Night had fallen once again.
Isagi stood fully prepared, together with Ryuu-senpai and Adi, in the back garden of the Garden of Stars — before the mound of earth bristling with weapons — ready to travel back once more to the dark period of several years ago.
The autumn wind was gentle and luminous. Scattered pinpoints of starlight hung across the pitch-black vault of sky, with no moon to be seen — it had probably gone into hiding.
Adi was coming along too.
This was something Ryuu-senpai had already told him a few days prior. Isagi had no particular objection, because the primary objective of this trip through time was to defeat Zard. As for whether there would be an opportunity afterward to face Alfia again, and what to do once they returned to the city — that was something Ryuu-senpai and the others would need to discuss among themselves.
But before they made the leap.
One thing could be said with certainty: Zard and Alfia had never come to the city, and so the seven days of the Great Dispute had never occurred. This was something Isagi found puzzling.
Strictly speaking.
He hadn't traveled back yet — which meant the fact of "defeating Zard and Alfia" had not yet come to pass. In other words, even if he chose not to go back this time, history would remain unchanged, and the seven days of the Great Dispute still would not exist.
So why had things already changed?
Isagi thought back to that time — when he and Ryuu-senpai, together with the dark god Erebus, had gone out to the fields to meet the last surviving adventurers of Zeus Familia and Hera Familia. When the god had extended his invitation, their answer had been, from the very start, a refusal.
From the very beginning, something in the timeline had shifted.
That was the conclusion Isagi had reached.
Even without him or Ryuu-senpai doing anything, the mere act of "traveling back" had itself triggered some kind of change.
But why?
He could only guess. Perhaps, at the countless decision points scattered throughout time — every juncture where a choice could be made — countless "branching paths" already existed in and of themselves. Zard and Alfia were a perfect example. Whether to come to the city, to become that absolute evil and so forge the young adventurers of Orario through trial — that had always been a matter of a single moment's choice. Accepting the god's invitation or refusing it — both had always been "possible."
So when they returned and that decision began to waver once more, of course some kind of change would follow naturally.
Perhaps.
In places he had no way of knowing, the world had already quietly changed in countless ways.
Isagi didn't dwell on it too long — because, at least for now, it was all for the better.
Not only was Adi alive.
The tens of thousands of adventurers and city folk who would have died during the seven days of the Great Dispute had, for the most part, survived — Isagi wouldn't dare claim every single one of them, but at the very least, on Amid's side, many of her Familia's senior members were still alive today. In fact, the Familia's numbers had suddenly more than doubled.
Apparently, when Dian Cecht woke up and found this to be the case, he had been so convinced something unbelievable had happened that he frantically called an emergency meeting of the gods.
And after Goddess Astrea had explained things to him.
That old man of a god — rumored to be utterly hopeless, constantly being scolded by Amid, and no better than Goddess Loki — had spent a good long while crying his eyes out.
All of it was for the better.
So let him and the girls go and change the world as it stood now — into something even greater.
"Move out!"
The moment Isagi's voice fell,
the pure-white disc appeared once more, and in an instant everything before them was swallowed up in light.
He wasn't sure how much time passed.
He and the girls had already returned to that stretch of farmland — the one that had been burned completely to ruin. In the distance, the farmstead beneath the night moon stood exactly as it had before.
The weather here was rather fine as well: not a cloud in the sky. Across the cold, sparse vault of the heavens, starlight glittered like an ocean, spilling outward without end.
But compared to the view above, the ground around them was nothing short of a sorry sight.
Nearly a month had passed, and yet the farmland still lay as wasteland. The scorched earth and stones remained charred to this day, looking as though they would be scarred here permanently. The destruction Zard had wrought was far more terrible than anyone had imagined.
"You came——"
From far away, a man's rough, resonant voice rang out.
The wooden gate of the farmstead swung open. And with it, spilling out along with the scent of food and the warm glow of amber light, came Zard — clad in black armor, a figure of overwhelming, towering power.
"So you finally came back. I've been waiting here for you all this time."
With something of a ruckus,
Erebus's figure emerged from behind Zard as well. The god, who always had an air of languid ease about him, was holding a wooden bowl — apparently in the middle of eating.
"Aren't you hungry? You're welcome to eat your fill first before we fight."
"No need."
Of course, Isagi and the girls had eaten before coming.
That said — and he had to be honest — having gone through all those messy adventurer "journals" with Ryuu-senpai these past few days, quite a few of them had made mention of this.
Zard was an exceptional cook.
The man possessed the ability to devour monster flesh and absorb its power. His near-obsessive fixation on "eating" was probably the very reason he had acquired such a skill to begin with.
Naturally.
His cooking was extraordinarily good — good enough, even, to make him one of Orario's preeminent chefs. But now wasn't the time for gossip.
Zard's steps as he came forward were impossibly heavy. Unlike the last time, when things had been rushed, the man now came fully armed and prepared — just as Isagi was. Isagi could even feel it: behind that black visor, Zard's eyes held the absolute resolve of a man walking to his death, radiating an aura that was deeply, deeply "terrifying."
Breathing had already grown a little difficult.
Isagi and Ryuu-senpai could manage, but Adi — as a Lv. 4 adventurer — was at a considerable disadvantage against anyone Lv. 5 or above, and so she was having a far harder time of it right now.
The air felt impossibly heavy, pressing down until it was almost hard to breathe.
This was probably her first time ever facing an adventurer of such power — and that adventurer was filled with killing intent, advancing on her one step at a time.
Clad in jet-black armor of immense weight, great sword in hand, the man was as silent and terrible as a mountain range. He came to a stop at last, not far from where Isagi stood.
He was waiting.
And Isagi wasted no time either.
After a brief moment of thought, he switched his character card to "Westward Journey Redux," swallowed his elixirs, and invoked the Forbidden Word Art — once again pushing his stats to an absurd extreme.
Then, with the staff-sword in his left hand and the moonlight greatsword hoisted over his right shoulder, he took his fighting stance.
Zard seemed mildly puzzled.
Beneath that black visor, the weathered and aged face of the man took on an expression of deep, concentrated thought.
It was the first time he had ever seen anyone fight like this.
Different weapons in each hand — that alone was unusual enough. But a walking staff in one hand and a greatsword in the other? What in the world was this?
He couldn't make any sense of it. But the instincts of a seasoned veteran adventurer, combined with the fighting power Isagi had already demonstrated, told him one thing with absolute certainty: he must not take this young man lightly.
And then.
He watched as a blaze of starlight and moonlight erupted into countless sword-blades and came hurtling straight at him.
"——!!!"
Inside the farmstead in the distance.
Faced with Isagi's sudden, all-engulfing barrage, Alfia — who remained inside the building — simply released her domain once more: the one that could dissolve all magic.
[Quiet Garden].
"Stillness of the soul."
With those cool, clear words, the invisible barrier rose once more — and every last gleam of starlight and moonlight was extinguished the instant it drew near, vanishing without a trace.
Truthfully speaking.
Alfia was even stronger than Zard — that much was beyond question. After all, this was someone who, back in Hera Familia, had gone toe-to-toe with the Empress — a Lv. 9 — despite being only Lv. 7 herself. Of course, if the Empress had been serious, Alfia would have fallen quickly — but even so, it was already extraordinary. A Lv. 7 challenging a Lv. 9 was something that should never have been possible to begin with.
He had no time to watch the distant woman's power in action.
Right now, Isagi had his focus locked in, his full attention on Zard standing not far away.
Combat wasn't turn-based. Just because he had attacked first didn't mean he had to wait for his opponent to hit back before acting again. Quite the opposite — the best thing in a fight was for "my turn to still be my turn after my turn."
Attack. Attack. Attack. Attack. Attack——
A relentless, unbroken offensive.
The moonlight greatsword held high in his right hand scattered countless moon-blades outward — its mechanism identical to the old [Left Bow]. Mental energy was burning away rapidly, but the "battery" items he had researched before — capable of storing magical power — were still available for use, so the drain posed little burden on Isagi.
And within that storm of star-and-moon light-blades, denser than a downpour, the staff-sword in his hand transformed into a coiling silver serpent, darting swiftly toward Zard.
The dazzling radiance of starlight and moonlight concealed the lethal chain-blade entirely, making it impossible to perceive its approach.
Even the "killing intent" had disappeared.
Even for a battle-hardened veteran like Zard, it wasn't until the blade was a hair's breadth from his body that he finally sensed it.
"Oh?"
Even after realizing the attack was aimed directly at his throat, he still didn't move.
The thick black armor was scored with a small cut.
As a [Tier-One Armament], Isagi's staff-sword had few special properties — but its raw "sharpness" was beyond question.
A drop of blood at the very edge blossomed outward.
What it brought to Zard was something he hadn't felt in a very, very long time — a cold, stinging sensation.
"Interesting."
"What else have you got?"
He still didn't move. The light-blades, formed purely of magic, came crashing in and then shattered — leaving nothing but faint scratches on that heavy black armor.
Zard narrowed his eyes slightly, watching Isagi in the distance, waiting for the young man to unleash another new mode of attack.
And Isagi certainly didn't disappoint.
Without maintaining the distance any longer, the young man had already begun walking steadily forward.
And it was at that very moment.
As Isagi drew closer, Zard felt something — a strange kind of "pressure." It was the instinctive sense, primal to any adventurer, that danger was about to arrive.
"Hah——"
Zard exhaled.
A deep, long breath, and his body stirred with an indescribable excitement.
And then.
Without waiting for Isagi to make his next move, his decision was already made — even if he died here tonight, he was going to use that technique.
Not for any particular reason.
Facing an opponent worthy of respect,
giving everything he had — that was the only thing he could truly call his own.
____
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