"You look rather anxious."
Diknuo's figure emerged. His right hand was gripping his left wrist—a habitual gesture whenever he was deep in thought.
Dalivenro looked over at him and asked, "What, am I in your way?"
Diknuo nodded, pointing toward the heights in the distance. "I was originally observing the battle from up there, but the glare coming off your head kept flashing in my eyes and severely distracting me."
"Ha. I never expected someone like you to make jokes."
"What, I'm not allowed to?" Diknuo smiled faintly. "Counting only the time I've been alive, I'm not that much older than you all."
"Sigh, how could he do this? Isn't he deliberately holding me down? I'm one of the few in our group who has already condensed a godhead fragment, yet I didn't even get a turn at a trial. Tell me, if I went to complain to the young master, how would he explain himself?"
"Once internal conflict is brought into the open, it inevitably ends with someone being pushed to the margins. Who do you think that will be—you, or him? Besides, he could easily say that the one best suited to guide your trial was Augurev. A pity Augurev has already fallen."
"Why should I be paired with Augurev?"
"The hairstyle."
Dalivenro was speechless.
"Try to take things in stride. It's really no big deal. Look, aren't I in the exact same boat as you?"
"Sigh, that's true. Knowing you're in the same boat makes me feel a lot better... Huh? Hey! Hey! Hey?"
Dalivenro waved his hand in front of Diknuo, only to find that although the man's eyes were wide open, he showed no reaction whatsoever.
Just then, high above the celestial canopy, another squire descended. Diknuo's consciousness had evidently been summoned upward.
Dalivenro stood in silence.
Then,
he opened his mouth wide and let out a furious roar:
"*Ahhh!*"
***
Philomena stood inside the divine realm of Phantom Knight Hidamir. It was a bleak, desolate expanse with one defining feature: no matter where one stood, looking around in any direction revealed not a single blind spot.
From a first-person perspective, Philomena could perceive everything unfolding outside, while here inside, she saw a gaunt man standing before her.
Philomena walked over, observing him with curiosity.
Though the Minister's dog was also a god, he hardly gave off the impression of one. Perhaps it was first impressions, or perhaps their household's resident deity was simply far too grounded in the mundane earth.
Having finally gotten a chance to make close contact with an actual god, Philomena was genuinely curious about what one felt like to the touch.
Indeed, she actually reached out and touched the Phantom Knight's mouth, and then his nose. Just as she went to push his nose upward...
The Phantom Knight's gaze began to shift.
Philomena instantly retracted her hand, pretending nothing had happened, and pushed her own nose instead.
With a touch of surprise, He asked, "You can still find the leeway to be distracted at a time like this?"
Outside, He was locked in a brutal struggle with the God of Assassins. Yet this girl, whom He had summoned up at Tyrannus's behest, actually had the spare attention to leave a portion of her consciousness wandering here.
Philomena asked back, "You are still distracted?"
The Phantom Knight fell silent. If this girl hadn't managed to evade His sensory trace the very first time, He might genuinely have suspected that the next God of Order had chosen a fool as His squire.
"He and I know each other far too well. When we fight, we could do it with our eyes closed. I don't enjoy crossing blades with Him, and He likely takes no pleasure in meeting me either. When we stand face-to-face, even the most ingenious applications of the laws of assassination cancel each other out. Our fight will be entirely devoid of grace."
"I know. He seems to be your elder brother."
"That is correct. He is my brother. We grew up together, rose in power together, and attained godhood together. Before He became a chief god, I always considered Him the person closest to me in the world. He was my only family."
Philomena said, "You're truly foolish. Truly."
Hidamir murmured, "Hmm?"
"No wonder He killed and sacrificed you. Even if you were given another chance, I think you would still end up as His sacrifice."
"Why?"
"It's just that feeling. You still have it. You were already killed by Him once, yet you still consider Him your brother."
"That is a fact."
"No. It's because the God of Order awakened you and granted you a second chance at life, so you instinctively feel that your brother killing you once doesn't matter anymore. Is your title really the Phantom Knight? Why isn't it the 'Naive Knight'?"
Normally, Philomena was a person of very few words.
Yet the environment here was peculiar. Not only were there no blind spots for one's vision within the divine realm, but the corners of the heart also had nowhere to hide. Anyone standing here was stripped of mental defenses, naturally pouring out their innermost thoughts.
Karen had always diagnosed Philomena as suffering from severe autism—moderate only in front of him, and mild only before Richard.
Yet those with autism were merely clumsy with expression or disinclined to speak; they were not incapable of it.
Above all, this knight's past bore an uncanny resemblance to her own, striking a chord of deep psychological empathy within her.
Hidamir asked, "Have you experienced something similar?"
"I grew up with my grandmother. She was my only kin. The first half was identical to yours, but I drove a knife into my grandmother's forehead before she could do anything to me."
*Smack!*
Philomena slapped her own forehead with great force—so hard that she nearly knocked her lingering consciousness right out of the realm.
It took her a long moment to steady the form of her awareness.
Hidamir asked, "Did you ever regret it?"
"No."
"Not even a little?"
"No. Because Karen told me I did the right thing."
"Is Karen... a god?"
"Did the God of Order tell you the same thing?"
A smile appeared on Hidamir's face. He answered, "It seems I am not as devout as you."
***
Outside, the duel between the Phantom Knight and the God of Assassins was not confined to any single battlefield. Their figures flickered across every pocket of the war, delivering lethal, efficient strikes against one another.
Wounds steadily accumulated across both of their bodies.
Originally, this clash was heading toward mutual destruction. Yet just as the battle reached its most desperate, white-hot peak, a low murmur resonated behind the Phantom Knight.
***
*Rumble!*
Within the divine realm, endless crimson mist rolled outward, while the ground below was slowly overlaid with a brass-like texture.
Hidamir reached out, shielding Philomena beneath His form.
Yet Hidamir's own eyes began to gleam with a reddish hue.
He had once said that emotion was meaningless in an assassin's duel, serving only to drag an assassin into a passive vortex of lost composure. Now, His emotions had been thoroughly ignited.
***
A massive tear was ripped open in the spatial rift, revealing the corner of an enormous stone coffin.
From within the coffin came the crisp clinking of bronze coins. On the unseen far side sat an ancient deity, His back resting against the sarcophagus, His eyes closed as He fanned the flames of negative emotion within the gods' hearts.
He was the master of Luoya's bronze coins, the creator of the Source of Sin—God Laks.
Karen's Eye of Order caught sight of His appearance. Fortunately, Luoya and the bronze coins were currently undergoing restoration within the containment space rather than on his person; otherwise, this would have been tantamount to delivering divine relics straight back to their owner.
At that moment, Alfred, whose consciousness was linked with Tyrannus, voiced a doubt:
"Why do some chief gods not dare to show their faces completely?"
"It is the same as the dynamics of the church circles. We suppressed them; we stood above them. Yet even in death, they will never truly unite. It was so with their followers, and it is so with their chief gods. Some chief gods had no choice; unable to conceal themselves, they were forced to show themselves and strike. But other, more powerful chief gods who still possess the ability to hide wish to spend the lives of others to whittle us down, forcing my Lord to descend. Never having experienced the previous era, it is hard for you to fathom just what kind of terrifying existence my Lord was in the hearts of the gods."
Tyrannus issued an order:
"Phantom Knight, take your brother with you into death."
***
Tyrannus's voice descended into the divine realm.
Hidamir shook His head. "If I do that, wouldn't it waste the fact that you saved me for this batch?"
Yet even as that thought crossed His mind, the moment God Laks intervened, the Phantom Knight's composure began to fray. Wounds multiplied rapidly across His body, and He could no longer inflict reciprocal injuries upon the God of Assassins as He had before.
By all rights, the fight had evolved into a trajectory where trading His life for His opponent's was impossible. Yet in Tyrannus's tone, achieving merely a one-for-one trade was treated as the baseline expectation—perhaps even an outcome tinged with regret.
Philomena offered, "Let me help you."
"If you want to die, you'll have to wait in line."
"But you need your death to count for something."
"Very true. Tell me, how do you manage to split your focus?"
"I'm sleeping."
"I see."
Hidamir slowly closed His eyes.
Outside, the Phantom Knight's figure surged toward the God of Assassins, the phantom blade in His grasp sweeping down toward His brother's throat.
A look of resignation crossed the face of the God of Assassins. In this severely weakened state, He had already performed to His absolute limit.
In a fair duel, He did not believe He would lose to His younger brother. But here, under these conditions, He understood clearly that His brother had the power to drag Him down into death.
For this was a prison—a divine penitentiary established by the God of Order and garrisoned by the branch deities of Order.
Any prisoner seeking to stage a breakout would inevitably pay a crushing price.
Within the divine realm, the eyes-closed Hidamir began to pray:
"Great God of Order Karen, please grant me strength."
A ray of majestic Light of Order descended into Hidamir's divine realm, imbuing the Phantom Knight with the supreme majesty of Order. He received the empowerment of great Order.
Even if that being's divine body had decayed, even if He could no longer maintain the barrier that had sealed the realms for an entire era, so long as He had not officially descended to His fall, no one could fathom how much divine might He still retained.
At the very least, He could still bestow power upon His knights right now, tilting this already asymmetrical battle into something even more one-sided.
The God of Assassins let out a sigh. Even as He casually launched a final, mutually destructive counterstrike, He began to release the legacy of His divine inheritance.
This had become standard procedure, seen in the Garden of Life, on the ice plains, and now here in Vienn.
Karen had once complained to the High Priest that the rhythm of the returning gods felt entirely different from what he had imagined, leaving him with a profound sense of anticlimax.
He had always envisioned a desperate hunt against vicious sharks in the deep sea—life-and-death struggles where blood stained the waves. Yet in the end, it was more like commercial whaling: a single harpoon fired into the target, followed by the dull, tedious wait leaning against the railing as the struck shark thrashed in a pool of blood until its pale belly rolled toward the surface.
In truth, the returning gods felt the exact same way. They understood all too well that their sole mission might simply be to expend the number of available harpoons.
One could only say that the "grace of Order" praised by the High Priest was truly a devastating weapon for eroding grand atmosphere, ruthlessly turning what should have been a tragic epic at the end of an era into a tacitly accepted game of checking off boxes.
The God of Assassins slashed through the Phantom Knight's divine body, cleaving His torso from His lower half. At the same time, the Phantom Knight's blade severed the head of the God of Assassins.
Every strike from both sides was steeped in boundless killing intent, leaving no possibility of recovery.
Yet at the instant His head was sheared away, the God of Assassins' eyes jolted with shock, and a faint smile touched the corner of His lips.
He had been tricked—tricked by His own younger brother.
His brother had never received empowerment from the God of Order in the first place. He had merely deceived Him into abandoning His defenses and resigning Himself to mutual destruction.
Hidamir opened His eyes, and the Light of Order that had descended into the divine realm promptly dissolved.
Immediately, He began to pray once more:
"Great Lord of mine, please grant me strength."
The genuine Light of Order cascaded down from the supreme heights beyond the era. This time, the Phantom Knight received a true divine blessing.
His severed upper torso, which had been on the verge of perishing, was forcibly consolidated. Tearing through the space before Him, it materialized directly above the stone sarcophagus.
Tyrannus had instructed Him that taking His brother down with Him would fulfill His duty, but the Phantom Knight had no intention of settling for the bare minimum. As the foremost assassin god under the banner of Order, He held Himself to far higher standards.
Shattering the spatial mist and piercing the barrier of the stone coffin, the Phantom Knight's upper body appeared right before God Laks.
God Laks opened His eyes. In that instant, panic surfaced in the gaze of this mighty chief god, who had once vowed to seal away all the sins of the world.
He regretted it now. He regretted that He had failed to hold back earlier and chosen to intervene; He regretted that having intervened, He had still tried to remain hidden rather than committing fully to the battle from the start.
Yet it was already too late. The Phantom Knight offered God Laks not the slightest shred of mercy. His half-body began to melt away, transforming into the sharpest strike the world had ever seen.
This blow punched straight through the layers of miniature worlds formed by the bronze coins, plunging deep into God Laks's body.
Such was the deterrent of an assassin, the terrifying reality of their trade—especially when an assassin abandoned all thoughts of retreat and sought only to trade one life for another.
The stone sarcophagus began to crack and crumble. Phantoms of bronze coins scattered across the heavens, while seeping divine blood stained the spatial rift crimson.
God Laks unleashed a roar of despair. He did not want His existence to end, yet He had no choice but to face reality and begin releasing His inheritance.
Inside the containment space, the bronze coins currently undergoing repairs blazed with intense radiance. The slumbering Luoya began to mature, transforming from a young girl into a grown woman.
***
Within the divine realm, Hidamir reached out and gently tapped the tip of Philomena's nose.
He felt that this young girl was a natural vessel for inheriting the rules of an assassin. Had this been the previous era, He would have gladly spent time instructing her personally.
Alas, this was both a beginning and an end.
There was no reluctance, no regret, and certainly no sorrow.
"Remember, the assassin's code has a rule: before dying, always drag one more down with you."
Philomena asked, "Which volume, chapter, and section?"
"I don't know."
"If it were the Minister, he would say Volume One, Chapter One, Section One without hesitation."
Hidamir nodded. "That makes a lot of sense."
Then Hidamir smiled, for He suddenly remembered that back in the day, the Lord had habitually prefaced His words with arbitrary volumes, chapters, and sections, after which Tyrannus would immediately set about 'revising the *Light of Order*' after the meeting to ensure the Lord's words were undeniably correct.
The frequent revisions of the *Light of Order* in its early days had largely stemmed from this very habit.
Using the last dregs of His strength, the Phantom Knight pushed Philomena's consciousness back into her body.
Just before His fall, Hidamir cast His own godhead into exile.
At that same moment, the severed head of the God of Assassins released its inheritance. The legacy did not fall toward the ancient, secretive Assassin's Guild that still preserved His teachings, but descended squarely upon Philomena.
The God of Assassins murmured, "In truth, back then, I was always waiting for you to strike at me."
Hidamir replied, "You're sick in the head..."
***
As the turmoil in Vienn erupted, Gates of Order began manifesting in every quarter. Gravestones were teleported to corresponding positions across the realm, standing sentinel to intimidate and suppress any stirrings from the gods who had remained hidden across the eras.
Only this time, they all behaved with utter obedience; not even a tremor like the previous disturbance from the Burrow occurred.
Every one of them was acutely aware that the descent of that supreme being was drawing near.
Only after He descended and fell would this era truly come to an end. As for how heavy a price the divine realm would have to pay before His descent, that was beyond their control; they could only do everything in their power to ensure they did not become part of that cost.
From the moment of the Garden of Life onward, though the continuously falling chief gods released their inheritances, the divine essence scattered upon their deaths served as a long-awaited "sweet rain" for this world.
Above ancient ruins, the spectral form of the Corpse-Gatherer God flickered in and out of view;
Deep within the God-Burial Grounds, suppressed primordial entities began to raise their heads;
In countless other corners, mysterious phenomena arose unseen—some recorded in mythological chronicles many eras ago, others long erased from any form of written record.
On the deepest tier of the containment space, upon the pedestal where the Spear of Eternity was imprisoned, the weapon spirit Michios raised its head:
"The fall of the 'New Gods' provides fertile ground for the return of the ancient era's overlords.
"Order, you were the ultimate victor of the last era, but what you face this time is a reckoning by the history of the gods themselves."
***
Above a ruined palace in the far frozen reaches, a pillar of light descended vertically.
In an instant, glaciers began to thaw. The dead, frozen expanse loosened its grip, and from the deep snow-covered earth, fresh, verdant life began to sprout.
The priest at the Order observation post immediately reported this anomaly to the church hierarchy.
Upon the Eternal Throne, a majestic voice echoed—a murmur whispered from eternity itself:
["Order, I can hardly wait."]
Chapter 938