With Holaris's death, the Divine King was freed from her curse.
That didn't mean she could move right away, though. It took her a considerable
amount of time just to rise from her seat.
With uncertain steps, the liberated leader stepped out from the rotten church. From there, she had an unobstructed view of the capital.
She had already known what she would see. Even though she couldn't move, she had been fully aware of what was occurring in the city for the duration of her imprisonment.
Before her was a scene of unprecedented devastation.
The walls built to protect the capital were buried under something like rotting meat.
Even the idea of restoring the city at this point seemed absurd. It was no longer a place
where humans could live.
But even considering the current state of affairs, the Dark God Mana had
been stopped.
For the Kingdom of Manii, the damage was unthinkable, but it seemed that at least it wouldn't spread any farther.
"What the hell is going on here?! How did they kill such a creature?!" Even if she had been in perfect condition, she would have been powerless to stop what had happened.
It would have been a situation of pure despair,
without the faintest glimmer of hope. But although Mana was a divine being,
far surpassing human understanding, someone had killed her.
That was certainly cause for celebration. The world had likely been facing total destruction, but someone had managed to put a stop to it. That deserved nothing but praise.
But how could she let a being capable of such actions go free? That young man from another world...it wasn't strange that his values were entirely different from those of this world.
Could she be sure that he wouldn't turn
against the people here at some point? Could she say that he wouldn't retaliate against their own world in response to some trivial slight
"We can't just leave a monster like that free..." After seeing that Yogiri had defeated Albagarma, she hadn't felt this way.
That Dark God had been weakened as much as was physically possible before his imprisonment.
With a small push, it wasn't unthinkable for him to have been defeated. But Mana was different.
She was on a higher level than Albagarma to start with, and she was in perfect shape. She wasn't a being who could be challenged by humanity.
There was nothing for them to do in
her case but beg for an intervention from another god.
And yet that young man had put an end to her effortlessly, which meant that Yogiri Takatou was a being who inspired a level of despair incomparable to that of the Dark Gods.
The Divine King mulled over the implications of this new threat.
◇ ◇ ◇
Seeing part of the Dark God emerging from the Underworld, the winged being who was visiting the capital had risen up into the air.
At the same time, it realized that the thing inundating the region with raw flesh was not the god they were searching for.
There was certainly something like a god present, but it was a far different life form from the one they themselves followed.
So the investigation came to a close.
The winged being could do nothing
but wait for another god to show itself.
However, there was still one point of
concern remaining — the black monster covered in blades.
Its presence was an issue, so they would need to find a way to deal with it.
For it to have shown up at the same time, it must have been looking for gods like they were.
Although the winged one didn't know its objective, it decided it would be
dangerous to leave the bladed monster to its own devices.
While searching the capital, it found no trace of the creature, which had
likely recognized that this flesh-god wasn't what it was looking for either and
immediately fled.
The winged being couldn't imagine that such a creature would be so easily consumed by the flood of meat.
Suddenly, the sea of flesh radiating its divine aura stopped moving. The
reason was unclear, but it hardly mattered. The winged being decided to
return home, beyond the sky, far from the land the humans referred to as the
capital.
As it made to do so, something caught its attention.
A short distance fromthe city, it noticed a winged human collapsed on the ground.
The being and its companion were the only ones who should have been there.
Concerned, it flew over and landed near them. Although the fallen form was covered in
burns, it was still alive, if only barely.
Left alone, it would surely die, the winged creature determined.
There was no spark of divinity in it, and it appeared to be no more than a human.
Even so, it had wings. And they weren't just for decoration; they seemed to be natural.
Unsure of what to do, it decided to bring the human back with it.
If it proved unnecessary, they could dispose of it later.
A final decision could be made by the winged being's superiors.