Chapter 50

Near the realm of Olympus, the land occasionally experiences thin lightning strikes followed by pink rain.

Meteorologist John Callet, despite extensive research, couldn’t understand the phenomenon until he accidentally met a resident wearing a lion’s hide on his head, who provided the clue.

[Zeus is being chased by Hera!]

[Huh? Chased?]

[Literally, Zeus is running away. He can’t hold on anymore. No matter what he does, he can’t win. For Zeus to win against that woman, he has no choice but to strike lightning into his head!]

[…What?]

[Yeah. This time it’s been about three days. He’s held out quite a while.]

John Callet stared blankly at the hearty laughter.

*

Lightning strikes repeatedly, scattering thunder and noise, burning and dropping the Watchers.

“Have you gotten much stronger?”

Miho, who had approached unnoticed, asked me while holding a bell in her hand.

I nodded.

Indeed, I’ve gotten much stronger.

At this level, I could probably take down a large beast by myself.

“Are they from Olympus?”

I pointed to a group of gods fighting fiercely in the sky.

“Yes. From there, Hermes, Ares, Athena…”

“Why is Freya there?”

“…She’s the type to move around a lot, so she probably came running after playing at Olympus.”

“She’s popular.”

Everyone seems to be holding their own.

Freya, using all sorts of magic, was surprisingly skilled.

I particularly liked the one wearing a lion’s hide and smashing the Watchers’ heads with a crude club.

But is that Hercules?

That tiny girl?

Somehow, it felt like a mythical hero had been turned into a gacha game SSR character, making my heart ache.

Praying not to die, I slowly moved forward.

To where the 4th-class Watchers are.

To where Tyrano sleeps.

*

I still don’t understand.

What crime I could have possibly committed.

Of course, I have no intention of understanding.

It doesn’t bother me.

In the entire trajectory of my life, I’ve never been anything but upright.

I just did my best to survive.

“Am I still evil?”

In the past, when Belva analyzed me and represented me with numbers.

My tendency was evil, then it became chaos, and then returned to evil.

I wonder about that standard.

How does that universal morality, which appears across dimensions, evaluate and judge me?

“You are evil.”

A Watcher with one wing torn off declared to me.

“Why?”

I had already sliced up another Watcher.

In the pool of blood of her comrade, I tilted my head at her, kneeling and looking up at me.

Surely this isn’t considered evil too?

Then, she spoke.

“Until now, you committed evil deeds but still harbored goodness within. You valued death heavily and fought only for your survival. Thus, you were chaos.”

“And now?”

When I asked, she pointed her finger at me.

“Look at you now.”

It seemed uncomfortable for her to lift her head, so I crouched down to match her eye level.

In her transparent blue eyes, a figure was reflected.

A woman with snow-white hair, smeared with bloodstains, smiling brightly as if delighted.

It was unfamiliar and slightly disgusting.

Feeling joy at the thought of devouring the Watcher after finishing speaking.

My face naturally contorted at the sight of myself, now influenced by divinity to an unknown extent.

“You are clearly evil, enjoying every part of the process.”

*

Wow.

That’s a wake-up call.

It hasn’t been long since I regained my divine power, and already it’s come to this.

Click-

I sighed and hung the Sealing Orb around my neck.

I need to quickly gain perfect control over my divine power.

Before something really bad happens.

“……”

“How is it?”

As soon as I put on the Sealing Orb, the expression of the Watcher looking at me changed subtly.

As expected, it’s because of the divine power.

“A bit different, right?”

Divine power is another self that constantly communicates with existence itself.

And over time, divinity and existence merge, completely transforming into something with the nature of divinity.

For example, gods like Zeus or Freya, who are born with innate divinity, fall into this category.

In such cases, existence becomes divinity.

They come to hate things that oppose their divinity and live a life always proving their divinity.

Just as Freya cannot do anything that harms beauty.

In my case, killing, consuming, and surviving are the essence of my divinity.

That is, the instinct to devour everything to become stronger.

If I were completely consumed by divinity in this situation, I wouldn’t be able to continue this conversation.

I would have already devoured them and moved on to the next prey.

I understand.

From what I’ve felt, thinking by separating divinity and self in this way is incredibly difficult.

There’s no reason to separate them in the first place.

Divinity is the depth of existence…

It’s my inner self, and that itself is the core.

So, you must have judged me solely by my divinity.

All of me.

“…Huh, why?”

But that’s wrong.

You might not have known, but entrusting yourself to divinity is incredibly dangerous.

“To you, I don’t seem bad, do I?”

Step.

I took a step towards the terrified Watcher.

The most fatal flaw of divinity is its purity.

Emotions are easily revealed, judgment is slow, and being absorbed in one thing narrows the vision.

It doesn’t understand that keeping someone alive without feeding them brings greater opportunities.

That was too big of a flaw.

For survival, it’s more effective to eliminate multiple weaknesses than to specialize in one strength.

There should be no gaps.

After all, when beings of similar levels meet, it’s all about who shows a gap first.

How would I, who pulled down the Divine Power below, be evaluated?

Thinking that, I raised my sword.

It’s not even enjoyable.

I’m no longer confused.

Such things are neither necessary nor meaningful.

It’s just about devouring as much as possible in the most efficient way.

And thus, surviving until the end.

That’s all.

Crash.

The sword I swung down pierced the Watcher’s head and plunged deep into the ground.

“Are you awake?”

“…I thought I had fallen into hell.”

Belva, who was perched on my shoulder, squirmed and opened her eyes.

That’s her first line?

At Belva’s words, I also looked around this place anew.

Thud.

Then, a white wing flew from somewhere and got caught on my foot.

A wing smeared with blood.

All sorts of gods, angels, and monsters of this land were entangled, creating a hellish scene.

From Belva’s perspective, it must have felt like that indeed.

I gently closed my eyes.

Perhaps because I absorbed quite a few Watchers, a new ability emerged.

As I activated the power, my vision pulled back, and the world became small and round.

At the same time, I moved the Divine Power to create a dark, translucent curtain.

It felt like embracing the whole world with both hands.

So this is how it’s done.

Thud, thud thud!

Suddenly, as the curtain appeared, the Watchers still coming through collided with it and fell into the void far away.

The Watchers from that dimension, whose connection was severed but were not yet dead, also clutched their heads and cried out in pain.

I look at the sky.

The curtain of Watchers I created, resembling countless eyeballs clustered together, was gazing down.

It soon disappeared, but it was a curtain of a horrifying form, like something out of a nightmare.

…Why do I look like that?

Disgusting.

Anyway, I’ve confirmed the performance of the power, so that’s that.

The Watchers, who had all stopped, either died from enemy attacks or cried out to their god.

“■■■! Why us!”

“No, I can’t die here, in this place…!”

But among them, there was no Watcher who cursed or denied their god.

Even if I tried to capture and interrogate them, they were dying too quickly.

I wanted to check if all the Watchers had bomb necklaces, but the result was a bit disappointing.

I also realized how lacking in faith Belva was as a Watcher.

“…Yeah, yeah.”

Belva, who seemed a bit sulky, grumbled and flew up into the sky, rescuing Noah, who was floundering in the midst of the war.

Noah was breathing heavily, looking utterly drained.

“Ah. Right. Noah, you did great.”

I gave a thumbs up and praised.

The best.

“Th-thank you, ugh…”

Noah, held by Belva’s hand, looked down and kept retching.

It was especially amusing to see Noah shedding tears while watching the Watchers being eaten by dinosaurs.

“…It’s, it’s much larger than I thought…”

“I was surprised too. Isn’t it too expensive to invest in just one dimension? Especially bringing things like Sacred Artifacts.”

“Th-the Sanctuary evaluated your abilities as extremely dangerous. Not just you, but the dimensions influenced by you had to be guarded against.”

“Huh? The dimensions themselves? Why?”

This is something I’m hearing for the first time.

When I pressed for answers, Noah asked me back as if I really didn’t know.

“Th-the size has grown tremendously compared to the beginning… Didn’t you know?”

The size has grown?

Of course, I had a feeling that the dimension itself had expanded a bit, but it was so vast that I didn’t really notice.

Unknown areas have increased, though.

But what does it mean that the size has grown? It’s an uneasy feeling.

To me, Noah whispered in a slightly frightened voice.

“This world… is devouring other worlds. And it’s, uh, tremendously… endlessly…”