"To clarify—this ability isn't something I was born with," Sū ěr replied after a moment.
"Is that so?" Amaterasu accepted the clarification easily, sighing with sentiment. "But you must have faced countless hardships on the path to obtaining it... I know. I know everything—only we can understand."
Her sigh held memories and regrets, but Sū ěr couldn't refute her, even if he guessed exactly what she had done.
Regardless of how she established the connection, she had slaughtered all the other gods, using their flesh, souls, and essence to reach this step. The gore and bone falling from her colossal body were the path she had walked.
And him? He had also stepped over the corpses of companions, using their souls to ascend to the divine throne... he couldn't even preserve their souls, which dispersed into the purest of Elementals.
Where was the difference?
Was it whether the corpses he stepped on were there by choice?
Those eight million dead gods certainly didn't offer their lives to Amaterasu willingly, whereas his companions had drunk his blood without hesitation, knowing they would die?
"Do you regret it?" Sū ěr said suddenly. He wanted to know the thoughts of an enemy, simply because there were overlaps between them.
"Regret?" Amaterasu seemed surprised, then entranced. "Regret... but what god could resist? Once you've tasted that feeling..."
"To use the wind as eyes, to create life with a breath and make it wither with a thought, to hold everything in the palm of your hand... compared to this feeling of ascension, what is a bit of regret?"
She was describing the feeling of being connected to the world—like soaking in warm water—and that nearly omnipotent power. Sū ěr understood perfectly. He himself had once been immersed in a power even greater than this, crafting worlds according to his whim.
"I see." For some reason, Sū ěr felt a wave of relief. Under Think surprised gaze, he began to smile strangely. "Then it seems we are different—I don't regret it."
If he felt regret for this power, for the final victory, wouldn't that be a betrayal of those who went to their deaths so calmly? What would they think?
"...Then you really are... evil, aren't you?" Amaterasu hadn't expected such a sentiment. She chuckled, her laughter shaking the earth as she towered over him.
"Indeed, I am an unforgivably evil man..." Sū ěr shook his head. "So, are you ready?"
"Ready for what?"
"The tyranny—of evil!"
As the words fell, Sū ěr directly seized the part of the world he could still command—the part not yet occupied by Amaterasu. It was like grabbing a phantom lever, and then—flip!
In Ashihara no Nakatsukuni, he knew he could do this but had refrained, wary of the consequences. But in this small world of Takamagahara, Sū ěr no longer held back. In fact, fearing the impact was too small, he added fuel to the fire.
The entirety of Takamagahara snapped in the middle like a broken biscuit, scattering into even smaller fragments in the collapse. Amaterasu let out a shrill scream of agony. Merged with the world as she was, it was as if Sū ěr had stomped on her spine from behind, snapping her in two.
"DIE! DIE!!!"
Screaming in a fit of rage, Amaterasu endured the pain and swung an arm with fury. To her, now restored and directly connected to the world, this was an instinctive, symbolic movement. Every gesture now commanded disasters: thunder, fire, lightning, storms... The tempest she whipped up sent tsunamis of gore toward Sū ěr. Within those red walls of flesh, the faint outlines of faces appeared—the last bits of lingering soul-shards, refusing to let go.
Sū ěr condensed his power into a single point, charging into the "tsunami." Forcing his way through, he could finally see clearly what lay beneath the broken world.
Takamagahara was not a planet either; it was also a flat expanse. Now, beneath the surface Amaterasu had tried so hard to conceal, Sū ěr had passed behind her and saw her empty lower half.
He had thought she was merely burying herself in layers of meat, but only now did he see the extent of her madness. She hadn't established a connection while maintaining her independence like Sū ěr; she had simply dissolved herself, becoming part of the world entirely.
Everything below the waist was gone. No golden blood flowed, nor could organs be seen through the uneven rupture. Amaterasu was like a hollowed-out porcelain doll—all that existed in the world was a shell of skin.
A black hole that could devour even light... even the wound Sū ěr had just opened was pure darkness. Yet this void was flowing outward with gold-red specks of light, drifting and faint until they vanished. But Sū ěr knew they hadn't truly disappeared; they had transformed into another state—connecting Amaterasu to the entire world.
She was undoubtedly using the flesh and souls of her kin for the final transformation. Her previous human-sized body was just a lure, like the light of an anglerfish. Normally, she might have needed centuries or millennia to reach her goal, but Sū ěr uninvited arrival had shattered her ascension.
Sū ěr didn't care. He felt not a shred of guilt for ruining the plans of this "evil god." Only one thing caught his eye: a faint path, or perhaps a trace, flickering beneath Takamagahara...
More importantly, the aura lingering on that trace—Tet divine power?!
For a moment, he thought his perception was wrong. He had assumed he wouldn't see anything from the previous world so soon, especially since Tet power should have been exhausted after protecting him and Think.
Was this a remnant from when he had peeked in from the edge of the world?