The False Goddess
Ever Kire's body and head, severed apart, crashed to the ground.
Thwack.
A moment later Simon descended from the air, his jet-black cloak billowing behind him. He drove the greatsword into the earth and finally let out the breath he'd been holding.
Then he looked down at his palm.
The sensation in my hand was unmistakable.
He had cut Ever Kire down directly with the Greatsword of Ruin — the blade that severed every form of regeneration and recovery the world had to offer.
It was over.
Simon clenched his fist, letting the moment linger.
"Are you all right?"
Lethe came over. Simon nodded, then straightened up.
"Where's Ever Kire?"
Lethe jerked her chin forward. Ever Kire lay sprawled where she had fallen, body and head torn apart, a pool of vivid crimson spreading across the ground beneath her.
And the Saintess of the Harvest, who had been swallowed into the woman's belly, had been flung far away by the force of the fall and lay collapsed on the ground.
"Your Holiness!"
"Let me take a look."
Lethe knelt before her and examined her condition closely before speaking.
"Her Saintess's Essence was stolen, but she's alive. She's only unconscious."
Just then, a light presumed to be the Saintess's Essence rose from the corpse of the dead Ever Kire and soared into the sky. The holy saintly robe she had worn vanished without a trace as well.
When a Saintess dies, her Essence wanders the continent in search of a worthy successor. Seeing the confirmation that Ever Kire was truly dead, Simon felt a weight lift from his shoulders.
But there's one thing that still bothers me.
The distorted world Ever Kire had created was still not collapsing. And the mind of the Saintess of the Harvest still hadn't returned.
Simon flinched and gripped the greatsword hard.
Shaaaaaaak—!
The blood soaking the ground surged backward like a wave, and Ever Kire's head and body rejoined. As though time itself were rewinding, the woman who had been lying sprawled rose to her feet and kneaded her neck as if it were stiff.
Simon's mouth hung open.
"H-how?! Regeneration was supposed to be impossible—!"
She smiled.
As if mocking the world itself.
Kraaaang!
In that instant, a lance of light streaked down from the sky and punched a hole through Ever Kire's back. Lethe stood with an icy expression, her arm still sweeping through the air.
"Enough of your nonsense—!"
Lethe's eyes went wide.
The woman who should have been a corpse was suddenly standing right in front of her, gripping her by the jaw, wearing a grotesque smile.
Lethe's body seized up with shock.
"Lethe!"
FWOOOOSH!
Simon charged in immediately, swinging the Greatsword of Ruin — and Ever Kire appeared far away in the distance, as though she had never been there at all.
"Damn it!"
Lethe scrubbed furiously at her jaw with her sleeve as if something filthy had touched it. Ever Kire grinned.
In her childhood, Ever Kire had been abandoned by her parents the moment she was born, drifting through the sewers, exposed to violence and abuse, slowly dying as she cultivated dark magic. There had been a time when she cursed the Goddess Deva for inflicting such trials upon her.
But now she understood.
She swept two fingers slowly down her face with an expression of rapture, nails peeling the skin of her cheek and squeezing out blood as they descended.
She stretched out a hand toward Lethe.
Lethe heaved a long sigh and raised her middle finger.
"Go eat a dick."
Her two arms locked in place in midair, and a red cross materialized. Once more Ever Kire hung upon the cross as it soared high into the sky, then her body melted into the air together with it and vanished.
"Stay on your guard! There's no telling where she'll strike from next!"
"Right."
Simon and Lethe kept their guard up, scanning their surroundings.
GUUUUUGUGUGUGUGU!
The ground around them shuddered. Rocks and debris began to surge up into the air.
"What is she up to now?"
Lethe said, spreading a protective barrier. Simon, sweeping his gaze across their surroundings, went white.
"The island...!"
It was rising.
Shaaaaaaa—!
Shaaaa!
The sea heaved violently. Gusts of wind lashed in from every direction. With the sound of something being torn loose, the island lifted buoyantly from the water.
KWA-KWA-KWA-KWA-KWA!
Weak bedrock and cliffs crumbled away, and the largest mass of all — Roke Island — climbed higher and higher into the sky.
Just like Epnel's Sky Island.
Even something like this is possible?
Simon felt his mind reel. The sky darkened steadily, rising past the gray clouds. Brilliant white lightning split the air. Ever Kire was still nowhere to be seen.
"...Simon."
Then Lethe pointed ahead with a trembling fingertip. Her face was pale with terror.
"L-look. Ahead of us."
"Where? There's nothing there."
"Not right in front of us. Farther away."
Simon's eyes belatedly went wide.
It wasn't on the island.
High above, where they had risen endlessly — through a rift in the sky that had torn open the gray clouds—
Ah.
People were coming through.
People of another dimension.
One of them hung limp with faded golden hair spilling down, arms stretching out to a bizarre, impossible length.
The moment Simon realized who she was, he turned to look at Lethe. Lethe already seemed mentally shattered — something was very wrong with her.
That's definitely...!
A goddess.
Simon had seen her in countless statues and holy relics. There was no mistaking it — the Goddess Deva. That indescribably colossal presence looked down upon the world, and Simon felt a divinity like the sun itself, unlike anything he had ever known.
A genuine god?
Her form was the very image of the divine shape humanity had imagined and worshipped. Her lower half melted away into the air, invisible; only her massive upper body gazed down upon the island. She had a face, but her pupils were black as the abyss, half-hidden behind her hair.
"Lethe!"
Lethe sank to the ground in apparent agony, her shoulders shaking violently.
"What's wrong?"
"...Every ounce of divinity in my body—"
She gagged, clutching at her own throat.
"—is screaming."
"Screaming what?"
"That thing..."
She stared at the goddess with eyes hollowed out by fear.
"...is not fake."
The goddess spread her arms, and radiance poured down through the dark clouds. Divinity was overflowing into the world.
"I can't attack that."
"Snap out of it, Lethe!"
Simon shouted.
"You know as well as I do! That's just a fabricated existence Ever Kire made!"
But as if she couldn't hear him at all, she only trembled in fear.
The goddess's enormous hand pushed through the gray clouds and reached toward the island — a sight of sheer, stomach-turning terror. Her palm spread open, threatening to swallow Lethe whole.
Simon swung the Greatsword of Ruin and hurled a slash at it. In the instant the soaring azure strike collided with the goddess's palm, Simon wrapped an arm around Lethe's shoulders and threw them both clear.
KWAAAAAANG—!
The palm slammed down on empty ground. That alone was enough to collapse the school buildings far away and scramble the terrain itself.
Simon looked down at her. Her condition was bad.
Holy Slump!
The opposition was so extreme for priests that it had reduced even a true Saintess like Lethe to this state.
Simon skidded across the ground and came to a stop. Above them, shrouded in a black sky, the goddess revealed herself between the clouds. She was simply too enormous. With Pier's power alone, he could never cut down something that size. For an endlessly vast target like this, Lethe's authority to bring down the stars would have been perfect — but her mind looked far too fragile to trust with it.
"Haah... haah."
Lethe bit her lip hard and forced out her breath.
"Lethe! Fall back for now!"
"Don't you dare underestimate me. Something like this is—!"
She raised her arm high, pointing at the sky, then swept it down as though drawing a line across the heavens. Divinity activated in the sky, and enormous stars rained down upon the goddess one after another.
Astonishing willpower, even in the midst of a Holy Slump.
But—
Tssssssssss!
The moment the stars touched the goddess, they dissolved into particles of divinity and were absorbed into her body. Simon's and Lethe's eyes went wide at the same time.
Lethe's body sank slowly, as though possessed.
At that exact moment—
"Lethe!"
Simon roared, seizing her face hard with both hands, and brought his own face right up to hers.
"Look at me!"
"?!"
Lethe could only stare at him, face frozen like a fish-shaped pastry, as if she couldn't believe what was happening to her.
"Your faith wavers over a sight like that?"
"Ugh — you — necro!"
Her face flushed scarlet, and she frantically shoved his arms away.
"What would a necromancer know about it, you jerk?! That thing is the source of all divinity—!"
"Then what do you call this?!"
Simon thrust one hand high into the air.
I can do anything!
FWAAAAH!
Divinity bloomed in Simon's hand. Lethe's eyes went round.
"You told me — only those the Goddess acknowledges can wield divinity! So what does it mean that a necromancer like me can use it?!"
"...Th-that's..."
"Think back. When I first used divinity, what did you say to me?"
At last, her trembling lips parted.
"...I said... there must be a reason the Goddess gave you divinity."
"That's right."
KWA-KWA-KWA-KWA-KWA-KWA-KWA-KWA-KWA!
Then Lethe's eyes blew wide. Behind Simon, the very stars Lethe had hurled earlier were being recreated by the goddess and falling toward them.
"Look out—!"
"I'll prove to you that this god is fake."
Simon raised the greatsword and closed his eyes.
FWAAAAAAAAH!
Divinity began to erupt from Simon's body. By all common sense, that should have put the undead coating him in grave danger.
Instead, the divinity settled into Pier's Bone Armor. The skeletal armor gleamed and shone brilliant white. His cloak flooded white from the shoulders down, and even his burning eyes turned pale.
Ah!
Lethe's mouth fell open.
Once more — the existence of a divinity-wielding undead. A being of death, an undead, holding within itself divinity, the energy of life. Could such a thing even make sense?
Thwack.
Simon planted his legs and drove them hard against the ground. Lethe had sensed the source when she looked at that goddess — but in this moment, divinity blazing around him, Simon could be certain.
That thing was fake.
He twisted his hips and stretched his arm out long. The white cloak whipped violently in the pressure of the wind.
Through the space itself!
Simon's greatsword moved. Compared to the descending star it was no thicker than a toothpick — but the divinity packed into it flashed with blinding intensity.
The feeling of cutting clean through!
KRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAANG!
The star.
Split in two.
The colossal star peeled open to either side, sweeping past Simon and Lethe, gouging an enormous scar across the ground before it finally burst apart.
GOOOOOOH!
Lethe literally could not take her eyes off Simon — the white cloak streaming behind him.
He had cut down the goddess's power. With the very power she had granted him.
"Not done yet."
Simon stretched out his arm. From who knows when, his La Escrime could be seen far away, flying through the air, gleaming. The goddess reached out her hand to catch it, but—
KZZZZZZZAP!
This time, it was not absorbed. The holy lance Simon had thrown carved a long gash across the goddess's hand as it passed. A sound of anguish burst from the goddess and echoed across the sky.
"See it now? If that were the real goddess, my power would have been stripped away too."
Simon rested the greatsword on his shoulder and looked back at her with a bright grin.
"Look at me, Lethe. I'm the proof that your goddess is a fake."