---o---
She felt as if she had been dreaming.
It must have been a nightmare; otherwise, tears wouldn't be welling up in the corners of her eyes.
Ishtar subconsciously tried to wipe her damp eyes with the back of her hand.
That's when she discovered that her hands and feet were tightly bound.
Everything in her field of vision was pitch black.
It wasn't the kind of darkness that came from a lack of light after nightfall, but the suffocating sensation of having her eyes covered by cloth, her sight completely obstructed.
She tried to open her mouth to say something, only to find she couldn't. Something like adhesive tape sealed her lips shut.
Like a rerun of a past event, what had once happened to Miss Mei was now happening to Ishtar.
The goddess named Ishtar was bound by the chains of a simulated Oath of Judah to a cross, like Christ in his suffering, and hung on the outer wall of her own temple.
Left to air out in front of her own temple, flanked by two beckoning cats that served a similar function to guardian lions, Miss Archer-Rin was feeling rather desolate.
Why does a supreme god-level being even exist in this world?
Weren't all the gods supposed to have returned to the Reverse Side of the World?
Why is a supreme god-level being still lingering here?
Ishtar, who had thought she was just encountering someone connected to Gilgamesh, only to discover that the man's divine essence was as dense as that of the sun god Utu, felt an inexplicable urge to cry.
And besides, why would a master of the sun open with a psychic attack?
The culprit behind this scene was, of course, the certain someone who had engaged in a round of "zero-dollar shopping."
Li Zihan hadn't yet decided whether to first contact the overworked-to-death version of the Oldest Bully in Human History before meeting the people from Chaldeas, or to just go and snatch Chaldeas's temp worker, Guda, directly.
After a moment of contemplation, he got hungry.
Therefore, deeply troubled by this predicament, he decided to find a place to stay and make some food first.
And so, he had used a rock to knock a certain Goddess of Venus out of the sky, then attempted to rent her temple for thirty gems.
When Ishtar refused, Li Zihan chose to emulate the participants in that "beautiful scenery" of the Lighthouse Country and initiated his zero-dollar shopping spree.
His specific method was a single blast of 'Feathers of Erosion' to knock the useless goddess unconscious. Then he simulated the Oath of Judah, strung her up, and left her to dry outside her own temple.
Feeling the bleak wind brush against her skin, Ishtar once again felt the urge to cry.
She had returned to the mortal world after a long absence, only to find her city transformed into a battle zone where the residents ignored her.
The Bull of Heaven, her henchman that required the combined efforts of Enkidu, Gilgamesh, and the sun god Utu to defeat, was also lost.
Then she ran into someone she suspected was sent by Gilgamesh to pick a fight, got into a brawl with him, and was summarily beaten...
What was wrong with this world?
Why was it so against her?
But now was not the time for self-pity.
As a Pseudo-Servant possessing a physical body, she wouldn't be as crippled by an energy-suppressing tool like Judah as a pure Heroic Spirit would be. Feeling the hardness of the chains, Ishtar decided to risk it all.
A slow-moving current of magical energy flowed through her body, strengthening her arms.
Once I break these chains, I'll beat that bastard to a pulp.
As a goddess, her physical strength was definitively higher than the standard unit of measurement in the Honkai world—an Emperor-class Honkai Beast. With a sudden burst of power, she strained.
And then—
Her entire body plummeted.
The bastard, having finished his meal, had dispelled the simulated Judah at the exact moment she exerted her strength.
Caught completely off guard, the goddess named Ishtar was forced into an intimate encounter with the ground outside her temple.
It was clearly a dirty trick, but Li Zihan did it anyway.
"How are you feeling, Your Highness Ishtar?"
The man who had just beaten her up walked casually over to the goddess who had crashed to the ground, asking with great interest.
Now that he was fed and watered, it was time to deal with the landlord situation before taking the girls to bed.
After all, leaving a landlord around who could come looking for trouble at any moment wasn't a good idea.
But killing her directly would be far too ungentlemanly.
As a seasoned lecher, Li Zihan wasn't fond of killing beautiful girls unless absolutely necessary.
So, it was time for a little chat with this Ishtar, who, despite being an idiot, was undeniably a beautiful girl.
That voice—though she had only heard it a few times, it had left a deep impression. Hearing it now, Ishtar couldn't help but burn with rage.
She scrambled to her feet, ripping the tape from her mouth and the blindfold from her eyes.
The humiliation of being strung up in front of her own temple made her seethe.
She was going to make this bastard pay!
"Maanna! Open the great gate! Heh heh, this is your moment of glory, you know? This is all my power—Crush them, 'O Mountain—"
It was the incantation for her Noble Phantasm, An Gal Ta Kigal She.
It was a Noble Phantasm born from the most "destructive" and "cruel" act Ishtar performed in Sumerian mythology—the story of how she, merely because she "found it unsightly," ravaged and destroyed the sacred Mount Ebih, a peak revered even by the king of the gods.
Once this Noble Phantasm was activated, the goddess Ishtar would ascend to the celestial domain of Venus from the Age of Gods.
She would grasp Venus (the concept of it), load it as a bullet into her bow, and fire it at the Earth—a planetary-scale blast.
Without a doubt, it was a method of attack that would make even the gods shudder.
It was a terrifying armament on par with Karna's Vasavi Shakti and Gilgamesh's Sword of Rupture, Ea—capable of pulverizing even a god to death.
Faced with such an attack, the young man made no move to defend himself.
He simply extended his hand.
Then, one by one, precious gems fell into view, orbiting him like planets around a star, dancing in the air.
These were the gifts the various magical organizations had sent him, according to the list he provided, after he made his debut in that world as a God-Slayer.
"My dear landlady, would you care to collect the rent?"
The young man, who had never been short of gems, smiled and threw a pile of them at the goddess of poverty.
The precious gems formed a wall, blocking the path of the Goddess of Venus who was about to unleash her Noble Phantasm.
The final words of her chant, the true name of her Noble Phantasm that she was about to roar, were forcibly swallowed back down her throat.
For the goddess of poverty, those gems—which might soon be paid to her—formed the Wailing Wall.
The Saint Seiya version, at that.
"This... is, the rent for me?"
The goddess, who had been about to viciously smack him in the face with her Noble Phantasm, ceased all her attacks. She stared at the floating gems, her eyes shimmering with avarice.
"The rent is only thirty gems. The rest is an offering to the Goddess of Beauty."
The young man, who had little interest in Ishtar herself but was very interested in the underworld goddess who shared her body, smiled at the goddess of poverty before him.
"May I ask, now that we have paid the rent and the tribute, can we now legally reside in your temple?"
---o---
Author's Note:
ps: Mei's green hat... let's have the goddess of love share the burden.