Between the heavens and the earth, the confrontation between the God of Storms and the nascent Devil King continued amidst a heavy, suffocating silence. I was screaming with every fiber of my being that the price for ruining my vacation would be far steeper than he ever imagined.
The silence was shattered by Tāwhirimātea’s snort. It wasn’t a sound of anger, but the pure, mocking laughter of a god watching a bug’s final, pathetic struggle.
"Mere bravado."
The God’s voice had turned cold, drained of its earlier heat.
"I know your threat of a double suicide is sincere, Usurper. However, for such a thing to manifest, your curse would need the power to perfectly envelop my entire divine form. Do you truly believe you have enough strength left for that?"
He had hit the nail on the head.
My final incantation was a single-use self-destruct mechanism that required every last drop of my remaining energy. If I ran dry before I could trigger it, I was holding nothing more than an empty gun with no bullets. Tāwhirimātea had seen through my bluff with terrifying precision.
"I shall allow you to pay for the sin of threatening a God by erasing your very existence from this world!"
Divine arrogance permitted no retreat. Instead, my attempt at intimidation had acted as fuel for his burgeoning fury.
At that same moment, at the edge of the hotel district several kilometers away from Waikiki Beach, Alessandro Gaspare and roughly twenty mages from the Bronze-Black Cross stood behind a massive defensive barrier, forgetting even to breathe as they witnessed the spectacle.
The surface of the barrier screamed, cracking and knitting itself back together repeatedly under the mere aftershocks of the clash between the God and the Devil King. The very air had turned viscous, compressed by the clashing wills of the two titanic entities.
"My God..."
A young knight groaned, his face pale with terror.
"The barrier... it won't hold. Is that truly the wrath of a God? Is there... is there truly nothing we can do against such a cataclysm?"
The veteran knight standing beside him answered in a trembling voice, but his eyes shone with something other than despair.
"No, it is not over! Look! Look at the calamity blanketing the sky! And look... at the lone King standing before it!"
The knights' gazes shifted in unison toward the distant beach. There, amidst the overwhelming storm, stood the silhouette of a single, small human who refused to fall. The ashen domain he projected was desperately intercepting the divine fury.
Alessandro gripped the hilt of his sword with hands slick with sweat. He felt the knights' despair and hope simultaneously warring within his chest.
"Are you afraid?"
Alessandro asked quietly. His voice made the knights flinch.
"It is only natural to be afraid! What stands before us is no mere magical beast or a heretical mage. It is a God—the very laws of the world made manifest! Our magic, our swords, our very lives are nothing more than dust before a God!"
He paused, pointing back toward the battlefield.
"But our King is different! Our Lord was born human, slew a God, and usurped divine Authority to become a Sovereign of the Earth! He stands there in our stead, fighting against that irrational disaster! The King is our only hope! If we crumble here, that flicker of hope will be extinguished!"
Alessandro shouted at the top of his lungs.
"Buy the King time to seize victory! Use your lives as a shield and protect the stage of that magnificent battle!"
The fear in the knights' eyes vanished, replaced by a resolute will. They swore to sacrifice everything to protect the single spark of hope that had bloomed within their despair.
However, my actual situation was spiraling toward a worst-case scenario, the polar opposite of their expectations.
The assault resumed. Thousands, tens of thousands of lightning bolts rained down from the sky. Each individual strike was weaker than the pure white celestial lightning from before, but the sheer numbers were staggering. This wasn't meant to shatter my petrification domain. It was the beginning of a persistent, cruel war of attrition designed to drain my strength and wither me away.
KRA-KOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
"Gah...!"
I expanded my petrification zone once more, intercepting the rain of lightning. It felt like trying to fill a bottomless pot with water.
I don't know how much time passed. Blood seeped once more from the wound on my shoulder, and my entire body was drenched in sweat. The petrification domain barely held its shape, flickering precariously as if it might shatter at any second.
I couldn't go on like this. At this rate, I’d truly run out of power and die.
Is there a way... is there no other way?
That was when a trivial question flickered through my mind. Why? Why does that bastard keep staying only in the sky?
Suddenly, a conversation I had with Alessandro back in the hotel suite in Italy came to mind.
"Hey, Alessandro. About Medusa, the one I killed. She's from Greek mythology, right? Does that mean she has no connection at all to gods from other mythologies?"
"Fundamentally, yes, Your Majesty. However, mythologies often influence one another, and primordial archetypes like the Earth Mother Goddess appear in similar forms across various pantheons."
Earth Mother Goddess. A goddess of the land. Medusa's Authority was the power to turn everything rooted in the earth to stone. Conversely, Tāwhirimātea was a God of Storms. Everything about him belonged to the sky.
The moment that realization clicked, a path forward—no matter how faint—began to reveal itself.
Medusa’s Authority isn't just the 'power to turn things to stone.' It is a 'Curse of the Earth' that halts the flow of life and time—the power to bring movement to a complete stop.
Then... what if I could drag that God of the sky... down to the earth?
"Ha... Hahaha!"
I burst out laughing like a madman. On the threshold of death, I decided to gamble. It was a final, all-or-nothing move.
I completely shifted my strategy. Leaving only the bare minimum of power to maintain the petrification domain against the lightning rain, I poured every ounce of my remaining will into the ground beneath my feet—Waikiki Beach.
"In my garden, even a God is nothing more than a mere pebble!"
The ashen curse began to spread like veins from under my feet. The entire beach responded to my will, transforming into one massive 'Altar of Petrification.'
"You have finally lost your mind, Usurper! Have you grown so pathetic as to vent your frustration on the ground because your strength has failed?"
Tāwhirimātea mocked my strange behavior. He judged this to be my final, desperate death throes. He didn't miss the opportunity, gathering every storm in the heavens to prepare a final strike to finish me once and for all.
I had been waiting for that exact moment.
"Now!"
Tāwhirimātea transformed into a giant of the storm and descended from the heavens toward the ground, intending to crush me personally.
As if I had been anticipating his arrival, I detonated every last drop of my power to activate the 'Altar of Petrification' I had prepared.
RUMBLE-GRIND—!
The entire beach came alive. The ashen earth transformed into hundreds, thousands of massive chains, launching toward the sky like projectiles. It was the wrath of the earth reaching out to seize the god of the heavens.
"Gwaaaaaah! T-this...! You wretch, what have you done...!"
Tāwhirimātea was aghast. He tried to dodge the stone chains, but they pursued him like homing missiles. Eventually, the feet of the god who belonged in the sky were bound by the shackles of the earth for the very first time.
His connection to the sky, the source of his power, grew faint. Instead, he writhed in agony from a horrific sensation—the feeling of his own power being absorbed by the earth.
"This is your grave, God of Storms!"
Even as I coughed up blood, I shouted the final incantation. It was a curse, an interpretation of myth, and a God-slaying word of power.
"Son of the Heavens, cease your wrath and return to the Mother’s embrace. Upon this earth, you shall meet eternal silence."
The petrifying curse surged up the God’s legs, spreading through his entire body with terrifying speed.
Tāwhirimātea’s massive eyes, a collection of lightning, were filled with shock and disbelief. Then, a memory from the dawn of time, long forgotten, flickered through his mind.
"...This warmth... the Mother's embrace. My eternal fury and sorrow directed at the heavens... was it all for this moment? I am finally returning... to rest."
Without so much as a scream, Tāwhirimātea turned into a titanic stone statue, his hand still reaching toward the sky. His face held no anger, only a faint trace of sorrow and relief.
The storms that had blanketed the sky vanished as if they had never existed. With the death of the God, a perfect silence settled over the world.
"...It’s over."
I collapsed where I stood. My strength was completely depleted; I couldn't even twitch a finger. My vision blurred, and my consciousness began to drift away.
Then, a young girl appeared beside me accompanied by a soft light. It was Pandora, the girl who was both the beginning of all calamities and the final hope, her vibrant pink hair tied into cute twin-tails. She skipped toward me and peered curiously at my fallen face.
"Wow! Incredible, truly incredible! Seventh! This is the first God-slay you've achieved on your own without Medusa-sama! Total pass! I'll give you five stars! ★★★★★"
Pandora clapped her hands, rejoicing like a child. Then, she suddenly looked up at the massive stone statue of the God.
"I feel bad for him, really. He spent an eternity grieving between the heaven and the earth because of the sorrow caused by the separation of Father Heaven and Mother Earth."
She rested her chin in her hand, lost in thought for a moment before nodding to herself.
"But perhaps this is for the best? Thanks to Seventh, he's finally returned to the Mother's embrace he missed so much. Well done, Seventh."
Along with Pandora's consolation, the massive statue crumbled quietly into shimmering particles of light. The God had finally returned to the earth, which in mythology, was the embrace of his Mother.
With her mischievous yet strangely benevolent voice as the last thing I heard, I succumbed to the exhaustion and wounds from the battle with the God and blacked out.
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