Chapter 249: The Oldest Human God Slayer
As the clear voice echoed through the streets of Shibuya, the petite blond girl hopped down from the Shimmering Hollow Tree of Light. She landed neatly, black dress fluttering at her knees, then looked up with a smile that was equal parts anticipation and delight.
Abigail had come for Rowe.
They had barely interacted. Their "bond," if it could be called that, was paper thin. Yet for a kin of an Outer God, for an avatar wearing a human shape, interest did not require familiarity.
Especially not when the target was Rowe.
In Great Qin, he had single handedly embraced power that belonged to nearly all the Great Old Ones, then refined it into a chaos core. To beings like them, that was not merely a human feat.
It looked like lineage.
It looked like origin.
It looked like the silhouette of Azathoth.
"Big Brother," Abigail said, tilting her head. Her smile stayed innocent, sweet enough to look harmless. "You seem more complete?"
Rowe did not smile back.
He looked serious.
So serious that Sajou Manaka, standing beside him, tilted her head in confusion.
Over the past few days, she had tried to kill him with everything from blades to bounded fields. Rowe had always stayed calm. Even when he showed off something absurd, he did it like a man commenting on the weather.
Manaka had never seen this expression on him.
This solemn look, as if he had finally met something worth treating as an enemy.
Abigail blinked. Confusion seeped into her face.
"Is something wrong, Big Brother?"
Rowe spoke.
"No. That is not right."
"Not Big Brother."
"You should call me Grandpa, Abi."
Aika froze.
"Huh?"
Abigail froze harder.
"Eh?"
Rowe did not falter. His expression remained earnest, almost lecturing.
"You are favored by Yog Sothoth. You are also an avatar of Yog Sothoth, a manifestation of an ancient immortal."
He lifted a finger and pointed upward.
"Who do you think I am?"
Abi followed his finger on instinct, looking toward the chaotic mist she had noticed from the start. Toward the core nested within it.
"The chaos core. Azathoth…"
"Exactly." Rowe clapped his hands together once, crisp and satisfied. "So in terms of relations, Azathoth created the original three Pillar Gods. Yog Sothoth is one of them. The Ancient Ones are avatars birthed by Yog Sothoth."
"You calling me Big Brother makes the seniority messy."
"You should call me Grandpa. Unless you want to become your own grandma."
Abigail swayed slightly, as if her mind had tried to perform arithmetic and caught fire.
Manaka also went quiet, staring at Rowe like she had discovered a new species.
Rowe's thinking really was… unconventional.
"No, that is not right," Abi protested, struggling to keep her footing. "Big Brother, you are not Grandpa Azathoth."
"You say I am not, so I am not?" Rowe smiled. "Who can prove it?"
"Call out Azathoth and see if he answers."
He said it with the practiced ease of a man who could absolutely win an argument with a child.
Manaka smiled faintly and leaned closer, voice low.
"Mister Rowe, are you trying to provoke her? Or rather, provoke the Great Old Ones you mentioned?"
"Just testing," Rowe replied without denying it. "The nameless existence of chaos is not so easily angered."
He was provoking them.
Those grotesque existences that existed beyond the universe, embodiments of the cosmos's dark will.
With mockery.
With taunt.
What Great Old Ones?
Had he not already stolen a portion of their source?
"I am Taiyi," Rowe said, lowering his hands. "And I am also the chaos core. No one can deny that."
Above him, behind him, vast chaotic tentacles slowly unfurled. The air became a star river. Whispers drifted, subtle and endless. At the tips of those tentacles, countless immortal treasures from the Divine Land shimmered, their light flowing like liquid.
The space around them expanded, manifested, then rewrote itself.
Tokyo vanished.
The distant buildings melted into nothing.
The ground beneath their feet became a world in its first breath, a landscape returning to the earliest stage of planetary creation.
It resembled a Reality Marble, yet it was not one. This was not a private inner world imposed upon reality.
This was a temporary rewriting of a planetary environment.
A stage made so the world would not collapse under what was about to happen.
Here, Rowe could display himself freely.
And because it was here, he could invite them properly.
Abigail looked around. Space and time had briefly rewound. The world had been reshaped. Yet she remained, and the dim, overflowing tree behind her still stood.
Her eyes brightened.
"So the game has already begun?" Abi's smile widened. "Big Brother is playing a game with Abi?"
"Abi likes this kind of game!"
"Big Brother, be careful not to get killed!"
Click.
Beneath the brim of Abigail's round hat, on the smooth forehead where her golden hair parted, a pitch black keyhole appeared.
A sound like a key turning echoed from inside her skull.
Then came the tremor.
The "tree" behind her unfolded. Not with leaves, not with branches, but with structure. It stretched, spread, and in the blink of an eye transformed into a huge mottled gateway standing in the star river universe.
A door.
A key.
A path.
"Here it comes," Rowe murmured, eyes sharp with eagerness.
Behind that door lay what connected to Yog Sothoth, the Key to the Gate.
And beyond that, the cosmic interstice where the Great Old Ones gathered.
They still could not descend with their true bodies. They still could not manifest in full.
But the gaze cast through a doorway like this would be enough to crush civilizations.
Precisely because it would bring chaos, Rowe had prepared a stage with the specifications of a star creating god.
He wanted them to look.
He wanted them to notice.
Come.
Kill me.
Or let me smash your heads.
Rowe smiled.
"Eh?" Manaka let out a startled cry as the world jolted.
Her body floated.
Rowe beside her vanished without warning.
In his place, something colossal filled her vision.
Atlantis would call it a machina god.
The Divine Land would call it Pangu.
A machine body.
A crown.
Authority that demanded the world obey.
Crown of Domination.
Light flooded the extreme heavens. Even though this space was temporarily sealed and rewound, the present world still felt it.
In the West, auroras erupted.
Britannia, Rome, Greece, Gaul, countless regions saw rainbow light spanning the firmament.
In Britannia's Platinum Palace, Artoria's lips curved.
"So you finally decided to appear, Lord Rowe."
In Rome, within the refurbished halls of the old imperial court, Nero lounged on her throne, beaming.
"Hmm, hmm. My Adjutant, I will not join the fun this time."
Nero Claudius chose not to go.
She believed she already had her first victory. So she would wait, and present herself as the final winner.
Make all competitors bow beneath her skirt.
That was the dignity of the ruler of the world.
In Gaul, the Saintess holding the flag of France knelt on one knee in the mountains. Behind her, armies gathered to resist the Huns.
Across the valley, a sneer rang out.
"Does that foolish Saintess only know how to kneel and worship?"
A young woman in black armor, identical in face to the Saintess, radiated an entirely different aura.
Two Jeannes.
One a Saintess with a heart that refused to break.
One a Witch burning with revenge after persecution.
The only similarity might have been faith.
Belief in one God.
And yet, even the Witch Jeanne knelt.
Above her, Altera cast a sidelong glance at the witch she had "subdued." Altera's expression did not waver.
"Bad guy," she murmured, desire threaded into the words. "Rowe."
In Greece, the Hunter Princess of Arcadia bared her fangs.
"By the will of Artemis, I will succeed in hunting you this time, Rowe!"
Laughter echoed elsewhere, greedy and amused.
"So he is still in the East?"
"He left the Eastern Lands, did he not? That is truly unexpected."
"What does that wild dog want to do now?"
Servants converged again, drawn toward the Eastern Lands like iron to a magnet.
But the greatest anomaly was the Divine Land itself, closest to the disturbance and most deeply connected to the chaos core.
Across ancient rivers and vast soil, "Pan" stirred.
A second tremor, stronger than the last.
Above the Nine Heavens, Consort Yu showed reluctance, then looked down with cold resolve.
"I need to stabilize Pan. This time, I can only let you go."
"Bring him to me. Snatch him back to the Divine Land."
"I will try," another voice answered.
"Ereshkigal, wait. I am coming too!"
"Ishtar, why are you following?"
"Do not forget. That man still owes me a huge debt!"
Voices echoed from beneath the earth.
…
Within the primal landscape of the world's creation, Rowe's three forms overlapped.
The chaos core.
The machina god.
The Primordial Human.
Manaka found herself inside the furnace core within the machine's chest, standing beside Rowe as if it were the most normal thing in the world.
She looked around, eyes bright, then knit her brows.
"How can I kill this?"
Even with her link to the Root, she was stumped.
Rowe chuckled.
"You only need to consider killing my human form."
Then he added, tone dry.
"Although perhaps you do not need to consider anything at all."
"Oh?" Manaka tilted her head. "Are you ending the game here, Mister Rowe?"
"Not ending it," Rowe said. "Entering the next game."
He looked toward the gate.
"Did you not want to see what my death represents?"
Manaka's smile sharpened.
"Very interested."
"Then we will watch," Rowe replied. "Together."
Opposite them, the mottled void tree became a star gate. Countless tentacles extended from it. Indescribable figures pressed behind the threshold, silhouettes that hurt the mind to acknowledge.
"Big Brother," Abigail said softly, voice almost pleading. "Do not die, alright?"
"You were the one who wanted to play first," Rowe said.
"If Big Brother dies, Abi will not talk to you anymore."
Abigail's form began to change.
The black dress vanished as if it had never existed. Pitch black seaweed wrapped around her body, outlining a tender slender shape. Her exposed legs took on a faint bluish hue. Curves were half hidden beneath dark fabric, while invisible tentacles wriggled from behind her like thoughts made flesh.
Not human.
A Great Old One shape.
A young evil god.
The juvenile form of Tawil at Umr.
The Ancient One who resided near the first silver key gate that led to the ultimate abyss of the universe. The guardian of the path.
And a guardian could open the gate.
Not fully.
Not safely.
But enough to cast the shadows of the Great Old Ones into the present.
Do not die.
Do not stop.
Do not.
"Death is a good thing," Rowe said, shaking his head as if to clear Abigail's whisper from his mind.
"Evil gods."
"I, your ancestor, have arrived."
The furnace surged. Lights and shadows churned.
Yet the chaos core remained curled in place. The vast machina god body simply maintained the world's pre creation scenery.
Neither of those forms struck.
The one who moved was only Rowe.
Only Rowe in his humanoid form, whose defense was "weaker" compared to the other two.
"Big Brother, are you not joining in?" Abigail tilted her head, puzzled.
Rowe stepped across molten light, walking through a landscape like swirling nebulae, directly toward the star gate.
"There is no need for us to act together," he said. "Me alone is enough."
Abigail's delicate face puffed slightly, childish displeasure showing despite her transformation.
"Does Big Brother look down on me?"
Rowe spread his hands.
"Yes. You are absolutely right."
"Sorry, I am not targeting anyone."
"I am saying everyone here is trash."
The wind stirred.
Whispers arrived.
Mental impact followed, layered, vast, and immediate.
Rowe's consciousness swelled, throbbed, blurred. Thoughts surged like a flood. The nebula world became fog.
His human brain became fog at the same time.
The Great Old Ones did not truly "rule" reality in this moment.
They ruled the realm of spirit and consciousness.
They drove minds into madness.
They guided existence toward self destruction.
Even gods could not easily resist their intrusion, because their whisper was everywhere.
A glance was enough to collapse reason.
Who could look into the void beyond the starry sky?
Who could gaze into the abyss beyond the universe?
Rowe's smile did not change.
His expression did not crack.
He closed his eyes.
He "looked" with consciousness, staring through the threshold at the Great Old Ones beyond the gate, and at Abigail standing before him.
"But have you forgotten," Rowe said softly, "I am the god slayer of the most ancient era."
"I know the shadow of the Old Ones has always loomed over this world. I know you have always been interfering."
Once, Rowe had cleansed the Six Heavens Ancient Ghosts of Divine Land. He had erased the traces the Great Old Ones left there, and with the Ancestral Gods shielding that ancient land across the universe, Divine Land had not been disturbed since.
But that was only Divine Land.
The Ancestral Gods and ancient sages could contend, but only barely. They could protect one land, not the entire Earth.
Over two millennia, countless places had suffered invasion.
Countless incidents brewed in the dark.
Abigail, dragged into the abyss by a witch trials tragedy, becoming an avatar.
And beyond her, other sensitive minds.
The Japanese painter Hokusai.
The European painter Van Gogh.
In Japan and the West, many people with talent and "inspiration" had brushed against the Great Old Ones and fallen into madness.
The shadow of the Old Gods always lingered in the deepest folds of time and space.
Hard to remove.
Hard to escape.
Rowe took another step.
"You were afraid back then, were you not?"
"What?" Abi sounded slow, as if the question had struck something human inside her.
"When you were still human," Rowe said, "facing unknown disaster, you should have felt fear."
He kept walking.
The chaos in his mind did not obstruct his thoughts. It clarified them.
What was the Primordial Human?
The first and purest human, both saint and villain, both man and capable of understanding woman, both old and child.
Everything had an origin.
So did mankind.
Rowe was the origin of Man.
So he could empathize with all people.
Abigail's eyes widened slightly.
She was now a familiar of the Great Old Ones. Yog Sothoth's agent on Earth.
Yet the past surged up.
America, 1692.
That environment.
That helplessness.
Abigail Williams had been afraid.
As a pure Puritan.
As a devout believer.
Targeted by an evil god.
Who could stay calm?
Not when she was as small and tender as she looked now.
Back then, she had yearned countless times for salvation.
Countless times for the Lord's light to fall upon her.
And now.
Now that light stood in front of her.
Even if she no longer needed salvation, even if she could become something greater, she was not there yet.
She was still Abigail Williams.
Her human part still outweighed the Old God part.
Rowe walked past the guardian of the first silver key gate.
He stood before the threshold and "looked" at the eerie dark eyes behind it.
Chaos in his mind deepened.
Evil gods were indescribable.
Evil gods were unwatchable.
And yet.
Rowe stood before the gate, facing the gaze of the Great Old Ones, and slowly opened his eyes.
He would block the indescribable.
He would gather the chaos.
He would suppress the Great Old Ones with consciousness.
He would tell them, with his very being.
"Humans are not your toys."
"We are not."
Rowe's eyes became a chaotic void.
Within that chaos, a faint light flickered.
Vast heaven and earth.
Like a lingering ember moving forward through wind and rain.
Illuminating the world.
…
"I think I had a dream."
"Me too."
"Are you crying?"
"I dreamed of light. Light that illuminated the world…"
"Father, what is wrong?"
"It should be… no, I am fine. Strange. Do Servants also dream?"
Voices rose across the world.
On this day, countless people dreamed simultaneously, dreaming of light and shadow beyond the starry sky.
…
At the same time, in Japan, within the Ise Grand Shrine dedicated to Amaterasu, a grand divine descent ritual was underway.
Bonfires burned. Shrine maidens in white robes and red hakama danced through the flames.
Legend said that long ago, Amaterasu, consumed by sorrow, hid within stone. A god's dance drew her out.
After that, rituals to summon Amaterasu often used dance alongside offerings.
Yes.
Summoning Amaterasu.
The chief priest of Ise had received an oracle the day before, from Takamagahara.
Amaterasu wished to descend.
The shrine would never resist.
As the ritual reached its peak, brilliant light appeared above the shrine, shining like the sun, condensing into a sacred shadow.
White faced.
Golden fur.
Amaterasu's Authority.
Tamamo no Mae looked delighted. As a deity manifesting in true body, if one counted carefully, she might be first.
The current world was gradually learning to bear them.
A return to the Age of Gods.
No.
Ultimately, it was still an era centered on human order.
But over time, gods had become part of that order.
"This first crab, your humble servant will eat first…"
"Ritual aborted!"
"Gah?"
"Message received from the Divine Land. Change the Amaterasu Festival to the Mount Tai God Festival."
"What?"
Wait.
She was already half manifested.
Let her finish first.
Tamamo no Mae, smug one moment ago, fell into the present world in an incomplete form.
"Did you hear something?" the chief priest asked, looking up, unsettled.
"No," the shrine maidens replied.
"Strange…" The chief priest sighed, then frowned deeply. "I hope Amaterasu will not blame us."
If it had been a simple instruction from the Divine Land, that would be one thing.
But this message came directly from a great figure.
The Mount Tai God.
Houtu Niangniang.
A goddess whose status surpassed Amaterasu, one who governed the leylines of the Divine Land.
And those leylines reached even into the land of Japan.
They had no way to resist.
.....
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