I didn’t fully understand what Nightchaser’s warning actually meant.

Still, the important part was obvious enough. It was dangerous.

And if danger alone was all that awaited me, then my decision wouldn’t change.

"I’m going in.”

"Idiot."

As though she’d expected that answer from the start, Nightchaser hid herself back inside the cup. Curious how she kept pulling off impossible tricks like this, I glanced inside. The cup was filled with gently rippling water.

Would I eventually be able to do things like this too? Frowning, I stuffed the cup into my pocket and headed toward what had once been the capital.

And immediately discovered the first problem.

"...Do I actually have to ask her to open it?”

The capital’s massive gates were sealed shut.

Figuring I had nothing to lose, I knocked on them.

"Elisia. It’s me. Let’s talk.”

Unfortunately, no answer came back.

Well, it was worth a try. I shrugged, and Linmel immediately drew her sword.

"Jern, step back for a moment.”

"I can make a small hole myself, you kno—”

"She won’t notice if you do that.”

Linmel replied with something I didn’t quite understand while leveling her blade.

—And that was the last thing I managed to process.

"Hup.”

A rather cute little battle cry escaped her lips, that made it seem that she didn’t even put all her power into this, then lightning fell.

Or rather, the sound came a little later.

-Craaaaaaaaaaaaash!!!

"..?"

She simply brought her raised sword down.

That single motion split the gate and surrounding walls perfectly in half. 𝙛𝓻𝒆𝒆𝒘𝙚𝓫𝙣𝙤𝒗𝙚𝓵.𝙘𝙤𝙢

-Rumble, rumble…

With the support structure completely shattered, the gate slowly collapsed inward. What had once been the western gate of the capital became little more than a heap of ruins in under 10 seconds.

I swallowed hard while watching the wooden gate splinter into sawdust beneath the falling chunks of stone.

And yet I was supposed to be the demigod here while Linmel was still human?

"That should get her attention."

Linmel muttered while staring at the destroyed gate, a faint hostility lingering in her voice.

It seemed she really didn’t like Elisia. Hating the Fallen was natural enough, but had the two of them actually fought before?

"R-right. Then let’s head in.”

The inside of the city looked exactly like it had from the outside. Perfectly restored and clean enough that people walking the streets wouldn’t have seemed strange at all. (Well, aside from the gate Linmel had just obliterated). Yet the city remained utterly silent.

As we started walking toward the library, the one place I hadn’t been able to examine from outside—

"Are cucumbers really supposed to cost this much?”

"You think we run a charity here? Don’t buy them if you don’t like it.”

"What are you brats doing playing in the middle of the road?! Get out of here!!”

"Ahem, be careful there. Under the new laws, getting caught hitting children is enough to land you a serious sentence.”

"Tsk, what’s this world coming to…”

People appeared.

"Hm."

"H-huh…?”

The capital I remembered, filled with the sounds of children laughing and running through the streets, merchants haggling over prices, the sounds of wagon wheels rolling by, beggars pleading for coins, and dogs wandering freely, had been perfectly recreated. A place the complete opposite of silence.

Apparently Linmel could see it too, because she looked around in confusion before suddenly turning pale and staring behind me.

"Jern, look behind you!”

The gate Linmel had just destroyed had somehow been restored completely.

At least, that was what our eyes showed us. My Tide Sense told a different story. I grabbed Linmel’s hand and immediately stepped backward.

"Jern?”

"It’s fake.”

I took a few more steps.

The moment we retreated, the suffocating silence returned.

Viewed from outside the gate, the capital was still nothing more than an empty ghost city. The gate also remained shattered exactly as before.

Frowning, I pulled out Nightchaser. The very reason I’d brought her along was for situations like this.

"What is this?”

"How should I know? Do you think I’m some kind of encyclopedia?”

"You don’t know?”

"Of course not. That place is just empty space. A fragment of a world not owned by any Outer God. Normally, something like that can’t continue existing. Even back in my era, they’d occasionally appear for a moment and vanish immediately. Do you seriously think a world can exist without a god?”

Still inside the cup, Nightchaser continued speaking as though she truly had no idea.

"But if I had to guess…You know the one who created this world? That so-called Outer God of the Abyssal Sea?”

"The First Mage? What about them?”

"To me, this world looks like one of their tools.”

"?"

A tool?

The implication alone made me frown, but Nightchaser continued calmly.

"The Outer God of the Abyssal Sea dreamed of creating the perfect world—a world without gods, right? But the funny thing is, they themselves were still a god. So they tried making a world capable of functioning without them by granting divinity directly to this emptiness and turning it into a false god.”

"What in the world are you talking about?”

"They forcibly divinized a world that belonged to no god. As for your friend…”

Nightchaser paused, choosing her words carefully, then smirked.

"She’s basically an eraser. If gods fighting over territory is like painting over a canvas with their own colors, then the Outer God of the Abyssal Sea did something else entirely. They incorporated Emptiness into the world itself. By doing so, they erased not only the gods but the worlds they ruled as well. As if nothing had existed there from the very beginning. Pretty tasteless, don’t you think?”

An eraser.

While I mulled over the meaning of that word, Nightchaser continued in an almost sing-song-like voice.

"The problem is that once the world was completed, there was no longer a need for the eraser itself. So it wasn’t supposed to exist anymore. I’m guessing the Outer God of the Abyssal Sea thought the same thing and devoured it personally. They just never imagined it would bloom again through the bloodline of their descendants.”

"So the situation’s pretty bad.”

"Pretty bad? Ahaha!”

Nightchaser openly laughed in mockery while poking her head out of the cup to stare at the capital.

"That thing can’t be killed, persuaded, or devoured. It’s basically cancer. It’s a common enemy to humanity, Great Void, and you. If left alone, it’ll keep spreading until it swallows the world humanity lives in. Great Void could probably isolate it somehow, but he wouldn’t want to touch it unless he had to. But the worst part is your situation. You have to go in there, don’t you?”

"..."

"What happens if your authority weakens? What if the territory you’ve spent all this time expanding gets buried and erased by that world? What happens when you’re reduced back to something that isn’t even a god anymore and still try standing against Great Void?”

"Well, it’s not like that would make things impossible.”

"Keh."

I shoved Nightchaser’s babbling head back into the cup with my finger and started walking toward the capital again.

Linmel was the one to stop me.

"Huh? Linmel, what is it?”

"Jern, I’ll go.”

"...What?"

Still holding my wrist, Linmel answered confidently.

"From what I just heard, if you go in there, something bad could happen, right?”

"Probably. But we can’t be sure.”

Elisia would never intentionally harm me.

At least, I didn’t think the sort of thing Nightchaser feared would actually happen.

While I was thinking that over, Linmel proudly thumped her chest.

"Then just trust me. There won’t be any problem if I go inside, right?”

"...Uh..."

Is that how it worked?

For a brief moment, I was genuinely tempted but then shook my head.

"No. Absolutely not. That’s way too dangerous.”

"Dangerous?”

Linmel titled her head. Behind her, the shattered city gate remained in plain view.

Something she did with those small white hands currently gripping my wrist.

"Well, Elisia could be in danger, so—”

"Don’t worry. I absolutely won’t kill her.”

"She can’t end up crippled either. Leave her arms and legs intact.”

"Of course! If she resists too much, she might end up with a few scars on her face, but that’s fine, right?”

"Not exactly, but…”

"Trust me, Jern.”

Linmel looked directly into my eyes.

"While you were suffering in that place called the Abyssal Sea for our sake—though I wasn’t doing something on your level, I worked hard as well. So that someday, when you came back, I could become your strength.”

"Yeah. Honestly, it seems to me like you’ve gotten stronger than me.”

"That’s not true, Jern. I know enough to understand that much.”

Linmel stared at me quietly.

And within those eyes, something different reflected there.

"You’ve changed Jern. So much. So very much.”

"..."

At those words—

A chill slowly crawled up my spine.

"Linmel. What do I look like to you?”

"Jern is Jern. No matter how much you change, that won’t change.”

"...Damn."

Linmel had probably known from the very moment I returned. Known that I had become something beyond human. And she’d seen it all without missing a single instant.

It seemed like I had underestimated her instincts far too much.

What would someone think after realizing that someone they’d spend over half their life with had become something other than human? I opened my mouth to explain myself, but she shook her head as if to say it wasn’t necessary.

"I’m okay. But at least in situations like this, I want you to rely on me. I’ll definitely come back safely. I promise.”

There were countless things I wanted to say—

But only one came out.

"...I’m counting on you.”

"Yep!”

As though that alone was enough, Linmel stepped back and walked through the gate.

The moment she crossed inside, her presence vanished completely from my Tide Sense’s range. The foul feeling in my chest worsened, and I sat down where I stood. From inside the cup, Nightchaser spoke in surprise.

"So that’s why you took a liking to her.”

"If you don’t shut up, I’ll kill you.”

"Why so hostile? There are beings capable of perceiving realms forbidden to mortals, you know? Those kinds of people eventually get acknowledged as apostles by beings like us. For a mere human to possess the qualifications of an apostle is extraordinary. At least among the humans I knew, they were all insect-like creatures. I would’ve thought such things were impossible for them, unless they carried Elven blood…”

I put on a lid on the cup so Nightfall couldn’t crawl back out and stuffed it deep into my bag.

Even if Elisia had become a Fallen possessing some strange domain, she still wouldn’t be able to defeat the current Linmel.

'Even Decay would probably die against that monster.'

Both her strength and ability to see through the essence of things.

They honestly seemed superior to mine, despite me technically being only a demi-god.

Thinking that, I sat on a hill overlooking the capital and waited for Linmel.

Several hours later.

As the sun began to set and the city was painted in twilight—

"...”

Something entered the range of my Tide Sense.

-Thud.

From inside the gate, something twisted and metallic came flying out, as if the city itself had spat it out.

"Haah, this is bad."

Nightchaser crawled halfway out of the bag, frowning.

She was staring at the object that had once been a sword.

—It had been the same sword that Linmel had carried a few hours ago.

I walked over and picked it up, inspecting the warped metal in silence. Nightchaser, growing visibly uneasy, hurriedly spoke.

"Maybe you should wait a little longer? She could’ve just thrown it away because it was inconvenient to carry, right?”

"No."

"Seriously, stop acting like a human.”

"I’ve waited long enough.”

If they were going to see me, then let them see.

I released every seal restraining me and took a single step forward.

Water slowly seeped from the footprint I left behind. Seeing that, Nightchaser lowered her head heavily.

"...Then finish it as fast as possible. If nobody noticed when you created that lake earlier, then maybe there’s still a chance.”

Linmel, Elisia.

It was time to drag them both back out.