Squelch!
Under the vast, silent sky, blood splattered across the ground. His abdomen and spine seemed to burst from within, jagged bone fragments protruding outward, crimson flesh stretched and torn.
It was gruesome—enough to make anyone physically recoil.
One of the 1,083,092,867 avatars of "Crowley's Hazard," a handsome, winged youth with a seven-colored halo, had his chest blown open. The cause was a crystal radiating a violet-red glow.
From within it, the High Priest saw a figure aiming and throwing.
Clang! Clang—!
With a rush of air, a golden spear emerged from nothingness.
The High Priest saw clearly—it was a double-bladed spear, each tip sharp and glass-like, the shaft a brilliant gold. Runes glimmered faintly on its surface, appearing and vanishing in shifting sequences, emitting an otherworldly light.
Othinus' runes?!
He recognized it as the "Lance of the All-Father"… or at least something imbued with Othinus' unique power.
And there were other unknown techniques woven in.
From the tangled lines of cause, effect, and interference, the High Priest thought he heard the distant beat of ancient war drums.
"That is—?!" His eyes widened. He held his golden sword, skewering Aleister's avatar, and froze.
It happened in an instant.
The golden spear tore through time and space. In the runes, he glimpsed not only the one-eyed, blonde girl but also a regal, purple-haired woman wielding a magic spear… and—
An imposing one-eyed elder with a long white beard, crowned with a hawk-helm, clad in golden armor, spear in hand, astride an eight-legged horse. Ravens perched upon his shoulders.
Odin, the Norse All-Father.
The vision shifted. The runes shattered. Darkness filled with cannon fire rose, a spear of light consuming everything. Amid the smoke, a double-headed eagle standard snapped in the void, defiant.
The High Priest understood.
So that was why he felt destruction in this power, why he sensed Othinus, Chimera, Proserpina, Nuada, Tezcatlipoca…
So that was it—so that was it!
"O Outer God who feed upon us…"
Squelch—!
Madness twisted his withered face. The golden spear pierced his skull dead center.
No scream, no final cry.
The mummified body, clutching the golden sword, snapped backward like struck by a mountain, a spray of blood arcing high.
Crack!
His neck bent at an unnatural angle.
The spear had driven clean through his forehead, shattering bone, leaving a gaping hole. The shrunken, blackened brain within sloshed like mud.
For any normal human, death would be certain. But was the High Priest normal?
"Kihara Brainstem!"
The Aleister avatar, ribs split wide, bellowed with savage delight.
"Anti-Art Attachment, tactical armor-piercing round."
Linked to Aleister's will, the golden retriever pilot spat out his cigar and spoke with bloodied jaws.
Clack clack!
The grinding hum of machinery echoed as steel beams, each dozens of meters long and forged from tungsten, locked into place within the Anti-Art Attachment's weapon array.
Vmmm—!
The massive armor became like a colossal crossbow drawn to its limit, the golden retriever's cockpit at its core glowing with violet-red light that bled across the outer plating.
Even with its soundproof metal design, the deep, resonating hum of the mass driver in the energy chamber roared through the air as it compressed and extracted power from the Honkai crystal at extreme intensity.
Only the crystal's inherent stability and inertia made such pressure possible—any other material would have detonated the chamber instantly.
"Boosters Alpha through Delta, ignite! Skip countdown—fire immediately!"
The twenty-ton steel mass forgot gravity in an instant.
Vwooooom—!!
It accelerated past Mach 20 almost instantly, becoming a spear of light tearing through the sky.
The fortress's quake-resistant structures groaned under the shock, straining just to remain standing.
Shhhk-BOOM—!
It struck the High Priest's withered body dead-on, engulfing him and hurling him skyward like a meteor, breaking Earth's grasp and shooting into low orbit.
In that ultrafast oscillation—high-frequency vibrations slicing reality into countless fragments—a single second stretched into an eternity.
"He's dead."
The Star of Bethlehem's stained-glass windows were now nothing but glittering dust, shimmering in the sunlight. Light and heat radiated in dazzling waves—yet no sound followed.
As if the scene were abruptly severed, a deep, lightless void bloomed, swallowing sound, light, heat, and shockwave alike. Even the tungsten spear vanished into its depths.
The brilliance faded in a heartbeat. Selene looked up, delivering judgment on the final Magic God.
There was a faint sense of unfinished business, but the outcome was far better than her worst expectations.
Of course, Selene knew this was far from a Magic God's full power.
In truth, her victories against them were hardly fair—dishonorable, even shameless. She did not deny it. It didn't matter; she was the victor.
Selene had always favored results over process. Whether through grand, epic battles or quiet, unseen strikes, she never hesitated if the method worked.
From the start, she never intended to fight a Magic God head-on.
That would have been the most foolish choice.
Over her long reign, beyond the thrill of battle and destruction, she had come to savor the pleasure of gaining the most for the least cost.
The most intricate and calculated of her plans had been for Othinus.
Not just because Othinus was the only Magic God who did not remain hidden—but because she was the most immature.
After all, she had once feared her own power so much that she considered abandoning it entirely, even musing aloud, "This is too much trouble—maybe I should just destroy the world instead."
Completely unpredictable.
Even crippled, she still had the ability and method to reclaim her full strength. When the time came, Selene would make sure to eliminate her.
Whether Othinus sought Selene out first or shouted about turning Selene into a tool didn't matter—the first target had always been her.
Selene would simply strike harder and dirtier.
She had long had her eye on Denmark, Othinus' home ground.
Recruiting Kakine Teitoku, enhancing him, planting countless tracking markers inside him—these had all been part of her preparations.
After all, one of the core requirements for forging the "Lance of the All-Father" was material capable of withstanding the life force of a holistic esper—a material so tough that, in the original account, it was made from the remnants of Kakine Teitoku's organs.
As for what Othinus had considered the true orthodox material for creating the spear—Fräulein Kreutune, imprisoned within the Windowless Building—Selene had certainly taken that into account.
Once World War III began, acting as Deputy Board Chairman, Selene issued an administrative order relocating all registered Academy City students and their families to the underground district, clearing the surrounding area of the 7th District. This created open space for contingencies.
It served a dual purpose: showcasing the Board's responsibility for student safety while also allowing her to set up extensive transfer formulas. A win-win.
If the Windowless Building were attacked by Othinus and her fake Gremlin forces, Selene would be ready to respond instantly.
Though in the end, much of that preparation went unused.
For those true Gremlin Magic Gods who slumbered in the Hidden World, Selene could only say—sorry.
No matter how lofty Aleister's excuses sounded, both he and Selene were exploiting the Magic Gods' "mercy" in sparing the world from destruction.
The fact the world functioned at all was thanks to that mercy.
Had the Hidden World collapsed and the fully-powered Magic Gods descended directly, Aleister's century-old plans would have been worthless. Unless you became a Magic God yourself, even a thousand years of preparation would end in failure.
They wouldn't even need to attack. Just their presence would have reduced the entire universe to nothingness.
When the true Gremlin members accepted Zombie's Infinite Division Technique and all manifested at once, the end was already sealed.
If they had been cautious—if even one complete Magic God had refused the division and stayed behind in the ruins of the Hidden World—Selene's true body wouldn't have been able to act at all. Even severely restricted, unable to move freely, such a being would have locked her down completely.
Magic Gods were arrogant toward mortals. But against another Magic God—or an Outer God—that arrogance vanished.
Unfortunately for them, Selene's true body was cautious. As long as a full Magic God existed, she never touched the Toaru world, maintaining only faint imaginary exchanges. As long as she wasn't at Magic God level, no one noticed.
It was simply the natural ebb and flow of the cosmos. The change of an ant—who would care? They were sleeping.
Her local fragment was powerful among mortals, but only that. Magic Gods might be curious but not concerned.
That was the confidence of the invincible.
Then, after weakening themselves, they all manifested at once, eager for entertainment.
And that was the end of them.
Selene had been ready, waiting in her private box-seat universe for their arrival.
Perhaps in another world, Selene wouldn't mind opening grand battle in the style of a bard's epic—public, glorious, all-out.
But here was the Toaru world.
The home of her adoptive parents. The place she had grown up. The city where she had earned her first fortune. The only place where she could truly feel what friendship was. This was special.
Unless her life itself were threatened, she would never shatter that peace.
Fighting a fully-powered Magic God here would destroy it beyond recovery.
Vwooom—
High in the sky, the golden retriever disengaged from defensive maneuvers, adjusting thrusters to slow into a hover beside Selene. Coughing up blood, he lifted a paw to push back his goggles.
"Hm? That fast? You've already dealt with the other Magic Gods? I thought Aleister would have to die a few hundred million times first—maybe even a couple of the Level 5s would have to be buried here—before you'd make it back."
The golden retriever grinned. From the auxiliary pack on his back, a slender, non-weaponized arm extended, holding a freshly cut Cuban cigar. He lit it and bit down, bloodied jaws or not—he was going to smoke.
"Not bad," Selene replied. It wasn't about killing—just sending them away. Of course it was faster.
She flicked the retriever's furry ear before tending to her own wounds.
Swords, spears, axes, arrows, stakes, hooks, scythes, lances, shears, halberds… half her body was still skewered with every imaginable weapon.
She hadn't had a choice. Unlike her other one-on-one hunts, Niang-Niang and Nephthys were inseparable. To save time, Selene had taken several hits head-on.
"It was worth it, wasn't it?"
Snapping off the halberd fragment lodged through her right shoulder, the gaping wound began visibly knitting itself shut. A faint white glow spread over her form. Like a poet toasting the moon, she raised her right hand high, as if praising her own masterpiece.
"I kept my promise. I've given the world a pure place without Magic Gods—where everyone has the right to demand answers."
The oppressive darkness dispersed. Overhead, the night sky bloomed with countless stars like diamonds scattered across deep blue velvet. A fresh, lively breeze carried the scent of victory.
"…"
"…Hm?"
She waited. No applause. No praise. It was getting awkward.
Turning her head—where was Aleister?
"Where's Aleister? This is the perfect moment for him to show up and let it all out. I've been waiting forever… Don't tell me he's actually dead?"
One human, one dog—staring at each other.
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