The Goddess Department's Farce
The goddesses of the Goddess Department, who ranked far below the highest war god—a black mage—glared at him with faces full of resentment and indignation. He continued speaking indifferently.
“A shabby robe? This is an incredibly valuable treasure that I cherish dearly.”
His gray robe was proof of the Root School’s lineage, passed down through generations to its masters. Reinforced with the Main God’s authority through Ten Circles, calling this combat robe shabby was laughable enough to make a dog chuckle.
“Short? I’m taller than all of you.”
It was absurd for creatures far smaller than himself to criticize someone taller as short.
“Rape? I have standards. You lot are absolutely not—!”
He now observed the goddesses, who had broken down into tears and hysterics from sheer terror.
‘How did these goddesses end up less beautiful than High Elves? Their faces, breasts, and waists are bloated with excessive divine power. The rest is a complete mess—almost no reinforcement elsewhere. Terrible divine power management.’
The goddesses of the Divine Realm lacked any healthy glow or muscle tone. Instead, they gave off a strong sense of deficiency, as if something vital was missing. Their bodily harmony had collapsed, stripping away the natural beauty unique to goddesses and leaving them feeling like sharp, artificial constructs.
‘What a waste of eyes. I’d rather look at women from the Demon Realm.’
Compared to the Succubus Queen’s unimaginably sensual figure and the Demon Queen’s seductive face, these goddesses weren’t even worth comparing.
The black mage quickly lost all interest in them and hurled them toward the building. Just as he turned to head for the stairs, dozens of goddesses in identical uniforms came rushing over.
‘Security goddesses? They possess a decent amount of divine artifacts and divine power.’
As the divine artifacts in their hands began to glow, the black mage channeled magic power into the defensive barrier of his robe.
‘Their response is reasonably fast. Let’s see what the Divine Realm’s combat goddesses are capable of.’
The Divine Realm’s goddesses seemed to be somewhat elite, as they surrounded the black mage in fairly orderly fashion. Then, in the next moment, the black mage could not believe his eyes.
Whoosh—!
The goddesses all raised the muzzles of their divine artifacts into the air and fired upward. A goddess in slightly more ornate attire, apparently the one in charge, shouted at the black mage.
“This is a warning! Criminal, surrender immediately! You have the right to appoint a defense god and the right to remain silent!”
“???”
Watching the attacks fly uselessly into the sky, the black mage felt like an idiot for preparing to defend himself.
‘I must be the strange one here.’
The combat goddess commander continued shouting seriously for him to surrender, making him feel even more like the odd one out.
“I warn you! The next time will be a direct attack! Surrender immediately!”
At best, they were only Intermediate Gods. The difference in combat power between them and a highest-ranking god like the black mage required no calculation. Yet hearing them continue to demand surrender made the black mage feel increasingly strange.
‘They seem to genuinely believe that a nice threat will make me surrender without fail. What a bizarre place. And what’s with those pathetic divine artifacts?’
No matter how he looked at them, they weren’t designed to kill enemies but to stun and subdue them.
‘They think they can subdue me with toys like that? Even a mid-tier Fighting God or War God resisting violently would be impossible to stop. Just how do they maintain public order here? In human kingdoms, if an incident occurs in the capital, fully armed knights and elite soldiers rush in. Their equipment and forces completely overwhelm even the elite troops on the front lines. But the Divine Realm is completely different.’
‘These combat goddesses look like they have zero real combat experience. How can the capital be guarded by troops that don’t even reach the level of recruits? Goddesses with lower physical abilities and combat power are completely unsuited for security duties. Unless they possess extremely developed special abilities like Granzoa.’
The black mage lightly released a bit of killing intent and Fighting Spirit.
‘What I see can’t be everything.’
Shudder shudder shudder—!
Upon contact with even that slight killing intent and Fighting Spirit, the combat goddesses proved just how inexperienced they were—the hands holding their divine artifacts were trembling violently.
The black mage felt deep regret inside.
‘Already scared stiff? I haven’t even started attacking or properly threatened them yet. This is ridiculous.’
These beings who couldn’t even control their own divine artifacts or aim them properly were supposedly the ones maintaining public order? Regret washed over him.
‘Damn it! If I had known the combat goddesses were this weak, I should have crushed the Divine Realm from the start. But that Sly Raccoon Main God probably won’t let me, will he?’
The Sly Raccoon Main God was a complete master of Eleven Circles, while the black mage had only just surpassed Ten Circles. Yet even a tiny difference in the higher circles created an enormous gap in combat power. Just as a Ten Circle black mage could easily deal with Demon Kings who had surpassed Nine Circles.
‘If I respond with Dimensional Authority and summoning Otherworld Spirit Gods, I might be able to manage it. But it’s too risky. Better drop it.’
Disappointed by the combat goddesses’ pathetic combat power and response, the black mage no longer wanted to look at them.
“Ground Fishing.”
"Magic Type: Spatial Magic, Wide-Area Suppression"
"Effect: Like fishing, it lifts the target's legs into the air and fixes them upside down."
⟨ Ground Fishing ⟩
It was a spell used to deal with charging groups of knights or soldiers, with its range determined by the caster’s magic power. The only ways to escape were to leave the area of effect at the moment of activation or to cut off one’s own legs.
After the first casting, the protagonist had once muttered that it felt a bit half-baked. After all, simply cutting off the ankles would end it immediately.
Pop pop pop pop—!
As the black mage lightly chanted the activation phrase, magic power flowed through the ground and instantly seized the goddesses’ feet, yanking them upward.
Pop—! Pop—! Pop—!
“Kyaaaaaack—! Why aren’t you surrendering?!”
“Kyaaak—! The manual doesn’t work on this!”
Every single combat goddess in uniform was caught by the ankles, hoisted upside down, and left dangling in the air. Seeing the combat goddesses screaming while suspended upside down, the black mage let out a sigh without thinking.
‘Sigh—! Not a single one dodged? This is truly pathetic.’
The divine artifacts that were as precious as life to combat gods lay scattered on the ground, and not one goddess attempted a counterattack.
‘These things aren’t even worth dealing with.’
He walked past the combat goddesses, who were screaming and begging for rescue despite suffering no injuries beyond being fixed upside down in the air, and headed for the main entrance. There, the higher angel from earlier was trembling violently while guarding the door.
“Is the automatic corridor being restricted to goddesses a mandatory rule?”
The black mage spoke politely while trying to calm the boiling rage inside him.
‘To think the Divine Realm was this weak? What the hell were all those hardships you endured as a mercenary god for? Once I reach Eleven Circles, I’m definitely going to flip this entire Divine Realm upside down.’
Since he still wasn’t confident he could defeat the Sly Raccoon Main God, he had to remain composed. In response to the black mage’s unexpectedly gentle words, the higher angel answered in a panic.
“N-no! The female-only policy is merely a recommendation issued by the Goddess Department!”
“Ha—! Is that so? So they dared to insult me and treat me like a criminal over something that isn’t even law.”
“B-but… it’s applied almost like law.”
The black mage looked for the goddesses he had released earlier, but they had already vanished. They had completely ignored the combat goddesses who had come to rescue them and fled.
‘Even demons say thank you when someone helps them, but these ones just disappear without a word. What kind of bizarre place is this?’
The combat goddesses who had come to rescue those ungrateful goddesses now seemed more pitiful.
Snap—! Thud! Thud!
When he canceled the spell, all the upside-down goddesses fell to the ground. He then stepped onto the automatically moving corridor and stairs, heading comfortably toward the Main God Temple, but his mind grew complicated.
‘The Demon Realm is far stronger than the Divine Realm. The Demon Gods’ abilities include God-Slaying black magic that can kill even a Main God, and they possess the same Eleven Circles as the Main God of the Divine Realm. There are nearly a thousand Upper Gods known as Demon Kings, and three Demon Emperors who command them. The number of Upper Demons under their command exceeds one million, and the number of lesser demons is beyond counting.’
He had thought the Divine Realm, which had fought the overwhelmingly powerful Demon Realm for eons, would be on a similar level, but this was clearly strange.
“A hypocritical peace?”
Battles between the Demon Realm and Divine Realm had always existed. Yet the Divine Realm itself was far too peaceful.
‘Right now, millions of angels are dying on the battlefield, and tens of thousands of divine beings are dying and regenerating repeatedly. But this capital seems completely unrelated to any of it.’
No matter how he looked at it, the Divine Realm and its goddesses were living as if the endless war and death with the Demon Realm had nothing to do with them.
‘They have enough leisure to build female-only facilities that contribute nothing to the war against the Demon Realm, consuming resources and emotions in the process?’
When the black mage had wandered as a mercenary god to reach Ten Circles, he had often encountered sentient races who had lost their home planets and drifted through space without destination.
‘Sentient beings who lost their mother planet wander the universe without any hope, searching for a planet that will accept them until they eventually disappear.’
Spaceships created by scientific civilizations inevitably break down or reach the limit of their power sources. The sentient beings who cannot avoid death then perish, leaving behind ghost ships that drift through space.
Some transcendents who led races of sentient beings wandering the universe would sense the black mage’s presence and cling to him, crying out for the great god to save them.
‘They begged, saying they would offer not only their own souls but half of their descendants if only he would spare them.’
Of course, he had never accepted even once.
‘All sentient beings are free. They must take responsibility for their own lives and deaths. They have to pay the price for destroying their own planets.’
One of the reasons the black mage had modified his magic tower into a survival-type vessel was for this very reason.
Yet seeing the fate of those ghost ships of sentient beings who had lost their mother planets and perished, overlapping with the false peaceful appearance of the Divine Realm, made him feel like vomiting.
‘I barely got appointed as a divine being, and now I find myself in a Divine Realm on the verge of destruction? What terrible luck.’
It was enough to make him seriously wonder if he had destroyed a world in his previous life to deserve such misfortune.
Vrrrrrrrr—!
At the point where the automatic corridor and stairs ended, the Main God Temple and the surrounding buildings came into view. There, mid-rank combat male gods heavily armed with full plate armor and shields stood in formation before the stairs. Their Fighting Spirit was excellent, and their training appeared considerable—they looked like truly elite troops.
‘Not bad at all.’
They were elite soldiers no matter how one looked at them, so the black mage unconsciously smiled.
‘They know the difference in power between themselves and me, yet they show no fear. Their bodies are also robust and well-trained. Was my disappointment earlier a bit premature?’
Having finished his assessment, the black mage heard the voice of the male god commander ring out before him.
“Advance—!”
Thud—! Thud—!
The combat male gods advanced cautiously, shields forward, matching the rhythm of their steps.
‘Excellent.’
The footsteps of hundreds of combat male gods synchronized perfectly, pressing down on the black mage. Powerful divine power concentrated on their shields, transforming into a wall of light. Feeling oddly cheerful, the black mage created a wall of magic power and slammed it into the wall of divine power.
Kuuuuuuuung—! Rumble rumble rumble—!
When the wall of magic power the black mage had raised overwhelmed the combat male gods’ wall of divine power, the soldiers in the front row held their shields firm while those in the following rows pushed from behind with all their strength to support them. Not a single combat male god was sent flying or screamed despite facing magic power that easily surpassed their total strength.
The black mage found himself nodding involuntarily.
‘This is how you survive against the Demon Realm!’
He finally felt satisfied now that he could see the true skill of the Divine Realm’s elite soldiers.
‘Even if only in name, wasn’t I the God of War?’
After seeing only those pathetic recruits earlier, encountering such elite troops naturally lifted his mood.
‘Come on! Break through the wall of magic power and come at me already.’
Thud—! Thud—! Thud—!
But something felt slightly off. The combat male gods continued only to hammer at the wall of magic power with their shields, simply holding their ground.
Thud—! Thud—! Thud—!
‘Why aren’t they coming?’
The combat male gods did nothing but continue pushing against the wall of magic power with their shields. Finding it strange, the black mage examined them closely and let out a dumbfounded sigh.
“Sigh—!”
Crackle—!
The black mage pierced through the wall of divine power with magic power, grabbed the commander by the neck, and forcibly dragged him over, lifting him up in front of his eyes.
“Ugh!”
When their commander was suddenly taken hostage, the combat male gods became agitated, but they only struck the wall of magic power even faster and harder.
Thump—! Thump—! Thump—!
Now, with only irritation rising as background noise, he suppressed his surging anger, tightened his right hand around the commander’s neck, and asked.
“You mere mid-rank security gods dare to mock me, the highest-ranking War God?”
“Kek—! Kek—! What do you mean, sir?”
The mid-rank god, directly exposed to the killing intent and Fighting Spirit of a highest-ranking War God, answered while trembling violently.
“Where are your weapons? Why do you only have shields? Do I look that ridiculous to you?”
There was no greater insult than mid-rank gods challenging a highest-ranking War God while disarmed. If not for the Main God of the Divine Realm, the black mage would have wanted to tear them all apart.
But suddenly, the mid-rank god with a blank, clueless expression answered.
“Kek—! We couldn’t bring weapons because the requisition paperwork didn’t get approved.”
“!?”
The moment he heard the mid-rank god’s answer, the black mage set him down on the ground. The mid-rank god immediately snapped into a rigid posture of attention under the black mage’s glare that looked ready to kill him at any moment, while internally cursing furiously.
‘Those damn security police bitches—! Can’t they even measure divine power properly? They said he was an Upper God? Anyone can see he’s a highest-ranking god—!’
The security police goddesses had gone to respond to a report about a perverted male god who was publicly harassing goddesses in public, only to get miserably beaten. Afterward, the combat male gods had rushed over with a suppression unit upon receiving the additional report—delivered through tears and sobs—that the criminal was an Upper God or higher. But this was actually a highest-ranking god.
Seeing the figure in the black robe, something clicked in his mind.
‘The noble and great black mage who has become the newly appointed God of War, right? Is this an undercover inspection? My older brother who works at the Main God Temple didn’t say anything…?’
No matter how he looked at it, this appeared to be the mid-realm-born War God who had been promoted to the highest rank at the Round Table a few days ago for killing two Demon Kings and annihilating high-ranking black mages.
‘The Goddess Department warned that he was powerful enough to want to destroy the entire Middle World and had a filthy temper. And since he’s a lustful color god who chases after women, they even sent down his personal information and face with instructions to be careful when dealing with him.’
He was currently rumored to be the most dangerous Fighting God in the Divine Realm, yet the goddesses had picked a fight with him.
“Where are the divine artifacts?”
At the black mage’s short question, the commander snapped to full alertness.
‘This is definitely a surprise inspection!’
If the God of War received the wrong answer during an inspection, not only his own neck but the branch chief’s would be in danger. Fortunately, the operational guidelines for offensive divine artifacts were something the commander knew well.
“Offensive divine artifacts are safely stored in the armory. When a request is made to higher command and approval is granted, the branch chief and I personally oversee the release after safely releasing the double seal. It is currently pending approval.”
“Approval? Double seal? Personal oversight?”
He politely explained to the highest-ranking War God, who had not been in the Divine Realm long and was unfamiliar with its ways.
“Because goddesses were injured by offensive weapons during the suppression of criminal gods in the past, they are normally stored in the armory.”
“But the goddesses were carrying offensive divine artifacts?”
“The higher command judged that goddesses have low combat ability and are therefore dangerous, so they are permitted to carry them.”
“Haaaaaaaah?”
The black mage looked up at the sky and let out a long, deep sigh.