"..."
Sitting on the edge of the wooden bed, Ryo was looking at the brown parchment scroll in his hands. Beside him, Leticia was peeling an apple. She cut off a small piece, then used her slender index finger to pop it into Ryo's mouth.
Looking at the man and woman in front of her, Rin suddenly felt like she was completely out of place.
'Damn it. This is my room, right?'
She screamed inwardly in frustration. If Ryo weren't here, she would have loved to let out a few actual screams just to vent.
'If you weren't His Highness' stand-in…' Rin glared viciously at Ryo, but at the same time, she knew perfectly well just how monstrous this man was.
The fact that Ouroboros was willing to entrust Ryo with protecting Kalki, the important tenth avatar of Vishnu and the representative of the Savior, showed just how highly they regarded him.
'This guy has only been in Little Garden for a year! And if you don't count the time he spent bedridden at the beginning, he's only been on the rise for four months.'
'Does that make any sense?'
'No! It's ridiculous! It's fucking absurd!'
Even Kalki, an incarnation of Vishnu who reached the 4-Digit level at birth, would have needed more than a hundred years of tempering to reach Ryo's current level.
And if he wanted to achieve it through a shortcut, he would at least have needed to collect half of the sun authorities he required. In other words, five sun authorities.
Yet Ryo, an ordinary "human," had crossed the hundred years of progress Kalki needed in a mere four months.
'No wonder Lady Lakshmi calls this guy a monster!"'
If Kalki weren't the one who possessed the Savior Spirit Rank, Rin might have seriously suspected that Ryo was the true "Savior" chosen by Little Garden's central core.
Rin stared at Ryo. "So you're just sitting here reading?"
"What else would I be doing?" Ryo answered without raising his head. "Going outside in the middle of a sandstorm to fight the Greeks to the death? Does that fit Kalki's character?"
Rin's breathing caught.
Right. If Ouroboros weren't forcing him to improve his strength, His Highness was probably exactly the kind of person who least wanted to become stronger.
After all, he hadn't even wanted to be born.
As the humanoid manifestation of the Savior Spirit Rank, Kalki's birth itself represented the beginning of the signs of Little Garden's end.
That wasn't a particularly friendly signal, whether to Kalki or to Little Garden central core.
Even to most of the gods and buddhas, what Kalki represented was more than a little unwelcome.
Calling Kalki the "unwanted Savior" was hardly an exaggeration.
Rin's lips twitched before she finally asked, "Are you sure nothing will happen to His Highness?"
Hearing that, Ryo looked up at her. "All I can say is that while he's under my protection, there's a pretty good chance nothing will happen to him."
'A pretty good chance? Isn't that basically the same as saying nothing at all?'
Rin couldn't help rolling her eyes, but at the same time, unease began to creep into her heart.
Even a monster like Ryo could only say there was a "pretty good chance."
So what exactly had the Heavenly Army sent?
'Could it be Indra, the Deva King, coming personally?'
'No way… right?'
According to Ouroboros's intelligence, the injuries he had suffered more than two hundred years ago when he fought that legendary evil, Azi Dahaka, still hadn't fully recovered.
But if it really was him… Ryo wouldn't be able to hold him off, would he?
Just as Rin was trembling with anxiety, Leticia, who had just cut off another piece of apple beside Ryo, suddenly froze.
After a brief pause, she said, "The Heavenly Army has sent someone. They're using an investigation into possible violations during the divine war as their reason. They want us to lower the defenses around the camp and let their investigators inside."
Hearing that, Ryo closed the scroll. "Finally."
He had thought he would have to waste several days hiding out in this cavern. He had even been considering how to keep Kalki disguised and active on the battlefield once the sandstorm passed, while secretly waiting for the Heavenly Army to launch a surprise attack.
Instead, the Heavenly Army had proven even more impatient than he expected.
"Who did they send?" Ryo asked.
Leticia's expression turned solemn. "Earth Goddess Mata and Maheśvara Shiva."
"You're kidding. They actually sent Shiva…"
Rin went completely blank when she heard the name.
That Shiva?
One of the three principal gods of Hinduism?
Even if His Highness, Kalki, underwent his ultimate ascension and became a complete incarnation, he would still be a level below Shiva in terms of rank.
And they had actually sent him personally to apprehend Kalki?
'Does Ouroboros's leadership intend to wipe out both Kalki and Ryo in one go?'
Rin did everything she could not to interpret Ouroboros's higher-ups maliciously.
It wasn't that she didn't want to.
It was that thinking too much about it might alert those gods and buddhas to her thoughts, which would make things even more troublesome.
But the more she tried not to think about it, the more nervous she became. She stood there silently, unable to say another word.
Meanwhile, on the only wooden bed in the cavern, Ryo frowned deeply. "Sweet carrot and big stick, huh?"
Even within the Heavenly Army, there was a distinction between combat personnel and non-combat personnel.
Of course, that didn't mean the non-combat personnel were weak. Compared with the combatants, they simply weren't as capable when it came to killing.
Take Mata, for example. She specialized in intelligence gathering. Although her strength was considerable, the nature of an Earth Mother Goddess meant that she disliked killing.
As for the combat personnel, they were on another level entirely.
The Sun Deva Surya, Maheśvara Shiva, the Creator Deva Brahma, Rākṣasa Rakshasa, and Indra, the Deva King of the Heavenly Army.
Every single one of them was a renowned Three-Digit god or buddha.
And the most frightening among them were Brahma and Shiva.
Through their own strength and talent, the two had defeated countless challengers and, in certain aspects, claimed the positions of two of Hinduism's three principal gods.
The three principal gods of Hinduism, known as the Trimurti, were Brahma the Creator, Shiva the Destroyer, and Vishnu the Preserver.
It was just that Brahma and Shiva's spirit ranks were only at the Three-Digit level, rather than the unfinished One-Digit or Two-Digit levels.
Still, the fact that they had eliminated nearly half of their competitors and successfully earned the names of the Three Great Hindu Gods as their true names was enough to demonstrate just how terrifying they were.
After all, technically, these were Spirit Ranks on the same level as Vishnu.
Even though Brahma's status had declined after the beginning of creation… Even though Shiva's position had yet to ascend because the end of the world had not yet arrived…
Which god or buddha possessing either of these Spirit Ranks could possibly be anything less than a "monster" among the three-digits?
And this time, the Heavenly Army had sent Mata, its chief intelligence officer, alongside Shiva, a combatant.
That combination made their intentions obvious.
They had come prepared to offer courtesy first and force second.
If Earth Goddess Mata couldn't reach an agreement with them, Maheśvara Shiva would step in and suppress them by force.
And with that arrangement, the pressure wasn't merely enormous for Kalki.
Even Ryo felt it weighing heavily on him.
There was only one reason.
The name of Maheśvara was simply too terrifying.
If Shiva hadn't been injured in the battle against Azi more than two hundred years ago, Ryo wouldn't even have considered directly clashing with an existence like her.
But one Sun Authority, combined with the protection Queen Halloween had granted him when he attacked an Ouroboros stronghold, was enough to make Ryo willing to act.
He had no intention of completely falling out with the Heavenly Army.
But while he was on this mission, protecting Kalki to some extent was something he was still obligated to do.
'In the end, it's because I'm still not strong enough. If I were stronger, a troublesome situation like this would never have landed on my shoulders in the first place…'
With that thought, Ryo sighed and stood up. "Come on. Let's go see what kind of game the Heavenly Army wants to play."
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