It was a decisive battle worthy of being carved into myth and grand history.
When the God-Slaying Alliance's trump card—the berserk red Mecha God Mars—smashed through the temple ceiling and descended, the tide of battle turned.
Immediately afterward, Romulus Quirinus—the supreme god who had ascended from Caligula's Saint Graph and a peerless spear wielder—appeared, completely sealing off Zeus's escape route as the Almighty God.
"…My arm is Rome! The tip of my spear is the path to liberation!"
Romulus Quirinus's spear of light was not meant to kill, but to strip away.
He forcibly dismantled and sealed the powers of the other twelve Olympian gods that had been fused into Zeus.
The once-invincible King of Machines gradually exposed his fundamental weaknesses as the concept of Rome collapsed.
"Now! Mash! Ritsuka!"
"Got it! Black Barrel—maximum output—!"
Under divine protection, Mash raised the god-slaying weapon.
A dark-red beam pierced the heavens and struck Zeus's exposed Spirit Core directly.
BOOM—!!!
With a roar that shook the entire Lostbelt, the God King who had ruled this land for thousands of years finally fell amid exploding flames.
"Did we… win?"
Gasping for breath, Ritsuka stared at the vanishing remnants of the Mecha God. An indescribable wave of relief flooded her chest.
But just as everyone thought the battle was over, sudden change struck.
The once-clear sky tore open into a massive fissure—not a crack in the clouds, but a rupture in space itself.
Through that tear everyone saw not blue sky, but a deep, despairingly dark universe.
In the deepest part of that darkness, a colossal eye slowly opened.
It was a stellar-class Dyson sphere—the mother ship of Olympus's twelve Mecha Gods: Chaos.
["Warning: Flagship Zeus has ceased functioning. Suppression field has disappeared."]
A cold, solemn, emotionless mechanical voice resounded directly in everyone's hearts.
["Current situation must be reassessed. Earth's surface resource extraction rate falls below standard."]
["Executing backup protocol: resume interstellar navigation."]
["To maintain mother-ship navigation, we have begun recycling 37% of hull surface mass and converting it into magical resources."]
["Separation operation commencing."]
Despair.
Purer and more irresistible than facing Zeus.
If Zeus had been the strongest being on the surface, Chaos was a predator from the stars.
Merely gazing upon this place caused the entire land of Olympus to begin collapsing, transforming into pure spiritual particles that flowed into the sky's fissure.
"Is this… the true nature of the Lostbelt…?"
Holmes stared at the sensor data with pale eyes. "As long as the mechanical-god form is maintained, defying the mother ship's orders is impossible."
"Zeus sealed this order for ten thousand years to protect humanity… but now that he is dead, the seal is broken."
Are we… going to be devoured?
Mash raised her shield, yet before a celestial-scale assault it looked pitifully small.
Just as everyone stood at the brink of despair, a sharp figure appeared before them.
"…It is not over yet, Master."
Miyamoto Musashi.
The female swordsman who had fought alongside everyone since Shimosa no longer wore her usual cheerful smile.
She gripped two swords, gaze locked on the colossal fissure above.
"That eyeball… is that a window connected to our side?"
She drew a deep breath. Magic around her blazed violently—not ordinary release, but the burning of her own Saint Graph, her very existence.
"My sword has never reached the realm of zero."
"But now… I understand."
"To sever that blank space, to sever this causality… I must become nothingness itself."
"Musashi?! What are you doing?!"
Ritsuka cried out and reached for her.
Musashi only turned back with her usual bright smile.
"Do not make that face, Master… This is a death worthy of a samurai."
"Niten Ichi-ryu…"
As she raised her twin blades high, space behind her distorted. A gigantic statue of the King of Compassion manifested.
It was the pinnacle of her lifelong swordsmanship—a strike that severed her karma at the cost of "vanishing from this seat forever."
"Ishana—!"
Just as the concept-slicing sword light was about to erupt—
"It seems there is some sort of problem."
Cutting through the tragic BGM came an extremely abrupt, tasteless, and slightly languid voice.
Musashi and everyone froze.
Even the swirling chaos in the sky seemed to pause.
In a blind spot unnoticed by anyone, without the slightest magical fluctuation, Steve had appeared at the edge of the battlefield.
He wore no red mecha suit and held no divine weapon.
In his hand was a small, ordinary-looking golden pair of scissors.
His posture resembled an old man about to prune a bonsai.
"Hmm… found it. This is the wiring connected to the other side, right? Honestly, tangled wiring causes fires."
Muttering to himself, Steve gently pressed the scissors against the void—more precisely, against the conceptual junction known as the cosmic window linking Earth and the Chaos mother ship.
Click.
A crisp sound, like lightly snapping paper.
No earth-shaking explosion. No flashy effects.
It was over in an instant.
The giant fissure in the sky—the eye of the star—which had radiated boundless gravity and despair, vanished like an old television whose plug had been pulled.
It was gone.
The collapsing earth stopped trembling.
Spiritual particles that had been rising toward the sky lost their target and fell like rain.
The terrifying pressure from space disappeared completely in that single moment.
The once-clear, tranquil blue sky of Olympus returned.
"…"
"…"
"…"
Deathly silence.
Musashi remained frozen in her raised-blade pose, the word "nothingness" stuck in her throat, body rigid as a statue.
She blinked, looked up at the sky, then at her own swords, and finally at the man casually returning the scissors to his pocket.
"Huh?"
The female swordsman let out the most unladylike scream of her life. "It's gone?! That huge eyeball?! What happened to my resolve?! What happened to my void flash?!"
"Eh? Which eyeball?"
Steve turned around with an innocent expression, yawning as he looked at everyone. "Was there a network malfunction earlier? The weather looks fine to me."
"By the way, has Zeus finished fighting? I thought I saw that giant fall."
"You…"
Holmes's eyes widened; his detective instincts screamed, yet the eyes that should have uncovered truth could not comprehend what had just occurred.
Those scissors… that gesture… it was a principle transcending magecraft, something that even surpassed magic itself.
Causality separation? Concept erasure?
No—it was essentially… completely rewriting the script.
"Steve… that was you just now, wasn't it…"
Mash pointed at the sky in disbelief.
"Me? I was cheering you on from the shadows the whole time."
Steve shrugged and lightly patted the still-dazed Musashi's shoulder. "Compared to this… your pose is really cool, Musashi."
"But holding it that long must be tiring, right? Since the battle's over, shouldn't you start thinking about what to eat at the victory party? I hear Olympus udon is famous."
"U-udon…"
Musashi blankly repeated the word.
Finally, the true sensation of having survived the disaster welled up inside her.
The two swords slipped from her hands. She collapsed, breathing heavily.
"Haa… haa… what the hell was that…"
She stared at Steve, eyes filled with confusion and indescribable gratitude.
"For real… you completely stole the spotlight."
A short distance away, the four hidden figures exchanged bewildered glances.
"Hey, Pepe."
Kadoc asked coldly, "What the hell just happened?"
"I don't know."
Pepe narrowed his eyes at the red figure, a meaningful smile on his lips. "But I think we should be grateful that this monster who only knows how to slack off has become our ally."
The Olympian wind blew gently.
The battle that should have ended in tragic sacrifice reached an inexplicable yet strangely reassuring conclusion in an inexplicable comedic atmosphere.
…
…
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