A golden storm raged over the steel earth, and the great purification led by billions of angels unfolded.
Steve hovered in the sky high above, like a VIP in a theater's highest balcony, calmly observing the massacre he had instigated. Yet his heart was filled not only with awe, but also with lingering fear and relief. He could only sigh in thanks that Solomon had chosen the remote Temple of Time as the battlefield.
This Reality Marble, created by the King of Magecraft's will, was a stage so perfect that there was no need to worry about the consequences. Had this taken place on the real-world Earth, Steve certainly would not have dared so recklessly summon the UO from Venus.
She was indeed powerful, but the scope of her attack was the very definition of indiscriminate area-of-effect destruction. Steve knew, better than anyone, that TYPE-Venus could never perfectly control her billions of spore clones. The best she could do was roughly 99.99% control.
That sounds extremely high, but with numbers on this scale, that meant tens of thousands of "angels," each as strong as a low-tier Servant, would inevitably slip loose and act as killer machines guided only by instinct.
He could not help but imagine an apocalyptic scene: if she were summoned in her true form into Fuyuki City, the uncontrolled angel army would devour the population within seconds, transforming them into nourishment for their mother. Afterwards, the army would swarm the cities and even neighboring countries like locusts, waging infinite, indiscriminate war upon all human-inhabited regions…
Truly fitting for one of the strongest of the seven planetary Aristoteles, summoned by a dying Gaia on the world's last day.
Her very existence was the denial of the planetary ecosystem.
Of course, Steve understood that the odds of such disaster were, in reality, quite small. If he were to summon such an Ultimate One in the real world, he would be immediately met with fierce resistance and interference from Gaia, the planet's will, who would never allow her painstakingly built ecosystem to be wiped out by Venusian plant spores.
If TYPE-Venus truly decided to descend, her fate would almost certainly resemble that of ORT in FGO Lostbelt 2.7: weakened during atmospheric entry, ultimately crashing deep underground where she would enter a coma, sealed in nearly eternal hibernation.
Alternatively, the other security mechanism, Alaya, might intervene even more drastically—perhaps making another Excalibur and, in a twist of fate, arming with the ultimate Atlas weapon, the Black Barrel, which could bring down the living god of Venus from the skies with a single shot.
In any case, Steve knew he would never see TYPE-Venus at her full power. So in a sense, within this absolutely safe environment where the enemy could reveal her world-ending face, he almost felt genuine gratitude toward the King of Magecraft who had drawn him into the Temple of Time.
While he pondered these things, the performance below drew to a close.
Assaulted time after time by countless angels, the seventy-one demon gods' ability to regenerate visibly slowed. Their giant bodies became unstable, flickering into blurry outlines only to be instantly shredded by tens of thousands of angels, vanishing into pure magical particles.
This one-sided slaughter became an extremely efficient "purification operation."
"Alright, alright… That's enough for now."
Feeling that he'd seen enough, Steve whispered to the "angelic girl" beside him. Though his voice wasn't loud, it reached the very core of TYPE-Venus's will.
"Yes, Master!"
The girl replied crisply, obediently.
In the next moment, the golden storm that had swept across the land abruptly ceased. Billions of angels, as if receiving a silent command, all turned into points of golden light—like a glittering galaxy flowing upstream—rejoining the colossal plant in the sky.
The gigantic object hiding the sky began to rise slowly, retreating behind the crimson clouds and vanishing from sight. Instantly, the suffocating pressure vanished.
With TYPE-Venus's withdrawal, Steve finally began to act himself. He extended his right index finger and quickly traced in the air—not simple, two-dimensional runes, but a complex, profound series of three-dimensional magical diagrams, assembled from countless points of light like a star map.
This was the basis of cosmic magecraft: using the orbits of stars as a blueprint to weave a net of laws strong enough to interfere with reality.
"—[Prisoner of the Celestial Sphere]."
With a brief chant, the massive star-map magic array expanded in a flash, transforming into seventy-one blue chains of cosmic light, which wrapped swiftly and precisely around the regenerating demon pillars' remains.
The chains tightened, forcibly compressing their phantom bodies and sealing them, forming a grand array of seventy-one sparkling, translucent ornamental cages.
Finally free from the magic binding, the demon pillars revived and gasped for breath, their collective consciousness net now filled with not pain, but fatigue and a nameless anxiety at surviving this calamity.
Tired, confused thoughts began to question Steve.
["…If you had seal techniques like that, why didn't you use them from the start?"]
Faced with this quite reasonable, if exasperated, question, Steve scratched his head, a little embarrassed, and answered apologetically—so perfectly phrased that they couldn't object.
"Well… It's mostly out of respect for you and the King behind you."
"Since the King of Magecraft has sent his strongest army of familiars, as the King of Cosmic Magecraft, of course I must counter him with the strongest familiar I can employ in this age." He explained gravely. "It's just the proper etiquette for each side, don't you think?"
"Frankly, among familiars born of Earth, few can defeat your demon pillar army—and even fewer would ever form a contract with me."
"In despair, I could only seek an answer from the perspective of extraterrestrial life."
This logical explanation, framed in terms of reciprocity and "last resorts," successfully silenced the demon pillars. Within their jumbled collective thoughts, there even flickered, for a second before silence, the ridiculous fantasy that: "So, he actually respects us…"
Of course, Steve's real feelings were utterly different from his words.
Etiquette?
Respect?
Oh no, no…
He smiled quietly to himself.
It's just that… I wanted to watch a spectacle like this!
…