Tonight, Alice joins the hunt.

Flora felt she should say something. Like, "How could you be so arrogant?" or "Humans don't need a god to judge their worth!" But as the words reached her lips, a strange tranquility filled her heart, as if such trivial matters were not worth her attention, and that listening to the girl before her was the more important thing.

She remained silent, and then she felt as if she saw a hint of approval in the eyes of the girl in front of her.

Was that approval? Possibly, but it could also have other meanings. Flora didn't know what constituted the correct judgment, nor could she find any basis for it—and as she pondered this, the strange tranquility she had felt earlier was subconsciously cast aside.

She saw the girl clap her hands, and the next moment, the pale earth beneath her feet warped and collapsed, instantly transforming into a vast and boundless galaxy. She had studied astronomy—how could a Chaldean not be familiar with astronomy?—and she immediately recognized it as the classic characteristics of a spiral galaxy; it was the Milky Way!

The girl's voice echoed in her ears, and for a moment she even felt that the girl's voice was somewhat familiar.

"Did you know that there are actually many civilizations in this universe? In every galaxy, you can always find a few planets suitable for life to grow, and there are countless such galaxies in a single universe."

The girl twirled her finger, and the vast galaxy beneath their feet was rapidly magnified in detail. The galactic landscape silently shifted, and the expansive scenery of the inner solar system appeared in Flora's field of vision—for some reason, the Martian system and the outer regions were somewhat blurry, but Flora didn't pay much attention, because that wasn't the point. The focus was on the dimly lit Earth.

She saw the lights of Chaldea near the South Pole, and then she saw another light approaching Chaldea. She also saw many restless shadows crawling in the darkness, things that looked unsettling and were closing in on Chaldea, yet she found herself completely oblivious to them.

The girl in front of her seemed even more satisfied.

Was it because she had faith in Fujimaru and Akuta, or because she simply didn't care about their lives? Flora was about to ponder this question when the girl's words interrupted her thoughts.

"I thought you'd be curious, wondering why, out of so many civilizations in the universe, you chose this tiny Earth and paid it so much attention. But now it seems my judgment was slightly off—yes, you don't actually care whether Chaldea can continue. You simply want to restore humanity, right?"

—Is it simply a matter of wanting to restore humanity?

Flora didn't answer, but her body subconsciously nodded slightly.

“That’s good,” the girl clapped her hands, and the starry river beneath their feet returned to its original state. “For humans of the past, curiosity was a good thing. Since the group as a whole could never die anyway, it was inevitable that individuals within the group would develop a habit of recklessly doing the dangerous. You don’t have this good habit yet, and that’s good. Because times are changing.”

"But I will still tell you why, because you can see that blood-red river. And that blood-red river actually represents humanity's destiny, represents their importance. As long as that river exists, then no matter how vast the universe is, how prosperous the starry sea is, or how remote humanity is in the world using the most backward technology, they will still be the core of the entire universe. Because the universe will revolve around humanity."

Her words contained a wealth of information.

"So this is the 'stage,' which is why the 'gods' have focused their gaze on such a tiny place. But soon everything will change. When that blood-red river completely dims, even nearly disappears, everything will be different... The old enslavers and the enslaved will rise again, because humanity has not become better than them, but has simply followed the same old path, becoming just like them..."

Her tone grew softer and softer, but Flora carefully memorized every word. If the goddess before her represented the old order, then the enslavers and the enslaved she referred to might be the ancient creatures defeated by humanity in the past—for a moment, she actually wanted to stand there and say on behalf of all humanity, "Since we were able to defeat them before, we will be able to defeat them in the future!"—but then she suddenly felt that she wasn't suited to say such things in this place.

Can I represent humanity? — It seems not.

Do humans need to represent themselves? — It seems not.

So she fell silent for the third time, but in that silence, she vaguely sensed that the ancient creatures Mangtlund spoke of did not seem to refer to the previous era of Earth... The girl's voice rang out once more.

“Ah—the topic seems to have strayed a bit. Conversing in mortal form always makes me lose sight of the point. So let’s return to the beginning, Miss Flora,” the girl’s fingers gently intertwined, stacked as lightly as a tower. “The agreement between us still stands, and it is your freedom to use my power and intelligence as you see fit. If you have the ability to remove all the curses attached to me while speaking about matters concerning me, then I will not interfere with your actions.”

"Are you satisfied with this answer?" She tilted her head, looking at Flora. "Or do you have some novel, additional, or insightful opinion worth offering?"

Flora then dismissed all the jumbled thoughts that had previously crossed her mind.

“I have no objection,” Flora replied, thinking to herself, [Anyway, there’s nothing I can do; after all, I’m just an agent, not the owner. What you said is interesting, but it doesn’t really matter to me—my goal remains the restoration of humanity.]

“Very good.” The goddess-like girl before her nodded. “I admire mortals with unwavering will like you. So, before we part, I have a small gift for you. I will unlock the shackles within your genes, giving you the opportunity to… gain the ability to choose.”

The girl's figure shifted, and she suddenly appeared in front of Flora.

The next moment, the girl's hand pierced through Flora's chest!

"——!!!"

An invisible force erupted within Flora's body, and she felt as if she was about to scream. However, before that scream could be transformed from a brain signal into a nerve response and stimulate the muscles in her throat and vocal cords, an unparalleled sense of impact bombarded her thoughts and brain!

Blood rushed to her head, nerves trembled, and her eyes instantly went from focused to blank. Countless fragmented, scattered combat techniques, seemingly from the distant past or bursting forth from the depths of her soul, surfaced in her mind. Even the scenes in her vision seemed to slow down—she could even feel her heartbeat and blood flow for a moment, and judge that their speed was subjectively slowing down!

This is... a pseudo-time acceleration caused by the brain's high-speed operation—and Flora knows very well that she currently possesses only the body of an ordinary mortal magician, and the powers belonging to Mangtlund have no effect on this land at all!

But the next moment, this wonderful feeling came to an abrupt end!

The girl before her withdrew her hand from her chest without drawing blood or leaving a single wound. She instantly felt the world return to normal; the slowed heartbeat and blood flow, returning to normal, pounded against her chest like a drumbeat. She was drenched in sweat, and the extreme exhaustion and weakness nearly made her collapse.

"This...this is?" She clutched her pounding heart, her legs giving way, and she slumped into a chair, her entire body going limp. Her gaze towards the girl was filled with shock. "What is this!?"

—What is this strange, eerie thing that feels so familiar?!

"This is a realm, a ladder, a key that allows you to transcend the mundane and reach the path of sublimation. It is also the potential within you." The girl before her gracefully returned to her seat, conjured a cup of coffee out of thin air, and took a small sip. "This is your own power. If you can develop it deeply, it will be the power that allows you to contend with the Mesopotamian gods without my help. As for how far you can use it, that depends entirely on yourself."

She put down her coffee cup, which may have been a way of saying goodbye.

After several seconds, Flora calmed her breathing, stood up, and bowed respectfully to her.

But the girl avoided it.

“There’s no need,” the girl said calmly. “I only hope that our agreement will be finalized when the matter of Mesopotamia is settled. I hope to get a useful answer from you. Hmm, here’s another piece of news to give you some motivation—it was the Demon King Goetia, not the Magic King Solomon, who initiated the Burning of Humanity. And both Goetia and Solomon are, to me, utterly vulnerable.”

He finished speaking.

Flora was about to speak when a sudden sense of loss overwhelmed her. The colors before her eyes swirled and shifted, and when everything settled, she found herself back in the secret workshop at the bottom of Imanitism.

The wisdom and power of the gods remained in her hands, but when she blinked and regained focus, she saw the flame-shaped bird that had been perched on her shoulder flutter up and fly away into the distance, passing through the walls and layers of barriers within the secret workshop.

This was a perfectly clear signal. It was obvious that the goddess wasn't looking forward to her next meeting with Flora before everything had settled down.

“Is…that so?” Flora said softly. She reached out her hand, clenched her fist, and the next moment, her eyes were filled with blankness.

If she were a reincarnator, she would know that her current state should be called unlocking the first stage of the genetic lock. She could clearly sense that she had absolute control over her limbs in this state. As long as she consumed magic, true ether, and divine power, this state could continue indefinitely, and she could even calculate that this state was comparable to one ten-thousandth of her divine wisdom!

This was the first step, and there should be many more steps to come. When she emerged from this state, she found that her mind seemed to have adapted to this wondrous state, and even using her mortal body again would not cause her to overexert herself—at this moment, she confirmed that this was the power that Flora, as Flora, could still retain after Mangotlund withdrew his divine power and consciousness.

She took a deep breath.

The goddess's words echoed in her ears, but she didn't actually have much of a sense of reality regarding those concepts like the "bloody river" and the "protagonist on stage." Just as an ordinary person living in modern times wouldn't care about an asteroid that would shatter the Earth a million years from now, she didn't really care about things that were too far away—except for that last sentence.

She exhaled the breath of cold air she had inhaled.

[The Demon King… I see. Goetia, the leader of the seventy-two Demons from *The Key of Solomon*. Considering Lev's actions in the control room and Fujimaru Ritsuka and the others' encounter in the Fourth Singularity, it seems Solomon, this Heroic Spirit, has encountered a problem, perhaps splitting into two parts… Maybe it has been secretly helping us get this far on our Grand Order journey. However, it's also possible I'm guessing wrong… Let's put this aside for now and wait for more information.]

[The important thing now is Mangtlund... she shouldn't lie, right? So, in the process of restoring humanity, is the promise to the goddess actually more important...?]

I need to find a way to tell Ba the information I can, so she can lend me a hand...

She made her decision, and her form instantly shifted. Vanishing from the secret workshop at the bottom of the temple and reappearing at the temple's main entrance on the surface—she saw Ba standing inside, waiting for her, just as she had instructed. This pleased her, and she quickened her pace to approach.

She suddenly stopped in her tracks.

Because at that very moment, she saw a holy white radiance, like a spear, fall from the sky and strike directly at the point where the control domains of Uruk, Imanitik, and the Blood Temple intersected!

Chapter 52 Alice: This is so hard for me

"She is not a saint, nor are either of them."

On the pure white earth, Alice gently sipped her coffee. The long-lost slightly bitter taste was exactly the same as the drink she remembered from many years ago. She sighed and turned her gaze to the seventh singularity, Mesopotamia, located on another dimension of space.

The goddess Lundminiad had been guided to her destination, and Fujimaru Ritsuka and her group had begun their second cycle. She clearly sensed that the limit of the interference she had unleashed after the start of this second cycle had reached the upper limit of her own abilities. In other words, she was now the only reincarnator on this land below who could go all out without worrying about being obliterated by the aftershocks of a battle between saints.

This is normal, because she has put in a lot of effort for it.

This is unusual, because all the 'players' who put in a lot of effort didn't even have the chance to 'fail at the last minute' and got stuck in the early to mid-game.

She raised her finger, adjusting her perspective.

—In the outer reaches of the solar system, the battle between Sirin and Ex is raging. The battlefield has stretched from the asteroid belt all the way to the edge of the solar system, extending outwards at speeds ranging from hundreds of thousands to tens of millions of kilometers per second. Perhaps tomorrow they will be able to cover Proxima Centauri, or perhaps even further.

—At the galactic center, the war between Patchouli and the Awakened Ones was gradually heading towards the latter's complete defeat. She had chosen a clever strategy, causing divisions to arise within this ancient true god, essentially a collection of billions of enlightened beings' spiritual aggregates. The Awakened Ones' demise was only a matter of time, and they themselves would become sustenance, allowing Patchouli to consolidate her divine status and climb to the highest possible level of that realm.

—On Earth's surface, Zhao Zhuikong and Zhao Yingkong have completely taken control of Seraphix and eliminated all discordant elements within it, expecting to arrive at Chaldea in three hours. Meanwhile, Xiao Honglu, Cheng Xiao, Ba Wang, Zhan Lan, and others have already infiltrated Chaldea and obtained some interesting finds. It's almost certain that Sesshouin Kihara has descended upon this region, and then… she'll probably receive a warm welcome.

—The Temple of Time, the Celestials' clandestine actions right under her nose were rather amusing. But now that she'd seen them, their clandestine maneuvers were practically offering themselves up. However, now wasn't the time to act against them, after all…

Alice blinked as an interesting little incident, one she hadn't anticipated or even observed before, came into view. It was quite an amusing mishap, and it led her to decide to cancel part of her plans against the Celestials. After all—there was no need to do something that had already been done again.

She then turned her gaze back to Earth and focused precisely on the Seventh Singularity, located in Mesopotamia in the 26th century BC.

One of the pillar gods left.

Alice wasn't sure if it was a coincidence; she felt it was 98% likely. Because just as she altered the spacetime structure, guiding Lundminiad to arrive ahead of schedule, in the Ur region south of Uruk, Quetzalcoatl, the chief god of South America, was separating from the earth and returning to the inner sea of ​​the star located on the inner side of Earth.

Alice had to spend some time retrieving and reviewing the records of the Ur region's previous timeline. While doing so, she clearly sensed that the Ur region's timeline was being overwritten by Zheng Zha's power, but Zheng Zha consciously stepped back upon sensing her presence and sent her a prepared file.

Alice raised an eyebrow.

“I see,” she murmured to herself. In the file that recorded all the events along a timeline, she clearly saw the entire conversation between Zheng Zha and Quetzalcoatl—the man, whom she considered practically equivalent to a gorilla and a sharp cleaver, earnestly explained his Dao to Quetzalcoatl. And after he finished speaking, the silent eruption of Dao erosion nearly twisted Quetzalcoatl into an ancient dragon.

The way of Quetzalcoatl is the way of plant growth and transformation. It has no concept of race, nor does it care about conflicts between ethnic groups or beliefs. In its eyes, all life is a newly sprouted seedling, and as long as the seedling experiences wind and rain, which it must experience, it can gain the right to grow and survive.

It is both an educator and a protector, both a tester and a judge.

It liked humans, especially Fujimaru Ritsuka, whom it had never met but which it had already thoroughly understood through its divine perspective in other singularities. Because it clearly sensed in Fujimaru Ritsuka the primal drive of a human… or rather, a creature struggling to survive. And in its eyes, this was as endearing as a tender sprout struggling to emerge from a crack in barren earth, enduring rocks and scorching sun.

It disliked Flora because it only sensed responsibility and determination from her, but not a single desire to live. In its eyes, Flora was like a mature, sturdy, withered tree, suitable as a pillar to shelter from the wind and rain, but ultimately just a dead tree with no future.

It disliked Mustard even more, because it saw no sense of responsibility or determination in it. If Flora was dead wood, then Mustard could only be categorized as rotten wood. After all, the True Ancestor Celestial was a planetary tentacle without life or death, neither a finished product nor a discarded item of the current era, completely different from its path and philosophy.

Quetzalcoatl had no intention of changing its mind, nor did it want to try a tactic it had no chance of winning. It might have originally planned to delay Zheng Zha in the Ur region so that Fujimaru Ritsuka could go ahead and conquer other gods to build up its influence, and even provide her with some help that might sway Zheng Zha when she visited Ur.

That was its original thought. But after listening to Zheng Zha's path of opening up, it sadly chose to give up. Because its path did not conflict with Zheng Zha's, it had no reason to fight to the death. And if it continued to delay there, by the time Fujimaru Ritsuka arrived in the Ur region, it would probably have already become Zheng Zha's incarnation.

It could do nothing, and when the first cycle of the divine war began, after it had watched the entire divine war and the time reversal created by the Chaldeans from within the time island separated by Zheng Zha's will, it knew that even if it wanted to do something, it would be meaningless.

So it chose to leave. It ceased participating in a battle from which it had no influence whatsoever, and returned to where it belonged, to continue its perhaps endless slumber.

The timing of its departure perfectly coincided with the time when Lundminiad descended. As a result, the commotion of its departure was only visible to the true god, while the attention of other, more perceptive local or alien beings was completely diverted by the noise of the Holy Lance's descent.

This could be considered a coincidence.

But there are no coincidences in extraordinary life.

“Yes, there are no coincidences in extraordinary life.” Alice’s will sank downwards, and the next moment she appeared on the border of Ur, outside the island of time. The figure of the Flame Bird reappeared, and the remaining aura of the Feathered Serpent God and the corresponding records between heaven and earth were completely absorbed and added to herself—the characteristics of the Flame Bird immediately transformed into a slight serpentine shape.

Extraordinary beings do not act by coincidence, so Quetzalcoatl's return at this time was actually with Zheng Zha's tacit approval. Because Zheng Zha was unaware of what Alice intended to do outside the Time Island, he deliberately chose the moment when Lundminiad descended to allow Quetzalcoatl to depart—his influence on Quetzalcoatl's Dao was sufficient to cause such an effect, although even Quetzalcoatl himself probably did not know that his choice of this time to leave was at the behest of others.

Alice spread her wings, and the transformed Flamebird streaked through the air in a long, dazzling line, soaring towards the distant horizon. That place was very close to Lundminiad's landing point, and also very close to the Chaldea group's landing point.

[Extraordinary beings don't act by coincidence, so my choice of Flora wasn't a coincidence, nor was it random; it was some kind of deliberately designed destiny. This wasn't predetermined by me, nor by Chu Xuan, so the remaining choices are narrowed down to a smaller range.]

She swept through the woods, and the sunlight rose with her. The Chaldean group arrived at the dawn when the first rays of light appeared, and now dawn was following her, rapidly approaching her target with the spread of her wings.

Above the dark sky, the enormous ring of light still exists. People of this era, or rather, of this world, may not know that the owner of the light has changed. This once glorious light, which brought pain to this world, has actually passively become a kind of protection—it has blocked the starlight from directly shining into this planet for many eras.

This might be an ability inherent in the light belt itself, written into the spell before the Celestials conquered the Temple of Time—after all, there are no coincidences among extraordinary beings, and as far as Alice knows, when Sirin and Ex were fighting and the battle area extended to the edge of the solar system, a powerful alien native who attempted to cross from distant stars and whose target was Earth inadvertently entered the battlefield.

Naturally, that guy was finished. The peak of the four native tribes and the peak of the Reincarnation True God are two completely different concepts. The limit that a life form equal to the Demon God King and of the UO level nurtured within many stars could achieve was merely to withstand the Dao Erosion phenomenon as an aftershock of the battle. And when Sirin and Ex simultaneously turned their gazes to it, the time it could withstand might not even be measured in minutes.

However, it died.

With its death, the impending catastrophe that would have arrived on Earth in the future, bringing about the bleaching of humanity after the burning of human order—Alice checked future records in a similar timeline without reincarnators—was thus abruptly halted. It no longer held the potential to occur.

This might have been intentional on the part of those two True Gods of Reincarnation during their battle.

[I once suspected Flora was one of the saints, but she didn't fit the characteristics of any saint... Saints contend for the Way, not force. And if I were to forcibly interfere with their projections, the moment I unlocked their genetic locks, I would inevitably fail... But I didn't.]

Alice flew over Uruk before dawn, glancing down to see that the overworked king had once again rolled into the underworld—which was probably inevitable, as a wise king in a crucial position shouldn't remain conscious when multiple reincarnators descend upon him. Whether his entry into the underworld was his own scheme or the arrangement of other reincarnators remained unknown to Alice.