Going back to moments before...
Inside the [Prison], Yakumo had defeated the wicked devout in the diver suit with the sacred treasure. With that, we could say that we’d achieved our minimum objective. Once we’d finished clearing up the other wicked devout, we could celebrate.
The problem was this gold crown, Gould. He was staring over in Yakumo’s direction despite me being poised ready to take him on.
What is he doing?
It didn’t seem like he was frozen in shock at the defeat of a member of the wicked devout or anything.
“Veraenderung.”
Suddenly, Gould’s right hand changed into that ice pick again.
Crap! Is he gonna—?!
“Lanze.”
Gould flew toward the barrier and stabbed the ice pick right into it. Cracks formed in the [Prison] before it completely shattered.
“Huh?!”
“Yakumo!”
The moment the [Prison] broke, Yakumo leaped away from where Gould was about to strike.
“Veraenderung: Schwert.”
The spear-like ice pick morphed into a sword, and Gould immediately slashed at Yakumo with it as she ran. Yakumo used the sacred treasure to block it.
The two blades collided...and Gould’s sword ate halfway into the sacred treasure.
“Devour: Gluttony.”
“What?!”
Gould’s sword wrapped around Yakumo’s as if it were alive and slowly, the sacred treasure lost its platinum sheen.
What’s going on? Is the sacred treasure losing its divinity? Can Gluttony Slimes consume even that?! Wait, no...
“Hm?”
Suddenly, the gold tentacles wrapped around the sacred katana cracked and dissolved into sand. Gould jumped backward.
“The erosion was blocked...? But this is...?! What an incredible amount of energy! With this...!”
“Did he just say erosion?”
Is it like we thought?!
The crumbled plating of his hand reverted back to normal. Gould’s eyes were filled with delight as he opened and shut his fist.
“Who are you? Are you...the god of erosion?” I asked, noticing how Gould’s behavior had clearly changed. Had a fragment of the god of erosion that had escaped from the Divine Realm taken over this gold crown and was now in control of its Q-Crystal?
“I am both the gold crown and the one who rules the crowns. My previous name was Chrom Ranchesse, the High Master of the crowns.”
“What?!”
This was Chrom Ranchesse?! The genius Gollem engineer that created the crowns?! What was going on here?!
“With this, our wish shall be granted. I will draw out the full power of the gold crown.”
Gould—Chrom Ranchesse—stretched out his small gold hand in front of him.
“Spatial Distortion.”
The space in front of Gould began to twist. With his hand at the center, the surrounding space distorted like a whirlpool and left a large gaping hole.
Wait, no!
Gould jumped into that hole and the space immediately returned to normal. By that time, the gold crown was no longer present.
Was that not...the blue crown, Distortion Blau’s crown skill, Spatial Distortion?
Assuming that the time manipulation abilities present in his wings came from the black crown, Chronos Noir’s, then did that mean this gold crown could use crown skills after all? And those of various types? What was going on here?!
“Grah!”
Out of nowhere, there was a loud bang behind me, and when I turned to face the source, I saw that the woman with the iron mask who had been fighting Frei had slammed her metallic orange mace into the front monitor, damaging it. Was that the power of her wicked vessel? Wait, the Divinity Neutralization wasn’t in effect... Was it because the sacred treasure had its divinity stolen from it?! The weapon no longer had any energy to use its trait!
The footage from the cracked monitor disappeared, and water gushed from the cracks into the bridge like a laser beam due to the water pressure.
“What did you just do?!”
“Didn’t think I’d ever have to press this!”
The woman with the iron mask smashed through the glass cover on the console and slammed the button underneath down as hard as she could with her mace. The next moment, a bright red light began flashing in the submarine and a security alarm began blaring.
Oh, don’t tell me...
“Activating self-destruct sequence. Warning: in one minute, the Ark’s magic reactor will be raised to a critical level and the ship will self-destruct. Countdown commencing: 59, 58...”
“A self-destruct device?! Dammit, you mean it’s the same as Chrom Ranchesse’s lab back in Xenoahs?!”
Why were scientists so desperate to shove self-destruct systems into their creations?!
“Father! We must escape!”
“[Gate]!”
Yakumo reverted the sacred treasure to its original form while I opened a [Gate] to Val Albus. Yae went through first to confirm it was safe, and then the kids jumped in after her. After that came Hilde, and then finally me and Gold. Gold was still standing staring at the space that Gould had disappeared from, but when I called out to him, he obediently came through the [Gate] with me.
Just as I went to jump through myself, I caught sight of the two wicked devout making their escape through the corridor that the gold bird Gollem had created. They probably had an evacuation ship somewhere, or maybe some leftover Kyklops.
With another bang, a huge section of the monitor broke off, releasing even more water.
Shit! It won’t last much longer!
I dashed through the [Gate] into the bridge of the Val Albus.
“Albus, evacuate this area immediately! Full speed!”
“Understood.”
The white whale ship changed direction and dashed through the ocean depths at a speed it had never gone before. There was a brief flash, then a massive shock wave came from immediately behind us. The monitors attached to the probes that had been watching the Ark went dark the moment the explosion traveled through the water; they must have been destroyed in the blast.
We sent another probe toward the site of the explosion.
“I can confirm the destruction of the Ark,” Val Albus reported. “Several pieces of wreckage can be detected. Do you wish to retrieve them?”
“Hmm...”
The most important parts were probably completely pulverized, but maybe we could find something useful from the pieces that were left.
Guess there’s no harm in taking them...
“Father! Look!” Frei shouted. I turned toward where she was pointing. It was a different monitor that was displaying the fight over in Lassei. Pictured was the gold crown, Gould—or, no, Chrom Ranchesse? Well, whichever name was correct, Gould was on the battlefield. Did he teleport there using Spatial Distortion?
He really could use crown skills, and without paying any price whatsoever. I suppose you could count part of the Gluttony Slime being the price paid, but compared to the other crowns, it was much more efficient. What was worse, he’d not just absorbed a fragment of the god of erosion, but even stolen my divinity from the sacred treasure. Even an idiot could tell how bad this situation was getting.
“Father, look at that!”
“What is he doing? Wait, is he...eating the Kyklops?”
Gould had sent out the feathers from its gold wings, and they all turned into Slime as they consumed the Kyklops around them—whether they were broken or still moving. I could understand attacking the Frame Gears, but why their own allied forces? Was it to gain the divinity of the wicked god? Was he trying to absorb not just my divinity, but that of a different god as well? What could he be trying to do that would make that necessary?
“Touya-dono, it is pointless for us to just sit here, it is. Let us go to the battlefield!”
“Y-Yeah, good idea. [Teleport]!”
I teleported everyone to the Lassei coast upon Yae’s insistence. By the time we arrived, the Gluttony Slime feathers were already being recovered by Gould. The only Kyklops left behind was the metallic red one—was that the one with the wicked devout as the pilot?