The boy snapped his fingers. At that exact moment, Koharu’s knees buckled, and she collapsed to the ground.
“Ah, huh? I’m sure I was channeling a god just a moment ago. What in the world is happening to me right now?”
“You’ve dispersed the spirit energy dwelling within you now that I’ve scattered the divine aura you tried to channel,” the boy commented, his voice smooth and contemptuous. “Call it what you will, a god or a mountain spirit, but it doesn’t change the fact that you couldn’t even wield it. If you could, you’d be fighting me for maybe thirty seconds rather than collapsing before I even flick my finger.”
Cordelia’s brow furrowed. “Scattered my divine aura?”
He continued stepping closer with a horrifyingly casual confidence for one so tiny. “Your skill level is… mediocre. Yet your bloodline is solid. Divine potential does run in your family. But frankly, I don’t need you. If you bear any demon or ogre blood, the gods themselves would deny you power, so to me, you’re still just useless.”
With that, he pivoted and strode back toward the forest, but Koharu wasn’t one to drop so easily.
She rose to her feet again, her voice trembling. “Wait! Please, wait!”
He turned back, annoyed yet intrigued by her persistence.
“You don’t just want mercy. You want to understand, don’t you?”
She nodded, spirit unbroken.
“Fine,” he said with a theatrical sigh. “Here’s the deal. I’m letting you live, for now, but you exist to witness my debut, a Demon God’s first battle. You’ll be my herald, feeding your people stories about me and spreading word among your leaders.”
He paused, then added with a smirk, “And what’s the point of me pausing… if you expect a fight?”
Koharu closed her eyes as electricity sparked in her black hair, static lifting it momentarily before gravity reclaimed it.
“You’re right,” she admitted, voice steady. “Manifesting power like this twice in one short span breaks the rules of divine beings or demons, since there are limits. You can’t unleash your godly form again so soon. Not for days.”
The boy grinned, though curiosity glinted in his eyes. “Ah, seeing a loophole?”
“Perhaps there is one,” Koharu said.
He raised his brow, halfway amused, halfway warning. “Oh? A method?”
“It’s important to understand something,” Koharu said quietly, her voice trembling, but not from fear. “The gods I call don’t help me out of kindness. They do it because of an ancient pact. Lord Mikazuchi, the Thunder God, aids me only because he’s bound to, however reluctantly.”
The Demon God tilted his head, intrigued but unimpressed. “And?”
“Breaking that pact, defying the rules of descent, is forbidden, yes. But forbidden doesn’t mean impossible.”
He scoffed, folding his arms. “You’d force a high-tier spiritual being to violate divine law for your own desperation? Do you even understand what that means? These spirits withdrew from the physical world for a reason. When they lend their power, even briefly, it distorts the balance. If one of them intervenes too often, or too soon after a previous descent, they’re punished. That’s the rule. One you’re about to break.”
“I know,” she whispered. “But I can’t back down. Not this time. I won’t.”
Because deep down, Koharu already understood what had truly scarred her. It wasn’t just loss. It was the shame of inaction.
The night her village was annihilated, she hadn’t fought or even screamed. She hadn’t done anything. While the people she loved bled and burned, she’d hidden, curled in a dark, dusty cellar, too paralyzed by fear to move, to even cry.
She’d told herself she’d been powerless. That the seal on her spirit arts had stripped her of strength. But that wasn’t the whole truth. Even without divine power, she could’ve done something, just as the other villagers had, the men swinging farming tools at monsters three times their size while the women—mothers, grandmothers—used their bodies to shield the children.
But she’d just sat there. Shivering. Waiting.
And yet, her hands had still worked. She could’ve thrown herself in front of someone. She could’ve stood. She could have moved.
They had died to protect her because she was the shrine maiden, supposed to be the future of their bloodline and the vessel worthy of godhood. They’d died with that belief in their hearts.
And she had let them, but never again.
Even now, Koharu couldn’t lie to herself as she remembered the collective agreement reached by the elders and villagers after long, solemn discussion. If her role was simply to survive, then so be it, for a shrine maiden’s duty was to endure and carry the gods into the next generation.
Yet when she realized she couldn’t summon the divine because the seal cut her off from the gods just as the enemy arrived at their gates, her body had simply gone numb. Her thoughts had turned to static, so she hadn’t fought back or even asked why when they led her to the underground chamber. She had run not by choice but because someone else told her to, leaving her no option.
“I guess that’s what it all comes down to, doesn’t it?” she murmured, barely audible.
Somewhere deep within her mind stirred a familiar voice, calm and powerful.
Koharu Saegusa. Is that what eats at you? That your house fell into ruin, and now the world sees you as weak?
That’s part of it, she admitted.
Or is it the demons who destroyed your village? The monsters still running loose across the world, unpunished? Is that what you can’t forgive?
That too.
Then this is my final question, the god said, his voice like the rumble of a storm. What is it you truly can’t forgive?
Koharu inhaled sharply. Her pulse thundered in her ears. This wasn’t a god’s judgment; it was her own.
And for the first time in her life, she answered not with thoughts, but with her voice. Her truth.
“The one I can’t forgive… is myself!” she screamed. “If I let this moment slip away, if I stay a coward, if I don’t fight now, I’ll stay a loser for the rest of my life!”
So please, give me your strength!
Her plea cracked the sky.
A surge of violet lightning exploded around her, illuminating the battlefield in blinding arcs of raw divine energy. The blast radius alone covered over ten meters, scorching the earth beneath her feet. Thunder boomed like the wrath of the heavens. At its center, Koharu let out a defiant, unrestrained cry that shook the air itself.
“Divine Warrior, descend once more: Take-Mikazuchi!”
Lightning roared across the heavens as Koharu bellowed the incantation, her voice raw with determination. Violet arcs of power surged outward in all directions, distorting the air with divine wrath. The boy—no, the so-called Demon God—raised an eyebrow, his expression one of genuine surprise that quickly soured into a frown.
“A human,” he muttered, incredulous. “A mere human, drawing upon a high spirit’s power twice in one day?”
But then, with a shake of his head, he dismissed the thought.