Karandiel was relieved that she had already restarted her source of strength less than a day after she was cast down from the realm of gods. When her fate had first been decided, she had expected to go through a relatively arduous journey to find meaning in her existence again. But here she was, already having found a clue and something to spin off of, thanks to Ackster.

She just didn’t know what to make of her first chapter’s ability.

Before and while writing the first chapter of her Book of Convictions, Karandiel knew she was dragging Ackster down due to her uselessness and that he was insistent on protecting her. The goal of the first chapter was to stop that.

But where did the golden, see-through egg around her come from? It was like a smaller, less spacious version of the shuttle that had protected her during her fall that also let her see and hear what was on the other side. Though, the sounds were muted like they were on the other side of a thick glass wall.

But it blocked the ants’ attacks and trampling legs as they ran over her, deciding to focus on Ackster instead. Since the ants just ran over her, they pushed her golden egg down into the ground instead of pushing and knocking it around, as they had done at first.

Karandiel lay curled up in her golden egg and watched Ackster through the endless forest of ant legs. It had taken a few minutes, but he eventually made his way over to her and stood in front of her protective spheroid.

Ackster stood right in front of her and split apart the incoming avalanche of ants with seeming relative ease.

Karandiel once again realized how powerless she was as she could do nothing but watch Ackster fight, kill, and eat the ants with frantic fervor. At least she wasn’t going to die or bring him down with her now that she was inside her golden egg.

However, she could sense that as she had just made her first chapter, she didn’t have much energy, and the golden egg wouldn’t last forever. If the ants had been free to trample all over it and attack it with reckless abandon, it would have cracked before long.

Karandiel’s heart, which had been cold after she chose to pursue solitude after what happened in the divine realm, found Ackster’s wide, muscular, bloody, and torn back incredibly reliable. Just watching him move around and pummel ants was calming, and her remaining anxiety from before she wrote the third volume’s first chapter seeped out of her.

She didn’t know what strange twist of fate had brought them together, what had put Ackster in the right position to find her after her fall, but she was thankful for it.

Although she had lost a lot of hope when the god she believed in, the god she worshipped, the god she had dedicated her life to, turned out not to be as great as she believed, that he wasn’t as worthy of worship, there was no reason to lose all hope. In the first place, the reason she had argued with her god, the god of light, Yillister, was because she believed in the good of humans.

She had questioned why the gods just watched Millmeria and the mortals go through the Calamitous Cycles for eternity without doing anything. Each Cycle brought with it more than enough suffering for their believers. Yet, the gods remained idle.

She could have understood if it was for a greater cause, such as the suffering of the last generation of each cycle granted prosperity, joy, and blessings to the next cycle.

But that wasn’t why the gods didn’t interfere.

Some couldn’t since they were too weak to act in the mortal realm.

But the others, the ruling gods, didn’t want to. They thrived on the despair of people, on the hope they held at the end of times. Why would they even try to get rid of or stop the Cycles when that would let society flourish and lessen the worship and faith they prospered off of?

The gods willingly let humanity, elves, dwarves, fairies, and all the other intelligent native races of Millmeria suffer for their own greed.

Karandiel thought she was doing good work as Yillister’s angel as she helped him bestow blessings upon believers all over the world. But all she had done was stoke the flames of worship in a selfish god.

That was what had destroyed her Book of Convictions, Second Volume.

The belief she had held all her life and her angelhood was shattered by the sudden revelation and insight that gods weren’t good.

She spoke up for her beliefs that the gods would reign in eternal gratitude if they could end this eternal cycle of destruction and rebirth. But the gods wouldn’t listen. And she was powerless to resist when they decided Karandiel had done her part. She was more trouble than necessary in the peaceful divine realm, free from the torments of mortality.

Even with her Second Volume, she wouldn’t have been able to do anything to the gods and the other angels as they stripped her of her angelic status and sent her down to the mortal realm.

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They didn’t kill her, but it wasn’t out of mercy. Since she spoke up for the pitiable humans and their miserable fate, she should join them.

After that, Karandiel, who had lost all she believed in, had been empty. She still had the mental strength and fortitude from life before angelhood and from spending all that time in the divine realm. But even that easily cracked as soon as she was put in a dire situation.

However, thanks to Ackster, Karandiel had been able to use to cracks to sow the seeds of her new strength.

She also had no reason to shield her heart from other humans and inhabitants of the mortal Millmeria. She might have lost hope, but she wasn’t foolish enough to take it out on the innocent.

Karandiel felt her sense of powerlessness wash away as she continued to watch Ackster, more than a little curious about where all these ants came from.

The more Ackster fought, the more his mixed feelings of ease and unease grew. He ate more and more, and his injuries were so shallow that they recovered in a matter of less than minutes. He couldn’t escape the accumulating fatigue. But he could feel Strong Body begin to work away the aftereffects of Limit Breaker from when he fought Hansel.

He was also getting increasingly used to the chaotic, non-stop battle with ants throwing themselves at him without end. His movements grew smoother and connected better with each other.

Instead of first punching an ant to death, then grabbing it and emptying its contents into his mouth before throwing it away or using it to attack another ant, he did it all in one single motion. His efficiency rose, and he killed more ants quicker.

That was part of the reason why he felt both more ease and unease. He was growing stronger in real-time and killing more and more ants. But no matter how many ants he killed, their corpses didn’t pile up.

He had moved around a little, but he had stayed next to Karandiel and her golden egg, so it wasn’t that they had left piles of dead ant carcasses behind. The corpses seemed to disappear somewhere.

But the battle was too chaotic, and there were too many ants for Ackster to see where the dead ants went.

Another reason why Ackster began feeling worried was the fact that it looked like he was eventually going to emerge as the victor. He was indeed tired. But it wasn’t to the point where he couldn’t endure it or power through. Aside from that, he was no longer facing any threat from the ants.

It was tense, and if he let down his guard, one of the ants might get in a lucky bite on his neck or something. But Ackster had no plans on letting down his guard. If anything, this drawn-out battle with the ants, where attacks came from every direction, was a good training opportunity for his skills and combat techniques.

He hadn’t even used the sword he pilfered from the bearded adventurer since he wanted to use his hands and throw whatever food he came over into his mouth. Ackster also felt that using the sword would be a waste. He didn’t need it, and fighting the ants with it would only wear down its durability until it became trash.

The sword wasn’t even that great, he had noticed. It was sharp. But it wasn’t that much sturdier than him. In that case, it would be better to keep the sword strapped to his hip until he needed something sharp or the extra range it offered. Nash’s sword was better.

But Ackster still had the advantage without the sword. And if things went on like this without anything changing, the ants would begin to lose numbers. It wasn’t worth it for them.

And so far, considering how they had waited until Ackster and Karandiel were too deep in the high grass to retreat before launching a coordinated attack, the ants or the ant controlling the disposable ants seemed relatively intelligent. It could be an instinctual decision to lure the prey or wait for it until it was in the prime position.

But the fervor that the ants charged at him with made Ackster wonder if there wasn’t perhaps something else at play. Not that he had any way of finding out what that could possibly be.

Ackster remained vigilant as he continued smashing, kicking, and stomping the ants. He would occasionally spare a glance to make sure Karandiel and her golden egg were holding up well, which they did. Though, it had lost some of its luster, so Ackster could tell that they weren’t working with unlimited time.

Ackster kept his eyes out for anything that could lead them out of this situation before the egg around Karandiel cracked. But all he could see were the dark brown ants and their glistening exoskeletons shimmering in the pre-dawn twilight.

His body was practically moving on its own to kill and eat the ants, so his mind and eyes were mostly free to look for alternatives to continuing in this everlasting battle of attrition.

However, before he could find anything or try to think of a solution that promised his and Karandiel’s lives, the ground beneath his feet trembled and gave away.

Ackster’s eyes widened in surprise as he lost his footing. He felt the torn soil slip away and disappear down under him. Before he could even think about what was happening, he used the nearby ants and whatever pieces of dirt that hung in the air as stepping stones to close the distance between himself and Karandiel.

He didn’t know what was going on, but with his mind already running on overdrive, he quickly figured out that they were going down. He also understood in a flash how the ants had appeared out of nowhere. They lived underground.

And during his battle, they had dug out the ground beneath him and Karandiel. It was too late to stop that or try to get back onto solid ground. With how many ants there were, there wasn’t any hope of getting somewhere that could hold his weight without this repeating. And that was without Karandiel, who he wouldn’t ever leave behind.

So, after getting close to Karandiel, he did his best to cradle and hold her golden egg of self-protection.

If they were going to fall, they were going to do it together.

The only thing worse than the two of them falling for this trap and into the ground would be them getting separated.

Karandiel might have regained some of her power, but it was a self-defense ability, and it was running out of steam. She would die if she got separated from Ackster inside the underground ant’s nest.

The golden egg was big enough to contain Karandiel and allow her some wiggle room. It was also slippery, so it was difficult for Ackster to hold it. But he at least managed to make sure it didn’t get further away from him in the rain of dirt and ants accompanying them underground.

Ackster tried to peer into the depths of the hole the ants had dug for them. But the only thing he could see were the tunnels on the sides. Only impenetrable darkness awaited them at the bottom.