Haru had stopped thinking about the Dark Empire approximately two hours after their envoys left, which was all the attention the matter warranted until Webster arrived.
What he was regretting, mildly, was destroying a hundred thousand corpses of the Demonic Gods in Tenebris. He'd destroyed almost all of them with his Space-Time Law rather than storing them in his storage ring. If he'd preserved the corpses, the Dark Empire would have had an entire catalog to buy from.
Tens of thousands of Intermediate Gods and dozens of High Gods, he couldn't even imagine what amount of wealth he would've gotten. He'd been impatient. The bodies were gone. It was useless to regret it.
The blood moon was rising. Neither Celestia nor Nova had completed their breakthroughs, they were still in retreat, both of them. The divine aura from Nova's direction indicated that she was close but not there yet.
If she didn't finish before midnight, the Angel Reincarnation Pool construction slot for today would go unused. Still, he wasn't going to interrupt her ascension for that.
He was preparing to visit the underground to meet Lily and Svetlana, especially the little girl, who he hadn't seen in some time.
Suddenly, his Divine Senses registered a God approaching them. Although the Divine Aura was below the Supreme God Tier, it was a familiar and strong one.
'Today is an interesting day, isn't it?' He thought, with mild wonder. Aurelyss in the morning, the Dark Empire's envoys in the afternoon, and now someone else at dusk. The Aetherium Empire had apparently become a hot destination for strong Gods and Goddesses.
…
Selene, the Goddess of Moonlight and Hunting, bowed with the careful respect of someone who remembered their previous meeting and had thought about this one.
"You've come for your artifact, haven't you?" Haru said, remembering the Divine Artifact [Selene's Crescent]. It had been sitting in his storage ring since he'd taken it off Daniel Bryant's corpse, the Castle Lord of the Fire Dragon's Nest.
It was Selene's natal artifact, lost in the ancient era, obtained by Daniel as a prize in the Beast Tide event and then killed out of his possession by Haru.
"That's part of it." She said, producing a ball containing a soul from her storage artifact and held it out.
"Sister Elunara asked me to deliver this. She's trying to ascend further and couldn't come herself." She paused, "It's the divine soul of the Aurora Goddess, Amelie."
Haru took the ball carefully. Through the seal he could see her, an extremely beautiful figure in suspended stillness, a Supreme Goddess reduced to a single thread of soul. In the Ancient Era's Divine War, she'd been besieged by multiple Demon Monarchs while shielding the Nature Pantheon's Goddesses in their retreat. Her Divine Body had been destroyed, only this thread of her soul survived.
The Castle Lords and even most natives believed that she had died, but the Native Gods knew better. A Goddess, especially one as strong as Amelie, even a single strand of her soul persisting meant she wasn't dead. She was just dormant, waiting for someone with the means to bring her back.
"Tell Elunara I'll resurrect her." Haru said, "The alliance between the Aetherium Empire and the Nature Pantheon would only grow stronger."
Selene's relief was visible and genuine. Sylvia had been kind to every Goddess in the Nature Pantheon. Getting her back mattered to them in ways that had nothing to do with politics. He sent the sphere into the Holy Grail with a wave of his hand.
Dantean's soul and the other tens of thousands of Demons' souls were already inside it, working through their transformation. Sylvia would undergo baptism too, not purification of evil, but reconstruction. The Holy Grail could handle both.
He pulled the crescent blade from his storage and held it out. The moment Selene saw it, her composure cracked slightly, the involuntary response of someone seeing something they'd lost and assumed gone for a hundred thousand years.
"Five billion Magic Crystals." She said quickly, before he could speak, "I've prepared them. I know it may not be enough, if Your Majesty requires more, I will find a way—"
She looked at him with an expression that had been carefully maintained as composed and was now visibly uncertain.
Haru looked at the blade, then at her.
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