From up beyond the sky, Cyrraia beheld the curvature of Gaia. It was beautiful—cold, lonely. The planet’s gentle gravitational pull was like a warm embrace.
Actually, wasn’t it getting a little too warm?
Well, whatever! She was glad to be out of that place. Spiting the ###### God had been fun and all, but she wasn’t the type of person to enjoy 30 years of bleak darkness all alone—and with Three as her only occasional visitor!
As her body started to catch fire in the upper atmosphere, she clutched the Heaven Key and brought it to her chest. In a flash of light, it was within her, and no one would be able to take it from her. At least, not without killing her first.
How’s Gaia like nowadays, she wondered. A long time ago, she’d been a human, reincarnated here just like anyone else—gone on a perilous journey just like anyone else, and did a lot of saving the world, too, even if only in her own little way.
That was a long time ago, though. She didn’t even know how to use physical limbs anymore.
“It’s just like riding a bike!” … Lies. Try remembering how to ride a bike after a couple thousand years!
Being able to teleport from the couch to the kitchen and back tended to turn upright and moral people into couch potatoes very quickly. Maybe ascending to godhood was a bad call, after all?
It was getting really warm now. She tried her best to steer herself towards that patch of green beside the flashing blue beacon on the surface—a beacon only she could see. That beacon was Minimine.
[I see you.]
Ah, Minimine! Hello! Cyrraia thought. Her face was currently busy out-regenerating the thermal friction damage from falling from the sky, so she couldn’t really speak nor complain about the pain of the whole experience.
[The cult is moving. I will send one of Kalender’s companions to find you.]
The cult… Gosh, even that darned god had a cult. She bet they even outnumbered her own followers—that darned god!
Gaia was a lot closer now. The planet’s curvature had become a faraway horizon, and she could make out surface features as if she were staring at a topographic relief map.
[The fighting has started. Please be ready.]
There were lots of people dying and suffering down there right now, weren’t there? Cyrraia wanted a break from fighting, honestly, but what could she do?
She didn’t have a choice. At least she had two arms and two legs—and a magical quiver full of lovely arrows.
She was almost there. Lyrica was big. The fire around her was hot. Really hot. All she saw was tainted in red.
Alright, there’s a cult—she’s gonna hit the ground running! Alright, alright—alright!
Holy crap, the ground’s coming really fast. Oh no, she’s a little off the ideal flight path—but that’s okay! It’s close enough to Harmony! She could probably-maybe find her way around!
Cyrraia, fight! Hype hype hype hype hype—
***
The explosion that rocked the Monster Wall turned night into day. Everything within half a kilometer radius had turned into burning splinters, and in the impact site itself was a bowl-shaped crater with a rocky needle-like protrusion in the middle, the result of the sheer violence of the impact churning the ground so hard it acted like a fluid for a brief moment.
Standing on the protrusion—there was no glowing goddess. Indeed, Cyrraia’s mortal body had been completely vaporized.
Still, after a moment, a gentle glow coalesced into a brighter sprite, which coalesced even further to form a circulatory system made of light. The respiratory system, the skeletal system, the muscular system—one after the other, motes and specks of divinity gathered together to recreate Cyrraia’s physical avatar.
In her left hand manifested her bow, and in her right, an arrow—and finally, her favorite adventurer clothes from 3000 years ago.
The moment she’d regained her eyes and ears, she’d already started scanning the dark for enemies.
She fell off the needle-like rocky protrusion she’d been standing on, tumbling into the dirt-and-bedrock bowl below.
It was her first time using real limbs in a long time, please excuse her.
After rolling to the bottom of the crater, she took five minutes to reorient herself in the usage of such implements as “leg” and “arm.” It was a minor grace that there was no one around to watch her stumble around like an AI trying to figure out locomotion through the sheer violence of 1-million repetitions.
Thankfully, it was all coming back to her bit by bit, and over just 100—yes, 100—repetitions, her face went from annoyance, to despair, to focus and determination and, finally, ultimate happiness!
Yes! She can walk! The plot can advance!
She started climbing out of that crater with a smile on her face. The smell of ashes, however, reminded her where she was and what she was here to do.
When she finally pulled herself over the edge, she found the jungle around her a smoking wreckage for miles around, embers flying like fireflies all throughout. Trees and stumps here and there were lit like torches. At least visibility’s good, huh?
Something on the far end of her vision caught her eye: something moving among the bushes far away. It didn’t take long for her cautious curiosity to be answered, as two spindly legs emerged from the fronds and greens. The creature hadn’t even left the forest before it made a disgusting, uncute screech, and it jumped out, revealing all eight legs and skittering straight towards Cyrraia. It was a huge creature, by itself capable of devouring an entire human village.
Cyrraia was a little surprised at this, wondering just how on earth that spider was able to find her. As one of the stealthiest goddesses alive, second only to Anina, the Goddess of Shadow, she was constantly stealthed all the time, so how?
That didn’t matter right now. The spider was practically sprinting with how fast it was going, leading Cyrraia to conclude that it needed some love.
Fearsome the creature might have been, she was still a goddess with an expired adventurer’s license. In one swift motion, she nocked an arrow filled with divine power and let loose; the bowstring snapped taut with the ringing whipcrack of a steel cable, and the arrow flew faster than a shockwave.
When it flew past the creature, it decimated everything in a straight line—which was just a padded way of saying she missed.
Still, it was an impressive way to miss. Her arrow emitted continuous flameless explosions all the way down its flight path, cutting trees down, stripping others of their leaves, and killing the giant spider’s brethren who were just about to emerge.
All Cyrraia saw was that she’d missed, however, and she took a hit to her pride for it. On the other hand, the monster was a monster; it couldn’t care less, and it just kept on coming.
Just when she nocked another arrow, five glowing lances slammed into the side of the giant spider, and it fell down, green blood pouring out in bucketloads. Its body thudded against the ashen ground, and though some of its legs twitched and struggled as if they had minds of their own, another three lances dug into the spider—so deeply and thoroughly that they poked out the other side. Only then did it stop moving.
Cyrraia kept her arrow nocked, but it didn’t take long for her to find the source of the attacks. She relaxed.
Thirteen elven rangers met her near the edge of the crater. Cyrraia found their attire odd, as they lacked the usual capes that elven rangers wore. Instead, they wore utility vests that each had a dozen pockets and were layered with a kind of thin mesh which the elves had attached random leaves and foliage to. At least, they kept the traditional hood and mask, and they still had a knife and another longer blade sheathed by their side.
What she was truly confused by, however, was the fact that the elves seemed confused, themselves. They were looking at each other then at Cyrraia, and even when they knelt to acknowledge her, they seemed to hesitate a little.
“Goddess…Cyrraia?” one of the elves said. She and the others hadn’t even heard of Cyrraia until today, but the Priestess of Apoi’s words weren’t to be doubted.
They truly weren’t doubting those words, but rather, what they were seeing in front of them.
Cyrraia dispelled her stealth, revealing the frown on her face. The elves gasped, wondering what they had done to incur her displeasure.
“I’m a goddess, you know…”
Cyrraia’s sulky words greatly troubled the elves, who had never encountered an ex-human goddess before. These were supposed to be divine beings who constantly exuded an aura of nobility, so what is this poor creature?
Cyrraia sighed and waved her hand. “Never mind. Thanks for the assist.”
“H-how can we be of assistance, Goddess Cyrraia?” the same elf said. She seemed to be the leader.
Cyrraia raised an eyebrow at her. “Why does it seriously sound like you’re not even sure who you’re dealing with?”
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For the elf squad leader, her next words felt like they would decide the destination of her next life. Such a great deal of anxiety kept her from answering immediately, however, and when she looked up, she saw Cyrraia looking straight at her. Whether that was a look of patience or impatience, she couldn’t tell, so she just screwed it and blurted it all out. What will be, will be!
“Yes, Goddess!” —her surge of fatalistic determination surprised Cyrraia— “When we, 4th squad of the 9th ranger battalion of Deramin, arrived at this scene, we found a set of floating clothes taking the shape of a person. After the unknown person used earth-rending power to eliminate hundreds of mana beasts, I, leader of the 4th squad, concluded that the set of floating clothes was actually Thy Divine Holiness, Goddess Cyrraia, art thou have mercy on meeeee!”
Ignoring that last part, ‘floating clothes’ ? Well, that wasn’t right. Why—
Ah.
That was the moment Cyrraia realized that she was too good.
Back in the Overseer’s domain—no way in hell she’d recognize it as that god’s domain—she had gotten into the habit of being stealthed all the time. The problem here was her definition of ‘stealth.’
The target of her stealth was “everything that was her.” In the divine realm, everything was made of magic, and her clothes and weapons were technically part of her. On the other hand, here in the material realm, only her avatar was identifiably ‘her.’
Her clothes and weapons, although made from magic, were separate entities from her. By analogy, “the spider’s web, although it came out of the spider, is not the spider itself.”
She hadn’t noticed this because she could see through her own stealth; she had to, or else she’d mess up her hand-eye coordination.
She corrected this dumb error before it spun out of control. This time, she disappeared entirely from sight, clothes and weapons included. The elves panicked for a second, but Cyrraia came back in the next, and it was all cool.
“You can stand,” Cyrraia said. There were other, more-pressing matters, and she couldn’t wait to get it all over with. “I hear there’s a cult around here.”
The squad leader shakily stood up, a mixture of reeling-yet-glad. “Y-yes, Goddess! We’ve been dispatched by direct order of the Goddess of War for your protection.”
Cyrraia had mixed feelings about the fact that one of her colleagues felt the need to send mortals to protect her. “Protect me?” she parroted.
The disappointment in her voice tipped the leader towards fatalism again. “Yes! The Goddess of War has specifically mentioned that Thy Divinity might say such a thing, and has tasked anyone confronted by this to say: ‘You missed, didn’t you?’ ”
Those words assaulted Cyrraia’s ego as if being slapped with a sausage, and she clutched her chest as her pride was completely destroyed in one shot. She could already see it: Apoi laughing from the top of the Dragon Throne.
“A-alright,” Cyrraia said. At least she knew when to give up. “A-anyway, give me the run down. Where are we, exactly? What’s going on out there?”
“We are exactly midway between Deramin and Lyrica, Goddess,” the squad leader replied. “Out of respect, we have not crossed into Lyrica, but the few scouts we have report evidence of fighting in one of the Lyrican army camps.”
Cyrraia gave it some thought. “Everyone must have seen me, right?” She pointed into the sky.
“Yes, Goddess. The godfall was visible all the way until Syn-thel” —Deramin’s capital.
“So they’ll be coming for me any moment now…”
“I don’t think we should be worrying too much, Goddess,” the leader, who should be worried (you fool), said. “This halfway boundary is where all the strongest creatures live. Thanks to divine contract, only we elves can cross without being constantly assaulted. Anyone else must be immensely powerful, otherwise.”
Cyrraia raised both eyebrows. “Then won’t that mean they’ll just send the strongest they’ve got, then!”
Explosions shook the edge of the Monster Wall. Cyrraia immediately stealthed herself, while the squad leader barked orders.
“Ren! Far-seeing Arrow!” she shouted, and one of the elves shot an arrow into the sky. Through it, she caught a glimpse of the multi-colored flames and explosions at the edge of the jungle on the Lyrican side…and it was coming closer.
“I can’t identify!” the elf shouted in reply. “Blue, red, yellow flames and explosions! A mage? Coming straight for us!”
“MP estimate!”
“I-I don’t know! Flames that big—10,000?”
“What?”
“10,000 each!”
“What?!”
“I don’t know, ma’am!”
The squad leader gritted her teeth. Against an enemy like that, Goddess Cyrraia would fare a lot better than they would.
Wait, where was Goddess Cyrraia? She turned around three times, left and right, but she couldn’t find her!
Another explosion shook her out of her initial panic. “Ren! Enemy’s distance!” she shouted at her subordinate.
Ren sent up another Far-seeing Arrow. “10 seconds!”
She clenched her teeth. They had to retreat, but not without Goddess Cyrraia!
Was she still here? She had to be! “Goddess!” she shouted, hoping she’d be heard. “We will be retreating!”
And so they retreated—but it was not to be.
Trees exploded on the left, and trees exploded on the right. Somewhere in the middle had been a blur too fast for elven eyes to track. Cyrraia, however, had seen the two figures perfectly.
On one hand had been a human swordswoman of long, golden hair, donning a battle dress like a princess’s but plated with articulating steel. On the other hand had been a green-skinned humanoid—wait, a demon?
Three had mentioned that the enemy already had agents in the material realm. They were sure to be strong.
On the other hand, how was that human just so strong?
The two battled in a circle around the still-forested parts of the impact area, and when all those trees had been mowed down, they moved the battle to the rim of the crater itself.
In plain view of everyone, the princess and the demon exchanged air-shaking blows of magic and steel. The demon threw out thunderbolts in straight lines and errant trajectories, while the princess just…slashed them all in twain!
It brought great stress upon the demon to see literal lightning get parried like this. It was a physical impossibilty, and yet it was happening right in front of him!
The princess, meanwhile, pushed mana through her sword, turning each slash into a ranged attack unto themselves. Crescents and darts of magic flew out of her blade each time she slashed and thrusted, each attack a different color—each color a different element, each element meant to cut a different material.
Really, she was just cycling through all of them to see which one did the job.
— Because it was just taking too damn long!
The demon was too sturdy and too fast, but thankfully not stronger than Arpeggio, to the latter’s consternation.
The two opponents stopped on opposite sides of the crater, taking the time to rest while, at the same time, watching each other’s next move.
That the demon had lasted an entire twenty seconds of combat—should Arpeggio be impressed? She’d never expected to meet an opponent that could keep up with her like that.
She’d feared that they’d level the jungle before the end of the battle, but the demon seemed tired and wary, while she herself had broken about eleven beads of sweat, three of them induced by the Monster Wall’s everlasting humidity.
It should be an easy fight from here… Why then, did she feel uneasy?
The green-skinned demon’s eyes flittered to the right once, then twice.
Cyrraia spotted the shaking of the trees long before anyone else did, and she didn’t wait to take aim. In less than a second after spotting the disturbance, she’d already decided that it was an enemy. It was only a breath later when she nocked an arrow, and it was only an instant later when she acquired the target’s bearing—and loosed her arrow.
The air between Arpeggio and the green-skinned demon blurred; only then did the thunder-like crack reach their ears. Both of them leaped backwards, startled by whatever it was that had come between them. Several explosions along the something’s trajectory got their attention, and when they turned their heads, they witnessed a line of explosions rushing headlong towards a line of shaking trees.
The two forces met—and the line of explosions was stopped.
There were supposed to be 300 explosions. Cyrraia realized it had stopped at 197. Whoever was there had stopped it.
— Not just that, but he returned the favor!
A few seconds later, a line of brilliant flames erupted along the arrow’s original flight path, tracing it back until the flames came between Arpeggio and the green-skinned demon, and then finally the place where Cyrraia had been. An all-consuming phoenix devoured that place, the sheer heat of its incandescence making Arpeggio sweat from hundreds of paces away.
As the towering inferno cooled down into a simple mushroom of hot smoke, Cyrraia threw up a peace sign and gave prayers of thanks to the next highest-ranking goddess above her. She had just barely escaped from the path of the attack, and now—maybe fighting back wasn’t a good idea, after all?
This wasn’t the first time she’d fought opponents with similar abilities, but they had just been mindless puppets of the ###### God—none of them were true, admirable warriors who respected their foes.
A red-skinned demon, clad in armor and wearing a fear element-imbued war mask, made his entrance by cutting down the jungle with a single sword strike. His sword, however, was not just a sword, as it morphed into a fighting spear in his hands.
Was he really respecting his foes, though? Powerful. Versatile. Relentless … and capable of deflecting divine magic—wasn’t that just plain cheating?
Cyrraia had been considering this for a while, but after that display of power, she was fairly certain that these people were god-killers: fearsome existences even in the eyes of a goddess.
It wasn’t that they were particularly powerful—they were objectively weaker than System’s gods—but they always worked in teams, and each and every one of them had a zombie-like resolve to kill. They were like hyenas who waited for their prey to be alone, and then they struck rapidly with one thousand tiny cuts, bleeding gods dry before any reinforcements arrived.
While she might have been able to evade and severely inconvenience them, she had exactly zero experience fighting the crack troops of the AntiSystem. Even years of fighting a solo guerrilla war against the ###### God couldn’t compare to the high-octane 10-gear-shifts-per-second combat that she’d have to engage in against these guys. She suspected that even that was understimating them.
Not just her, but Arpeggio too was on the back foot. She had been sent here by Minimine to fetch the newly-arrived goddess, but oh girl, even though she’d expected some resistance, she didn’t expect the enemy to send these kinds of people—and now there were two of them!
Ah, she was at a disadvantage now, wasn’t she? She might have been able to fight against the red demon or the green demon individually, but at the same time? Nope. No way. The smart thing to do here was leave.
She couldn’t do that without Cyrraia, however, and she had absolutely no idea where the goddess was. Considering the earlier instant national border creation attack, she had to be around here somewhere—
“Hi.”
Arpeggio shrieked at the whisper that assaulted her ear, and, in a fit of muscle memory, she nearly slashed a goddess with all the power of Level 9 Sword Proficiency.
Good thing that Cyrraia was nimble, or else her stealth would have gotten nullified by a violent spray of blood.
“Peace! I’m Cyrraia!” the strange disembodied whisper of a woman said.
Figuring out that anyone who wasn’t Cyrraia would have backstabbed her by now, Arpeggio spun back around to face their demonic opponents. “I-I apologize!” she said in a hushed tone, raising her arm to obscure her mouth’s movements as she spoke. In the best case scenario, the demons would have thought that she’d just taken some strange fighting pose by artistically slashing the air before mysteriously covering her face—hopefully!
“Forget about that,” Cyrraia said. “We must make our escape.”
“Yes” —no qualms there— “but how?”
“I’ve already created diversions.”
They both watched as the red demon’s next footstep resulted in an explosion that made him trip.
“No damage.”
“But he tripped, didn’t he?”
This was enough for both Arpeggio and Cyrraia. As soon as they turned around, the two demons rushed into a sprint—rushing headlong into landmines, and when they decided to try and fly, into air-mines!
— Behold, Cyrraia, the Goddess of Love, unofficially the 2nd stealthiest goddess, and self-proclaimed master of tactical retreat!
Cyrraia dispelled her stealth as soon as the sound of mines going off was entire miles behind them, giving Arpeggio peace of mind that she hadn’t, in fact, been crazy to listen to a disembodied whisper all along.
“Goddess Cyrraia!” Arpeggio exclaimed as they ran. “Goddess Minimine has tasked me to protect you!”
Wow, Cyrraia’s colleagues were just plain doting on her now, huh? Well, with god-killers behind them, it…it made sense. Yeah, a 2v1 wouldn’t be fair. Not at all.
“Can we take them on?” Cyrraia asked. “I may be a goddess, but those are god-killers!”
“Is it not possible to wipe them out with divine power?”
“I’m not battle-hardened enough to take more than just one of them!”
So, we’re evenly matched. Well, if they just needed a tie-breaker, then there was an easy way out of this.
“We will be running over the hills past the town, Goddess! My mother will slam the balance in our favor!”
With the demons hot on their heels, they emerged from the Monster Wall and Harmony came into sight.
Their hopes, however, would be dashed by a red flare hanging in the sky.
***