddess (with intelligence stats that left much to be desired), was currently rolling on the floor. She flailed her limbs like a toddler denied candy, her divine raiment tangling around her legs.
Everyone in the Chat Group kept saying they hated gods, calling them hypocritical or twisted. It made Aqua incredibly uncomfortable. It felt like a personal attack.
"It's not fair! I'm a good god! I'm the mascot of the Axis Order! Why is Ren bullying me too?!"
She wailed a few more times, her voice cracking the silence of the afternoon, purely to vent her frustration.
"What are you doing? Stop yelling, my head is splitting... it's so noisy~"
Megumin, the Archwizard of the Crimson Demon Clan, was slumped weakly over the wooden kotatsu nearby. She looked like a deflated balloon. Her face was pale, not from fear, but from a severe lack of nutrition.
"We haven't eaten a proper meal in two days... conserve your energy..." Megumin muttered, her stomach growling a sad, hollow tune. She criticized Aqua's sudden, unprovoked shouting with the last ounce of her strength.
"Ha!"
Suddenly, the front door burst open.
Darkness, the Crusader dressed in her signature light armor, marched into the room. She was drenched in sweat, her blonde ponytail sticking to the back of her neck. She brandished her heavy broadsword, slicing through the air with a whoosh before deftly sheathing it.
"Phew..."
Darkness wiped the perspiration from her forehead, her chest heaving with exertion. Unlike the starving wizard and the crying goddess, she seemed to be bursting with vitality.
"Gulp, gulp, gulp..."
She grabbed a pitcher of water from the table and chugged it down in one go, water trickling down her chin and neck. Slamming the glass down, she turned her flushed face toward Aqua, her blue eyes sparkling with a strange intensity.
"Aqua! You seem energetic! Are you uncomfortable staying at home? Do you want to go on a quest? I heard there are giant toads in the valley that swallow people whole and cover them in slime!"
"..."
Aqua stopped rolling and sat up, glaring at the blonde knight fiercely.
'Are you saying you want to do a quest?' Aqua thought, her brow twitching. 'You clearly just want to get hurt! You wretched, hopeless masochistic knight!'
Aqua huffed, crossing her arms over her chest, trying to regain a shred of dignity.
She looked from the breathless Darkness to the limp Megumin and asked seriously, "Hey, answer me honestly. Don't you think me, the Goddess of Water, is good? If everyone in the world joined the Axis Order, wouldn't the world be at peace?"
The room went dead silent.
"Axis! Where is Axis?!!"
At the mere mention of the Axis Order, Megumin reacted as if she had been electrocuted.
She instantly sprang up from the table, her hunger forgotten in the face of sheer terror. She clutched her staff to her chest, her crimson eyes darting around the room, vigilantly surveying the corners, the ceiling, and even the space under the table.
She looked like a startled bird, feathers ruffled, ready to flee at the slightest movement.
She even suspected there was an Axis Order fanatic hiding in the wardrobe, ready to jump out with a recruitment form.
"Stay back! I won't sign anything! I won't eat the soap!" Megumin shrieked.
It was no choice of hers to react this way.
She had encountered the members of the Axis Order once before in the city of Alcanretia. It was a traumatic experience etched into her soul.
They kept talking about how wonderful the Goddess of Water was. They cornered her in alleyways, grabbed her robes, and aggressively invited her to join. Their smiles were too wide, their persistence too terrifying.
But upon closer inspection... it wasn't just any ordinary religious group.
It was a cult. A bona fide, terrifying cult.
The members of the Axis Order were unhinged. They would do anything—lie, cheat, steal—just to get a signature. Megumin had fully experienced their madness.
So much so that she now suffered from legitimate PTSD, having an immediate, violent stress reaction whenever she heard the word 'Axis'.
Grrr!
Seeing her own party member—a Crimson Demon she worked hard to support despite her freeloading and obsession with one-shot magic—look at her followers with such undisguised horror...
Aqua felt a vein pop in her forehead.
She was enraged. She felt humiliated. Her own roommate treated her fan club like a plague!
"You ungrateful little brat!"
Aqua stood up, grabbed Megumin by the collar of her robe, and dragged her to the door.
"You, go earn some money! We can't pay the rent! If you don't bring back Eris today, you can sleep in the stable with the giant toads!"
With a surprising display of divine strength, she kicked Megumin out of the house.
Thump!
"Ahhh!" Megumin tumbled down the front steps, landing face-first in the dirt.
"..."
Darkness stood in the middle of the living room, staring blankly at the scene. She blinked, her masochistic brain struggling to process Aqua's sudden aggression.
She didn't understand why Aqua was suddenly so strange today. Usually, Aqua was the lazy one.
Drip!
A drop of sweat trickled down Darkness's cheek and splashed onto the wooden floor. The sound seemed amplified in the sudden silence.
Aqua's elf-like ears twitched.
She slowly turned her head. Her blue eyes, now glowing with a menacing aura of debt and frustration, met Darkness's gaze.
"!!!"
Darkness's body stiffened. A shiver ran down her spine—not of fear, but of anticipation. A feeling of impending doom rose from the bottom of her heart, and her breath hitched.
The next second.
"And you! Stop sweating on the floor and go be useful!"
Aqua grabbed Darkness by her armor plating and hurled her out the door as well.
"You go earn money too! I need to collect rent today! Go be a meat shield or something!"
"Bang!"
The heavy wooden door slammed shut with a loud, final bang, locking from the inside.
Aqua stood in the hallway, hands on her hips, breathing heavily. She was extremely angry. She was a Goddess, yet she was living in squalor, supporting two problematic individuals who ate her food and looked down on her divine status.
"Hmph! Maybe I should ask Ren for a loan..." she muttered, her anger instantly replaced by calculation.
Meanwhile, in the world of Fox Spirit Matchmaker.
The atmosphere was not comedic; it was heavy with the scent of ozone and tragedy.
"Sister... Tushan... Tushan is gone... Wuwu..."
Even though the Black Fox Queen—Fengqi—had been obliterated by the heavenly tribulation and Ren's intervention, it didn't change the cruel reality of what had happened prior.
The silence in Tushan was deafening. The bustling streets of the fox demons were empty. The laughter, the commerce, the life—all gone. Everyone in Tushan had been devoured by the Black Fox to fuel her ascension.
The most heartbroken was undoubtedly Tushan Yaya. She had witnessed the disaster firsthand, watching her friends and subjects vanish into the Black Fox's maw.
She hugged Tushan Honghong tightly, burying her face in her older sister's chest. She could no longer hold back her tears, her small shoulders shaking as she sobbed uncontrollably.
"Yaya..."
Tushan Rongrong, usually the calm and calculating brain of the trio, stood beside them. She gently patted Yaya's back, her eyes red. Tears streamed down her cheeks, dripping onto the charred ground.
This was their home. This was the legacy they had sworn to protect. How could they not be sad?
"..."
Honghong did not cry.
She stood tall, her red and white robes fluttering in the wind. She was, of course, in pain. Her heart felt like it was being squeezed by a vice. When she became the Lord of Tushan, she made a vow to protect every fox demon within these walls.
She had failed.
Now that Tushan was empty, a ghost town of memories, how could Honghong not feel distressed?
But she wouldn't cry. Not in front of her sisters. Not while he was here.
Because she knew there was still a chance. She knew the man standing before her defied logic.
She lifted her head and looked at Ren. Her eyes, usually fierce and domineering, were now filled with raw hope and pleading.
"Ren-ge..." she whispered, her voice trembling slightly.
Ren looked at the three sisters, then at the desolate city behind them. He smiled gently, a look of supreme confidence on his face.
"With me here, you don't need to worry about Tushan's problems. Tragedy is not allowed in my presence."
Ren didn't just offer empty comfort. He acted.
With a thought, his aura expanded.
[System Authority: Time Manipulation - Localized Reversal.]
The invisible, terrifying power of Time instantly covered the entire world of Tushan. The air grew heavy, static electricity dancing across the skin of everyone present.
Then came the reversal of all things!
"What... what is going on?"
Misaka Mikoto, standing off to the side, clutched her head. She was filled with surprise and uncertainty.
The world before her had a jarring sense of paused unreality. It was like a video glitching. The falling leaves froze in mid-air. The dust motes stopped dancing.
Before she could even confirm if she was experiencing a dizzying hallucination or some kind of esper attack...
Everything before her began to change rapidly, visibly.
"This is..."
Rather than a change, to Misaka Mikoto's scientific mind, it looked more like a violation of the laws of physics.
Whoosh!
The ruins of a destroyed building flew back together, stone by stone, sealing the cracks as if they never existed.
But the most shocking part was the life.
Silhouettes began to fade into existence from nothingness.
Fox demons—young and old, male and female—suddenly appeared where there was only empty air a second ago.
They were moving in reverse for a split second—walking backward, un-falling, un-screaming—before snapping into clarity. It was a scene that was bizarre beyond belief, a miracle that science could not explain.
Misaka Mikoto felt her scalp tingle. "He's... he's overwriting reality?"
Seeing the changes occur, the tension in Honghong's body finally snapped. She relaxed completely.
Ren had performed a simple time reversal on the environment and the populace.
However, he was precise. The Black Fox Queen, who had been completely annihilated by his attack, remained erased. She had been scrubbed from the timeline, ensuring she would not return with the reversal.
"Everyone..."
Yaya and Rongrong also quickly noticed the anomaly. They looked around, wide-eyed.
They saw familiar faces reappear in the streets of Tushan. The guard who had been eaten first was standing at his post, looking confused. The merchant was back at his stall.
In a blink of an eye.
The time reversal was complete. The flow of time resumed its normal course.
The empty, silent Tushan was once again full of life, noise, and vitality.
"Our magic power is back!"
Rongrong gasped, looking at her hands. The green aura of her spirit energy flared to life. The connection to the Bitter Love Tree was restored, strong and vibrant.
Yaya hadn't yet figured out exactly how it happened, but she knew who did it.
Honghong, overcome with emotion and relief, didn't care about her image as the Tushan King anymore. She immediately threw herself into Ren's arms, burying her face in his chest.
"Thank you... Thank you, Ren-ge..."
"Did... did Ren-nii save everyone?"
At this moment, Yaya and Rongrong also reacted, wiping their tears and looking at the miraculous scene with awe.
"Simply reversing the time of this world isn't a difficult task for me."
While explaining simply, as if he had just fixed a broken toy rather than resurrected a civilization, Ren smiled.
He naturally caught Honghong as she threw herself at him. His arm went around her slender, soft waist, pulling her closer.
The contact was intimate. He could feel the warmth of her body through her robes, the rapid beating of her heart against his chest.
Feeling this action, and the firm grip on her waist, Honghong's tall fox ears twitched violently.
Her small face, usually cold and imperious, quickly flushed a deep, alluring red.
She was the King of Tushan, feared by humans and demons alike. But in his arms, she was just a girl. Though she was shy to death, feeling the heat rise to her cheeks, she didn't resist. Instead, she lowered her head, burying it deeper into his shoulder, bowing slightly in submission and gratitude.
A rather obedient little fox.
"Time reversal?!!!"
Before Yaya could even exclaim her joy, Misaka Mikoto was already shouting in shock from the sidelines.
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