The strong-willed Canary didn't bother to explain further.
In truth, she could have overcome the Dystopia Demon Lord the proper way back then. However, she was betrayed by the Demon Lord alliance, led by the Son of God.
The Knights of Avalon were annihilated, and the crucial Star-forged Holy Sword was lost. This forced her to resort to a backup plan: unleashing the Black Death to eliminate any possibility of the Dystopia Demon Lord's birth.
Her joke about Su Mo being responsible was based on his status as the Lord of Christianity.
Even the Pantheon had to admit that for Canary to come up with such a countermeasure after being backstabbed was an incredible feat.
Although, in a sense, she had cheated. She hadn't actually solved the problem, merely moved it to the "bonus question" section.
But it was undeniable that by setting aside the Dystopia Demon Lord as a bonus question, they no longer had to face it, nor did they risk being ruled or annihilated by it.
If Canary hadn't made that choice back then, the Little Garden would never have survived to this day.
It would have either been colonized by the Dystopia Demon Lord, ultimately inviting the Wind of Decadence to destroy everything, or the gods would have abandoned the Little Garden and fled, never daring to return.
Izayoi didn't know the full story, but he didn't think any less of Canary for it. Everyone in the Salvation Group knew what kind of monster Canary was.
To say her intellect was almost demonic was no exaggeration. If even someone like her had made such a mistake, it only proved that the circumstances at the time had allowed for no better choice.
So, rather than focusing on rectifying Canary's mistake, he was more concerned with the deeper reason behind it.
"Reducing the probability of the Dystopia Demon Lord's birth to practically zero—how is that different from officially overcoming it? Why do you call it a mistake that needs correcting?" Izayoi asked.
Is a problem that doesn't exist still a problem?
"I used to think there was no difference either," Canary said, shrugging helplessly.
"A world-ending factor that will never manifest is no different from one that doesn't exist. There's no need to worry about it."
"But now, after Lord Su Mo overcame the Absolute Evil Demon Lord and officially defeated all the other Final Trials of Humanity, we've finally realized that what I did back then was wrong..."
At this, Canary sighed.
"To completely overcome the apocalypse, to defeat that Tyrant of the End, to overcome the very entity that grants the Final Trials of Humanity their authority of destruction, you not only have to overcome all the previous Final Trials, but you also have to obtain the results of having overcome them."
"In other words, simply excluding one isn't enough. Overcoming the Final Trials is just the means; obtaining the results from the corresponding worldline is the goal."
The Dystopia Demon Lord had indeed been turned from an official exam question into a bonus question that wouldn't cost you points if you skipped it, thanks to Canary's cheating.
And it was true that you didn't have to answer it.
The problem was, the final major question on the test required the answer to this bonus question as a prerequisite.
If you couldn't provide that answer, you couldn't solve the final question, and you would still fail the exam.
This turned the bonus question from an optional choice back into a mandatory one.
And that was a huge problem.
From the perspective of a test paper, there shouldn't be a mandatory bonus question. But reality never plays by the rules, not to mention the bonus question itself was a result of Canary's cheating. No matter what bugs appeared, she had no right to complain.
After realizing this, in order to overcome the Wind of Decadence, they had no choice but to pull the Dystopia Demon Lord back from the world where its probability was zero and overcome it once more.
The result of doing so was this ultra-high-difficulty trial constructed by the three Demon Lords before them.
In a way, the difficulty of this trial was the punishment for Canary's cheating.
"I see..."
After a few minutes of contemplation, Izayoi understood what Canary meant.
If they wanted to save the world, they had to break through the trial formed by these three Demon Lords all at once.
Thinking of this, his voice grew hoarse.
"So, you're saying that to fulfill our duty as Savior Candidates, we have to subjugate Homura, who has now fallen into a Demon Lord, just like we did with the Bull of Heaven?"
He never would have imagined that it would come to the one conclusion he wanted to avoid most.
A tragedy of brothers fighting to the death.
If Saigo Homura was destined to become a Demon Lord, and if he wanted to become a savior, did that mean he was fated to end his own brother with his own hands?
In that instant, Izayoi clenched his fists, his mind racing through all sorts of extreme possibilities.
Would he kill his brother for the sake of the world, or abandon his mission to save the world for the sake of his brother?
For someone like him, who valued family deeply yet possessed a strong sense of justice, weighing these two things on a scale was an exceptionally painful task.
The mere thought was enough to make his heart clench in pain.
With his personality, as long as his brother had done nothing wrong, he would never lay a hand on his own family, even if it meant the end of the world.
But the problem was, based on Homura's previous statements, his will was to sacrifice himself for the salvation of the entire world. This left Izayoi with an impossible choice.
However, before he could push himself to the breaking point, he heard Canary's slightly surprised voice.
"Huh?"
Izayoi looked up, bewildered.
"Don't you love your little brother? Why would you say something so horrible? Is this what they call a yandere? 'I'd rather kill you than let you leave me'?"
Canary's retort was thick with teasing, clearly toying with him.
But hearing that tone, Izayoi looked up in surprise, feeling an unprecedented sense of joy.
"What do you mean? Are you saying we don't have to fight Homura?"
"Of course not. Didn't I say from the very beginning? The five of you are comrades. Your mission is to save the world," Canary nodded as if it were obvious.
"Your enemy is the Absolute Evil Demon Lord, the Final Trial of Humanity, not Saigo Homura, its vessel. Don't get them confused."
What needed to be eliminated was always the world-ending fate symbolized by the Demon Lord, not the human Saigo Homura himself. This should have been clear from the start.
Naturally, Izayoi knew this.
But the problem was...
"How can we subjugate the Absolute Evil Demon Lord without harming Homura?" Izayoi asked the crucial question.
How could they destroy the will of a god without destroying the human body it inhabited?
"...You've already met someone who can do just that, haven't you?"
Canary said to Izayoi.
"Ultimately, whether it's the Dystopia Demon Lord or the Absolute Evil Demon Lord, they both end up ruling the world in the manner of gods... So, if you just find a teammate who is absolutely ruthless towards gods, wouldn't that solve the problem?"
Just as the Evil Dragon Satan was himself one of the gods, the Dystopia Demon Lord didn't negate the divinity of others to negate faith itself, but to gather all faith and divinity for itself.
The Absolute Evil Demon Lord sought to use evil to encourage good. While this meant great sacrifice for individuals, it was undeniably still a method of gods ruling the world.
And among the people Izayoi knew, there just so happened to be one such being who despised gods and even wanted to destroy the world because of it.
"You mean... Typhon?!"
Izayoi understood Canary's meaning and finally realized what her trump card was.
No wonder she had just raised the difficulty of this trial so high. Three of the highest-level Demon Lords gathered in one place—facing any one of them would be tough enough, but all three together was clearly beyond the Salvation Group's capabilities.
But if they could exploit the conflict between the Demon Lords and have them fight each other, the trial's difficulty would be drastically reduced.
In terms of his essential Spiritual Status, Typhon, as a victim, was indeed the natural enemy of the Dystopia Demon Lord, an authority figure, and the Absolute Evil Demon Lord, a researcher.
If Typhon could join forces with them, the Salvation Group plus one Demon Lord would indeed have a chance of defeating the other two.
But...
"Even setting aside Typhon's current physical condition, given his essential Spiritual Status, it would be difficult for him to team up with us, wouldn't it?"
Izayoi's expression was still hesitant.
It wasn't that he lacked confidence in his powers of persuasion, but this was clearly a problem that went beyond mere words.
After all...
"It's true that Typhon opposes and hates the gods, but he doesn't seem to have a very high opinion of humanity either!"
Izayoi would never forget the debt he owed Typhon for stepping forward to destroy Satan and save the other members of the Salvation Group.
But to see him as a harmless, good-natured person because of that would be a grave mistake.
Although he wasn't a Final Trial of Humanity, Typhon had expressed his own intentions at the very beginning: if humanity was destined to enter an era ruled by gods, he would rather take the whole world down with him.
If the future of humanity couldn't exclude victims of human experimentation, he was capable of blowing up the entire world at any moment.
And to this day, he had not changed that stance one bit.