Okay, okay. Stay calm, stay calm, Cid. Don't panic when something happens. Panicking won't help anyway. Calm down first and think of a solution.
Standing before the rampaging Seated Angel and looking down at the Day of Destruction ritual that had once again begun below, Cid silently encouraged himself, trying to stop himself from deciding the world was beyond saving and simply running away.
His sharp gaze settled on the colossal being before him, and Cid reached his first conclusion.
First, this thing couldn't be killed. Killing it would destroy the world.
Honestly, it was almost impressive. He had identified an intangible law that permeated the entire world and played some indispensable role in its development, then forced it into a physical form that could actually be destroyed. Theoretically, he had already accomplished the hardest part.
And then it turned out he wasn't allowed to kill it.
That was just ridiculous.
It wasn't completely incomprehensible. It was like suddenly removing a planet's gravity, stopping all air currents, or causing temperature itself to lose control.
Even so, it was absurd that a reboot program was apparently just as important to the world's operation as gravity, flow, and temperature. The instant it disappeared, the entire system crashed.
As expected of a world built on a mountain of shitty code. Delete one seemingly unimportant program at random and the whole world fell apart.
As long as it ran, apparently that was good enough.
Second, it couldn't be sealed.
Cid examined the Seated Angel's body, which had swollen several times larger after being restrained for barely a dozen seconds.
That was what happened when he sealed it.
Other programs governing the world's natural processes would jam along with it, disrupting the circulation of the world's spiritual veins. Energy would continue accumulating until the planet became one enormous powder keg.
Then the slightest touch would turn it into a firework blooming in space.
Finally, the people couldn't be saved either.
Cid glanced again at the information emanating from the depths of every living creature's soul and fell silent.
Was this world mentally ill?
God only knew how someone had managed to write such an outrageously awful program.
The reboot function had actually been woven directly into life itself, including the soul. Even fleeing to the ends of the earth wouldn't matter. Everyone would still die together.
Don't kill it, and the world's living creatures might survive for another forty divisions.
Kill it, and the entire world immediately crashed into a heap of garbage.
Seal it, and the planet instantly became a powder keg waiting to explode.
Take every living creature and flee to another world, and the program engraved into their bodies and souls would lock onto them across worlds, remotely reboot them, and reduce them to sludge...
Cid genuinely couldn't take this anymore.
Was this absurd monster really not something some idiot author invented on a whim?
If you wanted to destroy the world, couldn't you make it simpler?
Just kill everyone!
Couldn't kill it. Couldn't seal it. Couldn't run.
The world itself was trying to commit suicide, and no matter what he did, he couldn't stop it.
How the hell was anyone supposed to fight a gimmick this ridiculous?!
Someone hurry to a higher dimension and call Modi Wus over. This was literally his specialty!!!
"ROAR!!!"
A violent roar erupted.
Sound waves howled past Cid, stirring the darkness spreading around him. High above, the hand of the gigantic clock was about to reach "7."
Right.
Time to face reality.
This wasn't the moment to hope some convenient deus ex machina would suddenly appear.
At the end of the day, he had to rely on himself.
Still ranting internally, Cid took a deep breath and abandoned the idea of slowly testing one method at a time.
He would throw every idea that seemed useful at it all at once.
If he dragged this out any longer, something really would happen. By then, even if he found a solution, it would already be too late.
"Whoosh!"
Cid appeared to raise one foot slowly.
In reality, he vanished in the blink of an eye and reappeared above the Seated Angel, facing directly toward the top of its head.
He raised one hand and opened his palm toward the colossal being below.
"Well, I have no idea if this'll work. Whatever. If it fails, I'll just have to apologize to Nee-san and everyone else, then run off to another world."
The world seemed to enter slow motion.
A single drop of pure water silently appeared in the palm aimed at the Seated Angel.
The instant it formed, the planet's gravity pulled it downward from Cid's hand toward the Seated Angel's head.
"Drip!"
The pure droplet struck the Seated Angel's helmet.
A crisp sound rang out, like a raindrop landing on the surface of a pond.
It was an insignificant sound in a world on the verge of destruction.
Yet amid all the chaos and noise, everyone could hear it clearly.
It echoed through the void across the entire world.
"ROAR...!!!"
The frenzied roar radiating from the Seated Angel and pressing down upon every living creature abruptly stopped.
Its enormous body, which had continued carrying out the Day of Destruction ritual even while nearly collapsing under Cid's attacks, suddenly froze in midair.
The surging darkness that had seemed ready to devour everything became as still as stagnant water.
At that moment, the wind stopped.
The rain fell silent.
All things became still.
The world, which moments earlier had been filled with chaos and noise as destruction approached, fell into an unprecedented silence.
Not even insects could chirp.
People could no longer hear the beating of their own hearts.
Because...
Pure water had descended from above and occupied every corner of the world.
Deep underground, magma and the massive layers of earth intertwined and came to a halt.
People's beating hearts and flowing blood were permeated and replaced.
The movement of air and changes in temperature throughout the sky were cooled into stillness.
It was like an image made of separate layers.
Normally, reality occupied the uppermost layer, concealing everything beneath it.
Now, one of those hidden layers had risen to replace reality itself, while the original layer of reality had faded and sunk beneath it.
At this moment, everything on this "Water Planet" had been occupied by that single drop of pure water.
The silence of all things existed only to emphasize the silver-white figure standing at the pinnacle of the planet beneath the stars.
"Let's begin."
The figure dressed in silver-white formalwear smiled gently.
His hand traced a circle through the air as though he were holding a conductor's baton.
"The Great Purge!"
The gentle words fell.
The golden threads that had been wrapped around every living creature and object in reality appeared within this pure "Water Planet."
The ocean, which had possessed no movement and only deathly stillness, suddenly came alive.
It surged and twisted around the golden threads whose total mass equaled the entire planet, washing over them again and again.
What was the essence of water?
Ask the spellcasters of the world's major factions that question, and most of them would probably give the useless answer, "Water is water."
Someone slightly smarter and better researched might say water represented life, ice, or something along those lines.
Cid's evaluation of those answers was that they were worse than the meaningless one above.
At least water really was water.
So what was the actual answer?
That was a surprisingly profound question.
Even the records within The Library gave the same answer regarding "water."
Water was water.
Honestly, Cid often claimed that his greatest strength with Magic Formulas was deconstruction, and that titles like "God of Magic" existed only because he himself was powerful enough to stand high and see farther than everyone else.
But the real question was...
Just how high was he standing?
It wasn't that he specialized in dismantling magic because his ability to deconstruct it exceeded his ability to use it.
He stood so high that one glance was enough to show him exactly where the flaws were.
He was simply too lazy to spend time figuring out how to patch those flaws afterward.
That was why he was better at dismantling magic.
After all, he could just mindlessly stack "Cores." Even the simplest, most garbage Magic Formula could kill a whole group of Dragon Gods if enough "Cores" were crammed into it.
Why spend all day designing some complicated Magic Formula when smashing a "Core" directly into someone's face was easier?
Sometimes meaningless answers were surprisingly useful.
Because in Cid's eyes, the essence of water truly was "water is water."
His meaning was simply a little different from what most people meant by those words.
Heat water and it became mist.
Cool it and it became ice.
At suitable temperatures, it remained water.
Liquid, solid, vapor.
This world really was interesting.
So what was the essence of water?
Changes in density?
That sounded reasonable, but it overlapped too much with the abilities of Earth, so that answer was rejected.
Then what was it?
What defining property immediately came to mind when looking at water?
The answer was...
A change in form.
Or rather, transformation.
Everything in the world was "Earth (matter)."
Water was ultimately only one part of the material world.
Looking past the appearance to the underlying essence, the Core of water was transformation.
Everything could be "transformed (water)."
The Core of water was the phenomenon it represented.
There really was some truth to the saying that mastering one path allowed you to understand countless others.
Most abilities ultimately traveled down similar roads once developed far enough.
At the very least, in Cid's eyes, this single "Water" ability could reproduce effects similar to several completely different powers.
For example...
His gaze swept across a meteor drifting through space.
With nothing more than a thought, the extraterrestrial iron that could have caused a catastrophe if it struck the planet flashed with light.
A gigantic pitch-black sword appeared where the meteor had been.
Yes.
If Cid felt like it, the planet beneath his feet, which had existed within this solar system for billions of years, could become a planetary-scale greatsword.
He could even pilot that enormous space sword into other worlds, transform entire meteor swarms into world-destroying blades, and become an incredibly cool apocalyptic Demon King.
Of course, the abilities of Earth could accomplish something similar.
After all, Earth specialized in the material world.
They were still two different abilities. Even if mastering them deeply enough allowed similar effects, subtle differences would always remain.
And for the problem Cid currently faced, he felt Water was more appropriate than Earth.
Unless he wanted to fight a bug with another bug by removing gravity from the entire world and seeing whether that crashed the system...
"Water, transform."
Cid murmured softly.
Within the golden threads restrained by the pure water, at the very center of the Water Planet, the Seated Angel hidden from the layer of reality by that pure droplet appeared again.
The Seated Angel, which had previously struggled endlessly under its instinct to destroy the world, was now calm.
A silent, deathly stillness radiated from the white eyes set in its vaguely feminine face.
If a world with its apocalypse program activated was like a body suffering from heart disease, except that this particular disease was also an indispensable function of the heart itself, then removing the heart would kill the body, and stopping the heart would kill it as well.
What Cid was doing now was keeping that diseased heart beating while forcing the disease itself into silence.
That way, the apocalypse program, the "heart disease," would not inflict a fatal blow upon the world, the "human body."
Would it work?
Cid had no idea.
This was his first time trying something like this.
Who knew where such a disgusting boss had even come from?
Still, he could only hope he managed to cure the world.
If possible, Cid would rather not flee to another one.
Who knew what kind of horrifying freak show the world he escaped to might turn out to be?
Time passed while Cid distracted himself with those thoughts.
Deep within the water below, the Seated Angel buried at the very center of the Water Planet had finally calmed.
The horrifying restlessness that once covered its face had disappeared.
The intent to destroy the world faded from its eyes.
The planet's worth of golden threads surrounding it also lost their dazzling golden radiance and dimmed.
Could this really work?
Cid asked himself the question.
He still couldn't answer with certainty.
For all he knew, the thing might simply be pretending.
"Phew..."
Even though there was no oxygen left inside his body, Cid still exhaled and mentally prepared himself.
He couldn't maintain this forever.
Keeping the world trapped under this Water ability, which was similar to stopping time, was nothing more than burying his head in the sand.
"Snap!"
Cid snapped his fingers.
The water covering the "Water Planet" below slowly receded.
Reality returned to the surface.
The people who had been frozen as though embedded in concrete, unable to move and forced to watch everything unfolding on the water layer, regained control of their bodies.
Of course, none of that mattered.
What mattered was...
Cid looked toward the enormous Seated Angel.
The surrounding darkness remained still.
The Heavenly Fire did not appear.
Neither did the Sea of Blood.
Everything seemed calm.
Looks like it worked...
"Aaaah!!!"
A piercing shriek accompanied by terrifying pressure spread across the world.
Darkness began expanding.
Heavenly Fire descended upon humanity.
Floodwaters surged in every direction...
Bullshit!
It failed!
Cid stared silently for a moment, then sighed and prepared to run.
According to what he had learned from the previous disasters, the seventh one would not leave him enough time to reset the world's hand to "0."
Most likely, every living creature in the world would instantly be reduced into one giant...
Cid suddenly froze.
Something was wrong.
He looked down.
Still six disasters.
Then he looked at the sky.
The hand of the enormous clock was still pointing at "6."
It hadn't reached "7."
"Oh. I forgot to turn this thing back."
Cid pulled out the clock and moved its hand from "6" back to "0."
Instantly, every disaster ravaging the world vanished without a trace.
The darkness covering the heavens retreated.
The sky cleared, revealing the deep blue beyond.
Cid waited there for several seconds.
The Seated Angel did not suddenly reappear to resume its duty of destroying the world.
Only then did Cid confirm that the apocalypse program had truly been shut down.
"What the heck... That was pretty simple, wasn't it? Hahaha..."
Cid burst out laughing in the sky at how much time he had wasted before finally solving the problem.
He continued laughing until he noticed several figures flying toward him from the continent.
"Time to go. Back to Itogami Island. I still need to get over to Rias and establish my alibi."