— — — — — —
The roar from the ancestor below startled Sairaorg, but before he could recover, Zekram's shrill scream echoed through the air.
"Creator God?! You can't still be alive! Impossible!"
God?
The moment Sairaorg heard those words, his face drained of color.
'...Crap. If he surrendered now, would it still count?'
High above, God watched the near-hysterical First Bael and let out a soft sigh, "I'm not even fully resurrected yet, and I have to waste power on things like this... honestly, Ryo..."
She sighed again, suddenly feeling a little bleak about her future.
She had already been drowning in work before, and she'd thought things might get a little easier after joining Ryo's side. Instead, even as a wandering soul, she was still being dragged out to work.
Human capitalists were really the worst.
Shaking her head helplessly, she gave a faint smile. "Come to think of it, was this what the angels felt whenever they heard my orders? Why were they all smiling so happily back then? All I feel is annoyance..."
As she muttered to herself, she raised a hand.
A gentle radiance burst across the sky.
The next instant, the charred body of the First Bael, Zekram, plummeted from the sky and slammed into the ground in front of Sairaorg, embedding itself deep into the earth. He was barely breathing.
Sairaorg stared blankly at the holy figure in the sky, features impossible to make out. He instinctively started to raise a hand in surrender, but before he could, furious shouting erupted behind him.
"We surrender!"
"We surrender already!!"
A massive crowd dropped to their knees all at once. Pureblood devils, reincarnated devils, everyone.
The moment they heard the words "Creator God" from Zekram's own mouth, their morale had completely shattered.
And in the middle of the kneeling crowd, only Sairaorg remained standing, solitary and unmoving like a stalk of bamboo in winter.
Not because of courage, though.
He was just too stunned that everyone else had surrendered before he could.
Then, suddenly, he felt it.
The being in the sky seemed to glance at him.
That single look snapped Sairaorg back to reality, and despair instantly flooded his face.
Oh no.
She's not going to mistake me for some diehard loyalist, is she?
If I kneel now, is it too late?
At that moment, he vaguely heard a quiet murmur drift down from above.
"The eleventh one... six more to go..."
...
..
Outside Bael territory—
Ryo sat atop a dragon horse, gazing at the softly illuminated sky in the distance.
"As expected, if you want to deal with these old fossils, sending out their God works best. Look at the Baels. They forgot how to resist and just folded immediately."
"I think... anyone would fold," Ajuka muttered, frantically wiping sweat from his face with a handkerchief, still visibly shaken.
Seriously, if you brought out God personally just to arrest some devils, who wouldn't collapse on the spot?
Zekram was a monster, yet against God, even as little more than a remnant soul, he couldn't resist at all. One move. Instant defeat.
Honestly, how had the Four Great Satans and the heads of the Seventy-Two Pillars ever managed to fight something like that?
After personally witnessing God's power, Ajuka had started seriously doubting every historical record the devils possessed.
"Looks like the operation was a complete success." Ryo smiled as he watched Zekram being hauled away on a stretcher by the Satans Army.
"My surprise attack definitely caught everyone off guard."
'Including me,' Ajuka silently added.
Back at the Underworld train station in Kyoto, he'd suddenly seen Ryo disappear without warning. Just as he was preparing an emergency search, Ryo returned carrying the Goddess of Night, Nyx, like a captured chicken, casually laid out the entire operation against the pureblood families, and even picked Erebus to take the blame.
Honestly, Ajuka had almost wanted to pray for Erebus.
Betrayed by his own younger sister. Framed by Ryo. And in the end, even his home, Greek Mythology itself, was about to be wiped out by the three factions.
"Terrifying" didn't even begin to cover it.
Ryo Yagami, the Creator God, and Ophis.
Three monsters joining forces.
Ajuka seriously doubted Greek Mythology could even survive two days.
"Round up the surrendered devils, seal their demonic power, and imprison the heavily wounded family heads under strict guard. We're preparing to attack Greece next..."
Hearing that, Ajuka's expression turned a little strange, "You're planning to use those devil family heads as batteries?"
The upper ranks of the three factions all knew about the Fallen Angel production machine hidden beneath Kyoto.
And the thought of using devils as raw material to manufacture Fallen Angels made Ajuka deeply uneasy.
The devils were short on population too, you know!
"Relax. I already modified the device. It now has production lines for angels and devils too. You can distribute them however you want later."
Then Ryo added with an amused tone, "Besides, you people don't understand the true value these devils have in Little Garden."
"Their true value? Can auctioning them off get you some rare artifacts or something?"
At some point, God had appeared behind Ryo.
As an officially invited member, she knew far more than Ajuka did. Ryo had even told her about the slave trade without hiding anything.
"You may have a lot of them here, but pureblood devils are rare commodities in Little Garden. Especially those with special bloodlines. The purebloods of the Seventy-Two Pillars, in large enough quantities, can even be traded for Authorities."
Ryo sounded a little emotional as he said it.
He himself had never dealt in slave trading, but Leticia had apparently known the business inside and out. She'd explained the details to him thoroughly.
In a way, that was kind of depressing.
Still... Had Leticia already guessed back then that he might eventually walk down the road of "human trafficking"?
The moment she realized he would travel across worlds tied to the gods of Little Garden, had she already predicted he'd end up doing something like this?
The wisdom of the former Draculea Demon Lord really wasn't a joke.
.
.
.