"Hm? Who would be messaging me this early..."
Mei, who was preparing breakfast for everyone, heard her phone's notification and opened it.
*CRUNCH—*
The spatula in Mei's hand was crushed into a ball and tossed aside.
"What is the meaning of this? What is this! This is Ryn's blanket, isn't it? Huh?!" Mei looked at the selfie Kika had sent, covering her mouth with her hand as she gasped.
She was worried her sister wasn't doing well, but she was also worried her sister was doing *too* well. Especially a rascal like Kika!
Mei sent Kika a series of questioning and inquiring messages, but Kika didn't reply to a single one.
Because after sending the message to Mei, Kika had set her phone to silent and gone right back to sleep.
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"Are there any missions?"
"None for now. Thanks to Durandal, Kika, and Rita sweeping through all the Honkai incidents recently, there shouldn't be any more large-scale Honkai events in the short term."
"Alright, then I'll continue my leave..."
"Tsk, Ryn, you still remember you're on leave? If it weren't for Kika and the others being so diligent that we don't need you, I would've thought you'd already left Schicksal!"
"Ehehe... One more thing, Kika is also taking leave for a few days~"
"......"
In a stretch of silence, Otto ended the call with Ryn.
Otto had to admit one thing: he had to apologize for ever having the completely erroneous idea of handing Schicksal over to Ryn!
Even giving it to Theresa would be more reliable than giving it to Ryn!
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Ryn opened a passage to the Sea of Quanta and entered it once again.
He kept feeling like he'd forgotten something, and it turned out he had forgotten Seele.
After entering the Sea of Quanta, he didn't see Seele, but instead saw a massive dragon and a giant Kun fish, both comparable to planets in size.
The two behemoths blocked the passage between the Sea of Quanta and the prime world, obstructing all of Ryn's vision.
But when Ryn shifted to a god's-eye view, he realized that this dragon and the ray-like Kun fish looked awfully familiar.
"Kukulkan? Maheśvara? How did you two get so big?!" Ryn shouted in surprise, but after shouting, he realized something even more important.
"Wait, Kukulkan, what are you doing in the Sea of Quanta?!"
The figures of the dragon and the Kun rapidly shrank, returning to normal human size in less than ten minutes and appearing before Ryn.
"Why are we in the Sea of Quanta? Maheśvara, get him!"
"Mm!"
Kukulkan roared angrily, and then she and Maheśvara charged at Ryn from the left and right.
"Denied."
"Oof!" "Huh?"
Kukulkan and Maheśvara both tripped on flat ground and slid all the way to Ryn's feet.
The two of them looked up at the grinning Ryn, then glanced at each other in confusion.
"What... What's going on? I can't even call upon my power?!" Kukulkan looked at Maheśvara, completely baffled.
"Me too... What's happening?" Maheśvara looked back at Kukulkan, just as baffled.
It was as if an absolute prohibition had been placed on them; all the energy in their bodies suddenly stagnated and couldn't be accessed. To suddenly go from adults back to three-year-old children was such a huge drop that neither Kukulkan nor Maheśvara could process it.
"You two lovebirds have the same weird thought process. Shouldn't you be asking me, the one who caused this, instead of each other?"
Ryn snapped his fingers, lifting the restriction on Kukulkan and Maheśvara.
"Ehehe... I just subconsciously thought of Maheśvara first." Kukulkan stuck out her tongue sheepishly, then stood shoulder-to-shoulder with Maheśvara.
"It's simple! You are my Retinue, and most of your Honkai energy comes from me, so naturally, I can disable it! Also, in the Sea of Quanta, I have some minor visitation rights~"
Ryn placed his hands on his hips, his chin held high with pride. Like a proud swan, he was puffed up beyond belief.
As a child of the sea whose body was personally modified by the Sea of Trees, not only did he possess the sea's blessing, but as he grew stronger, he could also gain a certain degree of control over the Sea of Quanta.
Of course, to affect a living being, he had to be far stronger than them to issue a strict prohibition. Otherwise, Ryn could have just made Sa commit suicide on the spot back then.
"Alright, I'm done explaining. Now it's your turn!"
"What's there to explain..."
Maheśvara rolled his eyes, exasperated.
"You forgot to take us with you when you left, so you left us behind in the Sea of Quanta."
"It's like this... The energy here in the Sea of Quanta is really potent! Very powerful! But it's also highly corrosive. However, probably because we are your Retinue and due to your special nature, we were able to absorb the energy of the Sea of Quanta.
Since we were bored anyway, we just started absorbing energy here to strengthen ourselves. And then we accidentally absorbed too much and ended up like this..."
Kukulkan explained, on the verge of tears.
She and Maheśvara couldn't even think about returning to Earth anymore; they couldn't go back. (Sad)
The two had already undergone a qualitative change caused by a quantitative one and had become mobile celestial planets.
Going back would be like adding two more Earths to the planet. Not to mention the energy storms kicked up by their leaking energy, just the gravitational tides caused by their mass would be enough to tear the Earth apart.
How tragic. Only now did they realize how fragile the Earth was!
Before, they had to control their strength to avoid damaging the Earth. Now, they couldn't even get close to it.
"Hahahaha~"
Ryn clutched his stomach, laughing until he was out of breath.
"Isn't that even better? You stay in the Sea of Quanta, slowly absorbing and evolving. In a few tens of thousands of years, maybe we'll have two gods on our side?"
"Waaaah—I don't wanna be some god! I can't fight the ones below, and I can't fight the ones above," Kukulkan wailed tearfully.
Her and Maheśvara's current situation was just like that idiot Sa from before. They had absorbed too much energy from the Sea of Quanta, and their bodies had been transformed by its power, turning into an uncontrollable, automatic absorption of the Sea of Quanta's energy.
They were like infinitely inflating balloons. Although they were constantly getting bigger and stronger, like balloons, they had to be held down by a string to keep from flying away.
The two now had Ryn as an anchor, so they didn't have to be pinned to one spot like Sa, unable to leave easily, but it was still agonizing!
"Fortune and misfortune come hand in hand! At least you've skipped a few hundred thousand years on the path to godhood.
Keep it up. Once you can grasp the rules on your own and ascend to true godhood, you'll be free from this situation."
"......" "......"
"Don't look so down. If you don't believe in yourselves, do you not believe in me? Just wait a few years and I'll fish you out~ For now, stay put in the Sea of Quanta and build your foundation~
"Ryn patted Kukulkan and Maheśvara on the shoulder. He had high hopes for these two potential stocks.
Both Kukulkan and Maheśvara had their own cores. As long as they could truly master the rules represented by those cores, becoming a pseudo-god wouldn't be a problem. So Ryn wasn't worried at all.
Besides, compared to Kukulkan and Maheśvara's lifespans, what did a few short years matter?
(Just imagine Kevin preparing to emerge from the Sea of Quanta, only to be blocked at the entrance by the colossal forms of Kukulkan and Maheśvara, unable to see the exit, and thus unable to get out.)