The Jet-Black Meteor Givleon was in low Earth orbit.
Living creatures couldn’t usually survive in the vacuum of space, but this bizarre thing was doing just fine.
With the battle over, the creature had ascended, its instincts urging it to take on another form to fulfill its next duty.
But upon reaching outer space, its vibe had changed completely. This creature had been spouting corny lines on the surface just moments ago, but now, it began to speak in a voice completely devoid of emotion:
“Shifting to next state-based process: unsetting disguise. Seraphim Core confirmed operational within regular parameters. Proceeding to cancel Persona Program.”
The givleon sounded more like a machine now.
“Full withdrawal from the administrative area of local sacred realm confirmed. Commencing unsetting of disguise. Transferring mission to Seraphim Core. Lifting freeze on disciple: Lucifer.”
The apparent righteous hero’s shell began to crack, then it broke altogether. The fragments dissolved into dust, and then that too disappeared, revealing a glowing orb surrounded by dozens of sigils. As they revolved around the orb, the sigils executed their preset commands at dizzying speeds.
The orb began rapidly accreting space dust, which it used to begin constructing its next preprogrammed body.
“Commencing body formation. No interference detected from Sentinel Module. No interference detected from Antivirus Program. Prediction: Administrative system is dormant. Conditions for third-party intervention from an outside world have been met. Commencing temporary intervention into administrative permissions by Observer. Simultaneously scrubbing disguise data.”
What had seemed like a hero of justice was actually an entity sent from another world. If conditions were met, it would disguise itself, infiltrate its target world, and intervene in accordance with its programmed task.
Following its predetermined sequence of operations, it had begun creating a body to house the orb. Eventually, after taking in and reshaping enough matter, the system’s vessel was complete, and a transparent humanoid form now floated in low Earth orbit.
A female humanoid form, specifically, with a dozen wings.
Even though she didn’t quite look entirely human, she maintained an air of innocence. Her long, wavy, blonde hair fluttered, even in the vacuum of space, and she wore an expression so tranquil she almost looked asleep.
This life-form—what many might call an angel—slowly opened her eyes in the vast reaches of space.
“Where am I? Ah. I must have made it to my target world without any problems.”
The woman allowed herself a moment of relief at reaching her destination—a place beyond the control of her own world’s gods—and then started working to fulfill her next task.
“Hmm... It doesn’t seem like I can open a gate to the hallowed realm. In fact, the administrative permissions are frozen, so I doubt even this world’s own custodians can access the hallowed realm right now. What about the Observer’s access code? Mmm... It appears usable, but I don’t think it’ll be enough to get me into the hallowed realm.”
She moved on to her next task.
The no-confidence motion raised against the gods of this world for breaking a covenant, as well as the powers she’d been granted by Observers from an alliance of worlds, gave her the authority to begin extracting information from the Akashic records.
“This world has ended up in quite a state, hasn’t it? All the third-tier custodians are based on local life-forms, and there are no second-tier custodians or above. Has the administrative system been completely separated from the custodians? Or...no. Has it become independent?”
Observers could manage tens of thousands of worlds alone, and they made sure to leave a fragment of themselves behind in each of those worlds to help. Doing so allowed them to form a cross-dimensional network.
Other gods and disciples were also created to help, and each was given a certain role.
For a simple example, a god of fire might be created to manage things pertaining to fire.
Of course, some gods had permissions spanning several domains—though these tended to have more administrative roles, overseeing several other custodians.
This woman had those sorts of permissions in her own world.
“This administrative system seems more advanced than the one in my world, but it’s scary how free-spirited these custodians are. I could easily see this world falling to ruin. Strangely, such destructive acts are being carried out intentionally. The custodians have been carelessly summoning individuals from other worlds. Did they not consider that those other worlds would see that as interference upon their own territories? What was this world’s Observer even thinking, leaving its world’s stewardship to these reckless custodians? I can’t even imagine...”
While the custodians had been using an administrative system more advanced than the one from the woman’s own world, they’d used it incredibly irresponsibly.
Something like this never would’ve happened in her world.
The records showed that the Observer of this corporeal world had been reassigned to an even larger administrative world following a promotion and had planned a renewal of this world’s administrative system to coincide with their departure.
The system itself was so advanced that the woman was astonished, but it was being managed with astounding negligence. It didn’t have enough custodians, and what custodians were here were worryingly free-spirited.
Common sense told the woman that it was unacceptable for custodians to outright meddle in the worlds they managed, but these custodians brazenly interfered with life-forms in the corporeal world, inciting chaos as they pleased. If the mess had been confined to this world, it would have likely been overlooked. But when it threatened other worlds as well, things had been taken far more seriously.
Yes, the meddling in question was the hero summonings.
As a rule, when summoning living beings between worlds with different rules and laws, it was essential for the summoner’s world and the summonee’s world to work out the little details in advance, or there was no telling what could happen.
A summoned being’s soul was a dense mass of energy, and it was nearly impossible to say whether that energy might negatively affect a world with different rules.
A couple of bugs in the administrative system were one thing, but those effects could pile up over time, growing increasingly dangerous and eventually threatening to make the whole world collapse on itself.
And with that in mind, it was easy to imagine the sort of damage that repeated summonings could cause.
Of course, the Observers of other corporeal worlds had tried to do something about the problem too, but they’d run into a problem—namely, that this world didn’t have an Observer of its own.
Regardless of how much the Observers had complained, the custodians here never even got their complaints.
It was like a company without a president behind the wheel, now run by clueless employees who made decisions based on whims and vibes.
The woman sighed. “Why did things have to end up like this?”
Observers were generally indifferent about worlds not under their jurisdiction.
Even if people were being summoned from another world, and that world’s Observer came to raise their concerns with the one doing the summoning, the latter would typically wave it off with a statement like “Oh? That so? Well, sucks to be you, huh?”
This time around, however, there were a lot of worlds that had been summoned from, not just the world this woman was from. And the individuals who were getting summoned weren’t coming back.
Souls weren’t the same in every corporeal world. If summoned souls were piling up in this world, and that led to a chain of errors within the administrative system, then in the worst-case scenario, there could be a dimensional collapse that threatened not only the world those souls had been summoned to but also the worlds they’d been summoned from.
And a chain reaction like that could spell disaster.
The aggrieved Observers had thus decided to use a backdoor to see if they could interfere with this administrative world.
Clearly, they believed that if they waited too long to act and the threat spread beyond this world, there would be nothing they could do.
They couldn’t remain indifferent any longer.
Above all, if they didn’t retrieve the souls of those who’d been summoned to this world, there would be no repairing the damage to the fabric of reality.
They couldn’t allow even a single soul to linger in a world it was not native to.
“So they let these custodians wreak havoc in another world, then used the covenant against them to send disciples like me here. Seeing as the custodians here have been summoning people from other worlds without getting permission, the Observers do have legitimate grounds to intervene. Why didn’t they act earlier, though? I know they’re an apathetic lot, but still...”
The woman was not thrilled at having been dragged into this whole affair.
She wasn’t the only one, though. Other disciples had been sent to this world too.
As you might expect, Zelos and company were among them. Their harassment of the Four Gods was effectively laying the groundwork for the Observers to retrieve the souls stuck in this foreign world. The reincarnators were unconsciously working as probes, seeking out souls from other worlds.
And fortunately, the other Observers had obtained an Observer specimen within the “playground” they had set up.
All that remained now was to fully revive that specimen, then transfer all this world’s administrative permissions to it, and the world would have a new Observer in charge.