Gaia's face had gone just as pale.
In her emerald eyes, the will of the planet was violently surging.
The carpet beneath her feet tried to twist and harden,
but the instant an unnatural ripple appeared on its surface, it was smoothed out again.
She realized she couldn't even change the shape of the carpet under her feet anymore!
Under the frightened gazes of the two Counter Force girls,
Tiamat walked toward them with light yet resolute steps.
Her movements weren't rough; they even carried a certain divine grace.
But the unquestionable intent behind them still drove Alaya and Gaia to despair.
"Let go!"
"How dare you!"
Alaya and Gaia struggled, trying to push away Tiamat's reaching hand,
or launch a mental attack.
But the power they could muster now, under suppression,
was pitifully weak before Tiamat.
Her hand looked slender, yet it contained unimaginable strength and the blessing of some higher permission, easily breaking through their futile resistance.
Very soon, under Tiamat's calm and efficient handling, Alaya and Gaia were like two kittens being picked up and set down,
gently placed onto that overly soft, overly spacious bed.
They tried to struggle back up,
but Tiamat merely raised her hand and pressed down lightly in the air.
A gentle yet irresistible force pinned them in place at the center of the mattress.
Immediately after,
Tiamat extended a finger and tapped lightly on Alaya's elaborate black gothic dress and Gaia's nature-woven emerald outfit.
There was no sound of tearing.
No magical glow.
The garments on the two Counter Force girls seemed to be subjected to the most advanced disassembly spell—
from the points where they touched the skin, they rapidly broke down into countless fine particles, each shimmering faintly, then faded silently into the air.
The process was so fast they had no time to react; they only felt a sudden chill across their bodies.
In the blink of an eye,
Alaya and Gaia were left with nothing to wear,
completely exposed under the warm light that, to them, was sheer torment,
laid bare under Rei Ao's calm gaze and Tiamat's expressionless eyes.
"Ah—!!"
Alaya let out a short cry.
Her cold mask shattered completely.
Her violet eyes were filled with shame, panic, and utter disbelief.
She reflexively curled up her petite body,
trying to hide herself with her arms and silver hair, but it did little good.
The inhuman aura of the human collective unconscious rapidly receded from her.
Right now she looked far more like a frightened ordinary girl.
Gaia's jade eyes also brimmed with shame and anger and shock.
Her long green hair spilled down, barely covering part of her body.
She tried to call on the concept of nature to shroud herself,
but it was just as futile.
The indifference of the planetary will was broken,
revealing the most direct emotional reaction of its incarnation at this moment.
Rei Ao sat at the edge of the bed.
He leaned forward slightly,
one elbow resting on his knee,
his chin propped in his hand as he studied the two Counter Force girls on the bed — faces scarlet, humiliated to the extreme, yet unable to put up any effective resistance with their powers sealed.
He watched for a long while,
until Alaya and Gaia looked like they wanted to bury themselves in the soft sheets,
before he finally let out a soft sigh.
The sound was especially clear in the quiet room.
"Alaya, Gaia."
Rei Ao's voice rang out, carrying a faint, almost disappointed teasing.
"Look at you two now."
"Where's that overwhelming presence from earlier, when you summoned Mama Tiamat and made heaven and earth change color?"
"How did you end up this lame?"
Those words were like the final straw that broke the already fragile mental defenses of the two Counter Force girls.
Especially that word "lame."
For beings of such high standing, it was practically the greatest insult and denial.
Alaya bit down hard on her lower lip.
The light in her violet eyes flickered chaotically,
rational thought and irrational emotion clashing violently.
Gaia buried her face deep in the crook of her arm,
her shoulders trembling slightly — whether from anger or something else, it was hard to say.
And what happened next went even further beyond anything they'd imagined,
beyond what they, as incarnations of the Counter Force, were prepared to handle as an "event."
Rei Ao didn't do anything further to them in any concrete, physical sense.
He didn't even move closer. He merely sat where he was, eyes calmly resting on them.
Yet under that calm gaze,
Alaya and Gaia felt a deeper, even more irresistible power.
It didn't act on their bodies.
It acted directly on the core of their existence,
on their consciousness and perception as "incarnations of the Counter Force."
It was a kind of… existential pressure that defied description.
Like the shiver of recognizing your own insignificance while staring up at the stars.
Like the dizziness of having your cognition collapse when faced directly with cosmic truth.
Rei Ao was clearly just sitting there,
but in the perception of Alaya and Gaia — which had been magnified and sharpened to the extreme — his very "existence" was like a singularity,
ever-expanding and devouring all meaning,
something absolute: incomprehensible, immeasurable, irresistible.
The rational, cold, inhuman front they tried to maintain as the Counter Force
melted away under this pure, overwhelming presence, like ice and snow under the sun.
Feelings of shame and panic were gradually replaced by something more fundamental — a dizzy, chaotic state born of being looked down upon and enveloped at the level of existence itself.
Their consciousness began to blur; thoughts came in broken fragments.
Their sense of the outside world felt as if it were separated by a thick pane of frosted glass.
Their bodies went limp, even the strength to curl up slowly draining away.
Alaya's violet eyes, always engaged in ultra-high-speed computation, lost their focus and turned hazy and unfocused.
Her small mouth fell slightly open,
unconsciously letting out vague sounds as scattered phrases slipped past her lips.
"Going to die, going to die… permission error… cannot parse… existence overload…"
"So strange, it feels like I'm floating…"
Her voice grew softer and softer,
until it was almost a sleep-talking murmur.
The ice and rationality were gone, leaving only a muddled, dazed sense of numbness and disorientation.
Her cheeks flushed as she shifted slightly without realizing it.
Gaia was in a similar state.
She no longer even tried to hide herself,
simply lying limp on the bed.
Her jade eyes were half-open, half-closed,
the depth and age of the planetary will gone,
leaving only a blank, shattered confusion.
Her breathing had become shallow and irregular.