Intelligence on the [Black Dragon] stood at absolute zero.
They called it one of the Three Grand Quests, but in truth, the Black Dragon was in an entirely different league from Behemoth and Leviathan. That much, at least, was the one thing everyone knew about it.
And the price paid to learn even that much had been the complete annihilation of the Zeus Familia and the Hera Familia — once the mightiest forces the city had ever known.
At minimum, the world now understood this: a single Lv.9 and a single Lv.8, even backed by a host of Lv.6s and Lv.7s, was not enough to bring the Black Dragon down.
And given that not a single soul from that original expedition had survived to tell the tale, that battle had quite possibly been a one-sided slaughter in every sense of the word.
[So it takes at least Lv.10, then.]
Isagi's reasoning was simple enough: if that's what it took, then he'd just have to reach Lv.10 before picking a fight with the Black Dragon.
Besides.
He actually had a way to gather intelligence on the Black Dragon.
Travel back a thousand years — to the mont the [Black Dragon] was born. Dangerous, certainly, as things currently stood. But risk and opportunity walk hand in hand. With the great hero Albert and his companions there to deal with the [Black Dragon] at that ti, Isagi would have a window to observe it, to grasp at least so fragnt of information about the creature.
Not a bad plan at all.
That was, for now, the thing Isagi was most curious about when it ca to traveling back a thousand years.
The night grew long and lazy.
As late autumn drew near, the stars and moon had settled into a deeper quiet. Thin wisps of cloud drifted past the distant window, so faint and gauzy that they sohow made the world feel still.
The Garden of Stars sat well away from the city's main thoroughfares, so from the edge of his bedroom window, Isagi could just make out the distant glitter of magic-stone lanterns blazing in the heart of town.
Inside, though, the house was unusually silent. As usual, most of the girls were out — not because Aphrodite had wrangled them off to rehearse the theatrical production they were performing at the upcoming festival, but because they had only just leveled up, and one by one they'd all slipped out of the city to put their brand-new strength through its paces.
In Isagi's view, there wasn't actually much to test.
This level-up — for himself included — had given no one any new skills, and no one any new magic. What it amounted to, at its core, was a comprehensive boost to base stats across the board.
Which was completely normal.
For most adventurers, skills and magic were effectively "locked in" by around Lv.3. Everything after that, apart from refining technique and mastering so-called "secret arts" through combat experience, was fundantally about pushing raw numbers higher — not about acquiring new abilities.
What he himself had been doing before — picking up a whole heap of new abilities with every level-up, right alongside each new character card — was frankly absurd. Sothing that had never once happened in the city's entire history.
Even Goddess Astrea had complained about it.
His character panel had apparently grown so extensive that two or three sheets of paper weren't enough to contain it anymore. Every ti the goddess had to translate and copy it all down, her hand would ache by the end.
Isagi thought that was a bit ridiculous too, honestly.
So this level-up, aside from being able to select one new character card, hadn't brought him any "new abilities" to speak of — which was exactly what he'd expected.
That said.
After Lv.5, the focus of each character card's advancent had shifted noticeably — more and more of it was concentrated on things related to "Divine Power."
Just as he'd anticipated.
Because of the level-up, the "nightmare" he could conjure through Divine Power, the intensity of the "Asura" form he could shift into, the ability to travel back through ti — all of it had been strengthened to varying degrees.
But that was the extent of it.
Still, Isagi was satisfied. Having too many skills was its own kind of headache.
What mattered most to him right now was pressing forward with his research into "Divine Power." Everything else could wait.
On that front, not one of the girls could help him — and neither could the goddesses, whether Astrea or Deter. Both had told him plainly: this was sothing only he could work out for himself. No one else, mortal or divine, could lend a hand.
Because "Divine Power is an extraordinarily intimate thing."
What it manifested as was the essence of one's own existence — the bedrock color of one's soul. The goddesses had explained as much to him in broad strokes already, and Isagi understood it well enough. Put simply: the kind of god one could beco depended entirely on the kind of person one already was.
A contemptible person could never beco a god of justice.
A person who loved peace could never beco a god of slaughter.
So — what kind of god would he beco?
Lost in thought, Isagi gazed out at the courtyard, where the golden tree had grown steadily larger with each passing day, and found himself sinking deeper into contemplation.
Until — he arrived at no conclusion whatsoever.
Isagi decided to head out. He'd go find Lefiya and Ryuu-senpai and the others, and see what kind of chaos these lot were getting up to.
He walked along the long road and soon passed through the city gates.
Outside the walls, the fields under the night sky lay cold and bare. The harvest season was long over. The farmland now simply waited for winter's snow to fall, and would not stir back to life until spring ca again next year.
In the distance, Isagi could already make out the animated commotion near a small grove of trees.
There was plenty of open wasteland outside the city these days, and since the girls were just getting a feel for their new strength rather than going all-out with any reckless spells, they'd skipped the little deserted island out past len and opted for the much simpler option — a stretch of open field not far from the city walls.
Isagi arrived and took in the scene.
And found that Ais and Ryuu-senpai were fighting each other.
Off to the side, Lefiya and Tiona were cheering them on at the top of their lungs. The girls had spread out blankets over the slightly yellowed grass and laid out an array of drinks and snacks, making the whole thing look more like a picnic than a training session — and right in the middle of it all, little jellyfish Saika sat in a state of perfect bliss, her tiny short arms working in tandem, shoveling food into her mouth from both sides simultaneously.
Isagi had long since made peace with this. He didn't bother trying to stop her.
For this particular individual, eating was practically a form of leveling up in its own right.
In fact, Saika could apparently grow stronger simply by eating and eating and eating — which, in a certain sense, made her cheat ability feel even more broken than his own.
But never mind that.
Isagi's attention had quickly shifted to Ryuu-senpai and Ais locked in combat in the distance.
And it was different from what he'd expected.
After the two girls leveled up to Lv.6, it seed they had genuinely awakened sothing new.
The most striking of all was Ais.
The golden-haired girl moved as she always did, riding [Despair] through the night sky like a butterfly in flight, trading blow after blow with the equally golden-haired elven girl.
But sothing had changed.
The green breeze that had always swirled around her — it had changed color entirely.
It was a radiant, breathtakingly brilliant golden wind.
And because of it, even Ais herself seed to have undergone so kind of transformation — sothing almost sacred.
Isagi couldn't quite put it into words.
What exactly was that?
It resembled Divine Power, and yet it wasn't Divine Power. Sothing closer to — or perhaps purely — the power of a... Spirit?!
____
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