Ishtar's body trembled violently, unable to stop.
Not from simple fear, though that fear born of being crushed by absolute power did exist, coiling around the core of her divinity like a cold viper.
It was more a kind of... immense chaos, bewilderment, and helplessness produced after her entire worldview had been utterly overturned and the pride and dignity she'd held for thousands of years had been completely shattered.
The words Seiji Fujiwara had just spoken, and those two unreasonably powerful collectibles he'd put on display, amounted for her to nothing less than a spiritual "creation and destruction of the world."
"Wealth," "power," "godhood"... these things she'd once taken pride in, that she'd believed were the foundation she lived by, the highest symbols distinguishing her from mortals, had all become, in this man's mouth, cheap trinkets that could be "bestowed" and "stripped away" at will, like toys.
And she, the dignified Goddess of Venus, mistress of the heavens, the most beloved daughter of Anu, king of the gods, seemed in his eyes to be no different from those "maids" of unknown origin whose cheeks could be pinched and who could be stroked at will, merely a "reserve collectible" not yet fully tamed, of a rather rarer quality.
This immense sense of disparity, like a vast chasm, sent waves of dizziness through her, until she could barely keep her footing.
She even formed an absurd yet utterly real illusion: perhaps this man before her was the true "god" who stood above the rules of the world, while she and that self-important crowd of her kind up in the high heavens were nothing more than "false gods," frogs in a well amusing themselves, about to be cast out by the tide of the age.
"I..." She opened her mouth, trying to say something, only to find her throat parched beyond measure, as if gripped tight by an invisible hand, unable to force out a single word.
She wanted to refute him, to use sharp words to defend what little remained of her pitiful dignity, already shattered across the ground.
But what could she say?
That he was bluffing? Putting on a show? Yet those two women, whose terrifying strength still set her heart pounding now, stood there alive and bloody, and their near-instinctual, soul-deep submission to Seiji Fujiwara was something no lie or illusion could ever fake.
That she'd draw a clear line between them? And then what? Then watch helplessly as he used that "god-making technology" she couldn't begin to understand to prop up a brand-new "God of Wealth"? Then watch helplessly as her own believers were all taken from her by his "God Crystal" and "divine medicine," her power waning by the day, until as he'd said she was cast out by the age entirely, even effortlessly hauled back by him and turned into a "collectible" with no will of its own, knowing only to obey orders?
She didn't dare gamble.
After witnessing with her own eyes Seiji Fujiwara's unfathomable, seemingly endless trump cards, she no longer had even a shred of courage to bet.
Seiji Fujiwara watched quietly as she stood there crushed, distraught, her faith seemingly collapsed, and knew that the psychological conditioning and intimidation of her was nearly complete. Too much was as bad as too little; relentless pressure would only backfire.
Now it was time to toss out that honeyed bait she couldn't possibly refuse, laced with deadly poison yet sweet enough to make her abandon everything.
"It seems you've begun to understand the correct way for us to get along." He nodded with satisfaction and waved his hand, dismissing the summons of Saber Alter and Jeanne Alter. The two powerful servants bowed to him, then dissolved into spirit particles and returned to the spatial ripples behind him.
The suffocating pressure within the temple, mingling all manner of terrifying auras, vanished without a trace in an instant.
Only then did Ishtar feel herself come back to life, her taut divine body going slack, nearly collapsing to the ground, able only to gasp in great mouthfuls, greedily breathing the cold air of the hall.
"Don't be nervous, my dear Ishtar." Seiji Fujiwara's tone turned gentle and magnetic again, as if that cold, cruel Satan who treated gods as playthings had only been her imagination. "I never intended to treat a goddess as beautiful and noble as you in such a crude manner."
"As long as you're obedient enough, clever enough, I promise you'll become the most dazzling, the wealthiest, the most envied existence of this age, and of every age to come."
He walked slowly up to Ishtar, ignoring the wary, conflicted look in her eyes, and reached out to gently lift her exquisite chin, pale from shock and confusion, with a tenderness that allowed no refusal, forcing her to meet his gaze.
"Now, as the god-maker, I put to you a brand-new contract, one you cannot and have no right to refuse."
His voice was full of a devilish, irresistible allure.
"First, from today on, you are no longer that so-called guardian deity who has to read Uruk's expression before acting, but the... First Divine Consort of my Temple of Equivalent Exchange."
First... Divine Consort?!
Ishtar's mind went blank with a buzz. This title was more ambiguous, more intimate, and... ten thousand times more humiliating than the earlier "spokesperson" and "business partner"!
This was no longer a simple declaration of ownership. It was practically announcing to the entire world that she, the Goddess of Venus Ishtar, would become Seiji Fujiwara's woman, a member of his harem!
"You... in your dreams!" she shrieked, almost on instinct, straining with all her strength to break free of his grip.
"Don't be so quick to refuse, my little fool." Seiji Fujiwara's fingers gently caressed her smooth chin, his eyes full of amusement and the confidence of one who controlled everything. "Hear my terms first, then decide whether to keep talking in your sleep."
"In return for accepting this pet name, I will bestow upon you... a brand-new, custom-tailored, one-of-a-kind godhood."
A brand-new... godhood?
Ishtar's fierce resistance stalled in an instant.
"That's right." A smile curled at the corner of Seiji Fujiwara's mouth, one of certain victory, enough to make any woman fall.
"I will use the technology I command, which surpasses this age, to give your current godhood, riddled with holes, a thorough and perfect upgrade, from its underlying code to its outward expression."
"First, I'll personally sever that fragile and unstable energy link between you and human faith. Then I'll connect the core of your divinity to the magic source of my Grail, so that from now on you can draw endlessly on God Crystal, ten thousand times purer than the power of faith, as the sole source of your divine power. From now on you'll be completely free of the bonds of faith, gaining true freedom, your power forever stable at its peak, never again fluctuating with the number of your believers!"
"Second, I'll precisely strengthen and define your vague authority over the concepts of fertility and Venus, elevating it into the one and only, supreme God of Wealth and Trade!"
"You'll no longer be one of many, but the only one!"
"The entire Mesopotamian plain, every concept related to wealth in the future, will fall under your domain! Every transaction made with God Crystal will provide you with a thread of divine power! You'll become the supreme central bank and mother of wealth in this brand-new financial theocracy I'm about to establish!"
"A true Goddess of Wealth that never declines, never sets, that holds the lifeblood of the world's economy and makes every king and god bow their heads to her!"
"And all this will cost you only one thing: accepting the small, harmless title of First Divine Consort, and offering me... your eternal, unbetrayable loyalty."
"Now, tell me, Ishtar."
His face slowly drew near, the tip of his nose almost touching hers, his hot, aggressive breath spilling across her face and sending waves of dizziness through her.
"This contract, do you sign it, or not?"
Ishtar, in the end, "signed."
Or more precisely, in a tangle of emotions mixing humiliation, resentment, excitement, anticipation, and a faint resignation, she accepted this devil's contract almost half-willingly.
Because she understood clearly that what Seiji Fujiwara offered was not a question one could answer "yes" or "no" to, but an established fact where the only choice was "how to accept."
The fate of refusal, she didn't dare imagine.
And the future of acceptance... the pie Seiji Fujiwara had drawn for her was simply too tempting, tempting enough to drive any god mad, enough to make her forget all dignity and pride for the moment.
Freedom from the bonds of faith, eternal and stable peak power.
Becoming the one and only supreme God of Wealth holding the lifeblood of the world's economy.
This was practically a perfect "godhood evolution plan" that solved every pain point of the existing divine system and pushed its advantages to the extreme.
Compared to that, a mere "Divine Consort" title and so-called "loyalty" seemed to become... acceptable. Even, after chewing it over again and again, she tasted within it a strange sort of... security, of being sheltered and possessed by a stronger being?
The moment she trembled and branded her unique divine sigil onto that contract of pure magic, glowing with golden light, every clause crystal clear, she felt as if she'd lost something immeasurably important, yet at the same time felt a strange lightness she'd never known before, as if she'd broken free of invisible shackles and a heavy responsibility.
"Very good, my Divine Consort."
Seiji Fujiwara watched with satisfaction as the contract took effect, golden threads of rule flashing through the air and vanishing. He could clearly feel that a master-servant soul link had been established between himself and Ishtar, one no external force could sever.
From this moment on, this sky goddess's life and death, her power, even most of her thoughts, lay within a single thought of his. He could even "borrow" her divine authority at any time through this link.
The first goddess, successfully "conquered" and "collected," taken into his possession.
"Conquered" and "collected." The system's words. Seiji wanted the thing under them.
He didn't give her time to fix her face. The gold threads were still cooling in the air when he pulled her in by the soul link, one tug on a leash she hadn't known was there, and the goddess of Venus stumbled into him with a gasp she would have killed anyone else for hearing.
"W-wait. The contract said loyalty. It didn't say..."
"It said First Divine Consort." He was already pulling the jeweled raiment off her shoulders. Unhurried. Like a man unwrapping something he had already paid for. "You signed it. Did you think it was decoration?"
She should have burned him to ash. She was the morning and the evening star, goddess of love and war. Men had dropped dead for looking too long at less of her than this. She reached for the power that had answered her for three thousand years.
It answered him instead.
He laid her back on the cold black stone and pushed her thighs open with one knee, and all that divinity just sat there, waiting on his say-so, not hers. The most powerful thing in the sky, stripped on the floor of a false god's temple, her tits spilling out into the cold air, and her own magic would not lift a finger, because she had signed her name and called it a smart deal.
He was in no hurry. He had paid for all of her, so he took his time. He palmed her tits, thumbed the nipples till they stood up hard, and watched the goddess of love grit her teeth at how good her own body could be made to feel by hands that were not impressed with her in the least. He spread her wider and pushed his fingers into her, slow, working her until the most beautiful thing in the sky was wet and clenching around a stranger's hand. The shame of it only made her wetter.
"You... you arrogant little..."
Then he pushed his cock into her. Slow. All the way. The heat ran down the bond at the same time, so she couldn't tell the stretch from the link, and the insult died as a moan she didn't recognize. The goddess of love, who had handed this out and taken it back as it suited her for eternities, found out what the other end of it felt like.
She hated it. She kept telling herself she hated it. Her hips kept rising to meet him anyway. His mouth closed over a nipple. His thumb worked her clit until she was arching up off the stone chasing it like a common thing. He fucked her like he had all day, one hand spread flat over the divine core that was his now. And under the shame and the fury she found the thing the contract had promised and she hadn't believed. It felt safe. Belonging to something stronger than her, never again having to be the biggest thing in a room she couldn't hold. A kept goddess. A canary in a gold cage, just like he had said.
When he was done she lay where he left her, wrecked, trying to put her proud face back together out of nothing. The soul link hummed between them, sealed tighter than any contract.
...
And just as Seiji Fujiwara, within his black temple, quietly took a powerful true god as his private possession.
The bombshell he'd earlier dropped on all of Uruk's upper society through Ishtar's mouth, "In three days, the auction of godhood," also spread frantically through the whole of Uruk by the mouths of those nobles and priests who'd attended the first auction and fallen completely into madness, like a world-ending fire impossible to extinguish, fit to set the plains ablaze!
Uruk, this great city-state that had stood for centuries, kept in good order under the King of Heroes' rule, boiled over completely!
If the earlier "God Crystal" and "Life Elixir" had only made people feel shock, awe, and longing toward Seiji Fujiwara's power.
Then the news of "auctioning godhood" made everyone, from the lowliest slaves to the noblest princes, feel a bone-deep... terror and a total overturning of their worldview!
Gods could be manufactured too?
Mortals had a chance to ascend to heaven in a single step, to become immortal beings as long-lived as heaven and earth?
This news, to those commoners struggling at the bottom of society without enough to eat, was a distant, even incomprehensible, fevered dream.
But to those top-tier power-holders who already possessed immense wealth, lofty status, and supreme power, yet still had to face birth, age, sickness, and death, still had to bow and scrape before the lofty gods, this was without doubt the most lethal, sweetest, most irresistible ultimate temptation in this world!
Immortality!
Long life equal to the gods!
To become a being above men, a god above gods! To seize destiny entirely in one's own hands!
Countless greedy, frenzied eyes, bloodshot and full of ambition, suddenly lit up in every dark corner of the city of Uruk.
A silent, bloody war over the qualification to "become a god" erupted in an instant.
They began to raise funds at any cost, selling off family land, mortgaging future harvests, even sending their own wives and daughters out as commodities, all to obtain the capital to bid at the auction. Some went further, scheming against one another, framing rivals, dispatching assassins to carry out murders, all to seize a precious admission ticket to that "god-slaying feast" three days hence, to fight for the one and only "divine seat" that could change the fate of a family and a person!
The entire social order of Uruk, in the span of a single day, showed violent, visible upheaval.
The old faith system, under the impact of this heavy hammer called "Artificial Divinity," teetered on the verge of total collapse. Countless people began to doubt in their hearts whether the gods they'd worshipped for thousands of years were still truly worthy of their reverence and offerings.
The priests of the great temple fell into unprecedented panic and despair. They tried to step forward, using every venomous word to denounce Seiji Fujiwara as a devil from hell, spreading lies fit to destroy the world.
But their voices, before the whole city's fanatical wave of "becoming a god," seemed so pale and powerless, even somewhat laughable.
More ironic still, even among their own ranks, no small number of young priests began secretly selling off the property the temple had accumulated over centuries, wanting to bet that mad gamble on their own future.
Uruk was in chaos.
And the one who'd started it all, Seiji Fujiwara, still sat at ease in his black temple, savoring the fresh, delicious fruit Medea had coaxed into being with magecraft, fruit never seen on Earth, as if all the chaos outside had nothing to do with him.
He was waiting.
Waiting for one person.
Waiting to see how the only one who could barely hold Uruk's order together in this chaos he'd stirred up with his own hands, the King of Heroes Gilgamesh, would respond.
On this chessboard, he'd already placed a piece enough to "check," enough to force his opponent into a final choice.
Now it was that proud King of Heroes' turn to move.
At dusk, when the dying sun stained the whole city of Uruk a tragic blood-red.
High Priestess Siduri came once more, alone, before that black pyramid radiating its ominous aura.
This time, her face no longer held the composure and calm of before, replaced by deep weariness, helplessness, and an unmelting worry.
"Lord Seiji Fujiwara." She stood at the temple gate, not stepping inside this time, only calling out across the vast distance in a tone of immense complexity. "The King wishes to hold with you a... conversation undisturbed by anyone, a conversation between equals."
"The place of the conversation is not his palace, nor your temple."
"But the highest point of Uruk's city wall."
"The King says he wishes to look, together with you, one last time, upon the city he has guarded and the people he loves so dearly..."
Her voice paused, carrying a trace of resolute sorrow.
"And then decide whether to fight you... to the death, with all of Uruk as the battlefield, bleeding out to the last drop.
"Or..."
"To welcome, together with you, the... end of this world."