"For real!? You"ve been lying to me all this time!?"
"I have seen Raidou-senpai playing that Tower of Whatever, but since it has equipment with "gold" in the name, it must mean that the gold color you normally see isn"t actually gold gold."
But…
"Bronze Age Babylon was destroyed by the Hitt.i.tes who used iron tools. Those two have learned from that and created equipment of steel and later metals."
This sounds like trouble, she thought.
"They are not underestimating what came after them. And I thought the G.o.ds of ancient mythologies were supposed to be prideful."
The bridge that had been acting as a ceiling had been crudely destroyed.
Shifu saw a physical blow in front of her.
A metal arm measuring more than 200m long had thrown a punch with divine speed.
The bridge was consumed.
The punch was so fast that the midair pathway of metal and asphalt did not even bend.
The portion that was punched shifted in the other direction like it had been sliced with a cutting machine the width of the fist.
The pressure to the metal of the bridge actually melted it before creating sparks, so scorching pellets scattered from it. But by the time they were in the air, the fist had already punched through the bridge.
One portion of the bridge flew westward like a game of Daruma Otoshi.
However, that was only a midpoint along the punch.
The giant metal arm was aimed at something else.
"Tooru!"
He was in midair as the metal fist flew diagonally toward him. It was definitely on a collision course, but…
"Really, I wish you"d look my way."
"Oh, my bad!"
Shifu was crossing the river in order to pursue Tooru and the punched portion of the bridge.
She was using the rocks sticking out of the water as footing.
She raced along those stepping stones and flung herself toward the playground on the opposite bank.
"Flying Disc."
"You know that just means frisbee, right!?"
She looked back to see an unsmiling smile on Enkidu"s face and something flying her way. It was a disk with a diameter of about a meter. She could tell at a glance that it was a projectile with razor edges.
"I can use about a hundred of these if I keep going."
"Wow, that is wonderfully inexact!"
What was she supposed to say when she was the target?
Sparks flew.
First in the sky.
Bilgamesh felt the blow land. He too made a leap and continued swinging the 200m gauntlet, but…
"Something is resisting it!"
An unstoppable attack struck back at the great power of the metal, motors, and launch acceleration.
A sound of impact followed.
The resisting force was clearly a blow to the gauntlet.
Bilgamesh knew what had happened.
The giant metal arm"s attack had been knocked back the other way by a counterattack.
"The war G.o.d!"
This was Thor"s attack.
Someone was upside down and flying through the sky up ahead.
The lengthened sleeves of his summer uniform flapped behind him as he rotated through the air and raised something at the ready: his right arm.
That arm was covered by the color black. The fist at the end glowed red with heat and white smoke rose from it.
"What is that?"
"It"s called Jarngreipr and it"s an exterior power arm made for me. A super thin one. Your gauntlet has more ma.s.s, but I can give you a run for your money when it comes to pure power. Since we"re a later mythology."
It was true the struck portion of the gauntlet"s fist had been crushed.
The pressure of the blow must have been powerful indeed. A portion had melted and the base metal was visible. He could only think of one word to describe it.
"Impressive!"
"Thanks."
He did not feel his response warranted thanks, so…
"Gauntlet."
He launched it. And…
"I will not hold back, so this time I will launch both arms."
He sent his dual attacks into the air. Two heaven-striking attacks were summoned. Plus…
"Prepare for a double punch at the 500m size!"
They struck.
"Don"t push yourself so hard!"
That was her first thought about her partner.
They had forged all of Bilgamesh"s equipment.
They had done so back when they were receiving the blessing of the G.o.ds, so they were all basically cheating. In all honesty, they would not be able to make something like that again now. That was how high level they were.
Their Auth Spells were the same. They had made them based on what the G.o.ds taught them, so while the effects were simple, the power and efficiency were quite good. There were flaws, but…
"We can defend against those ourselves!"
Sparks erupted across the entire s.p.a.ce in front of her.
They were in between her and Shifu who was leaping to the other bank. The razor disks she had fired there had collided with something.
She had not seen anything, but the triple digit number of Flying Discs were deflected and scattered before reaching Shifu.
…What was that?
It was not a wall. She noticed there was no consistency to the way the razors were deflected.
"A fence!?"
That was it.
An invisible but extremely solid fence had appeared there.
Wondering what it could be, she launched more razor disks in front of her to check. She launched a countless number of them.
…Show me the answer!
It had to be something invisible or nearly so.
She guessed Shifu had dropped a lot of something there.
The girl had scattered some kind of obstacle in the air and it had to be something powerful because…
"They can deflect my discs!"
When they hit, sparks scattered before her eyes. A lot of sparks.
Metallic sounds erupted out and chained together while sparks burst up to illuminate them. Meanwhile, she continued her pursuit of Shifu. She followed the path created by the discs she threw out ahead of her.
"Is this it?"
Something touched her cheek.
Just as she realized it was a blade, her skin had been cut.
It was a slicing cut and it had to be quite sharp since the cut was still not bleeding, but…
"This is just a whole bunch of blades, isn"t it!?"
She shuddered when she realized what would have happened if she had simply jumped on ahead. What had scattered the razor discs was meant to have intercepted her instead.
And she realized the blade that cut her cheek suddenly grew soft and wrapped around her finger.
This was not a metal blade. It was…
"Is this hair, Shifu Saku!?"
"Bingo."
After landing in the riverside playground, Shifu listened to her partner"s physical blows in the sky and looked back while running.
Enkidu was attacking from behind.
Ether light was already scattering on the river below the bridge behind her. The razor discs made by an Auth Spell were returning to their original ether form.
And something else was thinly scattering ether in a similar way. It was…
"Gullhaddr. It"s my hair."
Meanwhile, Enkidu also landed in the playground.
She was approaching fast.
That opponent looked her way and raised her hand while running. She was activating her Auth Spell.
But Shifu spoke up before Enkidu, aka En Kidou, could take her turn.
"Could you say my name again?"
"Shifu Saku!"
She said it.
This is amusing, thought Shifu.
She was from Norse Mythology, but this was Shinto territory. Shinto was really lax in its rules, so…
…Pretty much anything goes as long as it isn"t impure.
Any mythology or religion was acceptable as long as it was not impure.
That was fairly unthinkable in Europe.
She liked that about it and had chosen a name other than her true name that fit the location. Even though she had initially decided to keep living like a Norse G.o.d while here.
But there was one thing that had pushed her to do it. It was more of a human rule than a Shinto thing, but…
…You get a family name!
There were clans and families and whatnot in their mythology, but he was just Thor and she was just Sif. She also had a bit of Jarnsaxa in there too.
But they were on their own. They were not alone, but they were on their own. They were individuals.
So she had been interested in how humanity represented what group they belonged to.
I mean, family names are incredible. Just a short little name is all you need to take something that could have existed on its own and as an individual and instead bind it as a member of a specific group.
…That normally wouldn"t be possible.
But while she had felt some opposition to the idea, she had also been curious.
Would she feel any different if she had a family name?
And this was the perfect opportunity to try it out.
So she had decided to do so.
And human society had another tradition.
"The wife takes the husband"s family name."
So who was her husband?
Tooru.
He was a war G.o.d and a thunder G.o.d, so he had taken the family name of Raidou.
So she had thought about trying that out herself.
She would have been Raidou Shifu.
And…
…It felt completely wrong!
I mean, I"m not a thunder G.o.d.
I"m a G.o.d just like Tooru, but I"m not the same G.o.d as him.
So if I took the name Raidou, people could only laugh and call it a lie.
I know the point is to have the same family name with separate individual names, but it feels so wrong in this weirdly ticklish way.
Yeah, I know what it is I wanted.
I wanted something more like when a couple gets matching tattoos! It"s not about one being above the other; it"s a symbol of them being together and becoming a unit that they"ll support together.
It"s a form of promise.
But when they were coming up with names to match this Divine World…
"If you want us to have matching names, how about you come up with a family name and I"ll take that. You do have a double divinity."
Tooru was super casual about it.
"But which of my names should I use for the given name and the family name?"
"Sif"s your main one, right? Then why not use Jarnsaxa for the family name?"
"Wait, wait, wait. But Sif is the main one like you said. Jarnsaxa is an addition. She"s the mistress."
"Oh, I think I get it. When you have two names due to a double divinity, the original name is the main one so you want it as the family name?"
"That"s it, yeah. So can you think of any other words that fit your image of me?"
"Blonde?"
"Not "busty blonde"?"
"You"d need to praise me a lot more if I went all out with that."
They came up with too many ideas to fit them all in, but she was personally satisfied with that. And after coming up with a family name for herself, she started going by Shifu Saku.
When she asked Balancer about it…
"That"s too much."
But it still feels like an option. A really good option, honestly!
And since everyone uses my family name all the time, I can be kind of forgetful of the given name part. But…
"Shifu Saku!"
It"s weird. When people use that name and I imagine a Raidou in front of it, it has an incredible power to it. It reminds me how amusing this era is and how good an idea that name sounds, but it also makes me wonder just how madly in love with Tooru I am. But regardless…
"I love it."
Shifu got to work intercepting.
She matched Enkidu"s speed and drew her hair before pulling her hands back to either side.
"Flutter, Gullhaddr!"
"Protection."
Ki raised her voice and created an ether shield just before a gold blade reached her.
While running alongside her, Shifu moved her hands to swing her hair which transformed into a blade.
It was a single-edged sword measuring more than 5m long. It was thin, but…
It sliced right through the ether Protection that was modeled after Bilgamesh"s armor.
Ki knew what this was.
" "Golden" hair, right!?"
"So what, do busty blonde"s have powerful hair or something?"
The idiot asked that when Senpai-san"s order arrived before hers did. This was the same as when Shifu had scattered her hair to block the razor discs.
"You can"t really say that Shifu-senpai"s hair belongs to her."
"What do you mean?"
Kuwajiri was unsure if she should answer that, but it was written down in the myths, so she went ahead.
"A long time ago, an idiot cut her hair off as a prank. Raidou-senpai was prepared to chase the culprit to the ends of the earth and a lot went down there, but Shifu-senpai received manifestation-level "hair" from some dwarf craftsmen."
"So a hair transplant?"
"No. If I had to describe it, I would call it a powerup."
They were not like humans. "Listen," she began.
"She was able to accept it as a part of her body. In other words, the mold of her hair was still powerful even after the hair was cut away. That was because her hair is her most representative mold. And since the craftsmen gave it their all, she was powered up to a manifestation level as the war G.o.d"s wife."
Kuwajiri saw Senpai-san looking overwhelmed by the appearance of the 150g hamburger steak in front of her.
"Um, after all that crazy talk this morning, I was real excited about this, but now that I"ve calmed down, you can get this kind of thing at most any family restaurant, can"t you?"
Perhaps it was only the G.o.ds from the Norse meat culture that thought this barely looked like any meat at all.
But anyway, the battle was still ongoing and there was something she had to say.
"There are a lot of different minerals and alloys in the world and they can be made to "exist" in this Divine World as well. And Shinto has developed a version of the ones known as Orei Metallo under the name Hihiirokane."
The Norse had something like that too.
"Perhaps you could call it Gudgull, or gold of the G.o.ds. It"s an extremely simple thing, really. In Norse Mythology, gold is a symbol of extremes such as wealth and decay or success and ruin, which makes it strongly influenced by curses and wishes. So if a righteous person uses it in a righteous way, the value and glitter of gold acts as their power."
Ki caught on to the trick.
…The special trait of being the gold of the G.o.ds remains, but she can freely alter how solid it is.
Gold was a very extendible metal. A single gram could be extended to 3000m as a thin thread. Ki did not know how dense Shifu"s hair was, but she was swinging it around as a thin, 5m blade right now.
"It"ll slice you up."
The attack was as fast as whipping hair.
It leaped more than it ran.
It danced more than it slashed.
When she pulled the blade back with both hands, it bent like a whip and the tip swung around faster than the rest.
The blade soared, but it did not follow a single path. It swayed and twisted and it was sometimes pulled around.
…It"s getting longer!
"I"m actually a harvest G.o.d, you see. Tooru is an agricultural G.o.d too, but he almost entirely ignores that side, so, well, I can do stuff like this."
Ki realized she was surrounded by the color gold.
The path taken by the flying and dancing blade remained as light and drew out an imaginary image.
It was a fertile field.
A land full of golden wheat spread out as far as the eye could see.
"Wait, is this what I think it is?"
This was supposed to be a riverside playground. They had been running through there while exchanging attacks.
"You can tell? The path of the blade and the wind it produces has gained a "phase". Since my hair is synonymous with wheat."
Ki knew what she had done. This was one special trait of the G.o.ds.
"You"ve established your divine territory, haven"t you!?"
"Welcome to the away game."
That made this a home game for her. The gold of harvest ruled this place.
And Ki knew something about a G.o.d"s authority.
Any one representation of it was also the other representations.
So if her hair was a blade and wheat, then the opposite was also true.
Every last head of wheat in this fertile field could become a blade. And…
"You can extend your blades by several thousand meters!?"
"Gull-Elding. This attack is basically named "Shifu and Raidou"."
With those words, the attack arrived.
The wheat directly below - no, all around - was the enemy here.
All of the wheat became blades that stabbed into the sky like backwards lightning.
Raidou was fighting a defensive battle in midair.
"Do you ever stop attacking!?"
"If you wish to counterattack, then do so!"
Bilgamesh threw his high-speed punches pretty much as he pleased.
Not only were they powerful, but he had a mechanical punching apparatus set up. And by swinging that apparatus around with a perfect grasp of its timing, he could up the rapid-fire speed without relying on the machine.
He was pretty good at this.
Raidou was focused on defense by using his right arm"s Jarngreipr as a shield.
Either he was lucky or they were a good match because he was small and light compared to his opponent"s punches.
He did take damage when hit, but the impact fully left him and his body was simply sent flying.
He had considered using that to make a jump and put some distance between them, but…
…He doesn"t let up!
Bilgamesh kept punching again and again, so Raidou had to keep taking the hits over and over in midair.
He had no opening to let himself be thrown a decent distance away.
At this rate, he could be taken to the edge of the barrier, but…
"Aren"t you a little too tough?"
"I am the man worthy of divine equipment! Did you really think I would get tired?"
"Well, you can talk the talk."
Raidou laughed while using small punches and elbow blows to fend off the left and right punches with just his right arm.
"I think you"ll get bored with doing the same thing over and over! And…"
Something arrived from below.
He could see a wheat field spread out as far as the eye could see on the dark surface.
"Tooru!"
Gold blades drew countless rectangles as they jabbed up into the sky.
They attacked the reverse side.
The inside of the gauntlets had thinner armor than the outer shield portion and they were full of openings where the movable parts connected together.
The hundreds of golden blades rose from below to strike and pierce them there.
They were essentially skewered, but…
"Your blade is not thick enough, later G.o.d!"
The numbers were insufficient to split the 500m arms.
Bilgamesh did not let the hits slow him down. He raised the gauntlets and shattered all the golden blades at once. Golden ether light scattered through the air.
But that was enough.
"Bought you some time!"
Shifu was right.
The thunder G.o.d had descended to the fertile field that remained on the ground below.
"Great job, Shifu! That was the time I needed to get knocked away from him!"
Raidou raised his arms in front of him and raised his voice.
"It"s a little early, but let"s do it here!"
Raidou prepared to fight Bilgamesh who was descending from the sky with two giant arms at the ready.
But he realized something while he looked up at Bilgamesh.
"The fertile field…"
A change had come over the perfect gold of the wheat field spread out around him.
It was a color.
The gold faded away from the fertile field covering the land.
This was the divine territory Shifu had established earlier. If she wanted to, her G.o.ddess authority let her bless an area of a dozen or so kilometers in every direction, but that was rapidly withering away.
"Too bad! This means Ki"s power is greater than your wife"s authority!"
Bilgamesh shouted while sending both his arms Raidou"s way.
"And now that I have caught up, it is my turn again, later war G.o.d!"
Shifu saw what was happening.
The fertile field and the land of reverse lightning blades had not all been used against Bilgamesh"s gauntlets.
Before that…
"I sent them at her so she couldn"t interfere."
Shifu meant Enkidu.
That girl was nowhere to be seen.
The fertile blades were losing their color now, but Shifu had sent hundreds of them from every direction to attack Enkidu"s location within the wheat.
The blades had taken curving routes and they were packed in densely enough to create a round fruit-like silhouette.
However…
"Not bad."
The fruit shattered. No, it withered and fell apart like it was unraveling.
Another form appeared in its place: a flower.
When viewed from below, the way that fruit of scattering blades faded and fell away looked like two sets of five giant fingers made from ether light.
Those ether hands surrounded and held up Enkidu like a flower. The structure was almost identical to the forearms of Bilgamesh"s gauntlets.
"I combined Protection Large with Sword Barrier. In the battles we fought, bladed weapons were more common than striking ones, so we have plenty of blade countermeasures."
And…
"You know my turn has already begun, don"t you?"
She did.
Her surroundings were changing. The golden wheat of her divine territory was withering and fading.
"Since I was made from the earth, I really wished I could use an Auth Spell like this, so I developed one before arriving here."
"Is it a nasty one?"
She could more or less tell it was.
Enkidu had just negated Shifu"s divine territory. That meant she had an excellent defense Auth Spell, but also…
"You are a harvest G.o.d. You are the fertile wheat. But I am the earth below. Do you get what that means? Wheat cannot grow without earth, so my "phase" is at the very foundation of harvest. Even if I"m technically clay."
So…
"A harvest G.o.d like you has an inferior "phase" to an earth G.o.d like me."
With those words, the protective fingers blossomed and scattered through the air.
In their place, the fading of the wheat reached its completion.
Everything had lost its color.
"Rock Hold."
And it was petrified.
"Rock to Mud."
The fertile gold faded to the color of dried clay. It then became a moist-looking black before turning white.
"Petrifying it wasn"t enough? You have to break it too?"
"As a life made from earth, my authority can return life to earth."
This was a compatibility issue.
Shifu"s harvest powers controlled the life that grew atop the earth and her opponent controlled the earth itself as life.
"The ancient mythologies are the originators. Of course, I doubt I could have beaten you if I couldn"t have done this, but I think I put up a pretty good fight."
Meanwhile, it reached Shifu as well.
The petrification did, that is.
Her divine territory had already faded out to the farthest reaches and started to shatter.
That meant she too would be returned to earth. And…
"This is only politics, so I think I"ll return you to normal even if you shatter. I"ve learned how to do that too."
Just as Shifu heard that, she too faded.
A dry feeling reached her fingers and toes and then rapidly moved up her arms and legs.
"I notice my uniform isn"t fading."
"Because it isn"t alive."
I feel like we get along pretty well, she thought just before her mind cut out.
She too had been petrified.
"You"ve got the petrification fetish covered too!? Man, you G.o.ds are down with anything!"
"U-um, are you saying you like rocks? Please tell me that"s what you mean."