The cocoon dissolved.
From the center of the temple, a beautiful figure emerged, suffused in gentle radiance.
Golden hair blazing, face achingly fair, body forever preserved in the form of a child — impossible to call male or female at a glance.
And in the moment this godling — the being in all the Lands Between who stood closest to divinity — stepped into the world, it was as though even the Golden Order that governed this place bent around him.
That voice, saturated with endless warmth and persuasion, came directed straight at Shin.
[Lord of Lands Between]: Seal your senses. Don't look. Don't listen.
[Lord of Lands Between]: The Lands Between still falls under the Golden Order. As long as you keep your mind anchored, my child Miquella's law cannot take full hold.
The moment Marika's warning arrived, Shin followed it.
But even so — as the demigod among all demigods who had most fully developed his Great Rune's power, that voice carried, and even after ascending to godhood, the force with which it could charm the world itself still managed to slip one sliver of sound past Shin's guard:
[Why won't you hear me out?]
[My law is a gentle law. One that can soothe all wounds and all grief, all calamity and all injustice…]
"Tell that to someone who'll believe it. Don't go fooling yourself."
"You just want to have your way with your cousin!"
Radahn: ?
The [Mind Partition] ability activated. Without hesitation, Shin severed and discarded the small sliver of his mind that had registered Miquella's voice, letting fresh thought fill the vacancy.
He was fairly confident he hadn't been affected at all — but better safe than sorry.
[Moon Princess]: Goodness, little one~ your language is as rough as any man's~
[Moon Princess]: Though, Lady Marika, your family really does produce people of divine quality — literally. I thought you and Lady Renalla were the only ones whose love could transcend gender~
[Moon Princess]: I do occasionally enjoy fictional media featuring cute girls together. But two men is where I draw the line, even if they're beautiful young-looking ones.
[Moon Princess]: [Men have a smell.jpg]
[Lord of Lands Between]: …
"You —"
Whether it was Shin's crude words that shocked him or the sheer fact that Shin appeared utterly unmoved, Miquella's eyes went wide — but he barely had time to speak before Shin was already in front of him.
[Protect me, Mohg —!]
The translucent voice cried out at once, commanding the barely-standing Mohg to force himself upright, wings snapping open, intent on throwing himself between his beloved godling and the threat.
[Miquella's Broken Great Rune]
But at that moment, the Finger Maiden — who had been easy to overlook amid everyone else present — produced the Broken Great Rune she had been holding in readiness and, without hesitation, flung it in Mohg's direction.
"…?"
"What am I…"
Miquella's Broken Great Rune sank into the flying Mohg and merged with him. Its Charm-resistance took effect immediately — and the Lord of Blood, thoroughly marinated as he had been, felt his mind beginning to clear.
That Broken Great Rune — where had it come from!?
"Hmph!"
Miquella had no time to be surprised. Because in the very next instant, Shin's hand was already at his throat.
…
All in all, Shin's plan to collect the nectar went smoothly enough.
A few minor surprises aside, there were no major complications. Like stumbling into Malenia and Radahn's war in progress, or discovering what appeared to be a second-playthrough Tarnished who had materialized from nowhere.
The first, Shin could handle. He had never been a man who sought out fights — he preferred to stop them.
On a whim, he had separated out a portion of his own flesh and bone — with its near-infinite regenerative potential — and fed it to Malenia. The symptoms of the Scarlet Rot vanished from her body.
— Not because Shin had purged the Scarlet Rot.
Purging something like that — a Conceptual-level contamination from an Outer God, capable of corrupting even inorganic matter — would have required Shin to essentially ascend to godhood on the spot in the Lands Between.
What had actually happened was that the Scarlet Rot and Shin's blood had reached a strange equilibrium — the balance that two foreign bodies striking the same host naturally found, like two viruses consuming each other.
The Scarlet Rot had not vanished. But its rate of erosion against Malenia's body could no longer keep pace with the regeneration Shin's blood was feeding her.
It was like attaching a near-permanent regeneration buff to her.
From this, Shin understood something: the evolution branch upgrades granted by the system were not necessarily inferior to the powers of Outer Gods.
He had half a mind to ask the Rot God directly whether he could serve as the Scarlet Rot's vessel in Malenia's place — he suspected it would effectively constitute a new bloodline for him. But the Rot God was in considerably worse shape than entities like the Formless Mother and was almost certainly not in a position to respond.
Oh — and the Tarnished. To put it plainly, she was wrong in every way that counted.
She would occasionally blurt out strange words and behave in strange ways. Her hostility toward both Miquella and Radahn was inexplicable and intense.
Toward the former especially — even after Shin had subdued Miquella and the system had collected his Great Rune, she had still tried to charge forward and put the boy down with her blade.
But the Tarnished herself had lost the ability to communicate normally. If this weren't the Lands Between, Shin would have suspected she'd hollow-turned.
[Aspiring to Be the Perfect Human Being]: @Lord of Lands Between — Lady Marika, do all the Tarnished you've awakened behave like her? I get the feeling this one has some kind of damage to her mind.
[Aspiring to Be the Perfect Human Being]: [Image]
The image was naturally a picture of the Tarnished — helmet removed, revealing delicate feminine features beneath. And whether by coincidence or not, she looked exactly like the female Tarnished Shin had built in the game in his first life.
The resemblance was uncanny. Though there was one very significant difference: those blank, unfocused eyes — like someone perpetually drifting in a fog, nearly drooling.
[Spreading Witch Factors: Oh? She's quite lovely, this one. Shame she looks a bit slow.
[Spreading Witch Factors: Children who look like that are all alike — I'd advise against taking a wife from that pool. You wouldn't want those traits passed to a child…
Who asked you?
Already back on Witch Island, Shin had shifted back to his original form and was reading the Great Witch's characteristically tone-deaf messages with a flat expression.
This whole trip to the Lands Between had taken less than half a day. Aside from returning to find Meruru spread across the bed like a dehydrated salted fish — beet-red and utterly drained — he'd made it back without the Great Witch catching on.
[Lord of Lands Between]: Damage to her mind? In theory that shouldn't happen — my contingency plan doesn't carry that kind of risk. This Tarnished's case is unusual.
[Lord of Lands Between]: I watched the full stream, child. There were several anomalies about her that caught my attention… Are you still in the Lands Between?
[Aspiring to Be the Perfect Human Being]: No, I'm already back.
Any later and Shin would have had to give Meruru a score of 8.6 out of 10 — because 1.4 of those points had already been used up.
A full half-day of unbroken labor, even with Meruru's [Healing] magic going full tilt — it had taken some of Shin's blood for her to actually recover.
According to Meruru, the Great Witch had come downstairs three times during the day. Shin's only commentary was that the woman clearly needed a hobby. Couldn't she just mind her own business for once?
[Lord of Lands Between]: Very well, we'll revisit this later. I'll instruct the other Tarnished to seek her out and make contact.
[System Message: [A Certain Single Non-Human Characteristic Recovery from the Taisho Era, Somewhere in Time] has been completed.
1,500-point reward has been issued to task-completer: [Queen of Britain]. Group members, please check your rewards.
Detected: threshold for group upgrade basic task completion count has been reached. A Special Task has been issued. Difficulty range for this Special Task: D++ to B+++. Full task details will be published upon opening in 15 days.
This Special Task is a group task and may be executed jointly by multiple group members. Group members are encouraged to assist one another.]
The system notification arrived mid-Marika message and drew a brief silence from the chat.
[Moon Princess]: I'd love to praise Morgan's efficiency — honestly, her and Great Witch's child are alike, both finishing a C-rank basic task in just over a day — but…
[Moon Princess]: What in the world is that difficulty range span? The last Special Task was C++ to B. Does a range this wide mean anything at all?!
Kaguya's complaint was fair — not just her, Shin was honestly staring at it too.
As a newer member, he had no frame of reference for how the chat normally handled tasks, but anyone with a functioning brain could tell that difficulty range was broken.
D-rank was human-tier. C-rank was monster-tier. B-rank was god-tier. In other words, this rotten little chat apparently believed this task was simultaneously completable by an ordinary human and by a god.
Shin was starting to wonder if the chat had caught whatever contagious contradictory logic the Great Witch seemed to run on.
The one piece of good news was that the task didn't start for another two weeks. He'd already retrieved St. Trina's nectar from the Lands Between — so perhaps he could use that time to…
"Big brother~… Mmm~…"
Shin ran a hand through the hair of Meruru, who was using his knee as a pillow and purring like a contented cat at his touch.
He took out St. Trina's nectar — a few drops of which were sufficient to put even a demigod into deep slumber for days — and let a plan settle in his mind.
Let the Witch Clan's grudge end here. Before the Great Witch sets her own plan in motion.
To be continued…