“Eeek!”
Alus’s bright blue eyes fixed her with a glare full of cold wrath. It was enough to make the supernal Goddess herself shriek like a little girl. He lashed out with his sword, striking to sever her neck from her body, but just before the blade made contact her form vanished into thin air.
“She got away...” Alus muttered.
The dull training sword was an object of the mortal world. In theory it should have no effect on the Goddess. But in that moment, Alus’s sword was full of his own sheer lethality and love for his sister. It had been enough to make the Goddess flee in defeat.
“So, some troublemaker has set her eyes on my sister, has she? What on earth did she do to earn the ire of a goddess, I wonder...” Alus said to himself, sighing as he sheathed his blade. “We’ve heard rumors about her journey in the Royal Capital, so I suppose she must be well, though I can’t help but worry. She said she would visit home for summer vacation, I believe. Perhaps I should pay the family a visit as well, to see how she’s doing...”
The bell sounded, declaring an end to the class period. Alus had already begun devising plans for the upcoming summer vacation.
† † †
“Damn it, damn it, damn it all to hell!” the Goddess raged, cursing and sputtering and really sounding nothing like a goddess at all. “That human! How could I allow a human to rattle me like this, not once but twice?!”
The first time the Goddess had run away, she had fled from Kanata Aldezia. This time it was from her younger brother Alus. What in the world was with that pair of siblings?! The younger brother, Alus, didn’t seem to be a heavy soul at all—he was an ordinary human of this world. What, then, explained his strength? That slash should have had no effect on her, even if it had hit. But as the Goddess touched a finger to her neck, she could still feel a slight pain and a trickle of blood. As ashamed as she was for running in fear, perhaps it had not been an incorrect judgment.
“Was that...D-Dimension Cutter?”
The irresistible cutting skill that nullified all resistances. The boy had not even been made a Hero yet. There was no reasonable way he could have used that technique. And yet, the attack he had unleashed against her seemed to have been an incomplete version of just that ability. Once again, she had come upon a being capable of defying the laws set by the gods.
The Goddess looked at the bit of blood on her fingertip and trembled. “Wh-What is going on?” she asked. “Another monster...”
She didn’t have a moment to lose. She needed to select the next Hero immediately and begin giving her oracles to people all over the land. She would assemble a party of mighty warriors with high-ranking Professions to kill Kanata and her brother.
Hoping that the next Hero she found would be easier to manipulate, the Goddess set out again on her search.