"Internal pressure: two hundred billion. Temperature: sixteen million degrees. Density: one hundred sixty times that of water… no matter how you look at it, that's the sun!"
Sion, who was handling the analysis, rattled off the jaw-dropping results.
Even without that last line, Scáthach and Artoria would have thought the same. The pillar of light in front of them looked exactly like the sun.
Just standing on the deck, they could feel a scorching heat thick enough to make breathing difficult.
If a human Magus were standing here, even a moment's slow reaction could be enough to make them pass out from the temperature alone.
"Everyone else, stay in the hangar. Do not deploy. This is beyond anything you can support from outside," Scáthach decided. "Director Marie, have Storm Border change course immediately and prepare to pull away from this area."
"Are we leaving Teacher behind?" Olga Marie asked at once, her voice tight with worry.
"Not leaving him behind. If we stay here, we'll only become dead weight." Scáthach finished and glanced at the barrier wrapping the ship.
Storm Border was still holding steady. The safer move was to create distance and fall back to a safe zone.
After that, all they could do was trust Shiomi and Morgan's judgment.
Of course, that assumed they still had enough room to spare, even while fighting the 'Alien God', to keep track of everything happening around them.
After another collision, Morgan and U-Olga Marie separated in midair.
"What? That light… in that underground world, there's nothing like that anywhere…"
The fight being interrupted already had U-Olga Marie irritated, but what happened next shocked even her.
The pillar of light suddenly swelled, then rapidly compressed and took shape, becoming a giant of light that burned like a living flame.
The giant raised its right hand high, aiming at the position of the Unity God Morgan and the 'Alien God', as well as Storm Border nearby in the same airspace.
"Is it aiming at us, or at Storm Border?" Morgan couldn't tell at a glance.
The only thing she was sure of was that whichever it was targeting, that strike would hit everything in the area, including the 'Alien God'.
"Looks like the Lostbelt isn't exactly on the same side as the 'Alien God' either," Shiomi replied.
"Forget the 'Alien God' for now. Get ready to deal with this…"
He didn't get to finish.
The burning giant suddenly swung its arm downward, its hand shaped like a blade, cutting precisely toward their airspace.
It was fast, but not impossible to evade.
The problem was that if the Unity God dodged, the hand-blade would hit Storm Border.
Even a graze would be enough to leave fatal damage, putting everyone on board at risk.
It was a frighteningly accurate strike.
Morgan crossed her arms and opened her Mana completely.
Using her authority, she built a conceptual defense and took the blow in Storm Border's place.
For the moment, she held it.
"Do you feel that?" Shiomi cried out, stunned. "It's burning, but what's coming through isn't light or fire. It's… a mixture of plants and minerals. Is this really something that exists on Earth?"
"Save it for later. We have to block it," Morgan answered in her mind.
She fixed her gaze on the hand-blade, now close enough to feel, as it slowly pushed through the conceptual defense. Her fairy eyes were wide, blazing with dazzling light.
For an instant, they overlapped with Shiomi's Star Pupil function.
A fairy born from the Inner Sea of the Planet could naturally adapt to the power of the planet's Mystic Eyes.
Morgan expanded the reach of her authority as the Unity God, forcing out more output.
Even so, cold sweat ran down her face from the strain.
They were holding nothing back, pouring everything they had into it, and they were still only barely matching a single strike from their opponent.
"That thing is my prey! This is none of your business, Lostbelt!"
U-Olga Marie snarled and joined in, pushing back against the hand-blade that had begun to overwhelm the Unity God's conceptual defense.
"I didn't ask you for help," Morgan said. "What, do you live by 'the enemy of my enemy is my friend'?"
"Shut up!" U-Olga Marie snapped back. "Once I deal with this thing, I'll wipe you two out next!"
With the Unity God and the 'Alien God' working together, the giant's strike failed to fully land and instead began to break down, its force dispersing.
Storm Border seized that razor-thin opening, drove its engines, and descended toward the hollow that had opened when the ground collapsed.
Pulled by gravity, the ship didn't need to force its descent.
That was to avoid failing to slow enough and slamming into the ground, turning it into a disastrous crash landing.
With the 'Alien God' now involved, Morgan finally had enough breathing room to check behind her.
When she saw what Storm Border had chosen, both she and Shiomi felt a flicker of relief.
Then Shiomi shouted, "No!"
As if dissatisfied that the hand-blade hadn't crushed its targets, the giant slowly raised its left hand, curling it into a fist.
"This thing has another hand," Morgan said with a bitter smile.
A punch like a meteor impact crashed through the conceptual defense and struck both the Unity God and the 'Alien God' at once, the sheer force blasting them down.
U-Olga Marie's continuous midair teleportation and the Unity God's flight both failed in the same instant, rendered useless by that single blow from the giant of light whose true nature they still couldn't grasp.
The two of them fell toward the Great Hollow underground.
Their uncontrolled descent crossed Storm Border's emergency descent path like intersecting lines, then veered away in completely opposite directions.
It would just take some time to regroup.
That was Morgan's assessment.
But Shiomi felt something even worse.
After plunging into the collapsing underground hollow, they didn't meet bottomless darkness.
Instead, after only a few seconds of falling, they suddenly found themselves in the sky.
A gale screamed past. Thin clouds slipped by at their sides.
Wind.
An ominous wind scraped past his ears.
Before he could even make out what the land below looked like, a sandstorm began swallowing the sky, gradually blotting out everything.
He didn't know what had happened here, but he knew the real problem was still ahead.
The Unity God state was nearing its time limit.
If they forced it any longer, it would repeat what happened last time.
"At the very least, I have to get my wife…"
Morgan heard the thought, but before she could react, the fusion came undone. In the next moment, it was simply the two of them, hand in hand, falling into the thickening sandstorm.
"…My husband, what are you doing?"
"Go back to the ship first. We'll meet up later."
As he spoke, Shiomi shoved Morgan into the water mirror behind her.