[Oh well, if you really wanted to know why I took the pains to come here then maybe I might just be a benevolent goddess and enlighten you.]
Her words brought him out of his thoughts and he stared at her in silence for a few seconds. From what she just said, he understood that she 'wanted' him to 'ask' her why she was here.
And that he did.
"So, what is it that would cause the goddess to come down all the way from her divine realm?"
[Pfft. 'Divine Realm'. Like such a place exists.
Besides a few oddities like me and some other high-ranked gods who reside in higher dimensional spaces, most of the gods just reside in worlds like this one.
But, that's beside the point.]
She walked towards the crater not far from them as she continued her words.
[Since you wish to know why I am here so much, then I might as well just tell you.]
Stopping at the edge of the crater, she stretched her hands out and spoke.
[While I was doing a little sweep of the situation on one of the worlds under my command, I discovered a scenario where one of the most powerful existences of the world had just killed a member of the race one of my subordinate gods was assigned to govern over, along with a member of a race from another world.
So, I borrowed the body of the subordinate god in question and made my way to the scene to 'investigate'.
In the end, I concluded that it wasn't worth my attention and decided to take my leave after monologuing to myself for a bit.
And since the two souls of the deceased existences 'happened' to be sealed in space, decided to take them away lest they end up causing harm to innocents.
But since I only had two hands and there were two souls, I had to drop the thing in my hands so I could pick up the souls.]
As she spoke, she dropped the grey crystal in her palm on the floor, before stretching out her hands and grabbing two balls of light that floated towards her from the centre of the crater.
[After that, I decided to leave the world as I had spent too much time there, leaving the thing I dropped on the ground where a transcendent level mortal coincidentally happened to be nearby.
However, while the thing I dropped might be useful to transcendents, it was useless to me as I had long surpassed that stage so I just left it there.
If the transcendent happened to pick it up after I left, well, that's not my problem per se.]
She turned around and gazed at Rathal for a moment, before her body flickered out of existence, leaving the stunned transcendent-level human there.
A few moments later, Rathal snapped out of his shock and walked up to the crystal, picking it up and dusting it before looking it over.
"This is a law crystal with a basic rank law inside it."
He thought about the words Artemisia spoke right before she disappeared and shook his head as he placed the crystal into his pocket and left the scene.
Meanwhile, Artemisia who was still in Aphine's body was floating in the void of space with two souls in her both hands while gazing down at a particular spot on the Alpha continent of Aidos.
'Good, he got the hint.'
She clenched her fists and squashed the two souls in her hand, shattering them to nothingness as she completely terminated the existences of the tenth finger and her contracted demon.
She was about to turn around when she suddenly felt dizzy and temporarily lost control of the body she was in.
Her left eye turned Emerald green as the worried voice of the body's owner rang out.
"My lady! Perhaps..."
[Calm down Aphine.]
Artemisia paused for a moment before continuing.
[My evolutionary cycle is complete and all the perquisites have been met, I'm advancing to the superior stage.]
"So soon?! We have to get your soul fragment back into your body quickly.
If the other gods sense your aura, they might not be able to sit still anymore upon discovering you have gotten stronger.
Especially that wretched bitch!"
Aphine turned her gaze towards the Dark continent as she spoke with unconcealed anger, however, she calmed herself quickly and spoke to Artemisia.
"My Lady, focus on concealing your aura. I'll handle the teleportation."
As she spoke, she activated her 'Authority' over space and silently muttered four sets of coordinates to herself.
[Thank you Aphine.]
A small smile bloomed on the goddess' face as her second eye returned to its emerald green colour, signifying that Artemisia's soul fragment within her had entered a dormant state.
"Dimensional Move."
With those two words, her body disappeared in a flash of light.
◇ ◇ ◇
Underground Facility
Unknown Island
January 21st
Year 1052
The Fingers of the Demonic Hand sat at a long rectangular table, with each one of them having sombre looks on their faces.
Not all of them were present, but it did nothing to hide the depressing air in the room.
"I can't sense her soul anymore."
The words spoken by the person seating at the head of the table caused the expressions of the ones present to distort.
"The connection was cut at first, but her soul still existed, however, now I can't sense her soul again."
After they spoke, one of the other Fingers seated at the table posed a question.
"She was posted to the Great Western Empire, right?"
"Yes, but her exact location was unknown. She had multiple bases of operations in the Great Western Empire, the Desert Country and the Beast Kingdom.
It's hard to know exactly where she was at the point of her death."
"This makes finding out who killed her to be more difficult. She could have been taken out by one of those 'Ten Swordsmen', the Desert country's 'Warlords', or the Beast Kingdom's 'Beast Masters', maybe even the Beast King himself."
The others in the room nodded upon hearing the words of the person who spoke, however, the one seated at the head of the table shook their head before saying.
"Finding out who killed her isn't the issue, the real issue is that everything she was planning was most likely found out by the other party.
Whatever she was planning is now officially scrapped.
There is also the possibility that all of her subordinates have been wiped out too.
This is the second time our plans are going awry in the span of a single year. And it's just when we started taking major action.
Tsk..."
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