Tiamat's massive silhouette dwindled into the distant cloud sea, a dragon-shaped storm muttering to itself as it coiled away.
The Iron Forest still smoked from Loki's erasure.
Charred iron trunks leaned at broken angles. A ring of warped, half-melted trees circled the smooth disc Ren's tribulation had carved into the world, like the scar of some cosmic surgery. The stench of ozone, burnt metal, and divine blood hung thick in the air.
No one looked directly at the char-marks where a Norse god had used to stand.
Gods, devils, angels, dragons—every faction present seemed to have silently agreed that if they pretended hard enough, the empty space in their perception would fill back in on its own.
Ren clapped his hands once.
The sound was small compared to the thunder that had just shaken the realms, but it cut through the buzzing silence like a knife.
"Alright. Break's over."
Hundreds of eyes flinched his way.
He rolled his shoulders, the motion loose and lazy, and with a casual flick of his wrist pulled a stack of slim, grey paper slips from nowhere. They fanned between his fingers with the practiced ease of someone shuffling cards behind a convenience store counter.
On the surface, they just looked like paper.
Underneath, the Iron Forest flinched.
Strange Dao-script crawled over them like sleepy ink, then twisted into glyphs that did not belong to this world. For a moment, even the local magic tried to parse them as runes, angelic script, or demonic formula—then simply gave up and backed away.
Ajuka's pupils shrank behind his glasses. One look told him this wasn't any system he recognized. Not the Demonic Code. Not the Sacred Gear formulas. Not Heaven's control language. Nothing. Just… something else.
Ren jerked his chin toward the cluster of top brass.
"Come on, VIPs. Step up. Take one each."
There was a beat of stunned silence.
Odin recovered first.
Of course he did.
"With my own hand?" the All-Father said, striding forward, Gungnir resting loose and familiar in his grip. "Am I not too old to be handed flyers, boy?"
Ren snorted and flicked one talisman toward him. It floated through the air, ignoring wind and gravity and common sense. It drifted straight past the razor tip of Gungnir, paused, and then stopped neatly in front of Odin's chest as if waiting for a handshake.
"It's not a flyer, Gramps." Ren's mouth curled. "It's my number."
Odin blinked.
"Your… number?"
"Yeah." Ren hooked his thumbs into his pockets, shoulders relaxed. "Soul-locked communication talisman. You pour your flavor of power into the seal, it syncs to you, and—bam—you can poke me from wherever. Asgard crisis, ward problem, random monster, weird cosmic brain-teaser, whatever. You call, I'll know."
He said it like he was explaining how to use a smartphone.
Ajuka materialized at Odin's side before the Norse god could reply, eyes gleaming behind flashing lenses.
"A cross-faction, cross-system communication artifact keyed to one individual…" he murmured, mostly to himself. "No infrastructure. No relay circles. No summoning sigils. Just a direct anchor in the soul-space."
His mind raced, stacking theories and knocking them down just as fast.
"A personal node in a separate… framework," Ajuka breathed. "Fascinating."
When someone like Beelzebub said fascinating, it usually meant hazard tape should be involved.
Four more talismans flowed out of Ren's hand, drifting away like lazy fireflies.
One settled before Sirzechs, whose expression hadn't fully recovered from watching a god get erased from reality. The Crimson Maou's eyes were still distant, recalculating the world's parameters with every breath.
Another stopped between Michael and Gabriel, hovering politely between halo and wing.
A third slipped in front of Azazel, who caught it between two fingers with a low whistle, the corner of his mouth twitching.
A fourth drifted toward Amaterasu, stopping at eye-level, as if asking permission to exist in her radiance.
"And one for the Shinto main server," Ren said, nodding at her. "Kyoto's leylines are pretty. I'd be kinda sad if they got wrecked by idiots."
Michael's brows knit, just a fraction. That was a lot, coming from him.
"Ren-dono," the Seraph said carefully, his voice calm but edged. "To share such a connection with Heaven… are you certain? It may become a burden for you."
"If Heaven gets desperate enough to call the weird cultivator from another world," Ren replied dryly, "that's not a burden. That's a good story."
Gabriel hugged her hands to her chest, blue eyes fixed on the talisman like it was a baby bird someone had handed her with no instructions.
"Um… if we use this…" she asked, voice trembling faintly, "it would not hurt you, would it?"
"Nah." Ren shook his head. "I'm built for nonsense. Just don't use it to ask me to fix paperwork. I draw the line at bureaucracy."
Azazel huffed softly through his nose.
"See?" the Fallen Governor muttered. "Even god-eaters have standards."
"Ren-chan! Where's Maou Levi-tan's~?"
Serafall practically vaulted up to him, twin-tails bouncing, magical girl outfit somehow perfectly intact despite tonight's insanity.
Ren flicked another talisman at her without missing a beat. "Here. Legal hotline. If anyone complains about the god I just deleted, forward them to me."
"Eeeeh, don't say 'deleted' so casually…" she puffed her cheeks, then brightened. "But okay. I'll use this when the other pantheons start screaming at me. Zechi-kun will be so jealous~!"
He rolled his wrist; the talismans split and unfolded like origami cranes, multiplying along his fingers.
One floated over to the Himejima shrine's representative among the angels, its edge brushing against wards tuned for exorcism and not even flinching. Another drifted to the Valkyrie liaison at Odin's side, who stared like she'd been handed a live grenade with the pin missing. A third slid away, slowing at the edge of perception—toward the shadows where Hades' unseen reaper-scouts were lurking.
They flinched when the paper turned midair, as if it had just noticed them.
The talisman hung there.
Insistent.
One of the reapers, shaking, extended a skeletal hand and accepted it.
Across the ruined Iron Forest, every eye followed those slips of paper like they were weapons. Which, in a sense, they were.
Ren smiled faintly.
"Anyway," he said, voice easy, "use those if shit really hits the fan. Later on, I'm planning to spread my methods around a bit—anyone willing to actually put in the work can hop on the train. But I'm only doing that after we finish the little thing we came here for in the first place."
His gaze slid to Rias and her peerage.
Rias stiffened. So did the others.
"Oh," Akeno breathed, realization hitting her like a thunderbolt. "The Rating Game…"
Issei flinched like someone had yanked a plug in his brain.
"Oh crap, that was a thing," he groaned. "I kinda forgot about Riser after Sensei started arm-wrestling reality…"
Rias pressed a hand over her heart. It had just started to calm down after watching Loki vanish. Now it spiked all over again—but for a different reason.
The arranged marriage. The humiliation. The first night she'd stared across the Occult Research Club room at a man who seemingly came from nowhere and barged into her life.
Next to Loki, dragon kings, and gods moving like pieces on a cosmic board, that first problem suddenly felt… small.
Ren shrugged.
"Yeah. Your little bridal dodgeball match with the loud dumbass," he said. "Don't forget why we started this. All this nonsense—Iron Forest, Valhalla, tribulations—it's just me building you up so you can crush him like an ant."
He said it lightly, but his eyes on her were steady.
Proud.
Rias' throat tightened. For an instant, the grand hall of Gladsheim, the scorched Iron Forest, all the watching deities blurred. In their place she saw that familiar clubroom, her back against the wall, her future sealed—and a stranger offering her a way forward.
Kiba exhaled, the memory of their week in hell pulsing like a second heartbeat inside his Soul Palace.
"…Compared to that first problem," he murmured, "this world has become too large."
"That's how cultivation works," Ren said lazily. "Your view gets bigger, and your old nightmares start looking like small fry."
He glanced around at the assembled factions, then snorted.
"Also, don't stress too much about everybody popping into Asgard uninvited," he added. "They're all here because of me anyway."
Azazel grimaced, pinching the bridge of his nose.
"You say that like it's supposed to make us feel better," the Fallen muttered.
"Isn't it obvious?" Ren replied. "If they weren't aiming at me, they'd be aiming at you. Just outsource the hate to the guy who can take it."
Several leaders let out breaths they hadn't realized they were holding. They still didn't know if his attitude was insane or oddly reassuring.
Probably both.
Ren pivoted on his heel and looked back at his students.
They were pale.
Even after Asgard, Iron Forest, tribulation, Loki, and the oppressive press of so many supreme beings, the echo of what he had just done still clung to their nerves like cold water.
Rias' knuckles were white where she clenched her skirt. Akeno's usual sadistic smile kept flickering on and off, unable to fully form. Asia was holding her rosary so tight the chain had bitten into her skin. Issei's grin shook at the edges like a mask about to crack. Koneko's tail was wrapped so tightly around her thigh that it bordered on self-strangulation. Kiba's posture was textbook-perfect, but his grip on his sword hilt was too tight, veins stark against his skin.
Ren took all of it in.
"Alright, ducklings," he said. "We're done here."
Rias blinked. "…Eh?"
"Rest day," Ren declared. "No more cosmic horror for twenty-four hours. You all look like you're one jump scare away from passing out. We're going back to the guest suites. Showers. Food. Actual beds. You meditate a bit, stabilize your Soul Palaces, and then sleep so hard even a Heavenly Dragon would have to knock."
Asia's eyes filled with tears on the spot.
"R-Ren-san… really?"
"Yeah." He waved a hand. "Cultivation isn't about grinding yourselves into dust, no matter what some old fossils like to preach. It's about knowing when to push and when to stop. Right now? Stop."
Issei sagged as if someone had cut his strings.
"Bless you, Sensei…"
"Hey." Ren pointed at him. "No praying to me. You've already got a System yelling at you in your head. I don't need that job."
Ddraig rumbled a tired laugh inside Issei's soul, for once in complete agreement.
Rossweisse, who had been unconsciously maintaining a complex stack of Norse arrays around them, exhaled like someone had taken a boulder off her shoulders.
"Then I… shall prepare the transfer magic to Gladsheim's guest wing," she said, straightening.
"Good girl," Ren said dryly. "Let's take a load off."
Her cheeks colored at the tone, but her staff moved with crisp, professional precision. A sigil-laced magic circle bloomed beneath their feet, runes and formulas weaving together with Ren's talisman anchors and demonic sigils into a stable transport gate.
Light gathered.
And then the world froze.
Ophis Appears
The shift was almost insultingly subtle.
No thunder.
No flash.
Just… less.
The background hum of the world—leyline chatter, faith-murmur, dimensional static—dropped several notches. Colors dulled like someone had turned down the saturation knob on reality.
Even Tiamat's aura curled inward, scales metaphorically prickling in distant sky.
Space rippled once in front of Ren.
A small girl appeared where nothing had been.
Bare feet. A simple black dress that drank light. Long black hair, straight and heavy as a waterfall, spilling past her waist. Her expression was blank, eyes a flat, endless grey that didn't look at the world so much as look through it.
Ophis.
The Infinite Dragon God. The Ouroboros Dragon. The one who once ruled the Dimensional Gap, embodiment of Infinity and Nothingness both.
Every god present went rigid.
Serafall's wand slipped from her fingers and clattered against the iron. Azazel's lazy, easygoing smile vanished as if it had never existed. Sirzechs' aura collapsed inward, compressing to a needle instead of flaring outward. Michael's wings unfurled on reflex, his halo snapping from gentle glow to full brilliance.
Even Odin's jovial, beer-soaked face went hard.
He whispered her name like a curse and a prayer at the same time.
"Ophis…"
The Einherjar didn't know who she was.
Their bodies did.
Warriors who had faced giants, dragons, and ancient beasts suddenly found their souls shrinking, instincts screaming predator predator predator. Knees locked. Throats dried.
Ren?
Ren grinned.
"There you are."
Ophis' head tilted a few degrees.
"…"
Her voice, when it came, was flat. Not mechanical, not quite emotionless—just empty, as if every word were a bare-bones statement of fact.
"You know me," she said.
It wasn't a question.
"I try to do my homework," Ren replied, unfazed. "Ouroboros Dragon. Infinite Dragon God. One of the founders behind the Khaos Brigade. Former landlord of the Dimensional Gap."
He shrugged, eyes bright with a very human curiosity.
"I've been waiting to meet you."
Her eyes, those bottomless grey pits, blinked once.
"Why."
Not "why me."
Just "why."
Ren shoved his hands into his pockets, shoulders loose.
"Any dragon god is interesting," he said simply. "But you? You're special. You like silence so much you started a terror organization just to evict a red lizard from your living room."
A faint tremor passed through the air around her—less a shift in aura and more an adjustment in presence.
"Great Red," Ophis said. "Is noisy."
"Yeah, I figured." Ren's grin sharpened. "I've been in your home a few times. The Dimensional Gap's energy is… nice. Clean. A bit temperamental, but nothing my body can't chew on."
Everyone stared.
He's been what.
Michael's fingers spasmed. Ajuka's glasses slid a fraction of a centimeter down his nose. Tiamat's tail froze mid-sway somewhere far above.
Ophis' gaze focused, an infinitesimal narrowing.
"You absorbed it," she said. Still that flat tone, but the words tightened. "The nothingness. The noise. From the Gap. Freely."
She took one small step closer.
The temperature dropped two degrees.
"How."
Ren's Immortal Soul Bone stirred, turning the layered, alien curiosity in her existence into clean lines and simple parameters. She wasn't angry. She wasn't excited. She was interested the way someone might be interested in a new equation.
His heart thumped once, amused.
"I've got a body made to bully energy," he said. "Hell Suppressing Immortal Physique. Ancient Ming Bloodline. A little Scripture I wrote that turns waste into fuel… Well, you wouldn't know that part. Point is, I eat weird stuff for breakfast. The Dimensional Gap was just step one."
He leaned in a little, as if sharing a secret.
"With where my realm is now," he added, "I'm going to build something that'll make a lot of people piss themselves. In a fun way. Fun for me, anyway."
Ajuka stopped breathing for a full second.
Sirzechs' fingers twitched, a micro-flare of crimson destruction quickly smothered.
Ophis studied him.
He could feel her—a vast, cold presence brushing against his existence like an ocean wave testing a rock.
Then… nothing.
Her eyes narrowed a fraction.
"…I cannot read you," she said. "You have no 'power' in the way of this world. No divinity. No dragon aura. No holy. No demonic. And yet, the world screams around you."
"Yup." Ren rocked back on his heels. "I'm off your System. Practically an alien from the Nine Heavens."
She blinked once at the metaphor, processed it, and silently discarded it as irrelevant.
Her next words were blunt.
"Can you remove Great Red from my home."
The entire field collectively held its breath.
Azazel's eye twitched. Michael's lips parted. Somewhere in the Underworld, Hades' quill froze above the book of the dead. Even beings who weren't physically present felt that question roll through the fabric of the world like a stone dropped in a pond.
Ren considered the tiny dragon god.
He thought of the colossal red dragon that surfed through nothingness like a bored teenager, the dream-pressure that had brushed against his tribulation from afar.
He smiled.
"Eventually?" he said. "Sounds like fun."
A ripple went through the crowd like a physical shock.
Sirzechs actually swallowed.
"Ren-dono…" Michael began, alarm bleeding into his tone.
Ren lifted a hand without looking back.
"But not today," he added easily. "I've got other stuff on my plate first. Students to train. Rating Games to break. A whole mess of idiots plotting in basements to… deal with."
He tilted his head at Ophis.
"If you wanna watch, though?" He shrugged. "Feel free to stick around or peek in whenever. I don't mind. I've got nothing to hide. And if you ever want sweets, you can drop by wherever I set up base. I'll make sure there's snacks."
"Snacks…" Ophis repeated.
The word sat strangely in that flat tone, like a stone dropped into still water.
She had been offered offerings, sacrifices, bargains, worship.
No one had ever invited her over for snacks.
Something flickered deep in her eyes. Not emotion, exactly. Attention.
"I will… consider," she said.
Her gaze slid past him, settling on his students—six devils turned cultivators, staring at her like rabbits looking at the concept of death.
"Those ones," Ophis said. "Noisy. But the noise is… warm."
Rias choked. Akeno's shoulders shook, halfway between laughter and terror. Asia made a small strangled sound in her throat. Koneko's tail puffed even further, if that was possible.
Ren's grin softened.
"Yeah," he said quietly. "They're loud. But they're my loud."
He rocked back again.
"We'll cross your roommate problem when we get to it," he said. "For now, if you wanna watch my cultivation method from the sidelines, go ahead. Just don't mess with my kids."
Ophis stared at him for one long, unblinking moment.
Then she nodded once.
"…I will watch," she said. "And wait. For sweets. And for Great Red to be removed."
Without any dramatic flare, she simply… vanished.
Space closed behind her like water.
Sound bled back in.
Everyone exhaled at once. Some a little too fast, like they'd been holding that breath since Loki showed up.
Ren clapped his hands together, as if he hadn't just had casual negotiations with an Endless Dragon.
"Cool. Anyway." He jerked his thumb toward Rossweisse's magic circle. "Field trip's over. Everyone who's not a dragon god, get in the teleport."
Issei stared at him, slack-jawed.
"Sensei," he croaked, "you… you just talked to her like she was a neighbor complaining about noise…"
Ren blinked.
"She was complaining about noise."
Rias covered her face with both hands.
"Ren…" she whispered, somewhere between exasperation and awe.
"No more detours," Ren decided. He reached out and snagged Issei's collar, Koneko's hoodie, and Rias' sleeve in one smooth motion, physically dragging them toward the array. "We're leaving before someone else shows up and tries to hire me or kill me. I'm off the clock."
They vanished in a flash of coordinated light—Norse runes, devil sigils, and Dao-script all intertwining.
Behind them, gods, devils, angels, fallen, and dragons were left standing in the wrecked Iron Forest, clutching alien talismans and trying to decide which part of tonight they were supposed to process first.
They weren't the only ones watching.
Khaos Brigade's War Room
Far away, in a shadowed chamber saturated with barrier spells and cursed smoke, a projection of the Iron Forest floated above a circle of figures.
The illusion wavered, but it showed enough: Loki's erasure, the tribulation, the lightning that tried and failed to crush one man, Tiamat's wary respect, Ophis' brief appearance, and Ren Ming smiling as if all of it were mildly interesting TV.
Katerea Leviathan's flawless face twisted with fury. Her manicured nails bit into her palms until black blood welled.
"That… thing dares to erase a god," she snarled. "And the Maou just stand there holding talismans like trained pets…"
Shalba and Creuserey muttered curses, their aristocratic masks slipping. The old Satan blood in their veins howled at the sight of Sirzechs accepting a slip of paper like some junior officer.
On another side of the circle, cloaked figures marked by the crossed-spear insignia of the Hero Faction watched without comment.
Cao Cao's hand tightened around True Longinus, knuckles white. The spear hummed softly, its holy light flickering as if offended by what it was seeing.
"That's not just 'strong,'" he said quietly. "Our god-tier scalpel is now facing… what? A bug in the system?"
Beside him, Georg's monocle glowed, streams of formula racing across the lens and refusing to settle.
"He erased Loki," Georg said at last. His voice was dry, calculated, but there was a thin edge underneath. "Not killed. Erased. No soul-transfer. No reincarnation. The records stuttered. The death registers I can access just… skip his name."
He pinched the bridge of his nose, fighting a headache.
"An external ontology," Georg went on. "Something that exists outside our rules. My calculations… do not like him."
Jeanne's lips pressed into a thin line. She had no talent for deep theory, but she understood swords.
What she had seen was not a sword.
It was a guillotine dropping on the neck of logic.
....
From the deepest shadow of the room, the air grew frigid. A skeletal figure stepped forward, robes made of darkness fluttering around him.
Hades. God of the Dead.
His skull-like face was impassive, but the fires in his eye sockets burned with a new, ugly intensity. He held a ledger in his bony hand—the Book of the Dead.
"That human," Hades rasped, his voice the sound of a coffin lid sliding shut. "He has disturbed my ledgers."
Loki's name hadn't been crossed out. It had vanished, leaving the page pristine white.
Hades' fingers tightened on his scythe.
"Interesting," the God of the Dead murmured. "My alliance was planning to test the stability of this fragile peace. But if that thing stands on the side of Devils and Angels…"
For the first time in eons, Hades felt the cold prickle of uncertainty.
"We will proceed carefully," he decided. "The Alliance of Hell can ill afford to awaken a variable that makes even Ophis curious."
The room fell silent, save for the terrified breathing of the conspirators. They realized with dawning horror that the chessboard had just been flipped, and they were no longer the players.
They were the pieces.