Ank

I stared at the wide golden-colored skies of that pocket dimension, the clouds, and the peak of the myriad of mountains beneath.

Then, I heard an earth-shaking screech from the ground, and I announced to my twin sister, who crouched beside me over the highest summit in that entire world:

“That’s it. We gathered them all.”

“Finally”, she said, getting up and pointing her palm to the pile under our foot.

A pile of innumerable deity corpses, that raised kilometers upwards; from Lower [Gods], all the way to the Higher ones, from minuscules [Zemis], to divine beings of mountainous size and power, their blood drained into entire literal rivers running between the mountains around.

“[Store]”, Hunah said, and the millions of tons of dead bodies instantly vanished, teleported straight into her inventory.

“Honestly~”, I sighed, finally selecting the [Yes] option that the [System] message passed to display long ago, and starting the process of returning to the real world. “I don’t know how long we’ve been stuck in here, but at least half of this time was spent collecting bodies for you.”

“Half~?”, my twin sister repeated, outraged. “At worst, it was only a third of the time!”, she was clearly wrong, “plus, don’t you want to be able to revive an army of undead [Gods] at any moment? I could just spill them out for you.”

“…Thank you very much, I take back what I said.”

Then, once again we were involved by dark smoke, and, in the blink of an eye: my sister and I were somewhere else.

“Haven’t we been kidnapped in an inn or something?”, I expected to come out in the same place we were first taken to the [Pocket Dimension]. Instead, we were in…

“…Some kind of laboratory?”, Hunah pointed, and she seemed correct (from what I could remember from the theater pieces we saw together).

Looking for an exit, I found some familiar inscriptions on the ground: sacrificial magical circles. Thousands of them, with varying degree of success; some contained statues of stone awfully realistic, but as they progressed further beyond, the extensive laboratory, the statues became less and less complete, until there was only some vestiges of dirt, and finally, nothing remaining over the last circle at all.

“What the fuck…?”, Hunah asked.

“It’s almost like…”, I tightened my fists. “…this is where sacrifices were first created.”

“Aren’t the [Gods] born with this [Skill], though?”

“The ones we know are”, I asked myself: did those [Proto] and True-[Gods] also have those kinds of powers? Never heard about them having the same practices; even the [True-God] we killed before, seemed to be gathering sympathizers only, and when he used sacrificial energy, it was to bring himself to the [Dungeon] not get empowered… “Or at least…”

“…That’s what Taffy told us”, Hunah understood.

We stood there for a minute, just staring at the scene of the possible beginning of a tragedy. What does that even mean? Should we even care? We’ve been staying true to ourselves up to that point, we had only a single and simple objective, to suddenly start to demand “truths” from our savior…

I was interrupted by a long and hoarse groan. And, from the direction of the noise, came stumbling an undead. A blonde human, young, with distinctive eyes of different colors, one blue, other green... A figure that was familiar. The founder of the Adventurer's Guild, who had a statue in the Beginner’s City.

[Name: Twain

Race: Proto-Human, Level: 92.]

“…The Guild Founder”, I pointed out.

The creature was hard to recognize, but that distinctive metallic box that we pursued with such determination was nearby too, putting this together with the fact that Taffy was once an adventurer, and that the box was so important to her... Anyway, the corpse had a bunch of clearly new peripherals that looked like they looked like they’d be very powerful when completed; whatever the reason was that someone was arming up a corpse.

“Gaarh!”, the zombie threw himself against us.

And then simply vanished, turned to dust, and having its remains carried away by a gentle breeze; I felt a little bad for doing that, especially without having to even put any effort to defeat the honorable man, he seemed to have been someone Taffy valued a lot. But surely, it would be better that way, if Taffy believed the corpse had simply been destroyed, than if she had seen what had happened to that Twaing guy, whatever he was to her.

“The exit is this way, then, right?”, Hunah followed the breeze.

I was surprised once again, when, once we got to the stairs leading up, I found one of my summons. And, on its knees, it spoke:

“Master, we’ve been doing your wish, and expunging this world of [Gods] for all this time.”

“Uh~ T- Thank you?”, Surely, then I could summon almost-eternal creatures, but not before that party inside Tezmot’s [Pocket Dimension]… Unless: “Oh, I see, it’s because the difference in time passage inside that place!”, I laughed out loud, followed by my sister.

“I bet that guy didn’t expect that we’d continue to kill [Gods] even outside his little trap!”

“About that…”, the summon spoke again, but this time sounding ashamed.

“What?”, I questioned. “You already did a good job keeping your orders for… How long has it been again?”

“Focus, Ank. What did you have to say, Su?”

“Su”, I agreed with the name instantly; just like it had been with Incute, long ago.

“Yes! I beg your forgiveness, Masters, for these useless summons have failed in killing every single divine being in existence… For, now, an army of space [Gods] have invaded the lands down south, adding a few tens of thousands of numbers to your ranks of enemies, of which, remain only four deities native to this planet, the highest [Gods].”