— — — — — —
Seeing Ryo's face twist into a frown, Scathach let out a small, amused chuckle.
"Let guess… you think I'm the thief yelling 'catch the faith thief'?"
"No," Ryo thought to himself. "I was thinking 'm that thief..."
He didn't say that aloud, though. Instead, he asked, "I am curious—what exactly made you suspect the Greek pantheon?"
Scathach chuckled again, then walked over to a bench in the nearby park and sat down, crossing one leg over the other.
Ryo followed, still munching on his mochi, and sat beside her.
He really was curious about the intel from the upper levels.
Without asking, Scathach snatched a piece of mochi from his hand, took a bite, and bead.
"Mmm, yours taste better."
"Stolen always tastes better, huh?" Ryo rolled his eyes internally.
"…You really think the gods can't tolerate variables during a massive historical upheaval like World War?"
Scathach licked her fingers, cleaning off the sesa seeds stuck to them.
Ryo was silent for a mont before voicing his doubt. "I an... they should be able to, right?"
To be honest, he had also been confused about Alpha and the Buddha intervening so directly to steer the course of potential events. It felt like overkill.
"Sure, major turning points like the World War are rare," he said, "but even if a few Four-Digit beings erge from them, that's not really a threat to the gods at the top. So... is it the hidden influence behind these events that's got them spooked?"
Scathach wagged her index finger, smiling as she corrected him: "It's not all the gods who are uneasy. It's specifically the Cross Pantheon. That's an important distinction."
(A/N: Rember—anything related to the real world in this fanfic isn't true. This is just for fun!)
...
"Cross pantheon?"
Ryo's eyes lit up—he'd caught on to sothing.
"You're saying… the changes during the Second World War in one world negatively impacted the interests of the Cross gods?"
"Bingo."
Scathach grabbed another piece of mochi, then added with a smirk that could only be described as malicious:
"Look, even though there are a lot of pantheons in Little Garden, after the 19th century, the outside worlds turned into a ga of 'one superpower, many strong competitors.'"
"The superpower is Cross (Christianity). The strong ones? Buddhism, legends, Taoism, and everything else after that."
That much was undeniable.
No matter how you frad it, Christianity was the dominant force in the modern world. Ryo knew it well.
In the early 21st century, two billion out of six billion people identified as Christians. That's a third of the planet—an overwhelming majority for a single religion.
So by Little Garden's principle of "mutual observation," Cross pantheon should have been the dominant pantheon here too.
But instead, the current power rankings went: first, the Buddhist sects; second, Taoism; third, the Greek pantheon; and only then ca the Cross pantheon.
That didn't add up.
"…The omnipotence paradox."
Ryo said it flatly, without emotion.
"A single, absolute God's worldview can't establish divinity in Little Garden. Hence the omniscience-and-omnipotence denial paradox."
Scathach clapped her hands together, then stuffed another mochi straight into his mouth before he could react.
"Correct! Ding ding ding! The omnipotence paradox!"
Ryo gave her a look of disdain, but she just winked playfully and went on:
"Because of that paradox, the Cross pantheon can't fully project their 'monotheistic universe model' here."
"And without that unique system, no matter how much belief power they get, they'll never dominate Gift Gas."
"So even though they managed to spread their influence across all of human history during the First and Second World Wars, they still can't capitalize on it here."
"Not a big deal on its own, really. They figured they could just take their ti... but then…"
Scathach's grin turned nasty.
"…then soone unknown stirred up a brand-new possibility over in East Asia."
Ryo's eyes glead.
"A new historical transformation in East Asia… could it shake the Cross pantheon's dominance in the 21st century?"
The implications of what he'd done began to hit him.
Led by Japan, backed by others, and free of interference from Arica, East Asia had created its own cultural sphere.
That alone was a massive deviation from the previous post-War tiline.
If East Asia remained stable while Europe descended into chaos, and Arica now had serious rivals for post-war spoils… that was a huge shift.
In short, the East stood up earlier than expected in the 20th century.
And given that Christianity was the dominant faith in Arica, Ryo could already imagine the blowback.
"Exactly."
Scathach wore the smug expression of soone watching an enemy trip on their own shoelaces.
"The Cross gods have been pulling strings for ages—sparking upper-tier Gift Gas and triggering historical shifts to steer the future in their favor."
"Lots of other pantheons got caught in the crossfire. So lost major assets; others were completely wiped out."
"But according to the rules laid down by the 'Seventeen' and the Little Garden Core, changing history requires challenging every pantheon."
"A thousand years ago, the Great Sage almost pulled it off—but even he failed in the end."
Ryo's voice dropped as realization dawned.
"So after that... no other communities have attempted a high-level history shift, right?"
If even Sun Wukong failed, who else would dare? Maybe only Arcadia had the ambition.
But Arcadia never made it far enough. They were destroyed before their influence reached the Three-Digit tier.
Now it really was starting to sound like a conspiracy.
Ryo couldn't help wondering: Was the demon lord that destroyed Arcadia secretly working for the Cross gods?
"You're on the right track. To change history, you need to participate in Three-Digit-level Gift Gas. But getting there from the lower levels is almost impossible—that's the deadlock."
"Everyone already sees the end of humanity coming. The gods can't ignore it. But they're bound by the rules—they can't interfere unless soone breaks the cycle."
"This isn't just a battle of belief anymore. It's a matter of survival. But the Cross pantheon refuses to cooperate. They keep doing things their own way, ignoring every offer to negotiate."
Scathach sighed deeply.
"Maybe that's why so pantheons have started acting outside the observable realms—looking for new possibilities in uncharted worlds."
"Who knows which pantheon had a hero bold enough to make that move?"
"Pantheon? It was just ." Ryo chuckled quietly to himself.
But now he understood sothing horrifying—Cross gods weren't trying to destroy humanity out of malice.
They wanted to replace the current Little Garden with a new one—a reality where their belief could thrive.
They weren't trying to end the world.
They were trying to remake it in their image.
A new world… a new Little Garden... where Christianity reigned supre.
Realization hit him like a thunderclap.
Everything he'd been doing—pulling other worlds into Little Garden, creating new tilines and possibilities—he might've already stepped on the Cross pantheon's last nerve.
He was—
—dancing right in front of the executioner's stake.
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.
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