Dozens of fighter aircrafts flew toward me. This country’s military, I supposed.

I sent them a warning-slash-threat in the Divine Language, but it did nothing more than send them into a few seconds of inactivity before their assault resumed.

I flew, breaking the sound barrier and with a wave of my hand, freezing and bringing down the rain of missiles. My palm faced toward the fighters.

I’d given my warning. I wasn’t very excited to kill them when they hadn’t attacked me out of hatred, but neither did I have the time to shoot them down gently enough to let them escape with their lives. Earth wasn’t Yggdrasia. There was no World Tree here to save their souls. I closed my eyes for a second to pray for them, and I slowly clenched my hand.

“—[Causality Alteration]—”

The fighters’ cockpits were instantly painted red from the inside. The majority of the aircrafts continued streaking past me, their speed unchanged, and they plowed into the distant ground.

They were all soldiers. Over the past ten-odd years, they’d had many, many wounds from training and combat, and I expected some of them had even died instantly when I activated my ability. How ironic… the more they’d hurt and killed for their country, the higher their likelihood of death.

“…still.”

While I might pray for their passing, that didn’t mean I’d start feeling merciful now, of all times.

I was the Goddess of Yggdrasia, not Earth. I would save this planet, the planet where I was born, but I had no plans to save the people on it. I was a koujin, after all.

“Stop throwing yourselves at me!”

Despite their losses, there were still fighters several kilometers away who were willing to continue attacking me. I threw daggers from my inventory to take them down.

One of them, the squadron leader from the looks of it, was still unwilling to retreat even when they were the last fighter left. I cut off the aircraft’s wings, prompting the two pilots inside to escape, and I tore apart the parachute of the more strong-willed of the two of them, catching him in mid-air. He was slick with cold sweat as the man felt my strength with his own skin, but he still glared at me with all his bravado.

“Damned demon!”

“All of this was caused by the ignorance of your own leaders. I had nothing to do with it.”

His language wasn’t one I spoke, but the Divine Language would let me communicate with nearly all sentient creatures.

He understood me, I was sure of it. The man in his forties who looked to be a commanding officer grimaced as my voice sounded directly in his mind, and he howled in outrage.

“Spare me the lies, White Demon! I know you! You are the demon that had attacked the country to the west and murdered tens of thousands! The higher-ups told me it was you that was the cause of this disaster, and even our neighboring country and the nation to the west told us you were to blame for their losses! No matter how much of a monster you might be, you won’t be able to stand against the whole world—”

“…right, I got it.”

I see, further questioning would be useless. I released my hold, and the man’s screams faded off as he fell faster and faster. My cold gaze stayed on him as I let slip a whisper.

“…so this country had decided to blame me for everyone they’d done, then.”

I had thought it wouldn’t be very productive to try and convince them, but only now did I truly understand how futile communication would be. This country had bought off technicians and researchers from the West and had touched upon the ‘parallel world’ despite their insufficient understanding, and their unanticipated failure had triggered a global existential threat. They must have thought that if what had happened were to be brought to light, the nation would lose much of its credibility.

From a certain point of view, I could understand their thought process, but it was much too foolish. They thought the few percentage of the world that they saw was everything. Even when the world they lived in was in danger, they still prioritized their nation’s reputation.

I didn’t want to believe that all humans were so idiotic. Yet there was far too much of a possibility that the neighboring country, those who had committed the same mistake, would try to keep this fiction alive as well, thinking that their own reputation will be at stake if the truth about what this country had done was to be revealed.

As the situation devolved, sooner or later, the middle-eastern countries and the United Nations would get involved. The people would then try to find an outlet for their dissatisfaction and fear, and they might just turn their eyes toward me — a well-defined enemy, and an easy target to push all their responsibilities on.

Should I demolish this whole region before it came to pass, then? But how much time would it take to comb through it all? Furthermore, how much of the local nature, flora and fauna would be destroyed? Not to mention that I didn’t even know if Brian’s core was here…

If humans were truly such a foolish species…

“…then maybe I should exterminate them to protect this world.”

It was then that I noticed something approaching me. It was still far away — several hundreds… no, several thousands kilometers away. And they were coming from more than one direction.

“—[Dimensional Manipulation]—”

I re-accessed the military satellite that I was still keeping a connection to. New info appeared in my mind.

…the neighboring country’s mobilizing its army? There are fleets of warships crossing the Pacific?

How? That’s too fast. It had only been a few hours since I came back to Earth. Even if they’d immediately set off then, there was no way they could have gotten so close.

“Then… had they been expecting this?”

It didn’t look like their preparations had been for my arrival, exactly. My guess was that the other countries had realized that this country was the cause of the disaster. They saw the chaos as an opportunity to further their own interests and bring in their own armies, using the disaster as a pretext. Their troops had been denied entrance by this country and had been waiting outside the border, but my appearance had given them the ‘reasonable cause’ to interfere.

There was a possibility they weren’t here to fight me, but the grey mud instead. I doubted it. They didn’t come loaded with incendiary weapons; they were equipped with what was obviously meant for human-against-human combat.

Was every country the same? Were they all people more concerned with robbing from others rather than dealing with a global threat, than the safety of their own lands?

Either way, I would still be their first target to attack, being the most obvious enemy to them. The military satellite told me their fighters had already taken off from their fleets to head straight for me. Meanwhile, this country’s air force also once again resumed their attack.

I let loose a bit of a sigh, a holdover from when I used to be human, and prepared myself to obliterate them. But just as I focused magic into my arms and got ready for interception, one of the fighters heading my way was suddenly shot through its wings. It fell.

“…what?”

Several flying objects showed themselves from behind the fighters and gave chase. They were far smaller than the aircrafts, yet overwhelmingly faster and more mobile. Impotent before their assault despite outnumbering them several times, the fighters began dropping like flies.

I knew this feeling…

“…mana?”

From these flying objects, I felt mana when it should have long since disappeared from this world. In that case, were what they were using to shoot down the fighters offensive spells?

They were about five meters in length. Their pitch-black armor brought to mind the image of an insect’s carapace that had been streamlined for flight. One of them changed form into what looked like a griffon and spoke directly into my mind with a telepathic spell.

“Sorry I’m lateeeee, miss Dark Bunny Ladyyyyy!”

“…what.”

…was that voice Jennifer?! The former researcher of the 12th research center, the gaming addict that had declared herself a worshipper of the Dark Lady, that Jennifer? I thought she was currently working in the management team for the VRMMORPG World of Yggdrasia after it had gotten downsized? Why was she here?

“Lady Shedyyyyyy!!!”

The griffon flew at me like an excited dog bringing a frisbee back to its owner, all the while talking in Jennifer’s voice. I dashed forward and gripped her neck.

“Jennifer… is this one of those mana-using avatars? Is your country still doing that? Had they not listened to a single thing I said?”

I put more strength into the hand holding the griffon’s neck, cold mist emanating from me as I fixed my frosty glare at her. Jennifer frantically shook her head.

“N-n-n-no, ma’am!! I mean, this is the final MO-21 model of the mana-using militarized avatar series, but I haven’t betrayed you! And it’s not like I can anyway when you’ve made that Contract with our President!”

“Then talk. What’s going on?”

“Y-yes!”

By her words, the mana-using avatar that she was using had been designed as the final model. All the research about magical weapons had been destroyed by my hands along with the research centers, but only the data about this MO-21 model was intact, having been programmed into the game as the final form of the playable monster avatars.

Jennifer and her co-workers had only discovered it about a year ago. As evolving into it required an absurd amount of magic point — four thousand — the management team had deemed the evolution impossible to acquire or even control with the current setup that they had. Removing it from the game would require a complete overhaul of the current monster avatar system, and so they’d decided to leave it alone until a solution could be found.

But once dark pixies began to appear on Yggdrasia and Earth, the management team started to consider what the players should do. It was during their talks with the leaders of Yggdrasia that ‘messengers’ of the World Tree appeared.

“…from the World Tree?”

“It’s true! The messengers looked like ghostly children. They said if the players were willing to cooperate, then they would allow us to use our monster avatars on Earth, and the avatars would be infused with enough mana to operate. They also said they wanted us to help miss Shedy.”

“…”

The Saplings… my friends, my family. They were doing this for me?

“Those messengers was amazing! They’d already understood how the avatars worked, and they helped us to evolve all our monster avatars into the MO-21 model! They’re so much smarter than me!”

“…”

My brows slightly furrowed. I think I had an idea of what happened. To have done this sort of nerdy stuff in secret, it could only have been No. 01.

I attempted to extract information from Jennifer’s Model MO-21. What I got were reports of players fighting dark pixies with their MO-21s all around the world, as well as bringing down the fighters deployed to attack me with contemptuous ease.

And that was happening when the players weren’t even trained soldiers. If the magical weapon project had been allowed to be completed, that country might have ruled the world by now.

So if the players had that many monster avatars… wait a minute…

“Jennifer, were all the MO-21s being controlled by a central system?”

“Of course! Some of our employees and a few players are military hobbyists, and they said we have to have a central control system if we’re going to be piloting these things. They even stayed up nights after—”

“Got it. Tell all the avatars to stop harassing the human armies and head for where dark pixies are appearing instead. I’ll be giving direct orders through the central control system.”

I removed my hand from Jennifer. She twirled her MO-21 in the air and gave a salute with the griffon’s front leg. Surprisingly dexterous.

“Understood! We are the Dark Army, the Bunny Lady’s Royal Guards! All ten thousand of us are now under your command, miss Shedy!”

*

The aerodynamic Model MO-21s danced in the skies.

People of the modern age were used to the sight of avatars being used in dangerous workplaces. However, in situations where rapid responsiveness and snap decisions were required, such as piloting a military aircraft, the human controller still needed to be present on the scene in order to maximize performance.

Yet having a human on board also meant having a human weakness.

On the other hand, the mana-using avatars had been attuning themselves with mana through actual combat in another world (albeit presented as a game), and their nervous systems had been strengthened as a result. Their performance far surpassed any and all modern weaponry.

The players hadn’t fought any other humans aside from the soldiers they encountered on their way to their destination. Even during those encounters, they hadn’t killed anyone, being nothing more than civilians themselves.

But that was fine. There was no need for their consciences to be burdened with death. I was the Dark Lady, the Goddess, and the weight was my responsibility to bear.

The MO-21s scattered throughout the world at speeds approaching that of an intercontinental ballistic missile. Their destinations were wherever there was the grey mud, the breeding ground for dark pixies. As soon as they arrived, I gave them the order through the central system that I’d linked to.

“Begin the assault. Your targets are the dark pixies.”

The MO-21s began their extermination. As I expected, it didn’t take long for them to eradicate the dark pixies while still keeping collateral damage low. These avatars possessed more magic points than greater demons after all, while their targets were nothing more than low demons.

“Thanks, everyone. It’s my job from here.”

My gratitude was answered with a multitude of voices from the players.

I began attuning all ten-thousand of the MO-21s to me until they were completely suffused in my power, and through them, I activated my ability. In the air, the pitch-black insectile MO-21s all turned white, while those that had transformed into griffons grew rabbit ears from their heads.

“Fear not, humans. Fear only feeds the demons. Rest assured, for I am here. Your planet will be saved.”

As I Spoke, particles of light scattered from the MO-21s. All humans and creatures of Earth turned their gazes to the rain of light.

“[Causality Alteration] [Dimensional Manipulation]”

The luminous particles began to scour through the past and future of all electronic devices throughout the world. From them, I saw everything about how the grey mud had appeared, how it was spreading, and how it would expand.

“…found it!”

I immediately cut my connection to the central control system and teleported to a mountain range to the east of Eurasia.

My vision flickered, and I appeared in the middle of an enormous blizzard. As though in response to my magic power, the mountains instantly erupted with grey mud.

“L̷̶͝Í͠T͏̧͜T̕͏̶͞͝L̡̢͜͠͡E͢͠͏ ̵҉̧̀B̷͘͡͞U̶N̡̢͘͟͝N҉͝Y͠Ỳ̷̡̢̕Ý̸͢͡҉Ỳ̵͢Ỳ̷͜͞!̕̕͢͡͞!̵͏̴͠!̶̀”

“Brian…!!”

The tsunami of grey surged toward me. I focused all the magic I could muster into my arms, and I brought my Divine and Demonic powers together with a clasp of my hands.

“—[Chaos Fulmination]—”

With me as the center, a sphere of annihilation expanded outward for dozens of kilometers, erasing and ravaging the grey tsunami. The mountains were stripped bare of layers of earth and rocks, revealing an unassuming research center hidden within.

“Palesnow!”

I called for my kin. The sentient sword appeared in my hands with a flash of its snow-white blade and a sudden emanation of coldness.

I brought it down. My blade sundered the research center several kilometers away in two and proceeded to slice apart a broken VR capsule, as well as Brian’s skull inside it.

“ÁĄ̕͢͡A̡͜͠͏͟a̷̧͡àA͏͞Ą̷̸̧̀ą͢À͞A͟Ŕ̢͢͝R̨R̸̴̵̷͢Ŕ̢͞G͜͏̛G̡͠҉͠H̸́̀H̵͝!̴͢͟͏!̶̷̧̀!҉̶́͟”

With his demonic core now in pieces, Brian screamed his death throes. No demons could continue to resurrect once their core was destroyed.

But I wasn’t done yet. I swung Palesnow together with an activation of Causality Alteration, and the sundered research center then began to melt into nothingness, bringing Brian with it.

He was gone. The demon named Brian, the man named Brian, had never been born.

With his disappearance, the grey mud all around the world began to vanish.

The particles of light I had spread throughout Earth slowly whirled into the air. People everywhere looked up into the sky, enchanted by the sight as though children seeing snow for the first time.

***

*boing-oing!*

“Ook!”

As soon as I returned from Earth to the roots of the World Tree, Blobsy and Panda immediately leaped at me.

“I’m back.”

I was finally home again. A sense of relief washed over me, and I found myself with a hint of a smile. I held my two kins in my chest. The World Tree greeted me with the rustling of its leaves and the dancing rays of dappled sunlight.

I dragged my weary body toward a length of root and sat down. With Blobsy and Panda in my arms, I let myself be taken by the gentle embrace of sleep.

There were so many things we’d talked about.

There were so many things I wanted to say.

The world in front of my eyes slowly changed. Sitting on the World Tree’s branches were ninety-nine of my friends and family, and they welcomed me back with cheerful smiles. I beamed in gratitude for their help and spread wide my arms.

“Love you, everyone.”

---

A/N: In stores now: ⅙ figurine of the Bunny, Goddess ver., for placing in shrines. 1000 dollars, tax included.

I think it’ll sell pretty well.

This is the end of the afterstories. Sorry for my infrequent uploads. I’ll be fixing them up bit by bit later.

Now that this chapter’s up, I’m setting Apotheosis as ‘Completed’ again. Thank you for reading.

I might update again if I have a new idea.

---

Translator’s Announcement:

It has since come to my attention that there are new chapters in the raw novel. However, I currently have no plans to continue doing this story. Please consider it dropped. Whoever wishes to pick it up, feel free.

---

Previous Chapter | Index | End

“I͞’̴ve̵ ̢be̢͢͝ę̸n̶̵ ̷w̛͢ai͞҉̨t̡҉i̢̨͠n̛͏g̡̢҉ ̨͜͞f͢͜o͜r̵̢͘ ̡͜͠y̶͟óù͠.̨.͟.̴͡ l͡͡itt͠͠le͝ b̷̡ú̵͘n͟ńỳ.̧̀.̵.̶͘”

 

From the mass of grey mud corrupting the vast, snow-drowned forest came a thought. A voice that rang directly in my mind.

I knew that tone. That madness.

“…so it’s you, Brian…”

 

Brian had been one of the people in charge of the parallel world department. He had toyed with the lives of a hundred orphans, including me, and after my counterattack wounded his body and mind, he began to be obsessed with me. In the end, he even summoned the Unseelie Lord Fiorfata. Just as he was receiving its ‘blessing’ and was about to turn into a demon, I killed him.

So how did he survive? I thought I’d erased every last bit of him. Did he have a core remaining somewhere else after his demonic transformation…?

[Brian] [Race: Dark Pixie (Seedbed)] [Demon]
・A soul of utmost profanity. Blessed by a high-rank demon, it has since transformed into a demon itself.

[Magic Points:*̸̴̢̧*̡͢͞*҉̵̛͠*̷҉̨/͏̵*̸̛҉*̵̷͜͝*̶̧*̸̕͝] 
[Total Combat Power:*̵͏*̸*̷̀*̷҉͢/̡͜*̷̧*̧̧͜*͟͠*̵͟] 

He had fallen. He was utterly, irrevocably a demon now. And while I expected him to be nothing more than a low-rank demon, the… colony? The colony that was his body was much too big for my Identification to work properly.

 

“Ļi̶͟t͘̕͝t͞t̶t̸̵́t̵͞҉t́̀͟le̴͘͟ b̴̢u͟n̨͜n̸y͏̡ý̨yy͏̵y̸̢͜y̧!͢͏!̶̧͡!̨̕”

 

With Brian’s screaming thought, the sea of grey mud that stretched as far as I could see — the demon’s Blessed Corpus — roiled and rippled. From it came an innumerable amount of tentacles that shot toward me.

This thing was dangerous. Even as low-ranking as he was, Brian was still a terrible threat to a world that had no defense against demons of any kind. If I leave him alone, he would overrun and devour everything.

I couldn’t let a single speck of him remain, here or anywhere else.

I activated Causality Alteration and Consumption, taking in all the light and heat around me and combined it with my internal magic to create a white sphere of power that rested between my palms.

I slammed my hands together and crushed it.

 

“—[Absolute Nadir]—”

 

An explosion of absolute zero rushed out, snap-freezing all the tentacles it touched. Everything within several kilometers disintegrated into atoms, and a storm of diamond dust carried the frigid cold outward for kilometers more. The boreal forest was remade into a glacial wasteland.

I floated in the center, a gouging, frozen-solid crater with a radius of several kilometers and a depth reaching nearly a hundred meters. My narrowed eyes scanned the surroundings.

 

-͜͞b́͢҉ų̴̡̢͝n͏̡҉̧͝ņ̢͘͜y̵͜-̡̛͢b̸̸͟u̡͘̕͢n̡͝-̴͘͠r̵̨͘à̛̕͝b̵̛҉b̨̢i̧̛̛͜t̛́͘͟͞-̕l̵̡i̸͢͟t͢͟ţ́͏͠l̴͢e̢̕͏̨b͏̸͜͡u҉̶͡n̸̛͝͞ǹ̵y̶͜͟͏-̷̨l̵̸̵̕i̢̨̛͢t̛͠-́f͢͞u̵̢͡z̷̴̴̷z̵̕͟͢͡b̀a̶l̵̀l̢͢͟͢-̨̀͞͡l̡̨̢i͏͢͠t̷̨t̸̢͜͜t̴͞͡t͡͝-̧͘͘͠l͡҉̨̛a̸͜͡͠ǵ̶̶̀͟ơ̧m͠͏͘͘o̵̕ŗ̨͢p̷̡̨͠h̛͢-̢͡b͝҉̶͠u̸̷̶̶҉n̸̢͡n̴͝y͘b͢ù͜͢͠͞n̴̴̢͘-̸̶̡́͟f̨͢͡͞l̵̴u̶͜f̴̸̷f̨̀͠-̵̴͟͢͝l҉̴́í̴͞l͠͏̨̡’̢b͠͏̵ų̧͏n͢n̢͜͜͢-̵̨́́̕b̶̴͞u̷̢̨̡-̵͘b͢͟҉ư͠͡n̸͘ń͞ì̵͟͟͝è̶̡h̵̸́͡͞-̶͞͠b̀͞u͘͏̵̨n̴̸̡̕͝n̕͜y̶̸̛͢-̨̛̛́b̶̵͘͜u҉̸n̵͘͠͝-̀͜r̡̢͟҉a̶҉͡b͜͠b̨͞i̷̷̸͘͞t̷̕-̢́͘͟͠l̛i̶̡t͏̢̀t͜҉͠͠l̢͢͞ę̶͜͠͠b̶̨̀u̶̷̧n̢̕̕͝ǹ́͘͢y̨͘-̵̸͞l̵̨͘ì͢͝t̴̡́̀-̵͘͡f̛ú̸z̛z͢͏b͝҉a̛͜͏l҉̶̴̡l͏̸͝-̸̸̡͘l̸̨̡i̧̨̛͠͠t̢́t̨̛t͝҉͡t͏̛͟͠-̵̷̛l͝a̶̧͏͜͡g̷̶̨͟͢ò҉̴̢͞ḿ̴͡͠ǫ̷r͟͝͝p̡̀͟͜h̢̡̛͝͡-̷̧̛́b̷҉̵͘u͏̵̵͞n̕͏n̶̵҉y̧̧̛͘͝b̴͘͞u̡͠n͢͡͡-͏̸̷f̧͏̵̕l̶͞ú̷̕͟f̢̨̛͢͡f̵̨͢-̷͘͘͟͟l̛͏҉i͜͟͜l̶̢͘͢͠’̶̵̶̀͘b̵͡͠u҉̀ņ̸̵̀͢n̶̨͘͞-̛͟b̸̨́̀͢ù̕-̷b͏̕͢ú͡n͏͏ņ̢i̴͏҉̷e͏͟h̢͝͠-̴͡b̷̕͜u̸̡͢͢ń̸̡͜n͏̸̢̕y̵̧͢-̢̛́͟͢b̶̢͜͝u͏̴̷̀n̡̛͘͏-̢͢͢͡r̀͜͡͠a̛͢͜҉̢b҉̶b̷̴̵́i͘҉ţ̡͜-̧ļ͘͡ì̶̵̕ţ͟͞ţ̴̕ĺ͟e͝͞͏͡͏b̨͘͢͜u̴͠͞͠n͞͡n͢͞ỳ̛͜͜-̴̨̛͘͡l̡͏ì̵̷͟t̨̨̀-̀͘͟f͏̢̢͟u̸҉͠z͡͠z̢b̡͘a̧̛l̢̢l̸̷̕-̀͘҉l͏i̵̴̕t̀͘͜t̷̡̕͝͠t͘t͏̵̶̷̧-̴̵͡͠l̸͢͜͡͠a̧͜ǵ̡̕͝o̷͡m͏̴̧̛o̕͡͏r̀͝͠p̸̵̀͢ḩ̷̛͢-͏̴̷̕͘b̸̶̧́u̴͞n͞͏͞n̵y̧̨̡̕̕b̨͜͞u҉̢͝ņ͘-҉̷́͠f̨̀͞͝l̛̕u͘҉͏̶͟f́f̡̕͜͡-͏̵̕͢͡ļ͠͞͠i̵̵̷l͝҉̀́͟’̛҉̵̡͠b͢u̵ņ̕͜͠ǹ͘̕-̸̕͜b̶u̶̡̨͞-̸̧͘͠͡b̷́u҉̨͢n̶̛͘n̛͡͏́í̡̢e҉̸̢͡ḩ̡͏̷͘-҉́b̛̛͜͢͝u҉̸̶͝ń͟͏ń̷̡̢ỳ̡͢͜͝ý͟҉̵̵ỳ̧̢͠͠.̕͏̛͜.̀́.̡̕͞

 

Innumerable minds screamed from the tidal waves of grey that were crashing toward me from outside the devastation I’d caused. The flood began to spew out dark pixies in unending number, and the swarm of locusts darkened the skies in mere seconds.

From what I could see, it seemed the grey mud was comprised of countless microorganisms the size of amoebas, with each and every single one of them being the demon Brian by themselves.

How did their minds work, then? Were these microorganisms working together to create a sort of ‘brain’?

No, probably not. As Brian was a demon now, he should have a core somewhere. But not here, it seemed, though I had expected it to be, since this was also the place that had a dimensional gateway.

 

Similar to Fiorfata, Brian was an annoying opponent to face, albeit due to a different reason. He wasn’t powerful, nor did he have a lot of magic power. In exchange, he could possess and sacrifice the life-force of creatures on this world and use their souls as a substitute for magic power.

At this rate, all life on Earth would be consumed. How much time did I have left? How far had Brian spread?

I needed more information.

 

“[Firebloom], [Rimeblossom]!”

 

With the mist from my left hand and the blizzard from my right blasting forward, I spun in place, freezing and incinerating all the dark pixies. Afterward, I shot upward into the sky at supersonic speed to look for information.

I climbed, higher and higher. One thousand became two thousand and five hundred, then four thousand. When the azure color of the sky began to give way to blue-tinted blackness, I looked downward, and I saw that below me was the Eurasia continent.

While there were a lot of radio waves bouncing around in the stratosphere, it was still difficult to directly extract information from them even with my ability. Instead, I tracked the signals to a military satellite nearby and teleported to it.

At this height, the stratosphere held barely any air. My crimson claws sank into the satellite. With Dimensional Manipulation, I accessed Earth’s cyberspace.

“…unbelievable.”

 

In countries with developed networks and centered on the Eurasia continent, the grey mud, the seedbed of dark pixies, was everywhere. At the moment, the worst of the damage was still contained in the middle of Eurasia. The spawning dark pixies were still manageable with the local military presence.

But it was only a matter of time before the defense break.

Demons needed mana to maintain their manifestation. The dark pixies were only sustaining themselves by absorbing the life-force of this world, so mundane weapons were still having an effect. But while it was enough to repel the demons, it wouldn’t be able to exterminate them.

I needed to act quickly, otherwise Earth would destroy itself in the chaos even before the demons devour them all.

 

At that moment, through the military satellites’ surveillance network and my own senses, I saw something. Something flying very, very fast.

…a missile!

Considering the trajectory, it was probably fired by the military of the country I’d arrived in. Nearly a hundred of the missiles climbed into the stratosphere, drawing an arc as they moved toward the forest undulating with grey mud. They slammed into their target and covered the area with a carpet of flame.

I’d heard that a large amount of fire could have a degree of purifying effect. Would fire from a missile work, too?

Immediately afterward, a chorus of screaming minds rushed past me. I couldn’t help but hold my head with my hand.

In the end, the fire worked. Sort of. Brian had manifested himself here by using matter from this world, so it wasn’t surprising that the mundane fire had had some effect, but not as much as appearance would suggest. It only looked damaging because the fire was burning the forest that was serving as food for the mud.

The barrage of screams I heard just now was the death throes of creatures that had been living in the forest. The negative emotions that came from them only created more miasma to excite the demons.

Burned and losing its source of food, the grey mud looked as though it had stalled. Then it absorbed the miasma and began moving again, and this time, with no food source to slow it down, it surged outward to look for more offerings.

 

I knew it, I had to find and destroy the core. But where was it? How would I find it?

“[Dimensional Manipulation]”

I cranked my ability to the maximum and searched for any notable magical signal nearby, but found nothing. Yet I could only continue searching. I had no other choice.

Then I noticed another flying object.

More missiles? Strange, though… they’d fired nearly a hundred, but now there was only one.

I looked at its temperature… hold on…

“…a nuclear warhead?”

 

Even nuclear weapons would only have the same result. If Brian’s core wasn’t directly attacked, no amount of heat could do anything more than temporarily stalling the mud. If anything, it would only damage the environment.

I couldn’t allow that. What I wanted to protect wasn’t the people on this planet. I wanted to protect Earth itself.

 

I released my hold on the satellite and chased after the warhead, expelling my internal magic to accelerate even more.

The ballistic missile had gone beyond the stratosphere and was beginning to drop, its speed reaching several kilometers per second. The projectile was glowing red-hot from the air friction. I caught up to it and with all my strength, I released an upward kick at the missile’s belly. My claws slammed into the warhead.

“[Consumption]!!”

It exploded. Space began to burn by the white light, but all of the heat and light were soon devoured by my ability. Nothing remained that would indicate there had been a nuclear explosion.

 

I sighed, winding down from my effort.

I was a Goddess now. I wasn’t harmed by the radiation or heat, but my mind was still tired. I supposed it had been because I had eaten the malice of humans, that which had expressed itself as a man-made weapon.

Yet I couldn’t rest, not yet. My cold mist should be able to keep the mud’s spread in check while searching for Brian, and without damaging the planet.

I began moving, but this time, I noticed several objects approaching me.

 

“…fighter aircrafts?”

There were dozens of them. I could feel them making some sort of communications with each other after they saw me, and they then began to attack me.

This country had decided I was an enemy, I see…

I could understand why. From their point of view, I was probably just another demon rampaging through their country.

I wouldn’t try to convince their leaders. Discussions with politicians would just turn into them trying to find ways for their side to benefit anyway, and I didn’t plan on wasting hours for that.

So I’d just say one thing.

“…sorry.”

 

I threw a random weapon I had in my subspace inventory and downed one of the fighters. With the Divine Language, I broadcasted my will.

“Get out of my way if you don’t want to die!”

---

Previous Chapter | Index | Next Chapter

“World Tree!”

I called for the heart of the world, asking Saplings all over the world to inform me of anything useful… and useful only.

The World Tree managed the software side of the world while I dealt with the hardware. I was loathe to interrupt its work, but if dark pixies were returning, then there were more important things to prioritize.

The moment I called, the World Tree sent me multiple carefully curated leads. It sure worked fast… actually, was it just me or did the World Tree sound happy when it responded to my request?

 

According to what it showed me, dark pixies were appearing in several locations around the world and attacking both people and animals. Looking at the places, I realized they were all on the path that I had once taken when playing tag with Fiorfata back then.

Were the dark pixies being spawned from the magic, or maybe the miasma that still remained from my fight with the Unseelie Lord?

…no, I didn’t think so. It was true that quite a lot of the dark pixies were at locations where our fight had been the fiercest, but it that case, the Central Continent should have been the worst victim of the current dark pixies assault by dint of being the location of my final confrontation with Fiorfata. It wasn’t.

The worst affected was instead the southern hemisphere. To be precise, it was the region to the south of where Quarancinq, the city where Fiorfata had manifested, used to be. I knew Fiorfata had done a number on the place, so it wasn’t surprising that dark pixies were now being attracted there… but I still felt like I was missing something.

 

“…let’s just do what I can first.”

Most other locations had monsters, demihumans… and that Hero to deal with the dark pixies, so I could leave them alone. Instead, I headed for the locations that had been hit the hardest first.

“First off, the sea.”

 

My teleportation was still limited at the moment. If my destination wasn’t connected to the Sapling network, or if it wasn’t in my field of view, then I couldn’t be accurate. I focused my mind on where I wanted to go and a phantom appeared in front of me, taking the shape of the member of my family that had been reborn as the Sapling closest to my destination.

I took their outstretched hand, and the scenery in front of my eyes shifted.

—good luck—

“Thanks.”

 

I departed from the easternmost edge of the Central Continent, crossing the ocean at several times the speed of sound. My flight sent me toward a group of sea dragons fighting a massive horde of dark pixies that had spawned right in the middle of the ocean.

“Get out of the way if you don’t want to die!” I shouted.

The sea dragons hurriedly dove toward the ocean floor. A white ball of pure magic formed between my hands, and I fired it at the mass of tens of thousands of dark pixies.

 

“—[Nadir]—”

 

In an instant, all the ocean that I could see snapped into ice. The horde of dark pixies all froze and crumbled into diamond dust.

“This is…”

Now that I was here, I finally understood. There were mana and miasma here, but more importantly, I also discovered that space here was warped.

Had the dark pixies come from this spatial distortion? But if so, then where from?

 

“World Tree! Tell me of all the spatial distortions on this planet!”

 

The reply I got was a list of locations. Where was this? The ocean? This was… an archipelago without a Sapling?

Nowhere else was space as distorted as in that whole region. The area was far away from the Sapling network, and there were a lot of dark pixies.

I couldn’t teleport directly there. There wasn’t any Sapling nearby, and if the spatial warp was truly the cause of the dark pixies, then it wouldn’t be the best idea to expose the Sapling network to tampering by using it.

 

“[Dimensional Manipulation]!”

After I fixed up the space here with my ability, I departed, flying by my own power to the archipelago. Not very far away, luckily. Only about a fourth of the way across the planet.

I flew straight east, switching between flying and short-range teleportation to reach a continent. I aimed my left hand at the dark pixies that were fighting with the monsters there.

 

“—[Firebloom]—”

 

The merciful mist descended to heal the monsters, while at the same time turning the dark pixies and the miasma into purifying petals of flame.

I repaired space with Dimensional Manipulation and headed further west. Just about when I exited the continent and re-entered the sea, I caught sight of the archipelago I was looking for.

I found myself frowning right after.

“Fishpeople…”

 

I understood now.

While the World Tree’s blessing reached even the ocean floor, the Tree and the Saplings themselves were on land. These fishpeople had never directly experienced the World Tree’s blessing, and so they thought it insignificant. They wanted more. They wanted to gain another blessing even from outside this world.

Their money-making through the slave trade, their attempt to prevent the other races from working together, it was all because they wanted this to succeed.

 

In front of me was a settlement of fishpeople large enough to have housed several tens of thousands. Now, all of it was swallowed by a muddy grey mass.

Some of the inhabitants were still alive. Most of them, however, had already had the grey infesting them throughout their whole bodies. One after another, their strength failed them and they sank into the mud, turning into nurseries to give birth to more dark pixies.

These fishpeople had used the money they’d gained to buy up everything that the Earth people had left behind. They had torn open space and time in order to summon the Blessed Corpus of the Unseelie Lord, Fiorfata.

 

…save me…

…I can’t…

…it hurts…

…God, save me!

 

Voices of agony, voices of things about to cross the threshold of life and unlife, prayed to God for salvation.

I understood their desperation. However…

 

“Don’t pray to God only when it suits you.”

 

The air trembled as I Spoke words laden with divine authority. The wailing stopped as though frightened, and the ever-spawning swarm of dark pixies crumbled into dust and disintegrated.

No good and kind god is here on this world, not anymore. This is the only kind of mercy I can grant you. The only kind I know.

 

“—[Rimeblossom]—”

 

The Demon’s Oblivion. The blizzard from my right hand shot forward to lay waste to the malevolent energy and souls, transforming them into fluttering petals of ice. The grey-colored Blessed Corpus disintegrated, taking the whole settlement of fishpeople with it.

The threat was gone. I just needed to fix up the spatial topography here, and things should come to a close by themselves.

…the Earth-made equipment had been destroyed, yet the dimensional distortion here still remained. Where had the Blessed Corpus that had passed through that distortion come from?

“…Earth, is it.”

There were greedy people making another mistake again, it seemed…

I sighed in resignation. I raised my hand toward the dimensional distortion that still connected the two worlds, but just before I could embark on another dimensional crossing, my hand was knocked away with a sparking jolt.

 

“…World Tree?”

It felt like… the World Tree stopping me from going to Earth?

I would ask why… but I already knew. The World Tree was kind. I had suffered during my time on Earth, and so it was worrying for me, fearing I would once again be hurt if I went there again.

 

“…it’s fine. I got a lot stronger now. I had nothing but bad memories of Earth, but it’s still one of my homes. Please, World Tree… let me protect my two homes.”

I implored. Then, I felt my restraints melt away.

 

“Thank you… I promise I’ll be back. You’re here, after all. You and everyone.”

 

I activated Dimensional Manipulation on the distortion, and I made the transition toward Earth.

This was the first time I came to Earth by myself without using the MMO game’s equipment. I didn’t know where on Earth I would arrive at. I only knew it would be where the cause of all this lay.

I appeared in the sky. The chilly wind of a snow storm blasted at me.

 

“…what… is that?”

 

I saw a vast forest coated in white snow. It was half-submerged in squirming, writhing Blessed Corpus, the grey mud stretching out as far as I could see.

 

“I͞’̴ve̵ ̢be̢͢͝ę̸n̶̵ ̷w̛͢ai͞҉̨t̡҉i̢̨͠n̛͏g̡̢҉ ̨͜͞f͢͜o͜r̵̢͘ ̡͜͠y̶͟óù͠.̨.͟.̴͡ l͡͡itt͠͠le͝ b̷̡ú̵͘n͟ńỳ.̧̀.̵.̶͘”

---

Previous Chapter | Index | Next Chapter

Coming out of my three-year hibernation, I decided to go check out a human town.

There were a few human villages nested deep inside forests the way demihuman settlements used to be, but there was only one single ‘country’, or at least something close to being a country, that had a lot of humans congregating, where interaction with demihumans was actively being maintained.

 

The human race once numbered in the hundreds of millions. The virtually-suicidal decisions that they’d made time after time during my fight with the Unseelie Lord and their loss of the World Tree’s blessings meant that the human race, complacent in their luxury and safety as they had been, was now barely a shadow of themselves.

Quite a few of them had still been alive when I finished reviving all the World Tree Saplings, in fact. However, their population took a further dive as many humans found they now had to contend with the threat of monsters, a threat they’d forgotten how to deal with since generations ago, as well as the vengeance coming from a small group of vindictive demihumans.

But all was not lost for the human race. With the help of demihumans and some of their own people who had taken up arms to be Adventurers once again, the dangerous but less intelligent monsters began to be culled. Slowly but surely, a new country was established, and the human race began its journey of recovery…

…according to what the Saplings told me, anyway. The consciousness of the new Saplings had come from my fellow orphans and secret alpha testers, and they could be quite… playful, from time to time. Sometimes they also told me about stuff I honestly couldn’t care less about, like “The neighbor just had a litter of kittens!”

So I had no idea how much of what they told me were accurate.

 

I took out a pure-white hooded coat from my subspace inventory and put it on. I landed in the only human country in this world.

While the humans had their own leader in the form of a representative instead of a king, formally, this was actually a ‘multi-racial nation’ run by a council whose members included demihumans.

Over half of the country’s population were humans. Yet watching the faces of the humans walking around town, I saw less excitement for their civilization’s revival and more a kind of unease.

 

Well, I suppose I could understand why. It was exactly because humans were weak that the other races had allowed them to parasite on the World Tree in the first place. Now that they no longer had access to their incredibly convenient magitools, I expected they would feel conscious of their physical disadvantages compared to demihumans.

I understood, but I wasn’t going to do anything about it. I mean, I was a Goddess of this world now. I wasn’t going to start favoring one single race over another.

One of the former orphans who was knowledgeable in Oriental culture told me that I was similar to a sort of koujin, a wrathful god of purifying flames. By nature, I was very much not any kind of merciful Buddha.

 

“We humans had once sinned—”

From far away, I heard a faint voice that sounded like it had been amplified by a magitool.

“Hmm?”

On a whim, my feet carried me closer. A single human man and several demihumans were standing on a stage and making a speech in a plaza.

“…Tiz?”

He was that one ex-emperor of some fallen country or another. Haughty, but quite an interesting character. By the end, as a leader of humans, he’d realized his sins and helped me with the destruction of the Saplings. Next to him was… the girl of the pair of elven twins, if I remember correctly.

So to summarize Tiz’s speech, he was basically reminding the humans not to be idiots again now that three years had passed since they’d started rebuilding. In the same breath, he was also warning the radical faction of the demihumans to stay quiet since the humans were being honest workers now.

…I sympathized with him a bit, to be honest. He was doing this for the good of everyone, but he was probably also making enemies all over the place.

 

It was now the part when Tiz was shaking hands with the elven girl. I sighed. Paying no mind to the people around me, I teleported to the roof of a building some distance away. I appeared behind a man aiming a black, cylindrical weapon at the plaza.

“So what are you doing?”

He jolted and whipped around, almost tumbling.

“W-Wha-who are you?!”

“I won’t ask again, fishman. What were you about to do with that?”

His hood dropped, revealing wetly glistening scales.

…them again? Just what’s going on with the fishpeople?

But more importantly, while the weapon he held looked rather beaten up, I still recognized it as a magic gun made with Earth technologies.

 

Despite his initial surprise and vigilance, the man began to smirk once he saw me. Apparently a young girl didn’t warrant his caution.

“…ain’t it obvious? Humans working with elves mean our profits go down… that’s all!”

The fishman suddenly aimed the magic gun at me.

Not a bad response for someone being on the receiving side of an ambush, I’d say. Let slip a bit of tasty intel to distract your opponent, then attack mid-sentence.

Unfortunately for him, he’d made three mistakes.

One, that he was possessing a magic weapon made with Earth technologies. I didn’t know where he got it, but it was not the kind of thing that should ever be allowed to remain on this world.

Two, that he was about to repeat history when this world was just beginning to know peace.

And three… that he pointed it at me.

 

In the few tenths of a second that it took for him to pull the trigger, I leisurely watched his finger move in slow-motion as I pointed my hand at him and squeezed.

 

As a young man, he once got his legs almost bitten off by a shark. Now they were torn to shreds.

As a boy, he once got bitten by a venomous snake. Now his flesh festered as the poison coursed through his whole body.

As a child, he was once trapped in a muddy stream and nearly drowned. Now he suffocated, coughing and wheezing as a vast amount of seawater poured out of his mouth, and he slumped to the ground.

 

I took the magic gun from the fishman’s corpse and crushed it into a chunk of metal with my hands, then threw it into a dimensional gap.

…huh, I wondered if it would later cross spacetime to become an out-of-place artifact in some other world…

Not like it had anything to do with me if it did, though. I gave Tiz a quick glance, the man still too busy making his speech to the people to notice me, and I muttered under my breath.

“Good luck with your work, Tiz.”

 

Then I teleported to the top of Mount Leonard, the highest point in the Central Continent. The vast world of Yggdrasia stretched out before my view.

…somehow, I felt like something was about to go wrong.

It wasn’t about the fishpeople who were getting up to no good these days, or at least, it wasn’t just them. My unease was coming from the instincts I had as a Dea Ex Machina.

 

“[Dimensional Manipulation]”

I closed my eyes, opening my arms wide, and I connected to the worldwide Sapling network. I began to pick up information from everywhere.

 

I’d become the Goddess of this world. That said, I still wasn’t experienced enough to be able to see the whole world without lifting a finger.

I scanned through the flood of information, ignoring the ‘recommended cat videos’ that my Sapling friends were sending me, and I noticed something happening in a village of wolf beastmen in the northern hemisphere. They were being attacked.

Wait, weren’t those…

“…dark pixies?”

 

When the Unseelie Lord Fiorfata manifested, it had also summoned these low demons as its kins and soldiers. Individual dark pixies weren’t much of a threat, possessing only the equivalent combat power of a simple footsoldier, but they had been summoned in hordes. For less well-defended towns and villages, complete annihilation had been a real possibility.

I had defeated Fiorfata. It wasn’t exactly possible to truly kill a demon of such power, but its revival should take thousands of years, at least.

 

Then why were the dark pixies here? How had the Unseelie Lord’s kins return to this world? Dark pixies themselves normally resided in the Netherworld, and while they could naturally manifested in the material world, it only happened very rarely.

Then was there some idiot calling dark pixies here again…?

 

At any rate, I needed to eliminate the dark pixies first.

I closed my eyes and stretched out my hand to the scene I held in my mind. But before I could activate my power, a group suddenly jumped in and started massacring the demons.

…who?

The group was full of armed women. There were so many of them I didn’t even bother counting. They moved and acted like a single organism, and the dark pixies dropped like flies.

A single man jumped out from within the women. One of his hands held aloft a magic sword, while the other dramatically flicked his blond-colored front bangs. He grinned a blindingly-white grin.

 

“Have no fear, my venerable madams, lovely ladies and adorable chéries! I, Calimero, is here, and I shall not allow a single—”

 

I instantly cut the connection out of sheer reflex. I blinked.

So he was alive.

…well, whatever. That meant I could leave the place to him while I go look for the cause of this mess.

---

Previous Chapter | Index | Next Chapter

“Commence the unsealing of subject ‘BRIAN’. All staff, be on high alert.”

 

In the quarantine laboratory of a research center, a certain superpower was attempting to unseal a hibernation capsule that they had acquired in utmost secrecy from a country to the west.

The capsule had been excavated from the ruins of a military compound in the western country. There were suspicions that the compound had been the location for an experiment to connect to another world, and for testing the new weaponry system that made use of the unknown form of energy gathered from said world.

Yet the weapon testing had ended in the complete destruction of the military compound.

Just what had happened?

Details were unclear even now, but the current theory was that it was an accident, one that had happened when the weapon platform nicknamed ‘The Girl of White’, or ‘Whitehare’, had ran out of control. The vast area that the compound used to occupy was now an icy wasteland, the horrifically low temperature having destroyed everything inside it.

Afterward, the country’s army began to examine the area through long-range reconnaissance. They discovered the underground section of the base several months later, from which they excavated several objects of interest.

The building had collapsed. A part of the surface structure had fallen into the space that served as the foundation. Seemingly due to the ‘accident’, everything excavated were frozen, and they continued to be so even after they’d been sent to various laboratories for further examination.

Among the excavated objects, the capsule was the most intact. It was sent to a lab with a researcher that had been bought off by the superpower. The researcher then defected to the superpower country, bringing along the capsule.

 

The capsule was transported to a research center used for space development that was situated in the outskirts of a city. With the use of robotic arms and avatars, the unsealing of the capsule commenced in the quarantine lab.

When it was first found, all the machinery connected to the capsule had been pulverized. It was a miracle that the capsule itself still remained, even if half-crushed. The name plate was barely legible on the surface full of scratches and cracks, and the letters spelled out ‘BRIAN’.

 

“…surface temperature… minus 136.6 degrees Celsius. Scans show a very faint organic signature inside.”

“Human?”

“It doesn’t match anything on Earth, if the results are to be believed.”

“So extraterrestrial, then… or could it be extradimensional?”

“Even assuming that this is actually life, it’s not carbon-based like us… this is life as we’ve never seen before.”

“Amazing…”

 

High officers of the government and the space agency were watching from behind thick glass. The robotic arm carefully pried open the warped door of the capsule. With a pair of forceps, a remote-controlled avatar scraped off the strange frozen mold-like substance inside.

 

“Avatar Control Division, reporting in. The low temperature is causing a delay in the response time of the avatar, as well as some other minor glitches. The operator has requested a raise in room temperature.”

“Is it going to be a problem?”

“We are unsure. The quarantine lab used to report normal ambient temperature, but now the object has lowered it to minus 62.7 degrees Celsius. It should still be well within operating temperature of the avatar, however…”

 

While humans still hadn’t abandoned their dream of one day reaching the stars, the development of avatars meant that most space programs now used them for dangerous work outside of spaceships.

Was it truly just the temperature that had caused glitches in these space-rated avatars?

 

“No point in having the work be delayed, I supposed. I give permission to raise ambient temperature.”

 

With the permission of the president of the space agency and the high government official, the quarantine lab began to warm up. The remote-controlled avatars resumed their work.

They didn’t know that this cold was a curse by the Girl of White.

The heater was running, yet the immediate area around the object continued to retain its low temperature. One of the avatar operators turned impatient. As soon as permission was granted, they raised the temperature of the forceps themselves and made contact with the substance.

It was the beginning of disaster.

 

“Active life signs confirmed in the substance!”

“Following procedure, immediately force-disconnecting all avatars!”

“Avatar 03 isn’t responding to force disconnection!”

 

As the other avatars vanished, having been disconnected, only the avatar making contact with the substance still remained. Some grey-colored substance clung to their fingertips.

 

“W-What the hell’s this?! It’s moving! IT’S MOVING!”

“Calm down, 03. Damage to your avatar won’t hurt your real body!”

“I’m going to break your connection terminal! Brace for impact!”

“Hurry! It’s getting on my arm! My arm’s going grey… aaaaAAAAHH SAVE ME! OH GOD, SAVE ME!”

 

The grey consumed all of Avatar 03, and it disappeared. A moment later, so too did the strange substance vanish like dust.

Shocked silence descended on all those witnessed the scene. It was then broken with a scream from the Avatar Control room.

 

***

 

From the calming spiritual world of the World Tree where my family was, I returned. My two kins lying on my chest woke up as well. I gave them a pat with my finger.

“Good morning, Blobsy, Panda.”

*boing*

“Ook.”

They snuggled into my chest again. With the two in my arms, I stood from the World Tree’s roots, poking Palesnow in my subspace storage with a finger, and I looked up at the green canopy that covered the sky.

“Hey, World Tree. I’m going out for a bit.”

The World Tree’s branches shook, turning the sunlight that slipped between the leaves into a kaleidoscope.

 

I heard someone calling for me.

It was the voice of the elven boy that had given me my name.

We’d made a promise to meet again once, long ago. Unfortunately, I wasn’t a spirit of the land as he believed me to be, and I looked different now, too. There hadn’t been a chance for us to meet.

That aside… I’ve only just gone to sleep for a few years. Apparently that was enough for the idiots to start forgetting the pain.

I placed Blobsy and Panda back into my subspace inventory. After so long, I once again walked as a Goddess of this world.

[Shedy] [Race: Bunny Girl] [Joker]
・Dea Ex Machina. An artificial goddess born in cyberspace. Possesses the right hand of a Demon to destroy all, and the left hand of a Goddess to save all.

[Magic Points: 550,000/550,000] 50,000 ↑
[Total Combat Power: 605,000/605,000] 55,000 ↑
[Unique Skill: <Causality Alteration> <Dimensional Manipulation> <Consumption> <The Divine Language>] 
[Racial Skill: <Fear> <Mist Form>]
[Superb Identification] [Deity Form (❤)] [Subspace Inventory]
[Overlord] [Goddess of Yggdrasia]

…I’m just imagining the changes. Yeah. Must be my imagination.

 

So anyway, since I was an artificial goddess, I wasn’t actually bound by the Naming, but that still didn’t change the fact that he’d done it. I probably had a link to him in some form.

It was why I knew where he was. I could see what was happening near him too.

Don’t worry… I hear you. I hear your voice.

 

“[Dimensional Manipulation]”

 

Upon my activation of the skill to cross through space, the world itself, as though to celebrate my descent, dramatized my arrival with mist.

Really, the World Tree was so sweet on me.

Right, so… beastmen and… a fishman, I see. It wasn’t that the will of just humans alone were weak. It was all humanoids.

The beastmen had regretted their past. They’d fought for the sake of the world.

So I gave them mercy.

The mist that grew from my divine left hand burned all the beastmen, incinerating them until their souls were purified, which were then returned to the World Tree through the Sapling. One day, they would be reborn in this world.

 

“N-no, no no no, I didn’t do anything wrong, it’s them, it’s them!”

The final remaining fishman tripped over himself to run away, all the while passing the blame over to the beastmen.

I hadn’t seen any fishpeople in the fight before. They had ran away from both the humans and the war, it seemed. I didn’t blame them for it… but that didn’t mean they would be forgiven for inflicting the pain that the beastmen had once suffered.

I didn’t suffer fools lightly.

The blizzard from my demonic right hand froze the fishman whole while he was trying to run away, freezing him down to his soul. All of his existence disintegrated as specks of ice.

 

“Goddess…?”

I heard the whisper of the elven boy. He was staring at me with his face bright-red, for some reason. I saw myself and my own faint smile reflected in his eyes. I’d changed so, so much from being the white cloud that he had once seen me as.

“It’s nice to see you again.”

I said my goodbye and gave him a pat on his cheeks, and I left.

I thought I heard him call my name then.

 

I flew far up into the clear blue sky. Beautiful nature, healed from its wounds, spread across my eyes.

But… I felt uneasy. I didn’t know why.

Maybe I should take a look at the mortal world, I thought. I headed for a human town.

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Not many people knew the truth about the world that was now only accessible in the form of an MMORPG, that it truly existed.

Those who did included only the management of the game, certain players, some people within the upper echelons of the government and military… and a few other superpowers who had, by chance, gotten their hands on the information.

Eager to find new lands to bring into their fold and to send their citizens into, one of these superpowers had bought off and gathered up the scientists and engineers formerly involved with the ‘parallel world’ project. But just as they were on the verge of their first successful test, the Girl of White had turned the whole military research base into a desolate wasteland.

Officially, the country announced it to be an “accident”, one that had resulted in the death of “thirty-five unfortunate souls”, when the truth was that tens of thousands of people had disappeared, never to return, while losses were estimated to be in the range of trillions of dollars. It was a national disaster.

 

The nation trembled in fear of the shadow of the Girl of White, and they washed their hands of all research related to the parallel world.

But the superpower neighboring them didn’t. They knew what had happened, yet they still desired the boons of the new world. They continued their work with the utmost discretion.

This country had vast lands, but not enough people or natural resources. The harsh climate stalled their crops and consequently slowing their population growth, while their lack of resources did no favors to their industries. They were forced to survive as a militaristic country.

They desired the resources of the new world. At the same time, they also knew to be far more circumspect than their defeated neighbor and the superpower that had first discovered the parallel world.

They knew that the first country had failed in an endeavor to gain infinite energy.

They knew that their neighbor had failed a connection test that had been meant as the first step in a plan to send citizens over.

The superpower surmised that, due to a reason still yet unknown as there had been barely any survivors from the previous incidents, the act to connect to the other world itself would invite some form of grievous devastation. So the country did not plan on making any kind of contact; they would only investigate the things that had arrived here from the other side, and they would see if they can gain anything from them.

 

One day, in a military research compound of the country, a certain something arrived after being sent through multiple other countries.

The container doors opened. Under the researchers’ instructions, the soldiers carefully carried the item outside. It was a hibernation capsule used for VR, one that was made by a certain country. The glass was fogged, hiding the contents, but there was a name on the capsule. A name in Latin letters.

It read “BRIAN”.

 

***

 

Yggdrasia, a different world. A world held up by the World Tree and ninety-nine Saplings. A world protected by an artificial Goddess.

Once, this world had been under the rule of the human race, thieves who had monopolized the World Tree’s blessings for themselves. Its mana was being consumed without end, and the world was heading toward a slow destruction. And once Earth began their silent invasion to gather mana, it only hastened the process.

But the apocalypse was then stopped by one person, one single girl who had been called the Dark Lady. By her exaltation into a Goddess, she had protected the world.

 

The ascendant reign of humans was cut short when the world was ravaged by what would later be called ‘The Dark Lady’s Great War’. Now, humans were allowed to continue living far away from the World Tree’s blessings, under the supervision of those who had once suffered under their hands, who had once been their slaves: the Demihuman Union.

Peace had come to the world. Yet after the Great War, three years were enough for the greedy and the corrupt to begin forgetting the painful lesson they’d been taught.

 

Deep within a forest, the ruins of a simple settlement stood. Its former inhabitants had lived in nomadic tents, and so there hadn’t been any sign of a standing house. All that remained in the grass were traces of a makeshift log table and a butcher’s workplace.

Next to them was a small tent, so new as to be out-of-place. Its size suggested that it wasn’t meant to be a permanent dwelling, but for traveling purposes instead.

Morning came. A young boy appeared from inside the tent. He walked to the nearby stream to get water.

He looked about ten years of age. His lithe physique and pointed, long ears hinted to his elven ancestry, a demihuman race. While elves were famously long-lived, elven children still grow as fast as humans, so the boy was truly as old as his appearance suggested.

 

The boy’s name was Yol. When the world was still the dominion of humans, he had lived here with several other families, hiding away from the humans’ eyes.

At the time, aside from the babies, Yol was the only child in the village. He hadn’t been old enough to help out much, so he spent his time just picking firewood and fruits by himself.

Then one day, what looked to be a child appeared in front of him.

Their face and body was hidden under a cloak. He didn’t really know for sure if they really were a child — he only knew they were small. They didn’t talk, didn’t make a sound, didn’t let him get close. The gestures they made in response to his words were the only way Yol knew they understood him.

The strange child-like form only ever appeared in the forest whenever Yol was alone.

Then one day, he heard from the adults that some human slavers had been about to attack them, and that they had been defeated by a ‘white mist monster’. Yol immediately though that child was the Forest’s Spirit, and as a sign of their friendship, he had gifted them a Name. He promised them they would meet again.

 

After the human threat had passed, Yol was now free to travel the world.

All the same, monsters still continued to be a danger, and there were also some humans who had chafed under the rule of demihumans and had escaped into the forest to live as bandits.

Yol wanted to visit the forest where he once lived in. At first the adults hadn’t allowed him, citing his youth, but once he turned ten and learned magic, he finally gained permission, if only for just several days to visit the forest. But after arriving and staying for a few days, the friend who he had thought to be living in the forest still hadn’t shown up.

On the final day, there was an unexpected encounter.

 

*snap*

Hearing the sound of cracking branches, Yol looked up. It wasn’t the friend that he had been waiting for, but several demihumans.

“Heey, little guy. You’re an elf, aren’t you. Why are you here alone?”

“…who are you, misters?”

 

They were feline beastmen clad in what looked like the attire of hunters. Yet he thought it strange that hunters would go so deep into the forest, and not only that, he also noticed a large-set man to the back of the group, his face hidden under a hood that glimmered as though made of wet leather. The man sent shivers down Yol’s back.

 

“Oh don’t worry, kid, we’re just coming to visit the elves who used to live in this forest. We heard that they moved to this area. Where’s your family now?”

“…we used to live here until three years ago. Nobody’s here now.”

The man who’d talked to Yol slightly narrowed his eyes. A moment later, the feline beastmen behind him began to quarrel.

“Fucking hell, who the fuck said there were elves here?! Fucking waste of time!”

“It ain’t my fault! There’s no way to know how up-to-date information about elves outside of towns is!”

“Shut up, you two, the kid’s gonna figure it out. I just got him calm.”

 

“M-mister?”

The kindly-sounding man’s gaze was now ice-cold. Yol flinched backward a step. An arrow flew from the direction of the men to stab into the ground next to his feet.

“Now now, stay right there.” The bow-wielding feline beastman then turned around and bowed to the hooded man behind him. “Sorry boss, no elf girl here. Just a kid.”

“It’s fine, shit happens. Kids sell for a decent price too anyway. Life’s been comfortable enough these days for the perverts to start showing up, so there’s good demand now.”

The hooded man pulled off his hood, revealing grey skin covered in scales.

 

He was a fishman. A race that shared the sea with the merfolk.

In contrast to the merfolk whose bottom halves were that of a fish, the race of fishpeople had legs, allowing them to walk on land. They still could not go too far from the water, however, and longer journeys would require them to wear a specially-treated coat.

So why had the man gone to all this trouble, leaving his home so far behind?

He was a slaver.

 

The merfolk were, as a rule, all beautiful, and so they were frequently hunted to be pet-slaves for humans. On the other hand, the most the fishpeople were useful for was simply labor, and only near the water, at that. It was why that had avoided the same fate. And as they had not joined in the Great War, they had survived with their wealth and power undiminished.

The War had drastically reduced the population of humans and demihumans, but not the fishpeople. After joining the Demihuman Union, their influence ballooned by virtue of being the only race with their population and wealth intact. They used their money to buy up magitools that had been left behind by the formerly dominant human race, and they began to approach the prosperity that humans had once possessed. And like humans, they then thought about making slaves out of other races.

Peace had come to the world. Even beastmen, those who should have understood the painful lesson better than anyone else, now began to lose themselves to their desires. They were about to repeat history once more.

 

“W-Why are you doing this?! The world is protected by the Goddess—”

Finding his courage, Yol began to shout, but the first man silenced him with a slap.

“Shut the hell up. She was one of those who had broken the world in the first place, and now you tell me to worship her? You think I’m an idiot?”

“B-but…” Yol whimpered.

“Hey now, don’t damage the goods.”

The fishman spoke, having came near Yol. He pinched the boy’s cheeks and turned his tear-stricken face upward.

“Regrettably, us fishmen never met that White Goddess or whatever her name is. Can’t believe in a god you’ve never seen, you see? And besides, we haven’t heard a thing about her in all these three years. You sure she didn’t die together with that Evil God she fought?”

 

Yol bit his lips in frustration. The human Hero named Gold was someone Yol truly looked up to, and he had been proud of the fact that he had once fought together with the Dark-Lady-turned-Goddess. Gold told him that she had forgiven all the evils that humans had wrought, that she was a true Goddess who had saved this world from its fated ruin.

Then why were these demihumans doing this? Why were they repeating the same foolishness of the human race that they had once hated? Why were they making a mockery of all the Goddess had done?

Yol whispered. He reverently asked for forgiveness from the Goddess, and he said his apologies to the friend that he still hadn’t met.

Forgive us, Goddess, we have been ungrateful to our savior… and I’m sorry, my friend. I don’t think I can keep that promise now…

 

“—Don’t worry. I hear you.—”

 

“…eh?”

Yol jerked his face up. The female voice seemed to have come from everywhere and nowhere at all, yet everyone else didn’t seem to have heard it. The first beastman grasped Yol’s arm and growled.

“Stand up. I’m sure you know where the other elven villages are… wait, what?”

Feeling a sudden chill, the men looked up, eyes darting around. A white mist began to envelop the area.

“What’s happening? Why is there mist?”

 

“H-Hey! I can’t move!”

Everyone turned toward the panicked shout. A feline beastman off to the side was rapidly being covered by white frost. His legs were frozen mid-step.

“S-Somebody, help—”

The ice rushed across his whole body, freezing him still as his hand stretched out in a desperate plea for help, and the ice statue fell forward. It shattered into white dust.

 

“W-what…”

“What is that?!”

The men looked on in stupefaction. Appearing from within the mist was a girl clad in a scarlet dress with crimson eyes and snow-white hair, her steps unhurried.

The girls looked to be about fifteen, maybe sixteen. Adorning her graceful features was a pair of long, floppy ears, like those of a rabbit’s.

There were no rabbit beastman in this world, with one single exception: the girl who had opposed mankind, who had been the bogeywoman of two different worlds. Formerly called the Dark Lady Whitehare, everyone now knew her under a different name.

“T-The White Goddess?”

 

“—[Firebloom]—”

 

Flame burst out from the divine left hand of the Goddess, turning a feline beastman into burning petals in a blink of an eye. The first beastman stretched out his hands toward her as though begging for forgiveness, and the burning petals began to spread from his fingers, purifying his evil soul. Flames of mercy burned until he was no more.

 

“N-no, no no no, I didn’t do anything wrong, it’s them, it’s them!”

The final remaining fishman trembled in terror, rambling and making half-formed excuses. He tried to run away. The Goddess pointed her right fingers at his back.

 

“—[Rimeblossom]—”

 

“It’s not my faul—”

The fishman was interrupted by the raging blizzard coming from the Goddess’ demonic right hand that swallowed him whole. All of him, even his soul, broke apart into petals of ice and dissipated. Not a speck of himself remained.

 

“G…Goddess?”

Yol could only mutter in astonishment as the White Goddess eliminated the demihuman slavers in a blink of an eye. She patted his blushing cheeks and smiled.

“It’s nice to see you again.”

She whispered, and the White Goddess disappeared in white mist.

Yol stood still, watching her departure as his cheeks still burned. Her words triggered something in his mind.

 

“…Shedy?” he mumbled.

---

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A certain nation of Earth had, by sheer happenstance, discovered a new planet. An extraplanar one. They had then begun to plan an invasion to this new world for its resources.

Especially for the unknown new form of clean energy called ‘mana’. Seeing the potential military applications, the government, as well as the defense industry, had ‘recruited’ unaware people to gather mana as players in an MMORPG game, as well as one hundred children as live testers for a military experiment.

All of them were orphans, and all possessed some form of special ability.

Through studying their powers, fields of science and medicine entered an unprecedented golden age. But once the children were no longer useful, the corporation deemed them ‘disposable pawns’, and used them as such in an attempt to develop mana-using weaponry.

 

However, the plan had been forcefully brought to a stop by a single girl, the final and only survivor of the experiment. Multiple research centers of the corporation and the accompanying research data had been destroyed. Even the army of the nation that boasted the most powerful military in the world had also suffered heavy losses.

The only facility to have escaped destruction was the game department, which had been left alone as her eyes to monitor the situation of Earth. Otherwise, facilities with either the equipment to connect to the new world or to collect mana, as well as the knowledge about the technology itself, had all been thoroughly wiped out. Now, even if they could revive the plan and keep it hidden, it would still take them at least decades to get back to the stage of practical applications.

Furthermore, those involved in the plan now feared the shadow of The Girl of White. The very idea of resuming the plan already terrified them.

 

Yet there were those who hadn’t known that fear. There were those who were unaware of The Girl of White that had returned to this world.

No matter how much they’d tried to control the information, the more people involved, the more chances it had of leaking. Secrets had a tendency to percolate, like water through stone.

They had been doing their utmost to defend themselves from foreign espionage. Industrial spies and similar infiltrators snooping around had been a constant threat, but the intelligence departments of the corporation and the military had always been prompt in their countermeasures. As such, there had been no major problems.

But the destruction of the chain of command by the girl of white had become a vulnerability to be taken advantage of by the foreign agents.

And today was the day a certain militaristic nation in the Orient began their first connection test to ‘The New World of Yggdrasia’. This achievement had been built from the information they had stolen, as well as the cooperation of the researchers they had bought off.

 

“Begin operation test.”

 

This nation sold a lot of cheap electronics as one of its main industries, and by hiding tiny organic chips inside their products, they’d learned of the secret of the new world that a certain Occidental country had been hiding.

Year by year, they’d slowly gained more and more of the related information and technology by bribing researchers and high-ranking government workers, and a few months ago, they’d finally succeeded in acquiring a researcher possessing critical knowledge of the technology.

Yet the equipment they’d developed were still several generations behind, as shown by their need of a facility so enormous it took up a whole baseball field. Perhaps the researcher they’d bought off hadn’t been that involved in the really important research.

If one of the main researchers of the Western corporation was here to see this facility and the equipment it contained, they would have thought it would be several decades more before the Eastern people could even begin sending avatars to the new world and gather mana.

But the Eastern country’s leader and higher-ups coming to observe the operation test hadn’t known that. They were only imagining the bright future waiting for them ahead with grins on their faces.

“So this will allow us to send more of our citizens…”

They had been making use of their overwhelming population to execute a policy not unlike a human wave attack, sending their people as immigrants to other countries and using them to take control of the country from within. However, these last few decades had seen fewer and fewer countries willing to take immigrants, and their overcrowding population was growing out of their control. They needed to find a new land to be their citizens’ destination.

None of them had been aware that they wouldn’t be able to send live people to Yggdrasia, much less that the atmosphere itself wasn’t even breathable to Earth humans.

They believed that their problem would be solved as long as they could send their people. They had proceeded with their plan upon that assumption, and finally, they began their operation test to connect to the new land today.

 

The enormous screen started to show images, albeit still blurry, of a gigantic tree that pierced the sky.

The room was astir with astonished exclamations. “…the World Tree…” whispered one of the governmental higher-ups. All were beaming, certain that this sight would soon belong to them.

But then, the scenery on the other side of the screen was suddenly fogged in white, as though covered by a mist.

 

“…what… is that…?”

 

And then the screen showed a life-sized silhouette of a girl with drooping long ears that looked like they belonged to a rabbit. A crimson crescent of a smile abruptly appeared where her mouth would be.

A white finger poked out of the screen. Somebody squeaked in fear.

Next came a pair of deadly sharp pin-heels, red as blood. Scarlet eyes, snow-white hair, and long rabbit ears poking out from her locks. The rabbit girl looked about mid-way through her teens, and she wore a crimson dress reminiscent of a tailcoat.

The girl of white gave a faint smirk, her gaze frosty. The researchers and engineers around her were frozen, spellbound expressions etched on their faces, and they crumbled into snowy powder.

 

Screams rang out the next moment, mixed with shouts of the soldiers.

“FIRE!”

There were enough bullets to pulverize the enormous screen behind the girl, but she stood unharmed. The girl of white gently spread wide her arms and clasped her hands before her chest as though in prayer.

 

“—[Nadir Beyond]—”

 

The next instant, all was white ice.

People, machines, grass, even the ground — flesh and iron froze all the same. The largest military compound of the country, together with many, many soldiers and high-ranking officials, were within the freezing sphere of dozens of kilometers in radius. All vanished as dust.

 

.The moment had been captured in real-time by the eyes of multiple military satellites.

But the instant the image of a girl standing in a desolate, white-colored crater appeared on-screen, her head turned to look at the satellites’ cameras. The last thing the satellites saw was her smile as she touched her index finger to her mouth. The very next moment, all the military satellites in orbit ceased operation, terrifying the operators affiliated with the armed forces.

 

***

 

Yggdrasia, the new world. A world held up by the World Tree and ninety-nine Saplings. A world slowly on the path toward ruination due to the human race monopolizing the World Tree’s boons, as well as the nations of Earth seeking to steal the unknown form of energy called ‘mana’.

 

Yet Yggdrasia’s fated end had been averted upon the appearance of the Girl of White, that small girl who had been called a ‘demon’, who had suffered from the cruelty of others. In time, she had walked through the door of godhood, and it had been by her hands that the Evil God summoned to this world by the sins of mankind was repelled. The path toward apocalypse had been closed shut.

The battle between the goddess and the demon had been truly fierce, and it had left behind a severe wound to the planet. But the reborn World Tree Saplings had healed the scarred lands, bringing new life to the world once more.

 

The human race that had monopolized the Saplings, those who had built their prosperity on the suffering of other life, had rapidly declined upon losing their blessing.

They had been dragged into the worldwide conflict, losing their barriers and their protection from monsters, and so it was no surprise that many lives had been lost. And with how dependent they had been on the Saplings’ blessings, many more would.

Still, it hadn’t been enough to make up for the crimes the human race had committed. Many demihumans and sapient life still bore a grudge against the humans. In a way, the humans’ true ordeal was only just beginning.

Nevertheless, their experience of this disaster had taught many among the humans to realize their sins.

These people had then gathered under the leadership of Tischlar, the former emperor of Touze Empire, and the Warrior Hero named Gold. They searched for the path of survival together with, and helped by, the elven and beastman people.

 

“So this is where you are, sir Tischlar.”

“Sir Gold…”

 

The two men said no more, standing in silence to watch over the town being restored.

Even if the settlement could be repaired, there was no longer any barrier protecting the people from monsters, and neither did they have the magic to power all the magitools of convenience that they once had. People once more survived by burning firewood for warmth and for cooking food.

On the other hand, it was fortunate that they still have a place to return to. Gold’s hometown, the desert country, was no longer an environment to live in. The overuse of magic had turned the land into a lifeless desert, and it would be centuries before people could make it their home again.

At the moment, the revived Saplings were beginning to regulate the environment once more, although now they no longer focused their blessings only on their surroundings, instead spreading it to the whole planet.

The people had been lucky to have survived, and many of them knew it.

That was to say, however, that some still didn’t.

Humans were weak. It had been the reason why the other races had allowed the humans to leech off the World Tree.

Among those who had gotten used to their former life of abundance, there were surely some who still hadn’t learned their lesson, who were thinking of taking the Saplings’ magic even now.

And perhaps it would be the demihumans this time, of which some had already turned the tables on the humans and had become oppressors themselves. Perhaps one day, they would be the ones to desire the Saplings. If it happened, it would be a true war between all the races, one that would spell doom for this world.

But Tischlar and Gold knew that such a future would never come.

Their eyes were drawn toward the new temple that had been erected in the reviving town. People were praying, wishing that they would never see war again. They prayed in front of the statue of the Girl of White.

As long as the new Goddess born of this world still existed, they were sure that such a future would never be.

 

“As long as Shedy’s here…”

“Indeed. She would never allow it.”

 

Men would always desire. But the new Goddess of this world would surely not forgive fools.

 

“Sirs, the conference is soon to commence,” said a voice behind them. Tischlar and Gold turned around.

It was the elven princess and her brother, the prince. Near them were demihumans that seemed to be their bodyguards: Selille, the former leader of the rural resistance, and Isaac, the young man who had introduced himself as her adjutant.

 

A connection from Yggdrasia to Earth still remained. A small group of players were continuing to log in even now.

The MMORPG game World of Yggdrasia had had their ties to the defense industry cut completely, and the scale of the game had been dramatically reduced.

The country never wanted to let go of their access to the new world, of course. Regardless, the development team, which had since gone independent from the corporation, continued to maintain the game. Their expenses were paid with donations from those who knew the truth, and a neutral observing organization to watch for invasion attempts from both sides had been established.

The game was now completely pay-to-play with a service fee, no longer freely opening its doors to anyone as it had before. Nonetheless, the more respectable players such as Sandrea and Weed continued to enter the game, helping to keep the peace for the locals by hunting savage, unintelligent monsters.

As the representative for the players who knew the truth, Isaac had come to this town together with Selille.

 

On their way to the joint human-demihuman conference, Tischlar spoke.

“Which reminds me, sir Isaac. You have gone to inspect the countryside, if I’m not mistaken. Has peace still not yet return?”

Isaac smiled as he replied.

“There hadn’t been any conflict between demihumans and humans. The region had calmed down, relatively. There’s been rumors of a swordsman going around subjugating dangerous monsters with a horde of women behind him… would you happen to know who he is?”

“No?” Tischlar said, tilting his head in puzzlement.

Walking behind him, Gold wryly smiled in remembrance.

 

*

 

Upon defeating Fiorfata, I returned to my home. The World Tree.

“I’m back…”

The World Tree replied with a gentle shake of its vast canopy, welcoming me back.

The World Tree. The one single green giant that held up this whole world. I squinted, looking through the swaying leaves and the rays of dappled sunlight that danced as though a kaleidoscope, and I gently took a seat on the immense root.

 

I had been an unwanted child.

Born with my albinic looks and the power to bring misfortune to others, I was shunned by my own birth parents, scorned as the “demon child”, and thrown away as they told me they “never wanted me”.

I had wanted to be irreplaceable to someone. I had wanted a place where I belonged, a place just for me.

But nobody looked at me.

I never knew how to communicate with others.

That corporation only ever wanted me for my power. It was why once they finished analyzing it, they could so easily throw me away and into another world as a disposable pawn.

Even when I became a demon, even when I became a Dark Lady, the demihumans only wanted me for the power I could wield.

I knew nothing of people’s feelings.

I had only ever known humans as creatures that did nothing but bring suffering to others. But slowly, as my opportunities to talk with them became more and more frequent, I’d learned that it hadn’t been all that they were.

All the same… the only one who would hold me dear, who would protect me, was you alone.

 

*boing.*

“Ook.”

“Yes, yes, you too.”

Blobsy and Panda leaped into my chest as soon as they returned. I kissed them, lightly and full of gratitude, and I gently brushed the white sword faintly trembling on my hips.

 

The only ones I could trust in this world were Blobsy, Panda, Palesnow, the secret alpha testers… and you…

“…the World Tree…”

With my kins in my arms, I closed my eyes, surrendering myself to the world.

I’ll protect Yggdrasia.

Now that I’d become the goddess of this world, I would protect you, forever.

 

Embraced by the World Tree, I dreamed.

I saw humans aware of their crimes, sweating as they fixed up the streets with their own hands.

I saw demihumans handing out bread to human refugees, even when their own grudges were still yet to clear.

I saw monsters trying to protect the Saplings, trying to keep history from repeating.

I saw the secret alpha testers smiling as they greeted me in my dream. They took my hand, pulling me into their circle.

 

—thank you—

—you’ve worked so hard—

—rest—

—and let’s play when you wake up—

—we’re here—

—we’ll always be here—

—welcome home—

 

My eyes turned watery.

 

“…I’m home.”

 

I had been an unwanted child, a ‘demon’, and now, with my transformation into a goddess of this new world…

 

…finally, my wish, the wish I’d had for years, had been granted.

I had a true family. I had a true home.

---

Author’s Note: Apotheosis of a Demon — a Monster Evolution Story ends here. Thank you for following me all this time.

I wrote this in a bit of a hurry, though, so there might be some fixing later on.

 

This story is about a girl who’d lost everything and her journey to find a true family and a home to return to. I might have gotten distracted a few times, but I think the story pretty much went how I planned it to.

A lot of my stories are comedies, so this one might have been a bit unexpected to some, but a departure could be interesting once in a while, right?

While this is the end of the main story, I’m also thinking a bit about writing an after-story kind of thing.

 

Well then, let us meet again in the other stories that I am and will be writing, too. And if it’s not too much to ask, I hope to see your comments and rating.

---

Previous Chapter | Index | Extra Chapter

“—Load—”

 

I activated the four evolved abilities I had — Causality Alteration, Dimensional Manipulation, Consumption, The Divine Language — in parallel, and my magic power surged. Demonic power covered my right hand in a glove of faintly-red flower petals, while divine power covered my left hand in another one of the same, only azure-colored.

 

“――̴̨∋̕∮̕͝͞‡̴∩∝̡͢‡͘͏―̛―̸”

 

In response, Fiorfata released its own outpouring of magic from its whole body. Our powers clashed, sending the earth and the skies of the Central Continent trembling.

 

“Hah!” I shouted, dashing as I tore through the air, rolling forward during my charge to bring my heel down on Fiorfata. It snapped its long, withered arm like a whip in defense, vibrating its wings just a fraction to repel me with a shockwave.

“Firebloom!”

Mist flowed from my left hand. As the white petals touched Fiorfata’s miasma, they blackened and burst into flames.

Yet the blast was still not yet entirely nullified, flinging us away from each other once again. Fiorfata released beams of light from its right arm, and I answered by thrusting out my own.

“Rimeblossom!”

The blizzard coming from my right hand clashed against Fiorfata’s lasers.

Its magic power was converted into icy petals as its lasers seared away my magic power. The collision resulted in an explosion that reverberated all across the Central Continent. The shockwave tore trees off the ground, enormous trunks tumbling in the air as though they were nothing more than leaves. Hills were grated away and the land flattened.

We slammed into each other once more, ignoring the damage we had taken. Fiorfata’s fist hit my stomach while my kick crashed into its face.

[Shedy] [Race: Bunny Girl] [Joker]
[Magic Points: 453,000/500,000] 
[Total Combat Power: 503,000/550,000] 

[Unseelie Lord・Fiorfata] [Race: Dark Pixie] [Demon Lord]
[Magic Points: 431,000/600,000]
[Total Combat Power: 501,000/670,000]

Fiorfata had answered my provocation. It hadn’t tried to attack anything else to recover its magic, instead agreeing to fight me head-on.

Was it the pride it had as a pinnacle being? Or was the cruelty of demons spurring it on?

As a demon, I’d always thought my aspect was ‘ruthlessness’, and now, I could feel that I’d gained the aspect of ‘rationality’ as a goddess.

Our combat power were about the same. Yet I was taking slightly, but distinctly, more damage that Fiorfata was, perhaps due to its superior experience in being a pinnacle of demons.

Which was why I knew that to have a chance of winning, I had to fight with an actual plan. I had to be as ruthless as demons and as rational as machines.

Fiorfata once more split its face apart in a smile. Had it noticed my determination, I wonder?

…fine then, Fiorfata, let’s get to it!

 

“—[Nadir Beyond]—”

I clapped my hands as though praying, teleporting a freezing mass of space to cover Fiorfata whole in an instant, engulfing it in white frost.

 

“―̡―͘∋̨̛͜∮◆̨̢͘―͠―̧͘”

 

Fiorfata shook it off with brute magic force and countered with lasers, but I was no longer there. I was already charging forward the moment I made my attack. The multiple beams of light changed their directions to chase me.

I dodged, grazing them, and got into melee range with Fiorfata. I used [The Divine Language] to create a five-meter chain of cold iron, throwing one end like a whip to wrap around Fiorfata’s left arm.

“Well then, let’s see who last longer.”

“◆̢l̨ơ͘̕☆n̶̵͟‡g̸͜◇̴̢e̕͢r̴̀?̸̸”

I pulled my left arm wrapped with the other end of the chain and slammed my right fist, wreathed in magic, into Fiorfata. It answered in kind and swung its right arm, which I blocked with my left.

Our attacks blew us away from each other, but the chain held us back.

Fiorfata immediately tried to cut the chain. I ran reinforcing magic power through it and while Fiorfata was distracted, I whipped a kick toward its head with all my strength.

[Shedy] [Race: Bunny Girl] [Joker]
[Magic Points: 442,000/500,000] 
[Total Combat Power: 492,000/550,000] 

[Unseelie Lord・Fiorfata] [Race: Dark Pixie] [Demon Lord]
[Magic Points: 418,000/600,000]
[Total Combat Power: 488,000/670,000]

As I expected, I had a much better chance when it was a melee fight. If my guess was correct… then Fiorfata was only making do with the experience it had gathered during its long, long life, and that it hadn’t had much experience in close combat itself due to being originally a dark pixie.

Cold iron could suppress evil, and could be strengthened due to its high affinity with magic power. I wasn’t good enough with the material to make a weapon, of course, but I could make a very tough chain.

 

“HAAAH!”

I unleashed the whole of my magic to swing the chain and Fiorfata with it, slamming and burying the Demon Lord into the ground. It pulled at the chain to bring me close and released a blast from beneath the earth.

The ground exploded. I was blown into the sky, and the taut chain brought Fiorfata with me.

The next moment, both of us pulled at the chain, flinging us together. Once we were so close our hands could touch, Fiorfata released beams of light at point-blank range.

“Rimeblossom!”

I didn’t care about offsetting its attack. The blizzard released from my right hand was purely to whittle Fiorfata down.

Two immense sources of magic power clashed with barely any distance between them. The violent explosion cut into both our magic reserves. For an instant, I took a defensive stance to minimize the damage—

“Wha-?!”

—but Fiorfata took the opportunity to pull at the chain to throw me away, taking me by surprise.

Fiorfata followed, connected by our binding. It snapped its long arm at me like a whip while I was still unbalanced. I strengthened the cold iron chain as much as I could and held it up to block. The impact rang in my ears.

I followed through, wrapping the chain around Fiorfata’s neck, pulling its face to meet my knee.

“―̀―̴‡̵̷̀◇͞――́？͘҉”

The impact cracked its head. It tilted its head just a fraction.

Too bad for you, Fiorfata…

“Looks like I’m better at fighting dirty!”

Once more, I jerked the chain back and slammed my elbow into its face, creating another crack. Yet even fractured as it was, its head once more split open in a smile.

It headbutted me in my face.

“Oof!”

I held back my reflex to bring my hand to my nose, instead swiping at Fiorfata with a kick. Both of us crashed into the ocean surface at such speed it felt like solid ground, the water erupting violently. I idly wondered how long ago we’d left land.

We were sinking deeper and deeper. This was bad. Underwater was bad. I couldn’t turn into mist to dodge with water around me.

But just as I struggled to rise from the water, I heard a heavy crash. Something had just chomped at Fiorfata underwater.

“GRAAAAAAGH!!!”

A sea dragon?! There were still monsters trying to help me!

Get away! I shouted, but underwater, all that came out were bubbles. The sea dragon broke the sea surface, dragging the chain — and me with it — out of the water.

Fiorfata struck, and everything above the neck of the sea dragon just vanished. Some of the splattering blood hit me.

I slammed both my hands at Fiorfata in anger, using Rimeblossom and Firebloom at the same time.

Crack! The fractures on its face widened. The cold iron chain was torn apart, the stress finally too much for it, and Fiorfata was flung away.

 

“…̸…́͢‡◆̢́∮͘◆̶∋ヾ̡͏̸∬́†̷―̨―́́͡？͠”

We floated above the waters, once more facing each other from a distance. Fiorfata stared at the torn chain in apparent puzzlement. Then it smirked, an enormous amount of magic power suddenly surging from it.

“――͜∬̷͜ヾ̵́‡͡͡͞―̧͟―̷̶̵ńu͟͟i̸͟͡s̀͡͠a͏̷͜n̷̛c̛͠͏e͟͝――̵͞͡”

 

Crap!!

 

Thousands upon thousands of beams of light shot out from Fiorfata’s whole body to pierce into the sea dragons that had been lurking beneath the ocean, waiting for their chance.

For the first time, the sounds coming out of Fiorfata weren’t the bizarre noise it had been releasing, but instead a recognizable word in the common language of Yggdrasia.

We had been completely ignoring our defense in our brawl, and both of our magic reserves had gone down quite a bit. But Fiorfata still chose to remove everything that could disturb us first, so that it could put a decisive end to our battle.

With most of the larger creatures under the sea eliminated, Fiorfata now turned its lasers toward land.

 

“—[Nadir Beyond]—!!”

A glacial cold covered Fiorfata. It didn’t take more than a few moments for it to be dispelled, however, and Fiorfata once more cracked open its head in a smile and resumed attacking the continent.

All the dragons that I could see, waiting for their opportunities as the sea dragons had, were being shot down, their wings full of holes. They fell to the ocean.

This was really bad. This was exactly what I had been trying to prevent by keeping its focus on me, but Fiorfata finally realized this whole world was against it.

 

Even if I had arrived at Fiorfata’s level, I had only just evolved. I didn’t have the experience. I had no way to prevent the Demon Lord’s wide-range attacks, nor a method of assault powerful enough to stop it.

I stared at my hands.

The right hand of demons, and the left hand of gods. A while ago, using both of them at the same time had allowed me to deal quite a bit of damage to Fiorfata.

But… should I use it?

It had been more powerful than I expected, that was true. But it had also been more unstable, more than what I thought I could control.

The demon inside me was whispering to me, telling me that if I did it right, I had a chance to win. But the goddess inside of me disagreed, telling me that in the worst case scenario, I could inflict a serious wound to this world.

But I couldn’t do nothing. At this rate, this world would—

 

—believe—

 

A voice interrupted my thoughts, covering me with its warmth. My hesitation and worries melted away.

It wasn’t the voice of the secret alpha testers. It was…

 

“—Load—”

Once more, I activated all my abilities and charged up my power.

Yes… I’ll believe. I’ll believe in this world, and I’ll believe in you, its protector.

Through the World Tree, I saw flashes of images from throughout the world. Everyone was looking at the sky, offering their prayers for their home to be saved.

 

As Fiorfata continued its onslaught, I poured all the magic I could into my hands and charged at the Demon Lord.

A demonic frost erupted from my right hand, and a divine flame burned on my left. They crackled in contact with each other, but I forced them together, weaving them into a single mass. My hands touched as though praying to the sky.

 

“FIORFATA!!!”

 

Upon my shout, its beams of light converged upon me.

I charged forward anyway even as the lasers threatened to burn holes through me, slamming the volatile demonic-divine mixture of power into its face, putting all my weight behind the blow.

Both my arms shattered under the overwhelming force.

At the same time, a large crack formed on Fiorfata’s head, which then soon expanded to cover its whole body in a spiderweb of fractures. The Demon Lord began to crumble from its extremities.

But it wasn’t enough. Fiorfata still lived.

The light of magic shone from its arms. As soon as I saw it, rather than using my divine power or my demonic curses, I was already stretching out my fractured hand into my inventory in a reflexive return to what I was most used to: fighting with weapons.

Space clattered and shivered. I took out a sword and threw it with all my strength, shouting in pure effort.

“HAAAH!!!”

 

Tiz’s enchanted sword struck Fiorfata’s magic in a flurry of sparks and shattered into pieces. The magic that the Demon Lord had been charging was scattered, glittering in the air together with the fragments of the blade. I hid behind the dazzling sparkles, squeezing out what strength I had left to draw the black-scabbard sword on my hip.

The blade tore through space, absorbing my now-godly magic power, Fiorfata’s own scattered magic, and even the flying fragments of Tiz’s magic sword to evolve, transforming into a slim longsword of pure white. Its name, the name of the sword that was my kin, rose unbidden in my mind.

 

Palesnow.

 

The blade cut into Fiorfata’s crack-filled face and became a channel for me to slam my demonic and divine magic power into the Demon Lord.

 

Fiorfata’s head shattered as my magic power erupted from all the fractures on its body. As the Demon Lord crumbled, it chuckled, whispering to me its final words.

 

“.̢́͘.̶̢.̛͟w̨o̷̡n̵̕d͏è̸͠ŕf͝͏͞u̷̡҉l͘..͝.̢́͟”

 

The Demon Lord’s body collapsed into particles of black light, and they too soon vanished.

Goodbye, Fiorfata… if you hadn’t agreed to face me head-on, I would have lost by now.

 

I raised my right hand to the sky to absorb all the miasma that Fiorfata had left behind. Then I pointed my left hand toward the ground, sharing power to the lands wounded in our battle.

My mist covered the world. The life-giving mist healed the wounded earth and creatures, and from the scorched dirt, the ninety-nine young seedlings of the World Tree rapidly shot up to maturity to heal the world.

Even a goddess’ power couldn’t revive the dead. But it could allow new, strong life to be born into this world.

 

And so it was that my battle with Fiorfata came to its end. The world was saved.

I, the girl who was once called a ‘demon child’ that brought misfortune to everyone else, had become a goddess, protector of a new world.

---

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Tiz stood in the castle’s courtyard. He whispered, staring at the remains of the destroyed Sapling.

“…Shedy?”

Shedy had used the magic sword to cut down the final Sapling, taking something from within the vanishing light into her hand. Then she disappeared into the cocoon of light.

She wasn’t gone. She was there. He could feel the enormous weight of her magic power, the presence of a true Dark Lady, still there.

But she wasn’t moving.

She was frozen as though a victim to her own power, as though her snow-white form had meant something far more literal.

As worries gnawed on Tiz’s mind, he, together with everyone else still staying behind in Touze Empire, all shivered as they suddenly felt a malevolent presence outside the city.

 

“…the Unseelie Lord…”

 

Fiorfata, the Unseelie Lord. A pinnacle of demons, a terrible being worthy of the name Evil God, summoned by mad humans. It wielded enough power to swat down the prided battleships of humans as though they were nothing but flies, and to bring cities and countries to ruin with a flick of its hand.

It was the face of the sins of the human race, the sins of mankind.

The humans had claimed the World Tree, what should have been the very lifeline of the world, as their own; had brought suffering to so many lives; had set the world onto the path of ruination. And now their sins had manifested themselves in the worst way possible, to enact indiscriminate retribution upon the whole world.

Despite how irresponsible it might sound, this was no longer a matter that humans could solve. And even if they had the power to, in all likelihood they would have used it only for themselves.

They had done it for their citizens. For mankind to prosper. And it might have even been necessary to some degree, but to the world of Yggdrasia, it was nothing more than a sin.

This was what Tiz had realized. It was the reason while despite being the emperor, he had abandoned the very keystone of his country that was the Sapling, gambling everything on the only one with a chance to win against this apocalypse: Shedy.

 

The Evil God Fiorfata silently floated above the city.

It didn’t need to do anything. Just the sight of it had sent people shivering, and those unfortunate enough to be showered in its overflowing, malevolent miasma soon decomposed, even as they stayed conscious through it all.

Fiorfata pointed its featureless face toward the white cocoon of light.

 

“――̀͟͠∴̀͞͡≠̸̡∬̧͢†̨‡∝̶͞∮̛̀―̵―̸”

 

A vast amount of magic power gathered at Fiorfata’s fingertips. Nearly a hundred beams of light shot toward the castle, centering on Shedy.

Just as Tiz readied himself for his impending death, he sensed a powerful surge of magic from behind him, from the light that had been the remnants of the Sapling. And he finally heard the voice he had been waiting for.

 

“—Bend—”

 

Upon the voice, enormous crystallized snowflakes appeared, each around a meter in diameter, and they instantly dispersed to cover the castle. They reflected Fiorfata’s beams of light away and into the sky.

Then they shattered. The fragments glittered in the light of the scattering lasers, turning into white, powdery snow that danced as they descended. And just as the first specks touched the ground, the cocoon of light slowly gave form to a person.

 

The girl of white stood there, with skin and hair of snow. Her eyes gently opened to reveal a vivid scarlet.

A pair of fluffy rabbit eyes draped on her lustrous, somewhat-messy locks of hair. When she had looked about fourteen before, now she had grown to fifteen, perhaps sixteen, the childishness fading from her features. The survivors of Touze all released an unwitting sigh as they saw her.

Her scarlet dress, modeled after a bunny girl outfit, had had some changes. Her bunched-up skirt had unraveled to resemble a tailcoat, with the long-extending hem wrapping around her legs. Depending on the angle, it almost looked like a gown.

 

Powerful magic surged from the white girl — from Shedy, the magic different from what she had before. The skies trembled in front of her.

From above, Fiorfata showed a fissure of a smile as it looked upon the birth of a new God-class. It pointed toward her and toward the city stretching below it, and it released an enormous magical blast.

Facing the approaching sphere of magic that was dozens of meters across, Shedy silently raised a finger of her left hand toward the sky.

 

“—Firebloom—”

 

With the power of The Divine Language — the evolution of Materialization — a glove, resembling azure flower petals, appeared to cover her left hand from the wrist.

A pure white mist burst from her left hand. As the mist touched upon the foulness, it transformed into black petals as though absorbing the malevolence and erupted in blazing flames.

The white mist purified, sealing and burning the wickedness. It clashed against Fiorfata’s magic power, and the two opposing forces sputtered and died out.

 

Space twisted, and a vast swath of the sky shuddered. Shedy suddenly flew out from the haze toward Fiorfata from the front, and a kick struck it in the back.

Fiorfata instantly reacted to the spatial reversal, blocking Shedy’s kick with its own arm. The two’s magic power clashed in flickering sparks of lightning.

Both were blown away several hundred meters from the impact, but Shedy had rolled with knees hugged to reduce the force. She forced herself to a stop in the air and pointed her right hand toward Fiorfata.

 

“—Rimeblossom—”

 

Her right hand was covered by a white glove glowing faintly red, and from it came a raging blizzard that shone with a similar shade. All the miasma in its way were transformed into petals of ice, and the storm lunged toward Fiorfata.

 

“‡̵∴̸*͟∋͟͠＊＊̢͜†̢”

 

Fiorfata released a sound that sounded half-singing, half-laughing. Its wings flapped at blurring speed, and it released a wide-ranging magical blast to blow away Shedy’s curse, that which turned everything it touched into icy petals.

 

Her left hand was the merciful hand of a goddess. From it came a mist to heal all living beings and to turn all evil into flower petals that burned in eternal purgatory, burning until they were no more.

Her right hand was the ruinous hand of a demon. From it came a blizzard to bestow a peaceful death to the sinless and to turn the wicked into flower petals that froze, annihilating them to their very souls.

The left hand of gods, and the right hand of demons.

The flames of mercy that burned all into nothingness, and the blizzard of destruction that brought death equally to all.

The power of gods, and the power of demons.

Gods purified one’s sins by granting never-ending suffering, while demons cared nothing for purification, only granting equal destruction to all.

 

An artificial goddess faced a demon of the Netherworld. The clash of two absolute powers had cleared away the clouds of the whole Central Continent, and once more, they took to the skies of Yggdrasia to resume their battle.

 

*

[Shedy] [Race: Bunny Girl] [Joker]
・Dea Ex Machina. An artificial goddess born in cyberspace. Possesses the right hand of a Demon to destroy all, and the left hand of a Goddess to save all.

[Magic Points: 489,000/500,000] 
[Total Combat Power: 539,000/550,000] 
[Unique Skill: <Causality Alteration> <Dimensional Manipulation> <Consumption> <The Divine Language>] 
[Racial Skill: <Fear> <Mist Form>]
[Simple Identification] [Deity Form (Lovely)] [Subspace Inventory]
[Overlord]
[Goddess from the Machine]

[Unseelie Lord・Fiorfata] [Race: Dark Pixie] [Demon Lord]
・One of the seven Demon Lords ruling Netherworld. A god of the Netherworld.

[Magic Points: 445,000/600,000]
[Total Combat Power: 515,000/670,000]

Under the cloudless sky of Yggdrasia, we faced each other with nearly a hundred meters between us.

With my evolution, I finally gained power equivalent to Fiorfata.

…and as traditional whenever this happened, another one of my abilities evolved weird…

…so anyway, I got the evolution for my final ability. I’d arrived at the same plane of existence as Fiorfata, and I had gained the power to defeat it.

But… without Blobsy and Panda, without the dragons’ sacrifices, without the many, many monsters and demihumans, and without the help of some humans to grind down Fiorfata’s magic power, I couldn’t have stood in front of it as I was now.

 

I had evolved. I was a Joker. I was the final and the greatest trump card.

I was both a deity and a demon, a man-made goddess born from the world of cyberspace.

I was dea ex machina.

My new power had been granted to me by the secret alpha testers… no, not just them, but by the whole world of Yggdrasia.

 

All the same, even if we were now on a level playing field, I still only just evolved. I didn’t know how much of my power I could use. Still…

 

“Fiorfata. Ready yourself.”

 

I wouldn’t let it recover any more magic. I would end this, here and now!

---

Previous Chapter | Index | Next Chapter

Everywhere I looked, I saw only white, except for the girl holding my hand. She told me she was number 99, and that she had been waiting with “everyone else”.

“Where is this…? And what do you mean, ‘everyone’…”

 

—we are inside of the World Tree. Open your eyes. Open up your heart… if you’re scared, just a little bit is enough… don’t worry. All of us are on your side—

 

Deep inside me, I knew she was speaking the truth. So she must have known, too, that I still could not trust, still could not let anyone into my heart.

But… even when I knew she was truthful, my door had been shut ever since I was born. I no longer knew how to open it.

 

—don’t worry—

 

Someone touched my shoulder. I turned around to see that it was a boy who looked about the same as the age of my current appearance. He was looking at me kindly.

Was he… number 01?

And it wasn’t just him. An Asian boy about ten years old and a slightly-older black boy were holding my hand in encouragement.

Number 17…? Number 08… ?

Their thoughts poured into me from their magic stones that I’d taken into myself, and my sight expanded as the world was painted over.

 

The ground was thick with green foliage as far as I could see, dotted with beams of dappled sunlight that had found their way through the green canopy covering the whole sky. Above the labyrinthine and enormous branches of the World Tree were many, many children. They all greeted me with a smile.

The secret alpha testers… the ninety-nine orphans who had died to the corporation’s betrayal…

There were kids from ten to fifteen years old, both boys and girls, of all nationalities and races. I only barely managed to recognize where they had been from by looking at the traditional clothing that they wore.

 

—thank you—

—thank you—

—thank you—

—number 13… you have saved us—

—you have saved—

—you have saved our souls—

 

The secret alpha testers spoke with gentle voices, full of warmth.

I see… so what I’d done hadn’t been for nothing, then. I did it… I actually saved them.

I closed my eyes, immersing myself in the warmth of their gratitude, the warmth of the sunlight.

The sun then darkened for a fraction.

 

—sorry—

—sorry—

—sorry—

—we’d let you be in pain alone—

—we’d forced our burden on you—

—we’d made you bear the resentment, the hatred, all by yourself—

 

“That’s not true!”

I was just trying to survive. I’d even told myself it had been for you, when all I was doing was justifying my vengeance.

“I… I don’t deserve your apologies…” I said, biting my lips.

The girl of number ninety-nine gently shook her head.

 

—we were the same—

—it hurt. It was unbearable. It was terrible—

—we died, bearing dark hatred for the world, cursing it—

 

As the other children followed up with their own words, the sun once more darkened.

But then… the light slowly returned together with its warmth. The ninety-nine secret alpha testers gathered around me, touching my hands one after another.

 

—but we were saved—

—you have freed us from our hatred—

—you have taken us away—

—from the darkness—

—so now—

 

Their voices joined together as one.

 

—it is our turn to save you—

—take it. Take our final power—

[Shedy] [Race: Bunny Girl] [Archdemon Lv. 100]
・The demon of Laplace. One who had ascended beyond an Archdemon.

[Magic Points: 338,000/338,000] 3,000 ↑
[Total Combat Power: 371,800/371,800] 3,300 ↑
[Unique Skill: <Causality Alteration> <Dimensional Manipulation> <Consumption> <Materialization>] 
[Racial Skill: <Fear> <Mist Form>]
[Simple Identification] [Human Form (Wonderful)] [Subspace Inventory]
[Dark Lady] 
[Final Evolution Available]

***

My vision blanked out. Once I could see again, the World Tree and the secret alpha testers were already gone, leaving me once again in a world of white.

It wasn’t the blind whiteness as before. Instead, everywhere I looked, I saw geometric shapes and lines with the same basic white tone, as though I was inside the world of cyberspace. So I wasn’t inside the World Tree, then. This must be my own personal mindscape.

 

“…final evolution…”

It was the last bit of power given to me from all the secret alpha testers. This was probably where my final evolution would happen, then, and the reason why it looked like cyberspace was probably because I was an artificial demon, and the evolution process had based itself on that same artificial system.

Evolve.

I focused on my decision. Boxes of text appeared, floating in the air to my left and right.

[Demon Lord]
・The pinnacle of demons, a ruler of the Netherworld. The diametrical opposition of gods. The granter of the fruit of wisdom to mankind, and the devourer of their ripened civilization.

[Beast]
・The pinnacle of demons, one who takes the shape of an animal. Savage and cruel. A predator and a destroyer, eternally seeking conflicts.

[Devil]
・The pinnacle of demons, the traveler of dimensions. One who gorges on souls of humans, who understands and charms the hearts of humans, who grants otherworldly knowledge on a whim.

These boxes were filled with red text and were on my right. Next were the blue-colored boxes on my left.

[Draconic God]
・A supreme creature, one who has lived through an eternity to acquire a spiritual body. Possesses great wisdom and force of will, as well as immense power.

[Minor God]
・An intelligent creature who had reached the threshold of godhood. The protector of life, and the ruler of the cycle of reincarnation. Rarely is there a natural Minor God, as most manifest by stealing power from another god. Called a [Goddess] when female.

[True God]
・A Major God born from the minds of intelligent beings. A true god, one created solely for the sake of those who are both their creators and their worshippers. Possesses no physical form. Power drastically fluctuates depending on worshippers.

“Umm…”

On the right side were demons, and the left were… gods? So I could evolve into these?

I was honestly surprised becoming a god was even a choice for me. I guessed I had the secret alpha testers to thank for that.

But could I win against Fiorfata as a god?

Among the choices was a Demon Lord, the same as Fiorfata, and the explanation mentioned being diametrically opposed to gods. If Demon Lords were godkillers, then I didn’t think becoming a Minor God would be much of an improvement from what I was already. Draconic Gods had the same problem.

True Gods were born from the thoughts of their worshippers, so I might not be able to keep myself as me if I chose that.

If I wanted power to fight Fiorfata, then perhaps I should choose to become the same Demon Lord as it was. Being a Beast or Devil might be good too, though I felt like a Demon Lord was the most balanced in terms of offense and defense.

Artificial or not, I had been evolving as a demon in the first place. I should be able to get used to the new power right away if I continued that line of evolution.

But I’d already made my choice. Not out of these six.

I chose the seventh option hidden among the others.

 

I had been a human who had no understanding of humans. I had only gained my insight into the hearts of others after discarding my humanity. From my wavering heart came a fragment of itself…

I took it. I grasped the white box of text hiding itself right in front of my eyes.

 

Then the white space that was my mindscape shattered. A vast world stretched out in front of me as I looked down on Yggdrasia, my new home.

I will protect this world. I will protect it for you.

 

[Shedy] [Race: Bunny Girl] [Joker]
・Dea Ex Machina. An artificial goddess born in cyberspace. Possesses the right hand of a Demon to destroy all, and the left hand of a Goddess to save all.

[Magic Points: 500,000/500,000] 162,000 ↑
[Total Combat Power: 550,000/550,000] 178,200 ↑
[Unique Skill: <Causality Alteration> <Dimensional Manipulation> <Consumption> <The Divine Language>] 
[Racial Skill: <Fear> <Mist Form>]
[Simple Identification] [Deity Form (Lovely)] [Subspace Inventory]
[Overlord]
[Goddess from the Machine]

---

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