Haimer didn't turn around, but the words had already been cast down here.
The altar sank into a long silence.
Only the crackle of flames burning through grease remained. A continuous silence.
And that meant the contest was still ongoing.
But.
As gods who had spent hundreds of millions of years together,
Haimer understood Ouranos.
"If this were the Heavens of eons ago, you would absolutely have leapt down from that stone seat and fought me to mutual destruction."
"But now, Ouranos, you've truly grown weak."
Hearing these words from Haimer, Ouranos closed his eyes.
"Tell me your true purpose in the Lower World, Haimer."
Ouranos's voice carried a deep weariness.
"Don't tell me you really came down simply to nurture those children."
"I don't believe that."
"Not a single god in all the Heavens would believe it."
"Your thirst for power was sated long ago in the Heavens, and your pursuit of wealth is nothing but a joke."
"Everything you do—sheltering monsters, recruiting those girls, pressing forward step by step... just what is it you're trying to do?"
"What am I trying to do?"
Haimer rose to his feet, took two steps forward, the soles of his shoes scuffing over a few bits of rubble.
"What do you all think I'm scheming for? To rule over Orario—a place not even worth a single corner of the Heavens? Or to indulge in those mortal games you lot have already played to death?"
"If you really must know what I want—then let us return to the past, and continue our inquiry into how to kill a god."
Ouranos's breath caught.
Haimer extended his hand, gazing at the lines in his palm.
"In the Heavens."
"I watched your bodies shatter, watched your Divine Blood dye the sea of clouds red, and watched your divinity collapse and fall into the long slumber of resurrection."
"I was obsessed with studying how to kill gods—how to carve you to pieces, how to drag out your souls and crush them."
"But in the end."
"I still could not truly create an art capable of utterly killing a god."
"And so, I kept trying to kill gods."
"Until one day, Loki asked me a question, and a sudden flash of insight struck me—I realized why I could never truly create an art capable of utterly killing a god."
"Because I have never known what death feels like."
Haimer turned his head, his gaze locking onto Ouranos.
"When a god is killed, it resurrects again after ten thousand years."
"To us, death is nothing more than a dull afternoon nap."
"But I have never napped."
"I dearly want to know—that mortal death, where once you close your eyes you can never open them again and everything returns to nothingness—just what kind of experience that is."
"So I tried."
"I exhausted every weapon I could think of, every authority I held, and turned the blade against my own throat, my heart, my very divinity."
Haimer spread his hands, looking at his ten slender, powerful fingers.
"But." "Each attempt came to nothing."
Haimer lowered his hands.
"I cannot kill myself."
"I can't even produce a wound that would leave a scar."
"And so, I sought the answer from all of you."
"Loki and I waged god-war after god-war in the Heavens."
"Pinning my hopes upon you gods who, after being killed, successfully resurrected."
"I had hoped you would come to me bearing the fury of vengeance, employing ten thousand methods to try and drag me down from my pedestal."
"But what came of it?"
Haimer's voice gradually turned cold.
"I once held the highest expectations of you."
"Instead, you disappointed me time and again. Time in the Heavens is eternal—your resistance against me should have grown ever fiercer, yet with each successive failure, you became more and more powerless!"
"Until at last, even when I deliberately toyed with and defiled your souls,"
"you no longer dared to harbor even the slightest thought of defiance!"
"And that is precisely why, in the end, I came to loathe you more and more."
"I was so tyrannical, toying with you day in and day out for ten thousand years—why was it that in the end you didn't even dare to spit out a single curse through your tears to my face?"
"I thought, with you numbering in the thousands upon thousands—no matter how omnipotent I might be, across these eternal ages, how could I forever remain your match?"
"But the eternity of the Heavens ended up turning you into a pool of stinking, stagnant water."
"Even when I, on the rare occasion, showed some kindness and washed your memories clean to grant you new life, you instead worried that I was merely toying with you again."
"To the point that the mere sight of you fills me with disgust."
"I had intended to remain in the temple for ten thousand years."
"Until a certain moment." "I saw those tiny lives down in the Lower World."
"Mortal lives are pitifully short, yet the miracles they give rise to were enough to refresh me anew."
"Those tiny lives—lives spanning less than a hundred years, lives that could at any moment be torn to shreds by a plague or a single monster—and yet they struggle on in the mire."
"To survive, to avenge, to protect their comrades, they erupt with a ferocity that hangs their very lives upon the blade's edge."
"That kind of miracle refreshed me anew."
"It made me realize anew that the eternity of the Heavens had blinded me to the infinite potential of these mortals—because only that will to survive, the kind that truly stakes everything, can hone an edge sharp enough to cleave through divinity."
"So, Ouranos, how fortunate you are—to be able to sit in that position and witness the arrival of all that I have recounted."
Haimer looked at Ouranos coolly, then slowly turned around.
Ouranos's hands gripped the armrests of the stone seat with all their might.
"So..." "You mean to use those Xenos to force the world to despise you, and thereby provoke a war? So that one day the lives of the Lower World might kill you?"
Ouranos looked at Haimer.
Now he finally understood—Haimer's true purpose in descending to the Lower World was to treat the entire Lower World as one enormous steel-forging furnace!
"Don't think me so base."
"Sheltering the Xenos is merely to make my own children happy."
"After all, compared to you self-important gods, the children of my Familia are far more endearing and precious."
"However." "From earlier on," "you must still be weighing whether all this might disturb the false peace you maintain."
"Then I would ask you to answer me!"
Haimer shed all his idle nonchalance, his gaze turning instantly cold and severe.
A near-tangible pressure, even without the backing of Divine Power, bore down upon Ouranos with crushing weight.
"When those Familias amass wealth like madmen in the Dungeon, using their supporters as bait sent to their deaths!"
"Who was it that played deaf and dumb under the banner of maintaining order!"
"When the Soma Familia, who hold the divine wine, bled them dry to the very marrow until they were neither human nor ghost!"
"Who was it that signed off on their business license for the next quarter in the Guild's office!"
"When those Xenos who possess reason were hunted at will in the Dungeon by the Ikelos Familia like mere *, sold to the black market and amassing a boundless blood debt! When someone, in the foul, stinking gutters of Daedalus Street, starved to death while still clutching their faith in the gods!"
"Who again! Who else! Would go on sitting upon this lofty divine throne, sighing and lamenting in the posture of one above all! Casting justice, casting mercy! Casting order! Utterly aside!!"
"I ask you!" "Ouranos! Tell me! A god like you—growing ever more decayed, who would rather let the Lower World go on rotting and stinking in the quagmire, rather watch those nauseating tragedies play out day after day, all to cling desperately to that thin veneer of false prosperity—an incompetent god!"
"What right do you have to pass judgment on a god who can bring change to this stagnant pool!"
"Just as a sun sinking into twilight—even though it once illuminated the earth—must now retire entirely behind the curtain! Quietly waiting, anticipating a new sun rising slowly over these ruins!"
"So!" "Handing everything you have over to me is the only decision you can make right now."
"Otherwise." We fight to mutual destruction. Silence.
A deathly silence. Only the cold underground wind blowing past the burning pillars of flame.
Ouranos sat upon that stone seat symbolizing the Guild's highest authority, seeming in this instant to have grown much more stooped.
He opened his mouth, trying to find some reason to refute, trying to defend the painstaking compromises he had made for the sake of order.
But the words, once at his lips, yielded only a heavy sigh.
After all, the Orario of today, this labyrinth city, beneath the shadow of the glittering Babel Tower, had indeed long been riddled with holes.
If one traced it to its source, everything could be followed back along a clear trail.
He had always believed that so long as the Dungeon didn't run rampant and Orario didn't fall, those costs were all necessary offerings for maintaining peace.
Like a dead thing enshrined within a sacred niche—apart from channeling Divine Power into the Dungeon day after day to maintain the seal, all that remained was endless compromise.
To avoid provoking Loki and Freya, he chose compromise, allowing Loki and Freya to drive Zeus away; to keep the common folk of the Lower World from falling into panic, he chose compromise, allowing the Xenos to be squeezed tightly down into the Dungeon's twentieth floor.
For the sake of Orario's uncertain future, he indulged Royman in seizing all the Guild's authority, and along with the other higher-ups enshrined him and the underground altar as sacred ground no ordinary person could set foot upon—utterly removed from Orario's residents, secluded behind the curtain.
He had compromised time and again.
And so, this time.
Facing Haimer, Ouranos once more tasted that bitter flavor.
"You win, Haimer."
Ouranos opened his eyes once more.
As these words were spoken, the entire empty underground altar seemed to waver along with them; the several burning blue pillars of flame at the altar's edge eerily dimmed a few shades.
"Fels.... If you wish to take her, then take her."
"But I have only one condition."
"She may move into your castle, may serve as that little human girl's magic tutor."
"But she remains my linchpin for communicating with the surface—that is the Guild's bottom line."
"You cannot strip her of the authority to carry out this duty, and still less may you intercept the intelligence she relays to me."
Ouranos sought to reclaim the last shred of dignity he held as the great god of the Guild.
"Deal."
"I already said—I have no interest in your petty affairs. Whatever Fels wishes to do, let her do as she pleases."
"So long as she doesn't hold up my child's magic lessons."
With that. After receiving Haimer's definite affirmation, Ouranos closed his eyes.
Leaving the underground altar,
Haimer made his way unhurriedly up the spiraling stone steps.
His mood could be said to be rather good.
After all, the matter of the Holy Emperor's tutor had been satisfactorily resolved.
With Fels—the 「Fool」 who had lived eight hundred years delving into the secret arts of life and death—imparting everything she knew, combined with the Holy Emperor's own absurdly vast reservoir of magical capacity,
given time, the Holy Emperor would absolutely grow into her power.
At this thought,
Haimer returned once more to that special parlor on the second floor.
The Holy Emperor was seated in a chair, holding the now somewhat cooled cup of black tea in both hands, sipping it in small mouthfuls.
Fels, meanwhile, stood quietly off to the side.
The fragrance of the black tea still drifted through the air.
"Creeeak——"
But as the door handle was twisted,
Haimer pushed the door open and walked in.
The atmosphere in the room shifted instantly with his appearance.
"Kami-sama / Lord Haimer."
The two of them stood up in unison.
"It's all been settled."
Haimer walked in and looked directly at Fels.
"Once the new residence is built, Miss Fels may move in directly."
"As for Ouranos, he's already given his nod, so there's no need to feel any burden. Until then, Miss Fels is likewise free to come and go from my manor each day to instruct her."
Hearing these words from Haimer,
Fels, beneath her cloak, couldn't help but sway.
After all, though she had already considered earlier that Ouranos might truly agree to Haimer's terms,
when she actually heard this outcome,
this wraith who had lived for eight hundred years was still utterly astonished within.
After all, she was no fool.
Judging from how swiftly and easily Haimer had returned, and how he directly announced the result,
Lord Ouranos, who had governed the Guild for a century, had in the end compromised after all.
For the sake of maintaining some greater scheme, he had handed her over as a bargaining chip.
What exactly had happened, she had no way of knowing.
In a contest between gods, she—a 「Sage」 who had merely clung to a wretched existence for eight hundred years by means of an undying secret art—had no power whatsoever to intervene, nor even the standing to inquire.
But.
Having lived eight hundred years in pursuit of that forbidden boundary of life and death—forever in sight yet beyond reach—she had long since become a skeleton without so much as flesh or blood.
Now, of all that she still lived for in this world, what could possibly compare to this—a girl possessing a defiance-of-all-reason reservoir of magic, one who could even turn a vast obsession into a wellspring of magic, sitting alive and breathing right before her? What could fill her with more anticipation than that?
Not only would the crystallized fruit of her centuries of magical research have an heir,
but more than that—over these eight hundred years, the 『Philosopher's Stone』 she had created, capable of granting eternal life, had been smashed to pieces before her very eyes by a presiding god's capricious whim, and could never be replicated again.
She had created an un- secret art, yet turned herself into this ghastly figure that could not bear the light of day.
Sitting withered underground, watching birth, aging, sickness, and death, watching countless mages who called themselves geniuses crash themselves bloody against the boundary between life and death.
The one and only chance she had truly glimpsed hope.
If she could pour all eight hundred years of her 「magic」 knowledge into this girl's body,
just what kind of miraculous flower, defying all reason, might bloom?
Fels was, truthfully, somewhat filled with anticipation.
Just as the gods descended to the Lower World to witness miracles,
she, Fels, likewise yearned to create yet another miracle!
At this thought, Fels bowed deeply toward Haimer.
"Then, I shall be in your care from here on, Lord Haimer."
Seeing this, Haimer nodded as well and looked toward the Holy Emperor.
The Holy Emperor immediately understood and hurriedly rose to her feet; standing before Fels, she showed not the slightest trace of fear at the horrifying body hidden beneath the cloak.
"Then, Lady Fels."
"There is still much about magic that I don't understand."
"In the days to come, I ask that you not be sparing in your teaching."
And then,
the Holy Emperor folded her hands together and gave Fels a slight bow.
Looking at such an exceedingly humble and immensely gifted student, Fels was indeed moved to compassion.
A desire to seek the limits of 「magic」—suppressed for centuries—grew like wild grass.
____
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