"A rift must’ve opened nearby," Momo said as she wrenched the steering wheel, sending the Hijet swerving around a shambling figure with half its torso missing. "This is clearly an outbreak. We need to let the hunters work and get away from here!"

Cecilia gripped the dashboard. The headlights swept across the dark road, illuminating more of them. More jerking shapes and dragging limbs, more empty faces turned toward the tiny truck with something that looked horribly like hunger.

Then she really looked at them.

The black filth coating their bodies was unmistakable, choking the ocean, corrupting the water until it had become something hostile and wrong. But this was the same substance, clinging to human skin like oil.

Humans.

These were humans.

Not monsters born from corrupted mana, not beasts twisted by miasma. People. People who had been walking and talking and living, and now they were dragging themselves down a dark rural road with limbs that bent backward, jaws that hung too loose and eyes that saw nothing but hunger.

Cecilia’s stomach dropped. Of course. Of course humans could be affected in this kind of way. Why had she assumed only monsters would be twisted by corruption?

"Oh God—" Bunny’s voice cracked from the truck bed. He was clutching the shovel to his chest, his face pale in the glow of the taillights. "Why, out of all fear, did You bless this body with fear of anything horror?! Momo, save me... Momo, save me..."

"Hang on!" Momo shouted, her knuckles white on the wheel. "We’re almost there! The main road is—"

SKIIIIIIDD—

The Hijet lurched. Momo had slammed the brake with both feet, and the tiny truck fishtailed, its tires screaming against the asphalt. Cecilia was thrown forward, her seatbelt catching her hard across the chest. From the truck bed came a heavy THUMP as Bunny collided with the back of the cab.

"Another rift opened," Momo whispered. "Another twin rift, huh?"

Cecilia blinked. She immediately remembered the dam, the two rifts that had opened simultaneously, the way one had been hidden until it was almost too late—

"Like the two rifts at the dam?!" she guessed.

Momo didn’t answer, but that question needed no answer.

"Momoooooooooooooo—" Bunny had scrambled on top of the truck cab, his voice rising to a wail that was entirely unbecoming of an ancient god of destruction. "—helppppp—" His fingers curled over the edge of the roof, his shovel abandoned, his dignity in tatters. "AH, FORGET IT, LET’S JUST DESTROY THIS WORL—"

"Shut up or I won’t bathe with you tonight."

"..."

"..."

"..."

Cecilia stared straight ahead through the windshield, her face frozen in an expression of soul-deep speechlessness. The cherry blossom air freshener swayed gently.

Then Bunny erupted.

"ALL-LOVING!" He thrust one hand toward the sky, his finger pointed at the heavens like a prophet delivering divine condemnation. "YOU ACTUALLY MADE MY WIFE THREATEN NOT TO BATHE WITH ME!" His voice cracked with the righteous fury of the truly wronged. "AH, SPARE ME! JUST KILL ME!"

"WHAT ARE YOU, VEGETA?!" Momo shrieked, her composure finally shattering. "STOP EMBARRASSING US IN FRONT OF THE CHILD!" She clasped her hands together, her eyes squeezing shut. "We seek forgiveness, All-Loving, All-Merciful, Ever-Living and Sustainer—"

Cecilia sat very still.

These two...

These two were the gods she had prayed to on the dam...

These two were the divine powers whose names had been whispered for millennia. These two were the beings who had created entire dimensions, who had lifted oceans and split skies, who held the fabric of reality between their fingers like thread.

And one of them was having a meltdown on the roof of a Daihatsu Hijet while the other one speed-ran a repentance prayer in the middle of a zombie outbreak.

She kinda understood Lilyca now.

"...So," Cecilia said, her voice remarkably steady given the circumstances, "about those twin rifts?"

Maybe it was best if she just drank the potion. Her fingers were already inching toward her inventory when—

"Oh, I’m suddenly not afraid...?" Bunny remarked, his voice losing its tremor, his posture shifting from cowering to something else entirely. He blinked, looked at his hands, then up at the sky with the dawning wonder of a man who had just received a very personal miracle. "ALL-LOVING, I LOVE YOU!"

BLAM!

He was gone from the roof before the sound finished registering. One moment, a cowering god clutching a shovel like a security blanket. The next, a blur of white t-shirt and divine purpose launching over the cab and into the glare of the headlights.

Cecilia’s jaw went slack.

Bunny hit the ground running, the shovel spinning in his grip like a staff, and the first zombie never saw him coming. The flat of the shovel connected with its skull in a horizontal arc that sent it airborne, tumbling end over end into two of its companions. All three went down in a tangle of corrupted limbs.

He flowed.

A second creature lunged from the left. Bunny pivoted on his heel, the shovel reversing direction as naturally as breathing, and drove the handle straight through its chest like a spear.

The zombie gurgled, impaled, and Bunny used the leverage to swing the entire body in a wide, sweeping circle, a human flail that bowled through the advancing horde and cleared a ten-foot radius around him.

He yanked the shovel free and the creature crumpled. Another was already mid-leap toward his throat. Bunny dropped low, let it sail over him, and drove the blade of the shovel upward in a reverse grip as he rose, catching it under the chin and launching it skyward in a spray of black ichor that glittered like oil in the headlights.

The shovel became a staff, a blade, a polearm, a bludgeon. He used it to vault over a cluster of grasping hands, landing in a crouch behind them, and swept their legs out in a single fluid motion.

Before they hit the ground, the shovel was already descending, once, twice, three times—

He caught a zombie by the throat with one hand, arm fully extended, while his other hand drove the shovel into the chest of another approaching from his blind spot. Then he tossed the first one into the air and batted it into the treeline like it weighed nothing.

The headlights framed him like a stage. His white t-shirt was spattered with black, his muscles flexing with every movement, his expression no longer fearful but serene.

He was beautiful. That was the only word for it.

Not handsome—beautiful.

The same way a sword was beautiful. The same way a storm was beautiful.

Every movement flowed into the next without hesitation, without waste. He didn’t dodge so much as he simply wasn’t where the grasping hands reached.

He didn’t strike so much as the shovel simply arrived exactly where it needed to be, exactly when it needed to be there.

These movements... Cecilia didn’t even see them in the way her husbands move. These were... more...

He planted the shovel in the ground like a standard, used it as a pivot, and launched both feet into the chest of the largest creature yet, a hulking thing that must have been twice his size, and sent it crashing backward through a fence that hadn’t done anything to deserve this night.

Cecilia watched, her mouth hanging open.

He finished the last cluster with a single swing, the shovel describing a perfect horizontal arc that caught five zombies at once and folded them like laundry. They hit the ground in a synchronized heap.

Silence.

Bunny straightened up. He rolled his shoulders. He spun the shovel one final time and struck a pose, feet planted wide, shovel resting across his shoulders, head tilted slightly toward the sky.

The headlights illuminated him like a statue of some ancient warrior god, which, Cecilia supposed, he literally was. "All-Merciful, let her bathe with me toni—"

"Pffft—" Momo spat, half-laughing, half-furious, leaning out the driver’s window. "REPENT TO ALL-LOVING FIRST PLEASE!"

Bunny turned, his pose unbroken, his expression serene. A single bead of black ichor dripped dramatically from his temple.

"Don’t worry," he said, spinning the shovel once more before tucking it under his arm like a gentleman’s cane. "I’ll fast tomorrow."

Momo giggled, "Huhu... Alright, I’ll fast with yo—"

A roar split the night.

The sound entered their ears and rattled their bones, vibrated in their teeth, making the little hairs on the back of everyone’s neck stand up like soldiers at attention.

Then came the light.

Dark purple bloomed from the direction of the main road like a bruise spreading across the sky, illuminating the treeline in shades of ultraviolet nightmare.

The shadows it cast moved wrong, stretching and contracting independently of any source, writhing along the asphalt like living things.

The three of them turned toward it in unison.

They still needed to get out of here. That was the plan.

Get to the main road, leave the hunters to their work and eat their fast food in peace. But...

"Child."

Bunny walked up to Cecilia’s window, his shovel still tucked under his arm, and leaned down until his face was level with hers.

Up close, she could see the black ichor still splattered across his cheek. She could see the exhaustion still lingering at the corners of his eyes. But she could also see his expectation. Like pride waiting to happen.

"How about you try closing this rift to finish the task?"

Cecilia’s eyes went wide.

Her mind raced backward.

The System’s task. The reason she had been sent to this world in the first place. She had almost forgotten, buried as it was under grave robbing and divine domestic disputes. But the task was still there, still unfinished.

"We’re having mortal bodies now, so we can’t help," Momo added from the driver’s seat, her voice carrying that same calm expectancy. She wasn’t looking at the purple light. She was looking at Cecilia. "It’s the perfect time to watch you finish the task yourself."

The perfect time.

These two... did they actually... staged all these...?

For her...?

ROAAAAAAAAAAAR—

The roar came again. Louder. Closer.

Cecilia uncorked the potion.