The first exchange ended with Tezcatlipoca being blown back, giving Shiomi and Morgan, as the Unity God, the first round.
That said, even though he had been sent flying, it had hardly amounted to any meaningful damage.
Tezcatlipoca calmly rose from the pile of stones and stepped up onto a larger boulder.
"One against two, or one against one?"
He studied the Unity God with obvious interest.
After becoming the Unity God, the outward form was primarily Morgan's. Naturally, the appearance and presence were hers as well.
Shiomi's existence was expressed only through power.
"A harmony of two surpasses even a perfect individual," Morgan said. "For this moment, you may regard us as a single being, Smoking Mirror."
"Heh... I wanted to test that guy, and the moment a real battle starts, he hides behind his wife. Can someone like that really be called a warrior?"
Tezcatlipoca mocked him.
The moment his words fell, gravity itself became invisible hands that crushed in toward Tezcatlipoca from both sides.
Taken by surprise, Smoking Mirror did not panic. With a casual kick, he sent the largest boulder hurtling at Morgan with tremendous force.
She raised a hand and shattered it from a distance.
But by then, Tezcatlipoca had already vanished, leaving behind only a trace of pale gray smoke.
Clang!
The pure white Holy Lance slammed into the short spear in Tezcatlipoca's hand.
Their strength was evenly matched.
"I thought you were still using a human body. Yet now you're already no different from a chief god?"
Morgan frowned.
"Don't look so surprised. If I use the vessel I prepared as a sacrifice, then taking back my full power for a short time isn't impossible."
Tezcatlipoca raised his right hand.
"Every second spent fighting here is precious. Even Daybit's time can't make up for that. So stop wasting words and let's enjoy this properly!"
With a swing of that arm, a burning sphere of obsidian descended like a black sun.
It was the embodiment of Tezcatlipoca's very existence.
A cross-shaped slash tore through space and split the obsidian sun apart, dividing it into four pieces that fell in different directions, setting ablaze the underground world that had already been burning with lava.
The black flames only grew fiercer, and from within them obsidian blades flew out endlessly, dense as rain.
Opposing that was the endless rain of lances Morgan called down from above.
Their concentrated attacks set off continuous explosions. A single mistake, a single lack of power, would have meant fatal damage.
But for two opponents who were so evenly matched, it was nothing more than meaningless probing.
In the end, only close combat could settle this.
"Hahahaha! Good, this is excellent! Since the five Solar Ages, aside from that bird bastard, you're the first opponent who's really gotten my blood boiling!"
Tezcatlipoca no longer cared which of the two was dominant within the Unity God.
The two in harmony had become a new god that surpassed myth itself.
The power of a god and the soul of a fairy were both indispensable parts.
The short spear and the long lance collided again and again. Each impact sent shockwaves through the underground, damaging its structure.
Collapse was already visible to the naked eye.
But neither side had any reason to care.
"For ages I've wanted to leave Central and South America and go test myself against the gods of other mythologies."
Tezcatlipoca grinned.
"Too bad gods like us grow weak, or disappear entirely, once we leave the place where our faith resides. Especially now that the end of the Age of Gods is unavoidable."
"In the end, you're just another type of being born after cosmic lifeforms parasitized a planet, aren't you? Not something established as a natural phenomenon, and not directly born as a god either."
Morgan pointed out the truth bluntly.
"You know your stuff," Tezcatlipoca said. "You know, the biggest divergence between this Lostbelt and Proper Human History lies in whether ORT fell to the planet sixty million years ago."
It was an era older and more ancient than Proper Human History, when humanity had not yet appeared, and the gods existed in a more natural, unconscious form.
"So what of it?"
Morgan had already guessed he was about to reveal something.
"The good news is that the ORT of this Lostbelt is a subspecies, much weaker than the one in Proper Human History. As for how much weaker... that depends on what the two of you can do."
As he spoke, Tezcatlipoca launched into a frenzied rush, thrusting his short spear hundreds of times in a single instant.
Phenomena were no longer merely saturated. They had swollen to the point of collapse at any moment.
Yet Tezcatlipoca used his authority to restrain that collapse, making the relentless barrage a fixed and undeniable reality.
"Oblivion Flash!"
Guided by Shiomi, Morgan's eyes clearly caught the one strike at the heart of those hundred attacks.
Then she struck without hesitation, fierce and decisive, her lance cutting through the oversaturated phenomenon before her in an instant.
The phenomenon collapsed, and the two sides pulled apart once more.
"Water [Atl], rain [Quiahuitl], wind [Ehecatl]. Shall we turn back? Return to the fountainhead of life. Descend. Mirror Mictlanpa [Tezcatl Mictlanpa]!"
The surrounding environment shifted once again, and the laws of physics gradually began to tilt in Tezcatlipoca's favor.
This was his Anti-World Noble Phantasm.
Once activated, it allowed him to dominate the physical laws within its range of influence, though he himself would also be bound by those same new laws.
But very few enemies could adapt to a world governed by altered laws.
In the First Sun, when the giants who once strode proudly had already been destroyed, only the Underworld still retained traces of that age. To reclaim that ancient power and bring it to the surface was to ensure that the Underworld itself would appear upon the surface as well.
"Established laws exist to be broken."
Morgan drove her lance into the ground, preparing to awaken the power of Chaos and twist the laws Smoking Mirror was trying to impose over the existing environment.
What came next would be a complete clash of authority.
Whoever took control of the laws of this place would be the victor.
That was, of course, assuming no third party interfered.
Unfortunately, before that could happen, U-Olga Marie's heart had already been cast into the depths of the pit where ORT slept.
The moment it came into contact with the Alien God's heart, ORT finally awakened from its long slumber and began moving once more.
Moving to destroy the planet.
The mantle began to loosen.
To collapse.
A gigantic lifeform was rapidly burrowing up from deep underground. The mantle, hard enough that even a chief god found it troublesome, was to ORT no more than flowing water, something it could part effortlessly as it climbed upward from below.
Standing atop rocks that had briefly lost their weight, Tezcatlipoca clicked his tongue in dissatisfaction.
"Three minutes was still too short. Things were only just getting interesting."