Author's Note: Merry Christmas to All! And to all a good night!
Chapter 138: Epilogue
Ragnarok, the war that ends all wars.
The final Clash of God and Man, the bastards chose to at least be 'sporting' about their intentions to genocide a entire planet, having chosen to engage in 13 1v2 fights to the death.
In one corner were thirteen gods, in the other were thirteen human champions gathered from throughout history and thirteen Valkyrie's in the form of 13 unique Volund or Sacred Gears. For the first round of the tournament there was Lu Bu, greatest warrior to ever step foot in China, joined by the Valkyrie called Randgriz the Shield Breaker who had taken the form of a pole arm. In the opposite corner was Thor, God of Thunder, strongest warrior in the Nordic Pantheon. As the two were about to square up with another another, a mass crashed down in between them pushing Lu Bu and Thor away from one another.
"You Fucking Morons!" As the dust cleared a white haired man in traditional Japanese clothes and a crescent moon head piece was waving it out of his face as he glared down the entire population of heaven.
"Tsukuyomi?" Thor looked confused. "You've gained weight, last time I saw you had worked yourself to skin and bones." It made sense to the Thunder God when he heard that the poor bastard had managed to put himself into a coma.
"You've lost it. Took those movies pretty hard did you?" Tsukuyomi stated as he poked Thor in his abs.
"Are you here to insult me?" Thor asked angrily.
"No but I am doing it while I'm here." Tsukuyomi stated as he prepared to deal with the situation with a clap of his hands. "I am keeping you morons from doing something that you can't take back."
And with a single clap of his hands the entire heavenly population was taken out of the Colosseum, the entire crowd of humans were confused but Tsukuyomi was replaced by a young lady with blue eyes and blonde hair carrying a bow.
"Sure, I just have to tweak the memories of all of humanity. No problem." Tanya let out a sigh as she got her bow ready. "I wonder if Kaede has any Miracles I can borrow." With that, Tanya got to work on fundamentally altering humanity's perception of the divine.
In the meantime the entire population of Heaven had been returned to their own realm, seated on the throne of god was the man who had just made off with the entire heavenly population Tsukuyomi.
"'We will establish laws to automatically regulate the functions of the mortal world. We will spread stories of ourselves, let them make, books, movies, video-games and other productions of us, and put our descendants into positions to be admired so that we can feed off of their worship. We will be able to reduce our workload to a minimum, passively feed off of their efforts, and reap the rewards.'" The Moon god let out a sigh as he wondered how it all went so wrong. "Gentlemen tell me, when did all of you get so us be damned lazy?" Various individuals were about to speak up at once. "YOU HAD ONE JOB!" Tsukuyomi on the other hand was having none of it. When he spoke he wasn't speaking to a single individual, but rather the entire population of his native realm. "Earth is in Chaos! Humanity is in an Uproar! The Multiverse is on the Brink of Collapse and you all are throwing a blasted tournament as it all burns down!"
"I suggest you watch your tone little moon god." Zeus was one of the oldest gods in the realm. "You are after all only one little moon-"
"I am the god of every domain you all have handed over to me in order to regulate." Tsukuyomi stated without hyperbole. "I am the God of the Natural laws that Humanity has come to worship as truth, and the god of outside influence who brokers every transmigration, every rebirth in another world from this one, every time someone needs a Hero summoned to their world to save them!"
Most of the world understood and believed in natural laws, other worlds had their heroes, people summoned from this world and the ones like it in order to save their's and push it forward, there were hundreds of reincarnated living the good life who all quietly thanked 'the god who brought me here' in their free time. When you thought about that the number of individuals who passively worshipped and empowered Tsukimichi could be measured in 'planetary populations.'
"And while I could deal with all of you right now it would be a waste of valuable time I need to un-fuck this mess you have landed us in!" As Tsukuyomi turned around portals opened around him stretching across the entire horizon. "Thus I will take a page out of your collective books and do unto you what you have been doing to humanity and delegate my work load."
Naofumi, the Behemoth, was the first one to arrive through the portal, his body larger and more built than any human had the right to be, a Desperado, and his army followed after, every monster that the gods of humanity had ever feared and tried to lock away were gathered before them, and all of them were grinning, mad, eager for a fight.
"Remember we need them alive!" Tsukuyomi shouted off as he left through a portal to his work station.
"Don't worry! We know a guy who can revive the dead!" Somehow that only made the various deities more concerned.
"So Ragnarok's over?" Jackie asked as he watched a sight that made him cry tears of joy and concern, Jade, his niece, was diligently studying for her exams.
"Technically it never happened." Jade stated her textbook opened in front of her as she made various notes. "All the space and time altering magic that the gods had set up to gather all those people from throughout human history was hijacked and sent them all back to where and when they came from, after we erased their memory of getting snatched that is."
"What about the gods?" Jackie looked concerned, these are the admins for the fundamental laws of reality she was talking about.
"Last I heard they were chained to a desk." Jade stated as she let out a sigh. "Can we talk about this later? I've had enough of this crazy to last me ten lifetimes." Jade stated as she indicated the school work that she had to do.
"You've had enough?" Jackie asked his face making a screw in shock. "Ever since I've stepped foot in this country I've fought Criminals, Demons, Ancient Magical Artefacts, other forces of darkness, reincarnated lunatics and a literal god. I've spent most of that time getting beaten up by a monkey, turned into a variety of monsters by my own tampering with the supernatural and I now have to come up with a reason why I'm carrying a baton around everywhere I go for the rest of my life. Right now I need to come up with a way of putting together an actual functional life for myself despite the fact that I have to live with the fact that I'm going to spend the rest of my days as a demon magnet." Jade gestured to the workload before her. "Can you help me with this?"
Jackie eagerly dug into his niece's workload. Of course what he hadn't taken into consideration was that same Baton Jade would have to explain away would also enable her travel to a variety of different worlds to satisfy her itch for adventure, and Jackie would never know she was gone. Separating her Personal and Business lives would keep Jade's family from worrying about her.
Alexandria was everything that Myne had ever hoped it would be, a magical land of scholars, engineers and other intellectuals whose singular job was to raise the quality of life of the people of this world to at least the same level as the Japan that Myne had come from. Technically the number of people to protect this place were few and far between, Myne would never force somebody into a position that they didn't want, but there was no shortage of people in the world that wouldn't kick down her proverbial sand castle in order to take her wealth, power and influence for themselves, or simply destroy it for the threat to their own life style that it represents. When this was all brought to Myne's attention she just smiled and said that 'She would read them a story before they were put to sleep.'
So long as Myne lived, no one had successfully defeated Alexandria on the field of battle, and she lived till a ripe old age.
"So. You're the Magus Association." Sakura looked down at the people who had tried to invade her town with displeasure. Admittedly the cards had caused a bit of havoc the past few years while she worked to clean them up. The Army though was overkill. "So tell me do you guys want to get your hands on my cards so badly that you're willing to trample a small town over it?"
A army from the magus association had been gathered together, most of them looked to be the part of black ops thugs, not that laid out flat on their ass's was a very good look for a bunch of two bit thugs. This was the work of the Gravity card, which made it so that any time one of them tried to get up again Gravity would just sky rocket the force that they were under and slam them into the ground again at 10G's until they got the message or died in the attempt, even if they did die Time could bring them back to life as easily as snapping his fingers. Not just the spec-ops fellows, the really dangerous ones came from the ones dressed as old fashion magicians and the various albino looking thugs in heavy armour. Kuro had warned Sakura in advance that aside from a plethora of mages and mercenaries the Magus Association also liked to employ the use of Homunculus super soldiers who traded short life spans for vastly increased physical stats.
"Well it's good to know that scum remains consistent across universes." Sakura breathed an annoyed sigh as she debated what the best way of dealing with these moronic people were someone who had yet to stick their noses on the ground was casually walking forward. An old man wearing old fashioned magician clothes. "Great. Gravity you missed one." Sakura aimed her staff at the old man, immediately a huge force left a depression around the old man as he was walking but he refused to stop. As Sakura was considering what to blast him with next the old man introduced himself.
"Hello miss Kinomoto. I am Kischur Zelretch Schweinorg." Great. The one Kuro was the most concerned about showed up.
"I've heard of you." Sakura stated as she ceased her barrage of spells.
"And I you. I must say it's not every day that I get to meet a 'Hero.'"
Fantastic, the bastard was well informed too.
"I'm not interested in becoming your apprentice." Kuro had emphasised repeatedly on the importance of making sure that Zelretch didn't take her on as an apprentice.
Apparently, he was one of the oldest mages alive, once a direct apprentice under Solomon who was himself the most prolific warlock to ever live. Overall, it can be said that Zelretch had a positive influence on the Magus association that he had helped found and build founding a strict series of laws by which the rest of the association has to abide which limits their influence on the world and in theory keeps them from ruling as it's mage kings. That said, Zelretch is also a hypocrite who doesn't obey the laws that he himself set and who was directly responsible for taking on countless promising apprentices and leaving them crippled and insane.
"Personally I find that to be a shame." Zelretch stated bluntly. "But that is not what I have come here to talk to you about."
"Is this about some of the rules you imagined into existence?" Sakura asked cocking a sidelong glance at the old man in question.
"I wouldn't call the founding charter of the Magus Association as just 'some rules I imagined.'" Zelretch looked vaguely offended. "But yes that is mostly it."
"I'm not interested in hearing them." Sakura stated bluntly. "I do not need to get a lecture on morality from people who have so little of it that they would do something like that!" Sakura indicated the Homunculi that would be lucky if they lived to be twenty years old.
"And that is a problem." Zelretch stated as he stroked his beard. "You let some very dangerous spirits loose on the world young lady."
"Irrelevant." Sakura stated bluntly. "I did not attempt to set them loose and I do not intend to do so again in this world if I don't have to. I do not need your rules to live by I have my own code of conduct, one that doesn't involve putting my friends on your dissection table for your own research or whatever inane reason you people have for what you're doing. If you're still not convinced then should I mention Naofumi Iwatani or Clow Reed as chief among my current Minders?"
Zerlretch's face cramped at that.
"Yes, I believe you've made your point clear." Zelretch paid attention to Sakura's staff, it was a cute little thing, pink with little cherub wings off to the sides, he's heard reports about it, and he imagined it was the kind of thing that a little girl would play with, which was probably part of the idea. "I'll have the Magus Association withdraw their inquiries." He had no intention of incurring the wrath of the Beast Of The Apocalypse. "Our business card." Zelretch stated as he handed over the piece of paper to Sakura. "Should you need to contact us." By way of response, Sakura abruptly turned around and left the park, with a wave of her hand she recalled the Gravity card releasing the soldiers out from under its pressure. "Should we go after her?"
"No. We are withdrawing all of our forces from this town with the exception of the observation team and emergency services." Zelretch stated matter of factually, his lack of jokes or double meanings implied that he was treating this with the utmost seriousness. "Unless there is a crisis the girl is to be left to her own devices, even if there is a crisis our actions will be limited to the sequestering and safety of civilians. Military action will only be taken if our own people go rogue." With that Zelretch oversaw the packing of the miliary forces and left the area, though he wondered who exactly told Sakura about him in advance?
"So you're going to rent out the Heroic Spirits?" Irisviel was looking at a pair of the spirits in question that were duelling each other under her husband's supervision.
"We have mouths to feed." Was Kiritsugu's simple reply.
Homunculi aren't cheap to maintain after all, even if Kuro has fixed most of their problems. For now he'd use them to clean up most of the dirty work that still needed to be done with careless magicians being a part of the reality they have to deal with on a day to day basis. In the long term if they have to deal with any more off worlders sticking their noses into this planet then they'll have an army ready and waiting to smack them.
On the flip-side Kuro was up a tree with her little friend, Atla, the proverbial love birds kissing in a tree, though he did hear her sneeze a minute ago. For now his main goal was to beat Chaldea into something resembling decency in order to counter the Magus Association and their hypocrisy, he wouldn't count on picking up morally decent recruits but so long as they sign the appropriate magic contracts they might be molded into something useful to society instead of the kind of people who kick off the Holy Grail Wars.
"Where. Is. My. Brother!?" The Ground was trembling every few moments. "Where is He!?" A monster was tearing apart the countryside.
During her final year at the Academy Katarina Claes brother Keith Claes had gone missing. She didn't take the news very well. Katarina's extensive experience with dark magic allowed her to detect traces of dark magic around the school leading up to Keith disappearing, now she really wasn't taking it so well. While releasing various Shadow animals to comb the countryside Katarina had gotten a lead. Keith was Katarina's adoptive brother, prior to that he was one of her cousins on her father's side, however he accidentally injured a couple of his brothers with Earth magic in self defence which led to his being disowned and subsequent adoption into the main branch.
Apparently Keith's older brother didn't improve very much as a person since childhood, abusing his position, privileges and the people of his territory until his father had to remove him from the line of succession. Mind you the most that the familiars were able to learn was that someone had tried to ransom Keith, so Geordo prepared the ransom, and Katarina's familiars followed it here.
"HIIIYYYAAAHHH!" Said brother was now running for his life as Katarina tore apart his home from the foundation up, her earth manipulation skills as handy as ever.
"Should we be concerned that the girl we're crushing on is basically the strongest dark mage in the world?" Alan asked his friends/rivals as he watched the carnage at a distance, at Katarina's insistence no less or they'd end up being caught in the crossfire. Katarina ended up rescuing her brother from a bizarre magic ritual to create a familiar, at which point in time she apprehended the dark mage that had been responsible for conducting the magic ritual and under the 'care' of the royal inquisition they would learn the identity of her masters and find them too.
"So after all of that you decided to come back here?" There were two Melromarcs, just like how there was two of everything when it came to that world. Of course Tanya had only one family that adopted her.
"I have more for me here than I do over there after all." Tanya stated as she handed another sheet of paper over to one of her assistants. "I made sure that the Bow took every reason I had to stay over there that I had with me." Tanya did the best that she could to prevent another world war in the world that she had been reincarnated into, the rest would have to be up to them but she had no intention of playing Nuclear deterrent. Reading about the Cold war in earth's history class was bad enough, she had no interest in living through it. She did however have one minor little thing as a condition for living here. "Make sure these documents reach the Queen."
"Yes Gen-I mean Ojou-sama." Visha took the documents with her before she went outside to fly to the castle town. She and the rest of the 203rd were making excellent messengers for the royal family, and in times of war they'd be absolute nightmares, but that seemed unlikely in the current environment, instead Tanya was having them train areal mages and were researching the production of computation orbs, which even outside of battle would still be invaluable across many different professions.
This was just sad. The entire Heavenly Palace had been arranged like a office building in Japan, complete with cubicles with dozens of individuals effectively chained to their work stations while people with deep circles under their eyes pushed carts around as they delivered files and folders to each work station. However this was not Japan, but rather the heavenly realm. After Naofumi's army of lunatics brow beat the gods into submission Tsukuyomi had this place built and the various gods moved here under the attention of the Valkyries.
"Are you sure that this is the correct course of action?" Gol asked looking at the moon god with obvious concern.
"It's a new age." Tsukuyomi's long flowing robe or head ornament were no where to be seen, they were for all intents and purposes his work clothes, the appearance that people expect him to have for lack of a better term, right now he was wearing a white button up shirt and black jeans.
"I mean you already worked yourself into a coma one time, shouldn't you be resting?" Gol asked as she looked directly at what could easily be the head of an office.
"I would love nothing more than to go off and take a long vacation. Ishtar, this needs to go to Odin." Tsukuyomi gave a folder to a young goddess who could best be summarised as 'pump but pretty' before he resumed the conversation. "But I can't. I have to get the other gods up to the point that they can manage the planet at least as well as I can." Which was a tall order, if you asked Gol's opinion, but some of them like Aphrodite have their own worlds to look after too, so when you thought about it 'able to smoothly and efficiently manage a planet' is the bare minimum. "I also have to implement Natural laws across the rest of the worlds too so that I can minimise the amount of intervention necessary." The gods were lazy, this was a unfortunate truth that had led to this situation in the first place, he thought that they wouldn't interfere if necessary, but apparently when they were pushed to do so anyway they chose 'destroy all life on Earth' as the ideal solution. Thus the widespread use of natural laws was an absolute top priority no matter what way you looked at it. "After that we'll have to create a series of laws to manage the divine realm as another way of stopping such intervention, or enable it under extremely strict conditions should it prove absolutely necessary." In other words, Tsukuyomi the workaholic was too important to take a vacation, at least until he can get the administrative situation straightened out.
Tanya wasn't the only one in the world they had been summoned too, Kaede was in the other version, the one that had already fused with Glass and the other's world. Specifically, she was in the ruins that Fitoria used to call her home, apparently now that Medea was no longer a problem she had left where Kaede did not know. That left what she had come here for.
"Is that what I think it is?" Maple had been looking at the item Naofumi had shown her, the completed Clock of the Dragon's era that Naofumi had previously explained had contained the back up copy of the world that she had been summoned to.
"Without a Hero to regulate it the world inside will disappear on its own." Naofumi explained bluntly.
"And you're giving control over it to me?" Maple asked as she sounded confused. "Are you planning on making me some kind of goddess or something?"
"You've created and remade entire worlds." Naofumi stated without a single ounce of hyperbole. It was a statement that left no room for compromise.
"Well when you put it that way." Maple just gave up her pointless resistance.
"Good girl. Press the jewel of your weapon to the centre of the clock, but don't suck it inside of your shield." Naofumi stated bluntly. Kaede followed her father's instructions.
'Clock face of the Dragon's Era Unlocked. Passive Effect: Return by Death'
'Return by Death: Every time A Legendary Hero dies they will be transported back to the day that they were summoned unless another skill revives them first'
Though in actuality this would only apply to the world inside of the Dragon's Hourglass.
"So miss goddess, what're you planning on doing now?" Naofumi smirked at his daughter with relief in his heart at seeing her healthy and whole again.
"I'm going to go home and play a video game." Maple stated as she let out a sigh. You'd think that she'd have enough of games for a lifetime after what she has been through but that wasn't it. When Maple returns to her home world she'll be returned to the same point in time as she first left, in other words she'll be able to get her childhood back, she also wants to see her friends that she can only see in New World Online.
"Somehow part of me figured that." Naofumi stated as he started to walk away.
"What about you?" Kaede was always thinking about others first and foremost, and that was no different here.
"Huu. I have a lot of people I need to make up to for what I did to them." Naofumi stated as he awkwardly scratched the back of his head. "I also have to work on pulling myself back together again too." There were probably a few thousand other 'hims' lying around after all, including the Behemoth. Pulling himself back together again would be a long painful experience but the only thing that he could think of was 'it's the minimum that I deserve after all.' "In any case let's get you back home, It's Christmas after all." Maple pumped her arm with a cheer as she quickly followed along.
Review Section:
MaelstromYY: Lo siento, no hablo español.
RonaldM40196867: True, Merry Christmas! I don't know if Season 4 has been confirmed yet, at this point I'm just hoping it doesn't get the same treatment it has gotten thus far.