"Ah!"
The moment he opened his eyes, the sight of the empty stadium, just as it was before the distortion, slowly came into focus.
’Thank goodness. We’re back!’
He could see unconscious spectators and students scattered across the stands. They seemed unharmed. Looking around, he saw that Sasha and the Saintess of Harvest had also made it out safely.
"Are you okay?" he asked.
Beside him, Lethe was slumped on the ground, looking utterly exhausted. Sweat streamed down her face, and her hair was a dusty mess.
"What about you?" she asked, her bright smile somehow untarnished by their ordeal.
"As you can see, I’m still breathing."
"That is a relief, yes."
"What about Ever Kire?"
Lethe shrugged.
"Dead, most likely. The goddess was destroyed, and she took a direct hit from our attack. That must be why we’re back in reality, yes."
That would be a relief, but Simon could feel a murderous intent slowly seeping up from the ground.
Through a cloud of rising dust, Ever Kire was forcing herself to her feet, her movements as jerky and unnatural as a broken marionette. A gaping hole had been torn through her chest where Chaos had struck, yet she was still moving.
[Uhhhhhh—]
Her mouth fell open.
[Goddess, Goddess, O Goddess!]
She shoved a hand down her own throat, gagging, before collapsing to the ground. She slammed her head against a rock, blood streaming from the wound, but she shot back up, shaking her head wildly as saliva flew from her lips.
Lethe frowned and looked at Simon.
"Her condition seems to have worsened, yes."
"It must be from my Chaos," Simon surmised. Chaos had the temporary side effect of scrambling one’s sanity.
"Just give up, Ever Kire," Lethe said, her voice laced with exhaustion. "Your plan has failed, yes. Just quietly......"
[Failed?]
Her eyes spun wildly in their sockets. Even under the influence of Chaos, her gaze was terrifying.
[Not yet! It’s not over! Do you have any idea how much time I spent on this plan? Failing to kill you was unexpected, but the holy relics I’ve prepared will soon activate!]
She raised her arm.
[This time, I will truly become a god...!]
Her words cut off. A network of cracks, branching out in every direction, spread across her body.
"I’m afraid that’s not going to happen," a calm voice interjected.
A man appeared, his crow-feathered cloak fluttering around him. He held a small blade, no bigger than a paring knife. He tossed it into the air, and it unfolded like a map, transforming into a complex magic circle. As he activated its runes, Ever Kire’s body split into eight pieces with a sickening crackle. She let out a scream of pure agony.
"Agent Alistair!" Simon exclaimed. It was the crow agent, Nephthys’s right-hand man, whom he had worked with during the Dark Festival.
"Good work, Student Council President. And you, Saintess," Alistair said with a gentle smile. "I was waiting for you to emerge." He gestured with his hand. "Seize her."
Necromancer agents materialized from thin air, their forms coalescing from the shadows. They cast chains of Jet-Black, binding the sundered pieces of Ever Kire’s body.
[My body! You thieves!]
Ever Kire tried to use her reality manipulation. The pieces of her body strained to pull back together like magnets, but the necromancer agents held firm, their Jet-Black flaring in defiance.
"Prioritize the injured," Alistair commanded.
At his order, teleportation circles bloomed across the stadium, whisking away the unconscious. Transport-type undead appeared to carry the wounded, while others were levitated away with hemodynamics.
It took less than a minute to evacuate every civilian from the stadium.
’He’s incredible,’ Simon thought, clenching his fist in admiration.
Desperately trying to reassemble herself, Ever Kire let out a sharp scream.
[How dare you oppose me, a god!]
"A fanatic who mistakes herself for a god, I see," Alistair muttered calmly. "I’m sorry, but your ambition ends here."
[Hahaha! Keehahahahaha! Are you so sure? You have no idea what I’ve prepared! This island will soon be!]
"If you’re talking about those holy relics," Alistair said, producing a chalice from his coat, "you mean something like this?"
Ever Kire’s eyes turned bloodshot.
"I thought so." Alistair dropped the relic and crushed it under his heel. She writhed in agony. "We weren’t just sitting idle out here, you know. We deduced that to impose your innate ability on reality, you needed a wide-range ritual using ’holy relics’."
Two years ago, the Volendi village incident was the first recorded instance of Ever Kire manifesting a manipulated world into reality.
’—A previously unknown village in ruins was discovered. Human body parts were found mixed into the architecture, used as building materials for roofs and walls.’
In that very village, holy relics used for white magic had been discovered within a twelve-mile radius, buried underground and at the bottom of rivers. While Ever Kire was fighting Simon and Lethe, Alistair and Kajan had analyzed the divine waves she was emitting and successfully pinpointed the locations of the other relics.
Alistair raised a communication crystal.
"Report, Kajan."
—’This is K-1. We have secured the last of the ten holy relics.’
—’All guardians eliminated. All agents are standing by.’
Alistair closed his eyes.
"Destroy them."
[Nooooooo!]
The sound of shattering glass echoed from the communication crystal as she let out a piercing, inhuman scream.
Watching the scene unfold, a strange light gleamed in Lethe’s eyes.
"It’s working, yes! Her divinity is weakening!"
Alistair gave a stoic nod.
"The false god is dying."
[Ha. Hahaha! Humans, mere creations, dare to mock me!] She pointed a trembling finger at them. [You are the false ones! Only I am reality!]
Ever Kire’s mouth opened grotesquely as she squeezed out the last dregs of her power. The stadium floor around them cracked, and the air turned a bloody red. The agents strained, their black magic weakening as her innate ability distorted reality around them.
She shrieked, lost in her delusion.
[I am a god!]
"Still have the strength to struggle, do you?" Alistair frowned, about to step forward when a tone sounded from the communication crystal in his coat.
He looked startled as he pulled it out and answered.
"Yes, this is Alistair. Have you come ’outside’ now?"
Even in this urgent situation, the agent prioritized the call over the fight. Simon watched him, puzzled. The crystal itself looked different from the others. He couldn’t hear the reply clearly.
"We’ve captured Ever Kire, but her resistance is fierce," Alistair said into the crystal. "Yes, the coordinates."
He relayed the location.
Instantly, a brilliant golden light poured down from the sky with a low hum. The light wove itself into a large circle, filling with complex formulas and geometric shapes before firing downward as a blinding pillar. It struck Ever Kire precisely in the center of her chest as she was regenerating.
[What is this!]
She was weakening again, the distorted reality she created flickering in and out of existence.
A golden tunnel, like a doorway, opened in mid-air with a soft ’whoosh’. A small girl popped out. She had flowing silver hair, piercing blue eyes, and wore a long battle robe he had never seen before.
"Ne......" Simon’s mouth fell open. "Lady Nephthys!"
She spotted Simon and gave a small wave.
"Hi, Simon!"
"A-Are you alright?" Simon’s voice trembled as he pointed at her. She tilted her head with a questioning ’Huh?’ before looking down at herself.
"Ah."
Blood was trickling down her forehead, and her robe was torn and singed. She looked as if she had just returned from a brutal battle. Simon’s heart sank; he had never seen Nephthys so much as scathed, let alone bleeding.
"It’s nothing," she said. With a light snap of her fingers, she was pristine again.
Seeing this, Lethe swallowed hard.
’That person is......’
The founder of Kizen and the leader of the Dark Alliance. A being who had lived for over three hundred years and stood at the pinnacle of all necromancers.
The Witch of Death, Nephthys.
She walked over with light steps and looked at Ever Kire, who was still fighting the temporal curse.
"So you’re the fanatic who calls herself a god."
[Witch of Death!!]
Ever Kire’s power flared, the force of her reality-distorting ability clashing against the power of time in a tense, pulsing stalemate.
"How thorough," Nephthys mused, casually smoothing her long hair. "You set the stage so I’d have no choice but to intervene, dangled a carrot in a distorted dungeon, but your real objective was here all along. This isn’t the kind of plan a madwoman like you would devise on her own."
[What are you talking about!]
"What am I talking about? Hmm, I wonder if you were just being used." Nephthys raised her arm. "Well, it doesn’t matter now."
The golden pillar piercing Ever Kire’s chest began to expand.
[Kraaaaaaaah!]
Ever Kire squeezed out the last of her innate ability, now trying to distort time itself.
[I am a god!]
"I wonder," Nephthys said, clenching her fist. "Are gods born without drinking their mother’s milk?"
A massive Jet-Black magic circle spread out above the golden pillar. The rotating circle transformed into a great bucket, which then tipped, pouring a torrent of sloshing black water onto the pillar below.
The black water flowed down the golden pillar, staining it, creating a sickening fusion of gold and black.
Nephthys clapped her hands together.
’Nephthys Original – Samsara’
Ever Kire’s body, impaled on the pillar, began to shrink. No, she was getting younger.
She regressed to the body of a student at Efnel.
To the body of a young girl, lost and wandering without direction.
To the body of a baby, crawling through the sewers.
And even further back.
Suddenly, two malevolent god-like figures materialized and caressed her body. Her shrinking form instantly swelled, returning to her original age. Then, she began to age in reverse.
"Oho." Nephthys’s eyes gleamed.
She skipped her middle-aged years entirely, transforming in a blink into a wizened old woman covered in wrinkles. It was the price for overusing her innate ability, for burning through her own life force. Her lifespan had been short to begin with.
[S-Stop!] Ever Kire shrieked, struggling painfully.
But Nephthys completed her spell.
With the gruesome sound of something being severed, the fanatic’s body crumbled into dust.
Even for a zealot who had plunged all of Roc Island into crisis and created a god, her end was hollow.
Simon and Lethe watched, dumbfounded.
The innate ability vanished, and the distorted world snapped cleanly back to normal. Light broke through the clouds, brightening the sky.
Nephthys retracted her magic, then turned to Simon and Lethe.
"We have a lot to talk about. But first, I should express my gratitude." She smiled. "To the futures of both our factions."

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