And... I Support That Mei-chan... I Am an Iztomo.
His ears hurt.
The man with the tachi held swallowed the thought in silence. The reason was obvious. Lightning was crashing down around him without end, and the one raising all that noise—a middle-aged man with white hair and a snow-white beard—had his eyes rolled back with rage. Everything around him was coming apart, and still he did not stop attacking.
The middle-aged man spat the words in fury. No—more precisely, at the words of Chief God Zeus, the man let a short laugh slip.
"Anyone hearing that would think the gods handed over everything and politely stepped aside."
Once, he might have been taken in by a line like that. But he had learned the truth over a long journey, and to him those words meant nothing at all.
"Hey. Chief God Zeus. Ever heard of reaping what you sow?"
Of course, the fact that humans had once received the gods' help did not simply vanish. But the gods had crossed the line. The exploitation that began at some unmarked moment had gone on for more than a thousand years, and aside from a handful of humans, the rest were worked like slaves. They protested. The gods would not even consider listening. They only sneered, as if it were the natural order of things.
And so, at last, the war began, and in the beginning the gods were of course the stronger. Against gods who wielded anomalous powers no human possessed, humans were no more than leaves in an autumn wind.
Those powers, though, had a limit. Their source was human offerings and human faith. Once the war started and the offerings and the faith stopped coming in, the gods' light faded in an instant. Then the counterattack began—humans who had tempered themselves while waiting for nothing but that opening—and in the end the gods were driven back into the world behind. The Age of Gods was over.
"I used to pity you. Now even that feels like a waste."
He had set out on a journey chasing the traces of the gods because he had learned that humans and gods once lived side by side. Symbiosis, god and human together. Then, from a certain day, the gods were simply gone, and the age of humans began. He had wanted to know why. The story was so old that almost no records remained, and that was why he traveled. What the journey taught him, aside from a very few exceptions, was that no god looked kindly on humans. The farther he went, the more he found only their ugliness. They had not reflected on a single old sin. If anything, they were already drawing plans to rule humanity again.
"...Even so, Chief God Zeus. I thought you, at least, might be a little different."
A vast pressure, felt even while standing still, began to gather in Zeus's right hand. Power that had been drawing together into a sphere slowly changed its shape, until it was a long streak of light. Zeus seized that pure-white bolt and looked at the man. The man looked back, gripped the tachi, steadied his breath, and settled into his stance again.
"Hoo..."
The one who moved first was the man. A weapon had risen in Zeus's hand, but what he had to do had not changed.
"Hup!"
With the shout he drove strength into his legs and closed the distance in an instant. What he tried first was an ordinary cut from the front. The speed, at least, was anything but ordinary. Had the opponent been an ordinary human—no. It was a speed even most gods would have struggled to answer. But the one standing before him was Chief God Zeus, and Zeus too slipped backward with a keen movement and let the blow pass.
The roar was huge enough to ring in the ears, and with it Zeus hurled the lightning in his hand.
"What—!"
A beat slower and it would have run him clean through. In the moment that thought rattled him, a new bolt was already forming in Zeus's right hand.
"...I need to end this as fast as I can."
An instinct cut through his head: drag this out, and the one who loses is him. It was not only the lightning Zeus threw with his own hand. Bolts were striking at random from the sky, and he had to keep dodging them. They had already been grating on him the whole fight. If time stretched, his focus would slip, and he would lose. There was no other ending.
"Haa..."
Wanting a quick finish did not make the opponent kind enough to allow one. Even so, he had to. One chance. Only one. Tension climbed through his body at the fact, but his mind, fortunately, stayed level.
In the same instant Zeus hurled another bolt, the man stepped in. A fraction of a second. Trusting his feel for it, he wrenched his body hard to the left, and the lightning pierced empty air once more. He did not drop his speed at all. He drove forward so as not to leave a gap, and when he had come close enough for the tachi to reach Zeus's body—
Zeus stepped toward him instead and threw a fist. It was, without question, a killing blow.
"No. I figured that's exactly what you'd do."
The man had already read that far. He drove the hilt up beneath the arm plunging toward his chest and forcibly kinked the fist off its line.
Zeus's fist buried itself in the ground of its own accord. Riding that recoil, the man spun his whole body through one great turn and swung.
"...This is the end."
And so the last god fell.
The instant a long sword-gash opened across Zeus's chest, a tremendous quantity of blood poured out.
And then—
The HP that had shown nothing but question marks until now finally read zero.
"I—I did it!"
With those last words, Zeus became pitch-black ash, scattered, and was gone. A moment later the ending cinematic began. On the screen, the gods who appeared in the game as allies—Hestia and Athena—sat facing each other before a hearth.
As she spoke, Athena turned her gaze, and it felt as though she were looking at me, outside the screen.
The title rose, slowly. Watching it, the fact that I had truly cleared ST finally sank in.
"It's... over."
The Iztomo were spilling admiration over the unreal play I had shown them at the very end. Fair enough. That last stretch—if I watched it again myself, I would probably be impressed too. I had perfectly parried Zeus's attack, then ended it with Great Mountain Slash, the single hardest command among every technique a tachi can use.
Well! For this gender-bent beauty of a body, it was absurdly simple!
Praise me more. I'm amazing. I'm the strongest! Thinking that while I read a chat window packed with compliments, I could feel my self-esteem climbing at a ridiculous speed.
"Haa.... Th-that was really fun."
"Huh...? Th-the tachi, obviously? I'm going to see every ending at least o-once with the ta-tachi. Using another weapon is... a-after that. Whether I'll even keep going after that, I... I don't know...."
Nothing to be done about it. The red-blooded man's blood boiling up inside me wants nothing but the tachi.
"Haaa.... Then I'll... I'll head out. Everyone, see you next time...."
I ended the stream, let the strength drain out of my body, and slumped in the chair. Honestly, I had meant to stay for about twenty minutes of idle chat even after the ending. Zeus had been harder than I ever imagined, though, and focusing at full power had worn my mind out.
Hard enough that I could almost believe I had picked the wrong choice and the difficulty had spiked.... To think it would be this brutal even with the tachi, the strongest weapon there is. Zeus, you bastard. You really were worthy of the name Chief God....
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