Cold rain poured down, washing over the battlefield that had long since lost its color.
Petals lay scattered across the ground.
Taigong Wang was gone—without even a trace.
For Merlin or Taigong Wang alike, this was the first time in their lives they had suffered such a loss.
After all, neither of them had imagined the magus's body could be this bizarre…
Not only had he stopped them with the land's blessing, he had even hidden such a trump card.
And at the center of the rain, Izaya stood quietly.
Rain slid down his black hair and soaked his thin clothes. On the pale face that had once belonged to a youth, bloodstains—washed and smeared by the downpour—clung stubbornly. It was impossible to tell whose blood it was.
He lifted his gaze.
Beneath wet bangs, a pair of golden eyes shone through the dim rain as brightly as day.
They were not human eyes.
They were the eyes of a god.
Whenever the rain drew near his body, it evaporated silently under divinity, turning into pale steam.
"Even the Counter Force seems to have miscalculated this time…" On the far side of the battlefield, the feral grin on Super Orion's face had already vanished. His mountain-like muscles were tense—not in preparation for another strike, but out of instinctive wariness toward the man before him.
Four Grands…
Merlin and Taigong Wang were usually considered quasi-Grand, yet under a full binding summon they were still not something ordinary Servants could even brush against.
And yet this strange man had stopped them—by himself.
If the Counter Force had known this in advance, then today wouldn't have been only four Grands.
It would have sent all seven.
The Old Man of the Mountain watched the youth in the rain without a word. His perception, beyond life and death, measured the mortal body before him.
Just now, with a single exchange, Izaya had repelled him and Orion—and had even erased Merlin and Taigong Wang as if striking names from a ledger.
And yet—
He could clearly feel it: the limit of death of this teenage body was rapidly closing in.
The youth wasn't fighting with his own strength.
He was trading his life for the overwhelming might of gods.
If this continued…
His body would soon shatter under the overload of that power.
But he still had no intention of yielding.
Realizing that, the Old Man of the Mountain wavered—for the first time.
His hoarse voice carried through the rain, and this time it held a sincere riddle.
"Why…"
"…stake your life?"
Izaya smiled through the rain curtain, as he always had.
That smile did not belong to the god who had just crushed a quartet of Grands.
It was sunlight—bright and youthful—belonging to a teenage man.
He didn't look at the Old Man.
Instead he lifted his head, pierced the heavy rain with his gaze, and stared into the distant sky—at the black hole, and at the woman within it.
Then he answered, flatly:
"From the beginning, my mission ends here."
He understood well how much a Beast's nature threatened human reason.
Even if the Counter Force hadn't sent four Grands today, it would have had other methods…
From the start, Izaya had prepared for this.
The simulator's purpose was to make him save people…
And though his current approach seemed to contradict the task, in truth—
A Beast's existence does indeed hinder human reason, but each Beast has different motives.
And the most harmful of all was Goetia—and the Foreign God now lodged within his body.
Whether it was Goetia's plan to burn away human reason…
Or the Foreign God's plan to overwrite Proper Human History…
Humanity would vanish.
And if humanity vanished, then other Beasts would vanish as well.
So…
Why not cooperate with Koyanskaya for now?
As for persuading her—
He still had confidence.
After all, he had known Koyanskaya for a long time.
"I'll have to leave the rest to you, Foreign God," Izaya said in his heart.
The Foreign God frowned slightly.
"Your body's functions are not fully compatible with mine. Even a short possession is already reluctant. If I keep relying on it, the body may…"
"It's fine," Izaya said, almost childishly.
"This isn't what you said at first," the Foreign God replied coldly. "If you die, who will feed me?"
Izaya smiled.
"Don't worry. I won't die.
"I promise we'll meet again—soon."
…
Rain hammered down.
The Grand-ranked Archer's sturdy body had sunk half-kneeling into a massive fissure in the ground. Golden divinity flickered around him like a candle in the wind.
Nearby, the Old Man of the Mountain tasted powerlessness for the first time.
His beheading sword was stabbed into the earth to support his body.
The blue ghostfire beneath the skull mask dimmed to a thin, wavering thread.
Two irregulars standing at the pinnacle of Heroic Spirits—still, in the end, they were suppressed beneath the might of gods.
On this cold ruin, they lifted their heads in silence to watch what was unfolding above.
This was true myth.
—The ascension ritual had entered its final!
But unexpectedly, it was not a smooth coronation.
It had become a frenzied civil war.
In the sky, two gigantic, ultimate wills fought viciously—biting, devouring each other.
On one side, the light Koyanskaya symbolized civilization and system. In this moment, her power seemed to transform into a towering pillar of ordered light, forged from countless weapons racing between heaven and earth.
On the other, the dark Koyanskaya embodied primitive and wild. Behind her, the shadow of beasts blotted out the sky, forming an incomparable, chaotic black hole.
The two candidates for Beast tore greedily at the last remaining fragment of Tunguska's land—the greatest reservoir of grievance-energy beneath them—each trying to seize it as the final piece of their transformation.
Orion spat a mouthful of blood laced with golden light particles. His hunter's eyes tracked the grand, savage internal war above, and finally he muttered in a rough whisper.
"At this rate… the final outcome might be a lose-lose, no matter who wins…"
At a glance, he could tell the land's energy was limited—at most enough to elevate one Beast.
But the two sides were devouring each other, grinding each other down, spending that energy in the process.
Perhaps they would both collapse from internal friction.
But then—
The Old Man of the Mountain's gaze sharpened, and the dim blue flame flashed.
Orion followed his line of sight and froze for an instant.
—That man.
The youth who had been in an overloaded state, exhausted on the ground…
Was slowly standing up again.
One arm hung limp. His body was covered in overload scars. Each step left footprints that looked like rain mixed with blood.
That ruined body seemed as if it would crumble completely in the very next second.
Yet he dragged it forward, step by step—like a moth chasing fire in the dead of night, like an empty shell forced onward by sheer will.
Slowly, he walked toward the center—
Toward the place where the two Beasts were colliding most violently.