In an instant, every god-king present stared at Riku in raw fear, divinities flaring, a chill racing up their spines.
Indra even summoned his vajra, golden lightning crackling along its prongs.
"Why are you here!? How did you get in!?" Indra demanded, voice tight; even his hand trembled.
This was the man who had routed the pantheons in the East, stripped them of face and authority, and carved terror into their hearts.
"Vajra Heaven, Śubha-Vista City, if I want to come, I come. You of all people should know that," Riku said with a lazy wave, as if this were his own home.
"…" Indra's face darkened. Given Riku's power and the Halloween Queen's mastery over boundaries, that much was, unfortunately, true.
"Relax. I didn't drop by to fight," Riku said lightly. "Even if I stood here and let you swing, you still wouldn't scratch me."
The god-kings' expressions curdled ashen, sallow, iron-blue. Power gap aside, the fact that he was Humanity's Last Hope meant they couldn't touch him at all.
'Why would Little Garden allow something this incomprehensible to exist!?'
With no room to resist, and under looks from Indra and Brahmā, the god-kings swallowed their shame, drew back their divinities, and sat down in silence.
"That's better. Keep the right attitude and I won't 'accidentally' erase you," Riku quipped.
"What do you want, and what did you mean just now?" Indra pressed.
"Nothing complicated. A new Humanity's Last Trial has already been born. Not one two," Riku said, almost offhand. "One in the East. One in the West."
"…!" Faces went bloodless around the hall.
They didn't doubt him. Someone on Riku's level had no reason to toss falsehoods at them, especially not after that unmistakable Historical Turning Point.
"Why tell us?" Indra's expression shifted.
"Because it's fun," Riku grinned, altogether too entertained.
Indra's face went black. Fun, was it?
"Oh, and one more tidbit, the birthplace of the new one." Riku's eyes played over Indra. "[Zoroastrianism]"
With that, the boundary fluttered, and he was gone.
"Zoroastrianism…!?" Indra's pupils tightened. His heart lurched.
"Indra?" Brahmā and the remaining god-kings looked over, brows deeply furrowed.
"He may mean us no good, but call it a favour," Indra said quietly.
If they knew the cause beforehand, they at least had a place to start.
Zoroastrianism… the hierarch…
Indra closed his eyes and let out a long, thin sigh.
After that, the Twelve Guardian Devas had no choice but to rally what forces they could and request reinforcements from Buddhism. Even so, still reeling from their defeat, they could muster only tens of thousands, not even a million-strong legion.
It wasn't only losses; those who'd survived bore deep scars. After what they'd faced, asking them to confront a Last Trial again so soon was almost cruel.
—
High above the Zoroastrian compound, the boundary rippled, and two figures appeared: the Halloween Queen and Riku.
"You really are incorrigible," the Queen said with a smile askance. "Feed the pantheons the details, then come here to provoke Absolute Evil?"
"If you're killing time, you might as well make it loud," Riku replied cheerfully.
He drew back a fist and casually punched the already-ruined compound.
BOOM!!
The blast tore the ground; shockwaves rippled for thousands of li, the land groaning as debris fountained skyward.
ROOOAR!
From beneath the earth, an answer bellowed back. God-slaying malice erupted; a crushing divinity rolled across the sky, saturating the world. A suffocating hatred seeped through the air itself.
Then a monster burst from the shattered earth.
Ugly skin plated with white dragon scales. Bestial, razor claws. Not a human face but a dragon's, and not one with three dragon heads on a roughly humanoid frame. Behind it snapped a standard, the Banner of Irreconcilable Enmity.
Six ruby pupils glowed with malice, sweeping the wasteland and fixing on Riku.
ROOOAR!
No words, only a howl not meant for human throats. Absolute Evil swelled, and countless black shadows lanced toward Riku faster than starlight.
The storm of black lances came on, and Riku met them with a single, unhurried punch. The volley shattered like glass.
"Aži Dahāka. Dragon's Shadow, huh?" Riku looked down on him, voice even. "Nasty gift, but it doesn't do much to me."
"…How do you know my true name?" Aži Dahāka's three pairs of crimson eyes narrowed.
Even after assuming the form of Absolute Evil, this ugly, inhuman shell, the man had seen through him in an instant.
"How I know isn't the point. I'm here to take something from you," Riku said, almost bored.
Absolute Evil had only just awakened far from his zenith, but Riku wasn't interested in waiting centuries. He meant to crack the black chest on Aži Dahāka here and now.
"Both Humanity's Last Trial and Humanity's Last Hope, you are no hero who can cross my ordeal," Aži Dahāka rumbled. "Here and now, I'll break you and wait for the true hero who can pierce my heart."
His Absolute Evil divinity surged; the malice of human history itself welled up until even the Halloween Queen felt a chill.
"Then bring something real," Riku said, drifting to point-blank range with a taunting look.
No more words. Dragon's Shadow streaked in, and Aži Dahāka's right fist followed pure brute force.
BOOM! SPLAT!
To Riku, it was all too linear. One light punch, and every vestige detonated; Aži Dahāka's right arm went with them, bursting into blood-mist that rained over the wasteland.
The three-headed dragon was hurled end over end.
Where the blood fell, it hatched into two-headed dragons, each at god-class might, an endless, multiplying tide tailor-made to drown armies.
Riku didn't so much as glance down. Against two-digits, such tricks were noise.
Aži Dahāka steadied himself; the blown-off arm regrew in a blink. He stared at Riku, but didn't rush in again.
"Surprised?" Riku asked mildly. "Because your simulated star map, Avesta, didn't trigger?"
"…" The dragon's eyes hardened.
He'd only just awakened, yet this quasi-peer, this natural enemy, already had him mapped.
Avesta: a simulation that mirrors the counter-principle of an opponent's cosmology and fuses it into the user, nullifying hostile gifts and growing stronger the more gods oppose him. It cannot, however, mimic Human cosmology; its legacy bears the fate of being slain by the "hero who saves the future of mankind" at the world's end, which is his wish as well.
Just now, Avesta hadn't answered; no "cosmology" had presented itself. Conclusion: the man hadn't used any gifts at all. He'd fought with raw flesh alone.
And with just that, he'd swatted him aside.
Silence stretched a few beats. Then pure malice flooded Aži Dahāka's pupils again. A Last Trial does not fear. However strong the foe, they do not retreat.
All three dragon maws opened; heat built to a scream dozens of times harsher than sacred fire.
His strongest gift. A blast famed for "destroying a third of the world," the apex of radiant heat, the spark that lights the fuse of eschatology.
[Sovereign Radiance Wheel]
"Going straight to the trump card? You're rattled," Riku said, unruffled. "When you don't know your foe's bottom line, firing the finisher first is… unwise."
"And that sort of power doesn't work on me."
Aži Dahāka locked onto him and loosed the sun-hot wheel.
THOOM!
Riku didn't dodge. He didn't even transform. He merely let the Perpetual Motion Engine divinity hum through his frame, then executed a simple clench–swing–draw.
The tyrant's sun-wheel unravelled in the oncoming fist-wind, space itself snuffing out around the blow. The pressure wave hammered into Aži Dahāka, blasting him away; scales and flesh tore, blood sheeting the sky and breaking into yet more twin-headed dragons.
The gap between them was laid bare in a single exchange.
"This hardly counts as a 'fight' anymore, just a one-sided crushing." High above, the Halloween Queen shook her head.
Humanity's Last Trial is a force no god in Little Garden can afford to ignore, a true great demon king. Yet even a Last Trial, before Riku, is as helpless as a child.
"Queen, let's go," Riku said suddenly, turning toward her.
That made Aži Dahāka's three faces twist with rage. Walking away mid-battle was an insult.
"Leaving already?" the Halloween Queen asked, puzzled.
"My curiosity's satisfied. Why stick around?" Riku waved a hand. "Besides, those gods will be here any minute."
"Fair point." The Halloween Queen's lips quirked; boundary force rippled, and she took Riku and left.
Aži tried to strike as she invoked the boundary, hoping to keep them there. But in his current state, stopping her was impossible.
"Is this a warning?" Aži's red eyes went cold. "Very well. Let malice swell, I will bide my time, and then take revenge."
Though a Last Trial that destroys what lies before him, Aži is no mindless brute. He is, in fact, shrewd enough to have once left even the "future Reverse Izayoi" at a loss for words.
Riku's aim was to interest and remind. 'Do not touch Disboard's territory, or be erased.'
He had to admit it: Riku could kill him easily now, not merely defeat or seal, but surpass and end him because Riku carried the factor of Humanity's Last Hope.
But Riku was not the hero Aži awaited; he refused to be ended by anyone but that hero. So he would not move against Disboard, not out of fear, but clear judgment. Compared to Riku, he was far too weak at present. He would wait for humanity's malice to surge, for Absolute Evil's divinity to grow, then destroy everything, Disboard included, until the pure human champion arose, drove a blade of light through his heart, and ended the logic of the end. That was his fate; his wish.
Meanwhile, inside the boundary corridor, Riku cracked open the black chest he'd just taken from Aži Dahāka and was pleased with the result: the Halloween Queen's boundary power.
Moments later, as two-headed dragons ran rampant across Little Garden's earth, the god-host finally arrived under Indra's lead.
One glance at the dense sea of bicephalic dragons made their scalps prickle.
"Gods and champions, I am Humanity's Last Trial, Absolute Evil. Accept my trial, then try to cross this banner of mine." Aži had long since mended his wounds; he faced the incoming host without a trace of fear and declared his creed.
Malice flooded his six crimson eyes. At the host's arrival, Absolute Evil's divinity swelled; ill will blanketed the firmament, and the colour drained from countless divine faces.
"So this is the new Last Trial… That malice and the banner of Irreconcilable Enmity…" Indra's heart sank as he looked up at Aži Dahāka. He asked, low-voiced, "How is the Patriarch?"
Aži looked down on him. His answer was a wave of black Dragon Shadows.
Battle broke out at once.
It was brutal. The tens of thousands of gods were all broken by Aži. Thanks to Riku's earlier "visit," Aži's blood had soaked the land, spawning uncountable god-class two-headed dragons, and his foul mood made the gods pay all the more.
Under the twin pressure of Avesta and the Tyrant's Halo, even Indra struggled to breathe.
In the end, the god host retreated in defeat. The name Humanity's Last Trial: Absolute Evil spread through Little Garden, and the East District fell into turmoil once more. Absolute Evil rampaged there unchecked; no divine host could bar his way. Yet however the East roiled, Disboard remained immovable, utterly unfazed.
That, too, drew ever more people to Skyborne City. Not a few communities, in this crisis, have even moved most of their headquarters there.
They had discovered a simple truth: so long as you don't offend Disboard, pay your dues, and show proper respect, Disboard won't touch you. Become an affiliated community, and Disboard will shield you.
Given the power Disboard had already shown, even a freshly born Last Trial couldn't do anything to Skyborne City, and by all observation, Absolute Evil alone avoided Disboard's sphere of influence.
Such was the consensus of the communities.
Many divine beings, especially those who'd crossed Disboard before, could only scowl. Disboard is already mighty enough to grind Buddhism, Daoism, and Thousand Eyes into the dirt now. With Absolute Evil's emergence, it rose even higher: the sole hegemon of Little Garden.
A saying spread: In this Little Garden, the first tier consists of Disboard alone. The rest of the so-called top class are merely second tier.
--
Meanwhile, in the West District, something else was taking shape.
A being styling itself a Utopian god preached Utopianism. In one city, it raised high walls to isolate those within from the world without.
It proclaimed equality for all, no gaps, no divisions.
Inside its walls, gems were as worthless as stones. Those with great gifts cast them off and returned to the ordinary; "equality" was the law. People worked not at all, yet food, water, and clothing were issued. Merchants ceased to trade; commerce no longer developed; the very concept of price was abandoned; communities became dispensable; and competition ceased to exist.
The people felt happy. They abandoned thinking, abandoned everything, leaving only faith. Faith in Utopianism. And what the city devoured, in turn, was faith.
From that one small city, its creed spread across the West. Utopianism began to shroud the entire district.
In Utopia, there was no war, no discrimination, no disease; even the very idea of "misfortune" was forgotten.
Naturally, the Western gods noticed.
They rejoiced. Here, at last, was a perfect Utopia.
Gods draw strength from human faith; humans need divine guidance. It is a mutual dependency.
Pure faith makes gods stronger. Thus, the majority of divine beings promoted Utopianism, hailing it as the pinnacle of human society.
A few hosts sensed something was wrong. But with the majority evangelising Utopia, they kept silent.
And so the West slowly became a so-called Land of Ideals, a Land of Fantasy.
Amid this, a god named Cloya Baron exploded in fury.
God of life and death, love and joy, he believed in humanity's potential more than anyone alive. Because of that, he fought back: this was no Land of Ideals but a birdcage that bound freedom and chained thought.
That so-called "Utopian god" was no god at all, but a demon lord, the Anti-Utopia Demon Lord. The hosts had been deceived.
His roars met only with scorn. Zeus and the Greek pantheon were especially forceful. Even though Zeus sensed the wrongness, many of their chief gods had seen their divinities damaged and were waning; the Utopia looked like the perfect chance to recover, even surpass their former glory.
He rallied other hosts to crack down on the "Tuxedo Reaper"… even branding him with the mark of a demon lord.
Cloya gathered those few clear-minded hosts and raised the standard of revolt, but the great majority in the West now stood with the Anti-Utopia Demon Lord; he could not win head-on.
He held a different conviction: if human faith could birth gods, then divine faith could also birth humans, meaning that if a hope-star could be born from within this Western Anti-Utopia, victory would be possible. So he set out to seek that star, if it took a thousand years or ten thousand.
In that search, he met the one Riku had dispatched: the Halloween Queen, his lifeline, and the saviour of the Celtic gods who rose with him.
Thus, earlier than in the original history, the Queen of the Land of Shadows, Scáthach, came under the Halloween Queen's banner.
As the Western situation fermented and the Last Trial of the West Closed World, the Anti-Utopia Demon Lord neared emergence, Riku left the matter entirely to the Halloween Queen.
He himself was preparing to leave Little Garden for a time.
If he stayed, the timeline would skip forward by a millennium or more. Better to tour other worlds and return to settle the last accounts.
He now held control over more than half of Little Garden's Star Grail sovereignty; setting the time on his return would be simple. He wasn't worried about missing anything.
Of course, even departing, he left orders.
For instance, when a crisis struck the Moon Rabbits' homeland, the Lord of the White Night should lend a hand.
And: he tasked Vados with a mission after Leticia's birth: guard her in secret. While direct intervention would often be forbidden, in appropriate moments, her safety was to be ensured.
Riku had no intention of letting Leticia be sold like goods, as in the original story, nearly losing her dignity along the way.
He gave a few more minor instructions to his cadres, then summoned the Star Grail and departed Little Garden.
…
In an unknown world, a spatial wormhole bloomed in the boundless cosmos, and Riku stepped out.
The instant he emerged, his vast divinity swept the universe; the world shuddered; terrible space-ripples spread as though the world itself were groaning.
"Low world-tier, hm," Riku mused. He hadn't even released power; the mere spillover of his presence had done this.
He wasn't surprised. Even Athena, if she loosed her divinity in a wuxia-scale small world, would crush it outright. For him to be contained at all meant this wasn't entirely ordinary.
"I'll have to be careful or I'll end the world by accident," he said, and with the Star Grail clamped his power tightly down, lest the world perish just from his existence.
Silence returned to space.
Even so, on a blue planet below, gods, angels, devils, yōkai, every extraordinary being had been frightened half to death.
Humans, feeling Earth's uncanny tremor, thought it was the end of the world. Luckily, it lasted only a moment, or the panic would have been immense.
"Oh? Interesting." With his Star of Omniscience and Omnipotence, he skimmed the world's state, stroked his chin, and his interest rose. "Looks like a decent vacation world."
Boundary force rippled; Riku's figure vanished into the endless dark. The wormhole behind him closed.
--
She could never pin down when "becoming sensible" was supposed to have happened.
If it meant her earliest memory, then it went back to before she was even a year old.
She'd forgotten what her very first word was.
But she remembered clearly that, the moment she began to speak in full sentences, a woman, very likely her mother, looked at her with a face drained of colour and full of fear.
Not long after, she was taken into the White Facility, a place of white walls and white lights.
She wasn't the only child there. Yet with snow-pale skin and silver hair, she seemed to blend into the scene itself. While other toddlers fussed and fidgeted, the not-yet-two-year-old girl sat quietly, ruby eyes scanning books far beyond her age.
That was when she first learned the word game.
People in white coats produced set after set of "games," saying they were intelligence checks.
Every one of them was, to the girl, child's play, so simple they were dull. No matter whom she "played," she won with ease.
In the end, the examiners left only one note, 'Unmeasurable', and stopped wanting to play at all.
She didn't mind. Playing alone was better than reading in silence.
Before she turned three, she taught herself chess, shogi, and go, playing both sides by herself.
Her abnormal brilliance frightened the white-coats. Behind her back, they called her a monster.
That was the girl's blank, boring stretch of memory.
A year later, her mother came again to tell her she had a new father and a brother.
But the girl disliked the way her mother spoke and the way she looked at her. It was the same gaze as those in the White Facility: the gaze reserved for something not understood, to be locked away.
Her mother left, promising to return soon. She didn't.
The girl didn't particularly care. Mother, father, brother, none of it mattered to her.
Another year passed. At four, she discovered the internet, and at last something stirred in her heart.
Then, a door appeared in the air before her.
Out stepped a boy, seventeen or eighteen at most.
Most people would have been terrified by such an impossible sight. The girl simply watched him with gem-bright eyes, a flicker of surprise within.
The boy Riku took in the small figure before him.
"Shiro, do you want to leave this place?" he asked, crouching to her level. His tone was gentle; his smile, easy.
"Are you my 'brother' or my 'father'?" Shiro tilted her head and asked.
"Mm? Why do you ask?" Riku blinked.
"Mother said I'd have a new father. And a brother," Shiro answered evenly.
"What do you think I am?" Riku's lips quirked. "Brother? Father?"
"Neither," she said, matter-of-fact.
Riku rolled his eyes. Figures. For someone so small, her mind was already razor-sharp.
"Mother fears me. The people here treat me like a monster," Shiro went on, closing the book in her hands. "Someone with powers like yours wouldn't be my father or brother."
"People are often scared of what they can't understand," Riku said softly. "It's small-minded and cruel."
He met her gaze. "I'm Riku Dola. Call me Riku. This place isn't for you. Come with me."
"Are you here to take me away?" Shiro asked, studying him. "Abduction is a crime."
Riku huffed a laugh. "Invitation, not abduction. You choose. If you say no, I walk back through that door."
Shiro was quiet for a beat. "I'm… not worth much."
"You're not a thing to be priced," Riku said, tone turning firm. "And you don't need to be 'useful' to be treated kindly."
He reached out and, with obvious care, ruffled her silver hair. "Besides, I'm a fan of prodigies strictly as a coach and guardian."
Shiro finally showed a hint of expression. "Shiro is still small. Will I… be a burden?"
"That's what mentors are for," Riku replied with a faint smile. "If you'll have me, I'll watch your back while you grow at your pace."
This was how Shiro and Riku first met an awkward beginning, perhaps.
But for Shiro, it became a treasured memory.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
T/N: This is the end of the Mondaiji arc. The next world will be a mixed slice-of-life anime world. I hope you've enjoyed my translation so far. I haven't seen much criticism about the translation, honestly. I changed a few things in the book and tried to cover the plot holes as much as I could without altering the story completely. For example, if I hadn't changed it, the protagonist would have fought the "Demon King" around chapter 40, the black dragon was considered a Demon King by the author. Lastly, my university semester has started, and translating this book, along with Warden of the Eternal Prison, takes a lot of time. I won't drop either of them, but because of that, my update schedule may become irregular.