Tonight, Alice joins the hunt.

..............................

No, the outcome has already been decided.

As Zheng Zha and Altshu fought to the bitter end, their two timelines intertwining, at the very edge of the starry sky, Brahma's true form bore the full force of Satan's attack. Four divinely crafted weapons turned to dust. And his sixteen-foot-tall golden body, whose strength had already reached the limits of physics, was completely destroyed!

The limits of physics are, ultimately, just limits. The most solid matter in the universe can only maintain its strength as long as the rules of the universe are still in operation. Just as even the most advanced electronic instruments would become useless in a world programmed to be without electricity, when 'Satan' unleashes its strongest power, derived from the Apocalypse of the Styx, and negates all the fundamental rules of the region's spacetime, even the true form of 'Brahma,' capable of shattering stars with a single punch, can only fall into defeat.

The Styx Revelation, the Eightfold Netherworld, the Five Paths of Magic. In her previous long cycle of reincarnation, Alice had only ever used the eight realms and four of the magic paths. The eight realms are the original border jail, and the seven evil beasts symbolizing the seven evils: rage, heresy, malice, greed, violence, lust, and gluttony.

The five spells are manifestations of the authority of the Ninth Domain. The first four are the wave of creation, the gaze that interferes with time, the earth-shattering force that destroys on a large scale, and the heavenly grip that strikes a single target—their very existence signifies the many powers of the early stage of the fourth rank. In Alice's plan, if she intends to complete her ascension as Satan, then she will master the final spell of the Ninth Nether Domain at the moment she gathers the light of her mind.

That will be the light of her soul, the manifestation of her authority. And she will call that spell 'Alice's Declaration,' its effect being the destruction and reconstruction of the fundamental four-dimensional rules within the region's spacetime!

This was immense power, a power so great that even on the battlefield of true gods, she could tear apart a true god of equal stature, one who also possessed the light of the soul. And this power indeed proved its worth; the moment it first echoed through the multiverse, a being of the highest caliber, even among true gods, met a utter and complete defeat!

She, Alice, Alice Margotrovid, became the first loser under the ultimate power she herself had conceived. Even though she abandoned all defense in that final strike, inflicting an equal wound on the descended 'Satan,' even though 'Satan' suffered a far greater and deeper injury than her, she could not deny the fact that it had already happened, nor could she deny the power that was spreading within her golden body, irresistibly pushing her status downwards!

The incarnate Satan is about to die, and she, who ascended to the status of a true god through the Brahma ritual, is about to be banished back to the mortal realm!

However, even in victory, the Descending Satan, whose form was gradually disintegrating, showed no sign of a smile. He simply looked past her to another battlefield ten light-years away, to the victor who had once been the master of vengeance, to the fairy queen who had slaughtered gods, to the twin blades that had shattered the frost giants, to the fox-eared witch who had been defeated by the five-colored dragon breath and sealed into a card, and to the Sun-Chasing Giant, who, like a farce, had fallen at the hands of a seemingly weak but actually not very strong mechanical pilot and his group of companions.

All battlefields have been won, and all stories have come to an end. But Brahma, standing on the other side of the starry sky, is the only loser among all these battlefields.

"Is this your true purpose?" the descended Satan said calmly, his tone devoid of joy or sorrow, yet subtly conveying appreciation and agreement.

“That’s right, that’s my purpose.” Alice answered quietly, her divine body gradually collapsing, her mortal body belonging to the puppeteer once again exposed to the universe. The power that had originally reached the limit of the middle stage of the fourth rank faded rapidly with the destruction of her divine body, and the concept of 'Brahma' was also detaching from her body at a visible speed.

It fell, continued to fall, until it reached the very bottom of the fourth tier, where the light of the soul was about to fade, barely sustaining itself only thanks to the divine power of Tsukuyomi and the Lord of the Seafolk. However, such sustaining was nothing more than water without a source, a tree without roots; a fake is ultimately just a fake, and it would soon end in this world... or even be completely eliminated before it could end.

However, this was exactly the outcome Alice had hoped for. For across the many battlefields spanning the chessboard of the gods, she alone longed for her own defeat!

She had long anticipated this battlefield; she had known all along what was to come. Only when she achieved her goal did the Deva of the Awakened, whom she had used as a weapon, understand the whole story.

The sage's projection sighed softly.

"So you never intended to continue on your path using Brahma's position. When you severed my karmic ties, you never thought of creating new ones with Brahma. You used Brahma's position to ascend, and I used my hand to shatter Brahma's position. And in the moment of your fall, you used your own mythology to pave your own unique path!"

The next moment, the Brahma golden body surrounding Alice finally broke down, and just as her power level was about to fall below the bottom line of the fourth stage of the gene lock, and her formed spiritual light was about to disintegrate, an infinite power surging from an unknown place abruptly stopped her falling momentum!

For at this very moment, the war between the sun, moon, thunder, and fire, which had continued since the creation of the world, finally came to an end. The Lord of Thunder and Moon achieved ultimate victory, while the Lord of Blazing Sun vanished. In this instant when the Lord of War perished, the Lord of Vengeance lost his status, and many other innate deities vanished into nothingness, even though the Star Cup did not appear in her hands, she became the supreme and sole god in this world!

Her mythology had been fully constructed, and this mythology was sufficient to support her divine status. The light of her soul, which had lost its color, was restored, and a ray of radiance, belonging neither to Satan nor Brahma, burst forth from her heart!

Compared to the previous incarnations of Satan and the golden body of Brahma, this radiance was undoubtedly weaker. But even though it was weak, it was still a power unique to Alice Margotrovid.

Alice opened her previously closed eyes.

“Yes,” she said softly. “I desire my own power, so I would reject both Satan and Brahma. However, your mythology… your erosion of this multiverse is far too powerful. So powerful that if I want to escape one causal link, I must become entangled with another. Therefore, I have no choice but to utilize your own power.”

The avatar of Satan clapped his hands. "And you guessed that if I were to descend, I would surely strip you of your status while leaving you intact. Because only in this way can the karmic connection between us be renewed?"

"Yes, that's it."

“Remarkable, remarkable. Although your scheme was only average, your courage exceeded my expectations. In my judgment, you would never gamble on the possibility of simultaneously angering two saints. Even with the protection of the chief god, you ultimately know that you are merely a vessel—you misled me, and you misled Brahma, so you won the gamble. However, even if the causes and effects of the paths are not intertwined, your scheme still involves our fate and yours. And you will eventually pay for it.”

“It’s better than being corrupted by your ways,” Alice replied calmly.

The next moment, the incarnation of Satan lost its support and vanished completely from the world—it was ultimately blocked outside the Sacred Hunting Ritual, blocked outside the universe of the Sacred Hunting Ritual. Even though it descended at Alice's active summons due to karmic ties, all it could do was settle this karmic debt.

Now, the cause and effect have been resolved, and the reason for its birth no longer exists. Although Alice must bear the consequences of her failure alone, these consequences are not bitter for her.

“I have finally forged my own path… no longer imitating the traces of those Path Eroders, but creating my own path entirely independently. This favor is immeasurable… to tell my beloved Aichidra the truth about Path Eroders and mythology.” She blinked, gazing at the radiance in her heart, and sighed deeply.

Under the illumination of her inner light, she clearly saw the scene where Riku, the protagonist of destiny, returned the Golden Apple to its original place, accompanied by the two 'goddesses'.

Zhao Yingkong's promotion is imminent, and the recurring Golden Apple myth will be the final straw that propels her forward. For her, whose inner darkness remains unresolved, the Dao erosion caused by the external myth is not a matter to be dealt with at this time. Therefore, before she completes her final, crucial journey, there is one thing that must be resolved immediately.

"It's time to keep our promise."

Chapter 101: The Story Continues

In a certain part of Earth, in Japan, in a certain city, as the calendar on the wall points to a certain day in the twelfth year after the millennium, an invisible wind sweeps across this world.

A few ripples appeared in the structure of spacetime, and then a slender hand reached out from nothingness.

First, it was the hand, then the fingers, that tore open the spacetime that was spontaneously tending towards a stable state. As the crack widened, purple hair also spread outwards from the inside of the crack. And the next moment, a traveler from another time, another dimension, arrived in this world.

Miss Celine opened her eyes. She frowned as she took in her surroundings.

"Something's not right. Did Alice send me to the wrong place?" Her ears twitched, and her extraordinary perception, undiminished in the slightest, immediately spread to her surroundings. Every detail of the city—language, exchange of goods, flow of information, and so on—was taken into her consciousness. In an instant, she knew that this must be Japan in 2012, and this city was the Tokyo that was often seen in anime.

She effortlessly captured over thirty million different mental responses from ordinary people. Then, based on this, she observed traces of underground activity by small mammals, dozens of times larger than ordinary people. Every detail of the entire city was easily retrieved and read by her, and her expansive mind even had time to peruse numerous paper documents in physical bookstores and compare them with information found online.

This is a real world, a world where supernatural forces do not manifest themselves. The planet beneath her feet, like many similar things she had seen in her reincarnations, is the real 'Earth'—not an illusion, nor a toy in the palm of some true god, but an ordinary, untouched native Earth carrying human civilization.

It was all very ordinary, very commonplace. She could even clearly hear the quiet discussions between a brother and sister, both addicted to the internet, playing chess on their computer two doors down. The emotional flow in this process was natural and smooth, without the slightest hint of artificiality.

"Is it the next era after the end of the God's Chessboard? Or another world parallel to the Game No Life Zero universe?" Miss Sirin pursed her lips. She remembered clearly that when she was sent into the time travel, Alice, who would become her partner in the future, had personally instructed her to be sent to the point in time when Zhao Zhuikong descended to assist him in accomplishing something. But the place she should have arrived at should definitely still be on the God's Chessboard!

"Has the plan changed... or was what she said back then just a facade for the mystery?" Sirin pondered, her feet, which had been hovering in the air, gently touching the ground. The latter was more likely, because in her understanding, Alice should be a wise person. And wise people... never speak human language or act humanly.

[And the task she assigned me was strange. Zhao Yingkong and Zhao Zhuikong clearly lived in the same era, and she was also going to that era. So, was there something she couldn't say or do herself, and instead entrusted to me...? I see, that sentence wasn't meant for me. It was manipulation, a disguise, a preparation to deal with someone who could also travel through the river of time.]

The girl's gaze sharpened slightly; she roughly understood what Alice wanted her to do. Her mission wasn't to participate in the main battlefield, but rather to act as a sharp sword aimed at other variables outside the battlefield. And the true nature of that variable resided precisely at the other end of spacetime!

[So, in the future, he won the Star Grail battle and became the ultimate victor, the One God... I see. Even if the Reincarnation Squad hadn't descended, the one who ultimately triumphed wouldn't have been the War Lord, Altshu. Ah, that makes sense. Judging by the intensity of the war, the holder of the Star Grail must have been a true god. Even if not, the Star Grail was enough to conjure up the image of a true god who successfully constructed a time loop.]

[The birth of this true god must have occurred later than the timeline in which the reincarnators existed. Otherwise, by the time the reincarnators participated in the competition for the Star Grail, the ultimate victorious god would have already unleashed divine punishment from the other side of the timeline, delivering a fatal blow to these variables!]

The cause and effect quickly became clear to Sirin, who immediately understood the mission she bore: the Star Grail War would inevitably be decided sooner or later, and the ultimate victor, the One God, had surely set the point in time for that decisive moment, intervening when her past self was about to lose the Star Grail. In other words, if the Lord of War was the final boss of this game, then the ultimate victor, who was definitely not Altshu, the Lord of War, could be seen as a semi-hidden boss lurking behind the final boss. Unless it wanted to die, or it had designated another victor, it would inevitably descend at the last moment!

The reason I'm here is to stall it at a future point in time, reducing the power it can dedicate to the time loop and even preventing its arrival at the final moment. And this task... is best suited for me.

【after all……】

Miss Sirin let out a long, soft sigh.

"When it comes to surviving, I'm a professional."

She rubbed her forehead, focusing her senses back into a single point. Now that the mission objective was clear, there was only one thing left to do.

The structure above her head vanished like clouds in an instant. The next moment, she reached out her hand towards the sky!

A meteorite powerful enough to send the mortal civilization of this era back 65 million years to the past, where it would be accompanied by those pitiful dinosaur fossils, then fell from the sky!

And then, in the next moment, time stood still!

"No matter the era, I always see people or gods like you who, aside from violence and slaughter, are too lazy to consider any other way of coexistence." A voice rang out from the frozen space-time. Miss Sirin tilted her head and saw a strangely dressed boy, his entire body filled with elements of board games and other games, appear from the void. She didn't sense much power from him, but his level of life was undoubtedly that of a true god. Her attention was immediately drawn to a crystal-like object floating in the boy's palm—she instantly knew that it was the ultimate goal of the reincarnators who had descended to this world.

That was the Star Cup, and the Star Cup formed the boy's power. If combat strength were ranked among the gods, then the boy before him would undoubtedly be at the lowest level of the transcendent realm. But when the Star Cup fell into his hands, he possessed a powerful authority that would be considered top-tier even among true gods, and might even vaguely touch upon the first level of the Spirit Rank. However, authority is authority, and strength is strength. He might be far stronger than Sirin, but he probably didn't have a sure chance of winning the battle that followed. Yet, even so, he still appeared here.

It was obvious that the boy before her was Sirin's target. And this world was extremely important to him.

“An immature God.” Sirin stared at the man before her and said calmly, “Your status is unworthy of the power and strength you possess. It seems that in the history where we do not exist, the final result is that you, the weakest among the gods, will reap the benefits of a mutually destructive outcome.”

"To be precise, I'm merely a custodian; the victor is someone else entirely." The boy gazed at the purple-haired girl before him and sighed. "It's strange. You clearly bear traces of human origins, yet you are tens of thousands, even billions of times stronger than any human I've ever seen. If those two back then had even a fraction of your power, I wouldn't be here dealing with this mess... Are you here to seize the Star Cup? To seize the Star Cup that should have fallen into the hands of the true victor?"

“I’m only here to stop you,” Sirin replied. “The real battlefield was in the past, on the chessboard of the gods when there were only fifteen powerful races in the world. The outcome should be almost decided, and I’m here to stop you from interfering with that soon-to-be-clear conclusion.”

An invisible will intertwined in the stagnant air, and the shapeless hounds dwelling in spacetime howled silently. A war powerful enough to destroy current human civilization in a short time was about to erupt. The boy before Sirin adjusted his baseball cap.

"Before we begin, let me ask you one question," the young man said softly, "Will the victor be human?"

“Perhaps,” Sirin replied, her thoughts drifting slightly to the reincarnators of the Central Continent Team.

"Are you a 'human' like yourself?" the boy pressed.

“You can think of it that way. At least outwardly, we’re not much different from ordinary people,” Sirin replied calmly, switching her focus from survival to the realm of bloody battle.

"Then, I will not hand over the Star Grail to you." The boy sighed softly. "My name is Tet, the Star Grail holder who temporarily assumes the position of the One God, with the game as his divine office. Outsider who attempts to snatch victory from the hands of humanity's agents, what is your name—"

"The Reincarnator, Sirin."

The two powerful forces then collided!

collision.

But it was just a simple collision.

Just as the two were about to clash with all their might, Alice, arriving at the precise moment, suddenly intervened, severing the combined attack of this extraordinary life form and the immature true god—she conjured a miniature world shield out of thin air, completely binding the forces of their confrontation. The next instant, her hand rested on Sirin's shoulder, who was still preparing to continue her actions.

"Let's end it here. There was no need to start this war." Alice's form appeared between the two warring parties. A scroll was held in her hand. "The war of the One God is over, and in my hands, there is now a proposal that is more important to you than the Star Cup. Tet."

She gestured to Celine, and with a message delivered, Miss Celine discreetly vanished. Time resumed its flow. The rooftops that Celine had erased returned to normal, and the city bustled with activity once more. Except for the siblings next door, addicted to their internet and scrambling around due to a power outage, everything returned to normal.

“You… there’s a strange aura about you.” Tetu took the scroll, but instead of opening it immediately, he cast a questioning glance at Alice. “A familiar yet perplexing aura… you don’t feel like an outsider… are you Fanlou?”

“I defeated Fanlou, and my companions defeated her again,” Alice replied quietly. “And my other companions defeated Altshu, and also eliminated the Goblin and Forest Elf Lords.”

"So, I'm the only one left?" A slightly self-deprecating smile appeared on Tetu's lips. "I never imagined that I, who am least skilled in combat, would not only win in the end but also survive. Thinking about it..." He shook the scroll in his hand, glancing at Alice. "Then I probably don't have any other choice?"

“You can choose not to accept this proposal,” Alice replied.

Tetu shook his head, chuckled, and opened the scroll in his hand. He might have intended to glance at it and tear it up casually, but the smile vanished the moment the first line caught his eye. The aura around him surged dramatically with his reading, and even without causing any real damage, the daylight outside turned into night at his will!

He closed the scroll that recorded the truth of this world and the proposals of the reincarnators, and looked at Alice expressionlessly.

"I need to verify."

Alice made a gesture of 'please do as you please'.

She witnessed Tetto's disappearance and waited in place for about two minutes. When Tetto reappeared, his youthful face no longer held the leisurely and composed air of the God of Games.

He took a heavy breath, first wanting to shout, but in the end it turned into a bitter laugh.

“I treated the world as a game, but I never imagined the world really was a game.” He looked at Alice, his expression complex. “And you, as the game’s creator, actually intend to grant the game freedom just before it’s about to become profitable?”

—From next door, the faint sounds of a brother and sister, both addicted to the internet, complaining loudly about the power outage could be heard: 'Reality is just a trash game!'

“Yes,” Alice replied. Her gaze passed over Tetto, looking into the void, at the colossal silver shadow perched atop the Tree of Things. “I intend to grant this world freedom.”

The colossal silver shadow whispered silently—[Even if you have to pay a heavy price for it?]

"A promise should be kept, even at a great cost."

She withdrew her gaze, and Tetu before her made up his mind. As the aura surrounding this former One God rapidly declined, the strange object known as the Star Cup immediately severed its connection with her.

The Star Cup became ownerless at this moment.

He pressed down on Alice's hand before her fingertips touched the surface of the star cup.

“Here, it is only I who have lost, not the two who died in the past.” He looked at Alice, his tone serious. “Those two never won in their lives, but in the last round, they did not lose.”

“I know.” Alice’s eyes conjured up the image of Riku and Shubi, one human and one machine, in the human settlement. If the Reincarnator hadn’t appeared, the two of them would have forced a draw in the end, and then Tet, born from Riku’s wish, would have won the Star Cup.

Tetto released his grip. And at that very instant, the branch belonging to Alice among the eight branches of the tree of events snapped off!

Heaven and earth are about to be reshaped, and these broken fruits will no longer be bound by the Hunting Ceremony and will gain freedom. It will become an independent universe, neither belonging to the Hunting Ceremony nor to the 'Wandering Earth-Three-Body' worldview outside of it. And in the new universe, they will gain freedom from the constraints of the script.