Isagi and Ryuu returned to their own future.
The battle had been a loss.
Zard and Alfia had been far stronger than either of them had anticipated. But the good news was — whether it was because Isagi and Ryuu-senpai had traveled back to the past, he wasn't sure — the two had changed their minds, and chosen not to come to Orario after all.
Though at the moment of parting, Zard had said he would be waiting for Isagi to challenge them again.
It wouldn't be long. Gathering enough Divine Power to make another trip back would take, at most, around two weeks — one more dive into the Dungeon, then returning to let Riveria and the others come experience the [Dark Hall] for themselves.
But that wasn't the main point right now. What mattered was forging new weapons.
At present, the only weapons remaining inside his cloak [Pandora's Shadow] were Wolf's Devouring Feast, the moonlit greatsword, the Blade of Ten Thousand Bones, and Moonhide.
Tch.
He'd need to go talk to Cecil about that — see what she thought.
And on the other side.
Unlike Isagi, whose thoughts had been purely and entirely fixed on the fight with Zard, the girl's mind was turning over far, far more.
For instance — by traveling back to the past this time, she had done certain things. So had any of it changed the future?
Back at the Garden of Stars, the moment Ryuu returned, she went to find Goddess Astrea first thing.
What followed was one piece of good news, and one piece of bad.
The good news was that the first step of the "three-step plan" they had set in motion by going back to the past had succeeded.
The Goddess had indeed notified every justice-aligned Familia in the city that the Dark Familia intended to raid the magic stone factory, seize the firing mechanisms inside, and construct remote-detonated bombs — and she had successfully prevented it from happening.
The Guild, which had already been overseeing the magic stone factory, made its own preparations in advance.
Under Guild Master Royman Mardeel's "command," they had directly destroyed every single firing mechanism, along with all related blueprints and anything of a similar nature.
The man had probably been genuinely terrified.
And as a result, any possibility of the Dark Familia ever getting their hands on those materials had been completely and utterly eliminated.
The outcome was this.
The seven days of [The Great Dispute] simply ceased to exist.
Because there were no remote-detonated bombs, and because Alfia and Zard never came to the city.
The dark era continued on as before, and the decisive battle they had anticipated never came. But the justice-aligned Familias gradually gained the upper hand regardless, and in the end, several years ago, they had wiped the Dark Familia out entirely — with the surviving remnants driven into hiding.
And so, ultimately — just as before.
The [Nightmare of the 27th Floor] and the [Annihilation of Astrea Familia] still came to pass. Ryuu still chose the path of vengeance, and the Goddess still departed for Solingen — and so things had remained, right up until now.
That was the bad news Astrea had to deliver.
Ryuu pressed her lips together and said nothing.
She had known it would end up like this. Even though she had, through the Goddess's relaying of the message, warned Alise and the others — faced with the Dark Familia's trap, the members of a Goddess of Justice's Familia could not simply look the other way.
So.
It would have to wait for next time. Next time, she would go to stop them — no, to strike down that monster herself, with her own hands.
Watching the elf girl's expression harden with quiet resolve, Goddess Astrea felt a strange sense of disorientation wash over her. As a god, two completely different sets of memories were playing out in parallel within her mind right now — it left her marveling all over again at just how incomprehensible this was.
It was different for ordinary people.
When the past was altered by Isagi and Ryuu, history shifted, and the relevant memories of those involved were naturally revised along with it.
But gods were different.
The gods retained their original memories.
The conflict and bloodshed of [The Great Dispute], and then alongside it the entirely new memory — of the Dark Familia, stripped of their trump card by the change, slowly losing ground until they were finally annihilated — both lived side by side in her mind.
Like two completely different lives, experienced simultaneously.
How strange —
Astrea shook her head, thinking: this is all far too peculiar.
But whatever the case, it was a good thing.
Because the [Seven Days of Death] had never occurred, many adventurers and city residents who had originally perished were still alive.
That was enough.
And besides…
A full day passed.
It was still deep in the night. The city blazed with light, and the stars above burned just as bright.
Ryuu couldn't quite sleep.
And so she had been sent out by the Goddess on an errand to buy some late-night snacks to bring back.
Isagi had already made his way to Cecil's smithing workshop, researching new weapons and refining new medicinal elixirs all at once.
The boy was nothing if not earnest.
It actually made Ryuu feel a little embarrassed — after all, stopping Zard and Alfia from coming to the city had been her idea in the first place, and then she had gone and been completely unable to fight them, and been no help at all.
She shook her head.
The elf girl felt strangely adrift.
Her destination was the Hostess of Fertility tavern on West Main Street — not just to buy food, but because the Goddess had said she wanted a drink as well.
Ryuu quickly cut through the busy North Main Street and arrived at Central Park, in the shadow of Babel.
Night had settled in some time ago.
The plaza that was always so crowded during the day now held only a scattering of figures — and more of them were Ganesha Familia members on patrol duty than adventurers.
Ryuu didn't pay them much mind.
Lost in her thoughts, she suddenly heard a somewhat familiar voice from somewhere ahead in the distance.
"Ryuu!"
…Hm?
The elf girl blinked, slightly startled, and turned around — to see a girl with close-cropped grey hair, beaming brilliantly as she came running straight toward her.
"Adi?!"
"Oh wow! Time travel — going back to the past?! What a fascinating story! I absolutely have to add that element to one of my plays next time!!"
Inside the Garden of Stars.
Aphrodite cradled her beautiful face in her hands, murmuring to herself.
As gods, they of course had sensed the new "story" that had been born from the altered history — a story that could only be called a good ending.
Artemis included.
The Moon Goddess had, during the era of The Great Dispute, led her Familia's children in a relentless seven-day march, arriving in the city at the last possible moment to lend her aid.
So.
She held an absolutely vivid understanding of how horrific things had been back then.
Flames, corpses, blood —
The city had come within a hair's breadth of utter destruction. The adventurers and residents who survived had done so only by clawing through something unspeakably brutal.
And those seven terrible days had now simply not happened.
"That's wonderful." "Mm."
Artemis agreed with the Goddess of Beauty beside her.
And so.
"Does this still not count as a true [Hero]?"
To travel back to the past, to change what had been a tragedy, and lead the world directly toward a far brighter tomorrow.
If even that did not count as a [Hero] — then what did?!
[Indeed —]
At this point, even Artemis could not help but acknowledge Isagi.
What the boy had done.
Had already surpassed anything a god could have imagined.
So.
This time, it had been [The Great Dispute] that changed. But what of the next time?
Artemis recalled that Isagi had once mentioned they had gone back a thousand years — perhaps to the very era when the [Black Dragon] had first emerged from the Dungeon.
If they were to start from that point.
And slay the [Black Dragon] then and there — what would the world look like now?
____
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