The God of Souls, Soda, looked at Ankh's cold smile with an indifferent gaze, as though he could see straight through his soul.
"You paid quite a heavy price to become human, Ankhseram."
Soda's lips did not move, yet Ankh heard His voice ring directly inside his mind.
Just as Acnologia disdained communicating with humans, Soda, as a god from the faction that sought humanity's extinction, naturally looked down on speaking to humans even more.
Only, compared to the Black Dragon, Soda stood even higher above them.
In His eyes, for lowly humans to hear the voice of a god at all was already a blessing.
Ankh listened to Soda's words and understood that He had most likely seen through the truth of his two souls sharing one body.
Calmly, he said, "I don't regret anything I've done now."
"That is because you have not yet tasted failure."
A deep, dark-purple light faintly swirled in Soda's eyes, and His enormous divine phantom gradually began to compress and solidify.
In the distance, one of the black-winged dragons that was facing off against Natsu and the others suddenly let out a painful cry that shook the sky.
Soda reached out toward the black-winged dragon from afar and clenched His hand. The enormous dragon body had no power to resist.
Amid its agonized roars, a wisp of soul spilled from its mouth and slowly scattered.
The giant dragon's pupils rolled white.
The life force within its body vanished completely.
Forget Natsu—even Rogue was badly frightened by what Soda had just done.
"Lord Soda! What is the meaning of this?"
Naturally, Soda, who looked down on all living things, did not bother answering his question.
Instead, He condensed His divine shadow into light and poured it into the black-winged dragon's powerful body.
As the divine shadow entered, the black-winged dragon's savage muscles suddenly glowed with a scorching red light.
Its enormous body seemed to melt and condense as though being refined.
Like a pill being forged in a furnace, the dragon's body compacted itself into a normal human-sized form.
That body reminded Ankh of "Doctor Manhattan" from movies he had seen in the past.
It had no hair, its facial features were formed from energy, and its body had a terrifying red-black magma-like energy color.
Soda exhaled and raised His hand, examining the body into which He had compressed a dragon's power.
A hoarse, unfamiliar voice emerged from His throat, still only audible to Ankh.
"This will barely do for a little play."
Ankh narrowed his eyes and looked at Soda's new form, which resembled a little golden statue.
He pressed his lips together without speaking.
Earlier, Ankh had asked Yusalk why he had never seen the true bodies of the gods appear, and Yusalk's answer had sounded very much like something a street punk would say:
Because they were scared.
More accurately, it was because the gods had now betrayed the emotionless path of the laws of all things.
The new Divine Realm rebuilt by those laws had instead become a restraint upon the gods, and they were unwilling to return.
Because of that, the power of the gods was now suppressed by the laws.
Whether they belonged to the faction that sought humanity's extinction or the faction that protected humanity, the gods could no longer be considered truly immortal in the strictest sense.
However, even if they died, they would not vanish completely.
After a god died, the laws of all things would use that opportunity to wash them clean again, turning them back into emotionless gods, the same cold and impartial judges of law they had once been.
In simple terms…
It was like the Investiture of the Gods as Ankh understood it.
The dead were placed on the list.
In other words, after being killed, they returned to the Divine Realm, became wage slaves again, gained full authority of law, became undying gods with strength—but without freedom.
Living gods, like the gods now, continued as wandering free gods.
They possessed great authority, faced the risk of death, had strength, and had freedom.
And finally, whichever faction achieved its goal—whether it was the extinction faction wiping out humanity and seizing control of the Divine Realm with emotional selves intact, or the protection faction creating a great free god who unified the laws—would be equivalent to entering the list with their living body.
That meant full authority, invincible strength, absolute immortality, and the freedom to wander countless worlds.
The ultimate form of godhood.
So Yusalk's answer of "they were scared" was not wrong.
For something this important, no one was willing to gamble with their true body.
Yusalk had descended through a mask. Soda had descended through Rogue, and now through this dragon body He had refined.
It was all the same.
Still…
This method was truly frightening.
"No wonder Seram said you and I didn't get along. Our authorities really do clash."
Soda's eyes were cold.
His body, formed from high-temperature energy, suddenly steamed with white mist, and His figure shot toward Ankh like a meteor.
Ankh refused to back down.
A fierce light flashed in his eyes as he roared and punched straight toward Soda.
This was the first time in Ankh's life that he had unleashed his full power without hesitation.
His fist was wrapped in dense divine power of death.
The black waves almost dyed space itself pitch-black, and even the earth and sky seemed to fall into a deathly stillness.
Soda's attack was like a parade of a hundred ghosts. Wherever He passed, faint wails of wandering souls seemed to echo.
Wherever His fist wind swept through, stones, flowers, grass, and even the air itself seemed to turn into hungry ghosts waiting to devour someone.
The two divine powers collided without warning.
Natsu, Rogue, and the others nearby had not even reacted when they suddenly felt as though a star had exploded beside them.
Boom!
The earth-shattering sound made everyone fighting across the city instinctively cover their ears.
A terrifying aura of divine power rapidly spread outward.
At the center of the battlefield, within the royal palace, the blinding divine light, like two stars colliding, still had not faded. Rolling waves of air swept outward layer by layer.
The palace complex collapsed beneath the powerful shockwaves.
Broken walls and ruins were torn up by the roots, and it was as though several layers of the ground itself had been shaved away.
"Are you kidding me?!"
Natsu screamed as the shockwave blasted him away.
Rogue felt the aftershock scraping across his skin like blades.
Terrified, he hurriedly retreated toward the outside of the palace.
Jellal endured that suffocating pressure and grabbed Future Natsu, whose eyes were blazing as he tried to rush in and help.
At the same time, he supported Lucy and the others, who had nearly been blown away, and quickly ordered his teammates.
"Pull back! This isn't a fight we can interfere in!"
Seeing that Future Rogue had already taken advantage of the chaos to flee the palace, and that the remaining three dragons were instinctively retreating because they feared Ankh and Soda's aura, Future Natsu no longer stubbornly insisted on staying.
Mirajane looked toward the center of the clash, at the figure almost swallowed by two kinds of divine light.
Enduring the violent wind and terrifying pressure head-on, she shouted, "Ankh!"
"You have to win!!"
Hearing Mira's distant voice through the storm, Ankh could not help grinning.
The dark divine light around his fist became even deeper and more sinister as he laughed and shouted back, "Of course I will!!"
Countless ghosts continued to invade from within Soda's attack.
His eyes carried a trace of mockery as He sneered, "You've come to love humans, Ankhseram. This is the reason why we look down on you."
"The reason? What reason?"
Ankh's face also carried a mocking smile.
A sacred, milky-white glow of divine life power suddenly rose from his body, endlessly providing him with energy and instantly overpowering Soda's assault of countless souls.
"You look down on me because I have people by my side, while you're all just a bunch of lonely old virgins?!"
Ankh's spirited voice rang out.
The divine power of souls was suppressed, and that mighty divine light was devoured and scattered.
Soda was immediately forced several steps back.
In their first clash, He had fallen into a disadvantage.