While Malia was conducting the search through shared senses.
After thinking for a moment, Philly spoke.
“Robert.”
“Yes.”
The knight Robert, who had been silently standing beside her, answered.
“While Aster is on his way here, is there no way to take out Mistilteinn first?”
Frondier wanted Aster to obtain Mistilteinn.
He had already told Elodie that, and Elodie had shared most of the information Frondier had given her with the imperial palace.
“We’re trying that right now, but it seems difficult.”
“Why?”
“They say Mistilteinn is underneath the Parthenon Temple. So we already sent knights there, but the miasma is so thick they can’t go down underground.”
“If they use aura or healing?”
“Neither worked. It doesn’t seem to be that kind of thing.”
At those words, Philly’s eyes narrowed.
‘So it’s not just an ordinary poison. Something a god did, huh.’
Philly thought.
If she were a god, she would have destroyed something like Mistilteinn on the spot. A weapon that exists only to kill gods? Of course that’s something that can’t be allowed.
But they hadn’t done that. Did that mean Mistilteinn was a weapon that even gods couldn’t easily lay a hand on? So they spewed miasma around it so humans couldn’t approach, and built a temple over it?
Just then, Robert spoke.
“They say if you have divine power, you should be able to break through the miasma.”
“Divine power......? Ah, I see. If a god really is the one who created that miasma, then divine power can defend against it.”
But if that was true, there was another problem. Philly’s expression twisted.
“......Divine power, at this point?”
“It’s impossible.”
Just a few days ago, the Zodiacs had sworn to abandon their divine power. Because of that, the Empire’s forgotten fervor had flared up again. Telling them now that they needed divine power again was absurd. It wasn’t just a matter of morale; it risked them losing their actual strength as a whole.
“Besides, the Zodiacs are in no condition to move recklessly right now.”
“Right.”
The Zodiacs were currently staying in the imperial palace. In a form where they watched one another.
Because no one knew when one of them might be possessed.
Descent had conditions, but possession did not. The Zodiacs had said they would abandon their divine power, but that was not such a simple matter.
Just as a human could not obtain divine power just by wanting it, they could not discard it just by wanting to.
So the Zodiacs were watching one another in preparation for someone being possessed.
Regarding that, Aten had asked,
“What if they get possessed all at once? That {N•o•v•e•l•i•g•h•t} seems pretty likely.”
The one who answered was Ospreet.
“This is not the only place where communication is difficult. It’s not easy for Olympus and Asgard to stay in contact either. They won’t be able to match the timing to possess everyone at once.”
In other words, even if possession happened simultaneously, at most it would be half the Zodiacs. If it was only that many, the rest could subdue them.
Especially since Ospreet, who had no divine power, was relatively safe; that was reassuring in itself.
‘......If anything, the problem is,’
Philly glanced toward the imperial conference room.
‘Inies.’
Elodie de Inies Rishae. She too had been staying in the imperial palace for the past few days. For the same reason as the Zodiacs.
But the severity of her situation was different from that of the other Zodiacs.
Philly spoke with Robert somewhere Elodie could not hear.
“What if Miss Elodie is possessed? If the power of those five gods is fully opened.”
“First of all, Miss Elodie herself said that will never happen. She said that with resistance of her level, only a chief god could possess her.”
“......Chief god. Among her divine powers, as for a chief god,”
“Yes, there is Vishnu.”
At that, Philly’s expression twisted.
Even if she believed Elodie’s words, it was dangerous enough if Vishnu alone were to possess her. If a god of that level possessed Elodie, no one could know what might happen.
Elodie had said that if someone could freely use her body for just five minutes, an entire village could be blown away without a trace.
And that was only if they used her own power.
If you added Vishnu’s power on top of that, and Vishnu was able to use every magic Elodie could use,
“Miss Elodie said that her friend is helping her.”
“......And that friend is also a god.”
Robert nodded. Philly’s head began to ache.
‘The Vedic gods are gods from another world. They might be unrelated to this war.’
But gods were originally beings armed with fickleness. They were precisely the type Philly hated.
‘Still, if what Miss Elodie says is true, then for someone to have that level of resistance means that most gods wouldn’t be able to possess them.’
Just what was that resistance?
What was it that allowed Elodie to succeed in resisting, and yet the so-called Zodiacs, in name at least, were all possessed during the Palma incident and flung all the way to Agoris?
“......It would be good if there were even one more person. Someone we could trust to stop any Zodiac who might run wild.”
Philly let out a sigh.
It was easy enough to say, but in practice it was extremely difficult.
Because it meant that without having divine power, they had to be superior to Zodiacs who did have divine power. Right now, the only one who fit that description was Ospreet.
“......I wonder if Mr. Angfer would be willing to help.”
Angfer was still inside the Roach mansion. The rumor that the servants were living in terror had spread all the way to the imperial palace.
Well, of course. Even Philly didn’t have the courage to face Angfer as he was now.
Philly muttered like a complaint. Robert said nothing to that and simply stared straight ahead.
“......This is strange.”
A voice came then.
It was Malia murmuring.
“What is it, Malia?”
“Ah, my apologies, Your Highness. I didn’t realize.”
“It’s fine. Go on.”
At Philly’s words, Malia spoke, her eyes complicated.
“To be honest, I didn’t think we’d fail to find it this much......”
“......Hm.”
Philly didn’t say much, but she was thinking the same thing as Malia.
Malia’s shared senses, aside from special situations like Frondier’s “fireworks,” were almost useless in actual combat. At the very least, even Gregory could use small animals to do things like peck with their beaks, scratch with their claws, or bite. But for Malia, only the senses were shared; she could not control the targets.
Instead, the range of her shared senses was so broad it reached all the way to the distant continent of Agoris, and the number of targets and the precision were optimized for observation more than any other skill, and no magic could block her shared senses.
And Malia was currently scouring the Empire with all of her senses, yet they still hadn’t found any worship site.
“Could the ones doing the investigating be doing a sloppy job?”
No matter how excellent Malia’s shared senses were, if the people she was sharing with were incompetent at investigating, it was useless. But Malia shook her head.
“From what I saw through shared vision, the people we dispatched seem to be inspecting thoroughly, without any gaps. Besides, a worship site isn’t something you can hide just because you’re a bit sloppy in checking.”
A large number of people, a large space. Just from those two conditions alone, it wasn’t that hard to find.
And yet they hadn’t.
“There’s something I don’t know yet.”
Malia thought hard.
At this point, it really made her think there might be some unknown, deep underground place somewhere in this Empire.
But even so, if they were going to worship there, people had to go in and out. Since she couldn’t see any such patterns of movement, it was frustrating.
“Even if we find the worship site, it won’t be enough to stop the god. They’ll come attacking here sooner or later.”
“Right, this is just stalling for time.”
The gods would definitely attack humans. To stop Frondier.
Blocking the worship site was only a first-stage measure. The gods would have other methods as well. Whatever those might be.
However, whatever method they used, the Empire’s current objective was simple.
─Until Aster has Mistilteinn, prevent the descent of any god.
***
The Empire was vast.
But compared to the Empire at its peak, no one could really call it that anymore.
If someone’s arm is huge, then naturally that person’s entire body is huge. For them, a single arm of theirs would not feel huge at all. That was the Empire’s current state.
There had been a time when the Falind continent and the Terst Empire were one and the same. Because the entire continent was imperial territory.
But the current Empire, which had protected humans with the barrier, had handed over most of that territory to monsters.
Beyond the Empire lay land far vaster and broader than the Empire itself.
The realm where outside monsters ran rampant. And that wasn’t enough, so even now, it was the realm of monsters that bashed their heads against the barrier.
But now, that place was,
KWA-BOOM! KWAANG! KWA-AAAAANG!!
It was being destroyed as if meteorites were crashing down.
“Graaaah! Get lost! Fucking get lost already!!”
There was a man rampaging, sprinting across the ground, and when that wasn’t enough, leaping into the air, smashing the earth and the trees and the mountains however he pleased.
It was originally supposed to be the territory of outside monsters, yet a single human was rampaging there like it was his own living room.
But his momentum was so ferocious and he was such an insane bastard that even the monsters didn’t come near anymore. The few monsters that had come at him had already been turned into pulp, fused into one with the earth and the trees and the mountains.
“Just get lost already!! Ares!!!”
KWAANG!
This time, the man slammed his own head into the ground. That alone caused a light earthquake.
His gray hair had grown longer and stuck out any which way, and his beard hung down unkempt.
Renzo, he was rampaging like a madman in the middle of the outer region.
Of course, for Renzo, that expression felt a bit lacking; to be more precise, he was worse than usual.
“Huff, huff, huff......!”
Renzo stared ahead with murderously sharp eyes.
Blood was already running down from his fists and his forehead, and his clothes were completely worn and torn.
No one else had done this to him. Renzo had put himself in this state.
No—strictly speaking,
[Renzo......!]
It was as if someone, visible only to Renzo, right in front of his eyes, was guiding him.
He faced Renzo in almost the same shape of rage as Renzo.
[Hurry up and go get my spear and shield!!!]
“Why the hell should I! You crazy rampaging brute!!”
What Renzo said wasn’t all that wrong, but coming from Renzo it somehow sounded wrong.
At Renzo’s shout, Ares reached out a hand. That hand headed toward the top of Renzo’s head.
“Grrr......!”
Renzo ground his teeth.
Right now he was tasting an utterly disgusting sensation.
It was truly the feeling of having the control of his body stolen.
He’d felt that Ares had been doing something weird ever since the Palma incident, but this time it had reached its peak.
In fact, even back then, it wasn’t that Renzo had blocked Ares’ possession.
Renzo could barely resist possession at all. Unlike Frondier or Elodie, he couldn’t perceive his own soul. For Renzo, who didn’t even have that kind of information, resisting Ares’ possession was extremely difficult. Unless he was a genius like Elodie.
But while Renzo wasn’t a genius, he was definitely a madman.
KWAANG!
[Urk......!]
He slammed his own head into the ground once more. The blood that had already been running from his forehead now threatened to gush even more.
“Ha-ha! Try and take this body from me! Before that, I’ll turn this body half-crippled myself!”
[You really are insane, you know that!]
“I’m sick of hearing that already!!”
Ares had actually predicted this result. That was why he hadn’t forced possession back in Palma. Because he’d anticipated that Renzo would resort to self-harm. Lunatics understood each other in their own way.
“If I let a bastard like you take this body for even one second, I’d sooner make this one remaining arm useless too......”
Renzo cut himself off mid-sentence and shifted his gaze somewhere.
Renzo had smashed up all sorts of things in this area. The earth and the mountains, the trees and the forest, without distinction. If he could have touched the sky, he would have smashed that too.
Somewhere in the exposed forest.
He saw several people, with cautious steps, entering a cave.
“......Huh?”
