"Hm? Me? You think I'm Enyo?... Hahaha! No, no."
Thanatos seemed genuinely amused by Shiro's question. He laughed loudly and waved a hand in denial.
"Enyo has never appeared personally. Every order is passed through someone else, and we don't even know whether this person truly exists. The name may be written in the language of the gods, but Enyo might not even be a god. I'm certainly not something like that."
Thanatos revealed what he knew about Enyo without the slightest hesitation.
Perhaps to gods like them, who liked to describe themselves as omniscient yet powerless, hiding so cautiously was itself proof of insufficient ability.
"See those murals?"
Thanatos turned and pointed toward a room behind him, where several stone pillars stood in rows.
"Little Mask told me Enyo specifically had people bring them here from some ruins."
Shiro followed his gesture and looked deeper into the room.
Just as Thanatos had said, it looked almost like a section of ancient ruins.
The most striking feature was the collection of murals covering nearly every wall.
Some had been painted onto crimson stone tablets. Others were carved into cracked, faded rock walls. A few looked as though they had been forcibly torn from some larger structure, leaving most of the original image missing.
Their forms differed, but the scenes they depicted were remarkably similar.
People fleeing from monsters.
Every mural, regardless of what kind of monster appeared within it, portrayed the same thing.
Disaster.
Destruction.
Looking across the various images, Shiro could almost hear the screams of the people trapped within them.
One mural depicting a giant dragon stood out above all the others.
Unlike the monsters in the surrounding murals, the dragon was not shown destroying anything.
Instead, six girls surrounded it.
Every girl had her eyes closed and her hands clasped together. At first glance, they seemed to be praying to the dragon.
"That's supposed to be Nidhogg."
Noticing where Shiro was looking, Thanatos explained.
"Before the Three Great Quests appeared, back in what we gods call the ancient age, this was the dragon the old heroes had to face."
"So what they're doing in that mural isn't praying."
A sharp light flashed through Shiro's eyes.
"Correct."
Thanatos smiled.
"It's a sacrifice."
According to ancient records recovered from ruins around Orario, more than a thousand years ago, settlements without a "hero" capable of resisting monsters sometimes resorted to sacrifice.
Women and children were offered in rituals meant to calm the disasters brought by the Dungeon and appease its wrath.
The girls depicted in the mural were most likely being sacrificed to Nidhogg.
"Well, that answers your question. Now it's my turn."
Under Ishtar's increasingly impatient looks, Thanatos abruptly ended the subject and turned his attention back to Shiro.
"I didn't go out much in Heaven because I was responsible for handling souls, but I should still recognize almost every god there."
His eyes narrowed slightly.
"And yet I have absolutely no memory of you."
Thanatos paused.
"Were you born sometime within the last few hundred years? No... if that were true, your turn to descend shouldn't have come yet."
His expression became more curious.
"Or are you like Enyo, and perhaps not even a god at all?"
A strange fluctuation spread from Thanatos's body.
It was the radiance that allowed any mortal of the Lower World to instinctively understand that the being before them was a god.
An energy fluctuation that inevitably accompanied the use of divine power.
Divine Aura.
"Hmph. Before asking me that, why don't you tell the woman beside you to stop using her charm?"
Shiro snorted and immediately directed his hostility toward Ishtar, who had been releasing an overwhelming seductive presence ever since they met.
"You've been actively charming everyone here from the moment we arrived. Do you think children of the Lower World can resist that?"
His tone sharpened.
"Or are you trying to force me to admit I'm a newly born god before you'll feel safe?"
Shiro glanced at her coldly.
"If that's what the Goddess of Beauty thinks, you may as well hand your position over to Freya. At least she never doubts her own [Beauty]."
"You—!"
"Hey, hey! Calm down, Ishtar."
Thanatos quickly reached out and stopped the furious goddess.
Then he turned back toward Shiro.
"Ishtar and Freya have some issues because their Authorities overlap. It's better not to mention Freya in front of her."
By this point, Thanatos was already treating Shiro as another god of equal standing.
That was only natural.
There was a well-known rule throughout Orario.
Mortals of the Lower World could not lie to gods.
Aside from the extraordinary insight accumulated over countless years, the difference in status between gods and mortals made most mortal lies painfully obvious to divine eyes.
Even after sealing away their divine power, gods might not be able to identify the exact word or phrase containing the lie, but beings who had lived for so long were hardly easy to deceive.
When questioned directly by a god, the only truly effective option for an ordinary mortal was silence.
But that rule could also be exploited in reverse.
If someone appeared before a god, claimed to be divine, and yet remained impossible for that god to see through, most gods would naturally accept the claim.
Only gods with special Authorities, such as Loki, who could even see through the lies of other gods, would remain suspicious.
It was a blind spot born from the assumptions shared among gods themselves.
Shiro had fused with an Incomplete Divinity.
Calling himself a newly born god therefore could not truly be considered a lie.
Thanatos and Ishtar would never imagine that someone had touched this realm before even reaching Level 10.
"I did it on purpose."
Shiro nodded.
"You bastard!"
"Ishtar, wait."
"Thanatos, if you try to stop me again, I'll beat you too!"
"I know you're angry, but—"
"So that makes it two against one?"
Shiro casually interrupted.
"You said you'd beat us both. Don't break your promise now, Goddess of Beauty."
"You think I won't?!"
"I SAID WAIT A SECOND!!!"
...
"You knew about her relationship with Freya, so you should've known exactly what kind of temper she has."
After finally calming Ishtar down, Thanatos turned toward Shiro with an exhausted expression.
"If I hadn't stopped her, once she got beaten here she might've gone home and immediately declared a War Game against you."
He sighed.
"She has a Level 5 battle prostitute, you know."
"So you expect me to ignore the fact that she was using charm without the slightest concern for the child standing beside me?"
Shiro's expression remained unchanged.
"Besides, if we're comparing the abilities of our children, I don't believe mine would lose."
If Alfia had not spent most of her life with her eyes closed because of her illness, Lily, currently disguised as her, would almost certainly have been charmed by Ishtar already.
"Your guard?"
Thanatos blinked.
He had clearly not expected a god who willingly entered a place like this to actually care about the life of his guard.
More importantly...
This god was confident enough to challenge a Familia surpassed in Orario only by Loki Familia and Freya Familia?
Thanatos finally looked properly beneath the girl's hood.
Long gray hair.
A cold, beautiful face.
Closed eyes.
He rubbed his own eyes.
Then looked again.
Nothing changed.
The girl still wore exactly the same face.
"ALFIA?!"
Thanatos's shriek echoed throughout the artificial labyrinth.
…