On the other side, Bella felt her hand go empty. She glanced down.
Lara was gone.
Gone meant gone. The adventurer could handle whatever the illusion-space threw at her. Right now Bella had one priority: shatter this pocket dimension and reach the depths of the tomb to see what Himiko was up to.
Click. Bella cast Ice Armor on herself.
Three translucent ice-shield fragments materialized at her sides, rotated twice, and faded—but the moment she took damage, they would spring back into place automatically.
"A Japanese divine artifact. Which one, exactly?" She studied her surroundings.
She was standing in a ruined field. A light breeze nudged a few stubborn weeds still clinging to life. Above, the sky was pitch-black. Far off, on a mountain that rose like a pillar holding up the heavens, shadows danced in the light of fires.
As if they sensed her gaze, the dancers multiplied. Their silhouettes grew steadily clearer.
"The sharper I look, the clearer they get? It's playing off my own psychology." Rather than looking away, she leaned in—arms crossed, watching with frank curiosity, determined to stare until she'd seen everything there was to see.
The distant mountain sharpened before her eyes. The countless dancing figures seemed to wave at her with genuine warmth.
Bella smiled but said nothing, tapping her fingers in time with the rhythm, as if she hadn't noticed that the mountain was rapidly closing the distance between them.
If the atmosphere were different, I'd break out an Atsumori dance in return.
The mountain had started at least ten kilometers (~6 miles) away—a small mound on the horizon. But with every second she stared, it surged closer.
Ten kilometers. One kilometer. A hundred meters. Then ten.
The figures became real, distinct. Bella began picking out faces.
"Ebisu?" She recognized the god of fishermen and fortune.
"That one controls food... Ukanomitama? I always mix those up."
"And that one is—from the Kojiki—Takemikazuchi, the thunder god?"
Each time she named a deity aloud, its presence swelled, its form growing vivid and immediate, as if she were facing something truly divine.
Among the worshippers, she spotted several modern people. Some wore crude, primitive cloth. Others were in tactical gear with pistols on their hips. Every one of them had lost themselves completely—swept up in the crowd of 'gods', dancing mindlessly to the same beat.
"The Yata no Kagami."
The clues were too obvious to miss. Bella named it without hesitation.
Every deity on the mountain turned to look at her at once. Snarling faces. Contemptuous faces. A wall of divine stares, so dense and numberless that the eye couldn't find an edge.
"You think that's scary?" Bella's right arm shot upward.
The temperature plummeted thirty degrees Celsius (~54°F) in an instant.
The black sky overhead churned with a mass of pale, heavy fog.
This was her most powerful offensive spell—a fourth-circle area attack she'd mastered from Calypso's teachings: Blizzard.
"Eat this, all of you!"
She pointed.
A hailstorm swallowed the mountain whole.
Howling wind snuffed every fire on the summit in an instant. The world went dark. Arctic cold spread across the mountainside like ink bleeding through paper. The few ordinary humans trapped within froze solid. The remaining 'gods'—shadows without physical form—popped like soap bubbles the moment the hail struck them, dissolving into nothing.
"Why are you doing this?! Are you a demon?!"
"Please—have mercy on the people of Japan! They need light! Help us!"
"How can you be this cold-hearted?! Is your heart made of ice?!"
The survivors launched into a barrage of words—threats, curses, tearful pleas.
Bella didn't move a muscle.
She cast a second-circle Crystal Storm at the summit, caught her breath, gathered what spiritual energy she had left, and fired another fourth-circle Blizzard.
All the spells she'd acquired from Calypso skewed toward the ice element. In the real world—not a game—there was no such thing as a dedicated "fire mage" or "ice mage." All spells were simply a matter of shaping magical force and infusing it with an element. Storms, fire, ice—they were all just power with a different skin.
The reason she'd learned almost exclusively ice spells was simple: she thought ice looked cool.
Fire was a liability—one slip and you'd roast yourself, then go sprinting away like a panicked rabbit. Undignified. Wind was no better; it left her hair a disaster and made her look unhinged.
Ice was elegant. Crack. Enemy frozen. Stylish and efficient.
Two consecutive Blizzards swept the eight million gods of the mountain aside. She walked forward. The mountain took one small, wary step back.
Bella's smile widened.
She exploded forward at full speed and drove her blade into the center of the mountain.
The illusion fractured like glass struck by a hammer. A single point shattered first, then spider-web cracks spread outward, and then great chunks simply fell away. In the final instant before she was expelled from the dream-space, Bella's arm shot out and snatched something from the disintegrating air.
A round mirror. Gold in color, ancient in shape.
The Yata no Kagami.
With its illusion-weaving ability broken and no one left to control it, the mirror squirmed weakly in her grip. The moment she wrapped it in a layer of frost, it went still.
It was a divine artifact—and a Japanese one at that. Bella, who had always been a girl on a budget, turned it over and examined both sides.
It was slightly larger than her palm. The frame was engraved with dense, archaic cloud patterns. The back bore designs of bamboo, plum blossoms, pine, and cranes. As she watched, the Takamagahara deities reflected in its surface faded one by one, leaving a bronze mirror with a faint golden sheen—and in that polished surface, barely visible, the reflection of her own face staring back.
"Your previous owner abandoned you," Bella said to the mirror. "How about you come with me?"
Text materialized on the mirror's surface, in Japanese: Agreed.
Bella was surprised by how fast that was.
She decided to run a quick test before trusting it.
"Do you know English?"
Yes.
"French?"
Yes.
"Russian?"
Yes.
Each time she switched languages, the mirror's response shifted to match. After several basic questions, Bella suddenly asked:
"Mirror, mirror, tell me—who is the most beautiful woman in the world?"