On a Godless Planet:Volume3A Chapter 26

Chapter 26: Killing Gameshow

–It’s fun if all you’re doing is watching.

●

Kuwajiri heard Demeter mention the 4th generation.

“The 4th generation was involved in our origins.”

That was a generation of mythology much older than her own.

“We’re 5th…so that’s one before us.”

“Right. I’m sure there are other ways to define it, but that would be the gods who ‘were spoken of but never written down’.”

Demeter turned Kuwajiri’s way.

“And where were they? I’m sure your knowledge god has looked into it, so out with it.”

“You’re up, Kuwajiri-chan.”

“All right,” agreed Kuwajiri.

…This knowledge is right up my alley.

The beings thought to have been 4th generation could be found in a variety of places, but there was one especially likely candidate for this group.

“Anatolia.”

●

Kuwajiri opened a map in a Revelation Board. It displayed a familiar location.

“This is the Black Sea. South of it and on the very east end of the Mediterranean are the ruins of an ancient city known as Catalhoyuk. People began living there at around 7000 BCE, but it was a very well made city. With its boxy houses built with white earthen walls it could almost look modern at first glance.”

“Our ancestors built the city of Kish at around 6000 BCE, so this is even older than that…”

“Yes. And quite a few female figurines were discovered in those ruins. There were also plenty of male figurines, but there was an even wider variety of female ones.”

●

Kuwajiri spoke, aware of everyone’s attention on her.

“To start with, Catalhoyuk’s primary population was around 10 thousand at the most. And both men and women were equal in their social structure.”

“You mean the guys had big boobs too!? …Oh, I don’t need your help this time, Raidou-senpai. They were hard last time I groped them.”

“What have you people been doing?”

“If it seems like it’ll be funny, you have to go for it.”

Kuwajiri deeply disapproved of this side of her superior. But anyway, she waved her hand to dismiss the idiot’s comment.

“We can tell men and women were equal by looking at their graves.”

“You mean the men and women had the same grave goods?”

“That wouldn’t account for differences between households. It was simpler than that: Catalhoyuk practiced human head worship after death. That means some bodies are found with the head removed, but the number of men and women found were about equal.”

“That means the men and the women were worshiped, doesn’t it?”

“Yes,” confirmed Kuwajiri. “Instead of a patriarchy or a matriarchy, their society had everyone doing the same work and they shared within the community.”

Kuwajiri looked across the group and tapped the map at the point of the ruins.

“Catalhoyuk’s houses had earthen walls on all four sides and you entered and exited through the windows or roof as a security measure. We know there were no streets in the city and people walked along the roofs.”

“On the roofs? What a weird culture.”

“It was apparently to avoid attacks from enemies or wild animals. It turned the city itself into a wall against enemies and provided no streets they could use to get in.”

“Then did they not have any shrines for their gods?”

“Each house had a room or space you could call an altar room. There they hung bull skulls on the wall to deify the men and carved reliefs into the wall to deify the women.”

“So how were the female figurines you mentioned used in their lives?”

Kuwajiri answered the question from the god who could be seen as the leader of the 5th generation.

“Fascinatingly, most of them were thrown out or buried. With how many female figurines were excavated, it can be easy to assume they had a concept of a goddess back then, but apparently that wasn’t the case. It is thought those female figurines were images of women, but not goddesses.”

●

Kuwajiri continued while someone expressed their confusion.

“Most of the figurines found at Catalhoyuk were of animals, indicating they practiced a primitive worship of nature. The female figurines were only 5% of the whole and the male ones didn’t even come out to a single percentage point, but the divine male bull skulls on their walls probably helped balance it out.”

“So the bull skulls took care of the male boobs and they also had the female reliefs, but the male boobs were bigger so they used the figurines to supplement the female boobs side?”

“You’re not making any sense.”

“No, I understood him! There must have been so many animal figurines because they were using the figurines to increase the human boobs quantity with animal boobs!”

“Exactly right, Senpai!”

The idiot and his guardian deity high-fived, but Kuwajiri ignored that and kept talking.

“Some of the female figurines were found in homes, but most were discarded in what are thought to have been trash dumps. Some were also buried, but those were apparently modeled after the person being buried.”

●

“…? That’s weird.”

“What is?”

“They were nature worshipers and worshiped animals, right?”

“Yes, not only did they have bull skulls in their homes, but we know they viewed large bears as holy.”

“Then.” Athena tilted her head. “What were those female figurines? They weren’t goddesses? And they threw them out?”

“Maybe they were substitutes.”

●

Everyone turned my way all at once. I felt a little awkward.

“U-um, that’s a thing, right? Like in old folk medicine where you make a paper doll and transfer someone’s ‘sickness’ into it and throw it into the river.”

“In Shinto, Izanagi used a substitute to escape from Izanami after she got a little carried away in Yomi. And in ancient Japan, some think the clay dogu figures were used for that sort of ‘substitution healing’. The theory is they were broken or cut in the same place as a patient’s ailment. Some that may have been grave goods have also been found.”

Exactly right. Meaning…

“With birth and menstruation, a female culture may have developed where they created figurines as substitutions and then discarded them in an emergency or upon death to rid themselves of impurity.”

“Or something like that?”

“Maybe show more confidence in your idea?”

“No, no, no. I’m already pushing myself too far!”

“But.” Kuwajiri-san gave a quick nod. “We of course can’t know the details since they left no written records. But the discarded female figurines often have their head removed or are have another part broken or cut off.”

“Sounds a lot like the dogu.”

“Would that mean the female figurines were stand-ins for whoever owned them?”

“Yes. Catalhoyuk lacked a common female image that they appeared to worship. Even when female images were accompanied by livestock or a lion, it is thought those things were used to indicate social status.”

“So they didn’t have a goddess… Hard to say if that was just Catalhoyuk or if that was common for the time period, but did the humans there only worship animals, ancestral spirits, and natural phenomena?”

“Then how does Catalhoyuk connect to the 4th generation…or rather to our goddess?”

“I’ve already given a bit of the answer,” said Kuwajiri-san. “One of the female figurines excavated at Catalhoyuk had an odd shape. From the front, it was a many-breasted image of ‘female divinity’. But from behind, it revealed a frail and bony figure.”

Meaning…

“Female life and death. To give birth and to die. It is thought that figurine was meant to represent both of those things.”

●

Athena didn’t understand.

“Didn’t you just say the female figurines weren’t of a goddess? Hadn’t we settled on them being stand-ins for their owners?”

“Correct. It is thought Catalhoyuk did not yet worship what we think of as a goddess. Their agriculture was too underdeveloped to worship a harvest goddess and they were mostly reliant on hunting to survive. That is why they worshiped animals.”

“Then it doesn’t make sense.”

Because…

“Why would they find a female figurine that represents life and death instead of being modeled after the owner?”

“You already have the answer. Think about it carefully.”

“What am I supposed to-”

Then it hit her. With little concept of agriculture, they had not yet created a harvest goddess. But they would already have another concept.

“Life and death!”

●

Kuwajiri nodded.

“Right. The excavation of Catalhoyuk is not yet complete, but there is one phenomenon that will be related to women before agriculture or hunting: life and death.”

So…

“The concept of life and death will form before any god. That means one of the original gods will be a god of life and death.”

What did this indicate?

“The concept of a goddess was not born in Catalhoyuk of ancient Anatolia and there is no evidence of it there. But while it still had no name and it isn’t clear if it was worshiped, they were aware of ‘life and death’.”

●

<In fact, the act of burial is a primitive religious act that implies an awareness of the concept of spirits or one’s ancestors.>

“In Japan, graves from about 20 thousand years ago have been found in Hokkaido, but more than just burying people, these included grave goods, including items that could only have been acquired through trade with the continent.”

“They were trading with the continent 20 thousand years ago?”

“The Jomon period begins at around 11000 BCE, which means humans of the earlier stone age had made it all the way there by then.”

<To give you some advance information, the oldest graves in the world are known to be where archaic humans placed bodies in caves. Their time period can only be estimated, but they go back as far as about 2.5 million years ago.>

“I remember someone saying there are Cro-Magnon graves from 70 thousand years ago.”

“With numbers that big, you really have to wonder what human culture was like back then.”

“Yeah, they wouldn’t have even had language then.”

●

“Anyway,” sighed Demeter.

She thought that was enough setting the stage. So…

“Do you get the general picture?”

Every eye was on her. Quite a nice feeling, she thought. And…

“From here on, this will include some speculation. Because it doesn’t just involve me.”

“So you’re getting to the point now?”

“That’s right.” She smiled a little. “The fundamental concept of life and death spread from Anatolia to the surrounding regions at some point. Do you know why that is?”

“The Black Sea, right?”

She didn’t have to wait for a response. You were waiting to say that, weren’t you? she thought, but that was correct.

Then someone else reacted. Demeter knew one head would go up after hearing the knowledge god’s answer.

“How about that, Echidna?”

“You mean the mass migration of the surrounding peoples due to flooding of the Black Sea, don’t you!?”

●

“That’s right. The foundation was built in Catalhoyuk at around 7000 BCE, but the Black Sea had already begun flooding by then. Catalhoyuk received refugees, or it may have been built by them in the first place.”

Furthermore…

“Catalhoyuk was expanded a few times, but the last major expansion was at 5600 BCE. That coincides with when the Black Sea’s flooding ended and the water level stabilized.”

●

”

“Listen. If Catalhoyuk’s female figurines, which were modeled after their owners and represented the concept of life and death, spread to other places, what do you think happened then?”

There was only one answer.

Time passed and the humans advanced.

“The expansion of culture and civilization in different places ended up mixing together those ideas, making them into gods.”

“So you mean they were originally perceived as natural phenomena or human work, but it all became complexly intertwined and they became something else entirely over the course of history. Then the images and figurines became traditions rather than their owners and then they became ancestral spirits or nature gods.”

“Right. The idea of life and death eventually created a god of life and death. And as agricultural technology advanced, they gained a harvest god. And from there, the roles of the gods grew more specialized. So…”

Demeter raised three fingers.

“At Catalhoyuk, they were only meant to be modeled after their owners, but in later times, the mixture of cultures around Anatolia generally went from their primitive nature worship to having three goddesses: life, death, and harvest. The cycle of life and death can also be applied to the regeneration of new plants growing to be harvested. Also, in that region we see the goddesses having more power than the male gods.”

“Like me?”

Right.

“The sea gods and river gods tend to be goddesses. Then what about the male gods? You can see that with Mr. V there. He was the god of springs and his wife Salacia was the sea god.”

“It was the same for me. I’m a god of the earth and sea, but my wife Amphitrite has the greater ocean power since she is the daughter of Oceanus.”

Then a hand went up.

The human’s.

“What is it, human? Do you have a question?”

Of course he did, so she would hear it here. She more or less knew what it would be.

“So, hey. The relative strengths and positions of the gods can come from one people conquering or joining with another, right?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Then,” he said. “Then is that where the Hades abduction story and Seaweed Man’s wife’s story come from?”

●

Demeter nodded at the human’s question.

“Europe – and Greece in particular – was originally a land of many different forms of nature worship, so the later goddesses and spirits there were in charge of a great many phenomena. We were worshiped in that way and we already had our doctrines in place by 1500 BCE. But later on the people who became the Greeks attacked.”

She explained.

“The attacking tribes’ main gods were Zeus and Poseidon. Some theorize that Hades was as well. So after the war, those main gods were brought together as brothers, creating Greece. That established the heavens, earth, sea, and underworld we rule.”

“You mean…?”

“Yes. Poseidon over there wasn’t originally a sea god. He was an earth god. He was the god of a people who rode horses. Same for Hades.”

So…

“After Hades abducted Persephone, it was only natural he was indebted to her and that she was depicted as being superior to him as if she were the true ruler. Because the underworld originally belonged to Persephone and it was Hades who stole it from her.”

And…

“Zeus took me, a harvest god, as one of his wives while Kore, goddess of life, and Persephone, goddess of death, were given to Hades. In other words, our people were won over by a combining of myths.”

●

“That was as lot all at once.”

“As exciting as I find this, I think you’re stating this with too much confidence.”

“It’s true that the people who worshiped Demeter were conquered. And that Greek mythology was developed afterwards. In a way, you could think of this as ‘unwritten information’ about the myths.”

“But even with just the confirmed parts, it does look like Greek mythology went through some major syncretism.”

“Yeah, and it came from a lot of conquering and joining together by the humans.”

“Mr. Vomit! Did you get your wife through a conquering marriage too!?”

“Huh? Our mythology was formed by stealing the form of Olympus mythology, but for whatever reason the power balance between husband and wife went untouched and my wife ended up far more powerful.”

“Maybe we shouldn’t have asked…”

“Wait, aunt, if the myths point back to what the humans did, then what does it mean that you got so furious you beat the crap out of Zeus?”

“My worshipers were the warrior type.”

<In truth, Demeter worship came as a set with Persephone and Kore. And they did some wild things with poppy leaves in their secret rites, which apparently caused a lot of problems.>

“The poppy is my lucky item and I don’t just mean the pretty flower. I mean the opium poppy that can get you high.”

“So Busty Olympus is a real yakuza…”

“I’d always wondered why she was like this, but I think this answers that question once and for all.”

●

“So is this like how I’m a harvest god, my sister is a death god, and we also have Ninhursag as a birth god?”

“You see the same pattern in Shinto with my sister as a birth god and me as a lifespan god.”

“We have that too. I wonder if the idea traveled up from Anatolia to the Caucasus and then to Scandinavia?”

●

“Listen,” said Demeter.

“As you can see, my authority is primarily as a harvest god and with some life and death thrown in, but that is because I am one of the three goddesses. Which means I have no connection to the water. So…”

So…

“I can’t cause a flood. My origins in the concept of the 4th generation goddess of life and death proves it beyond a shadow of a doubt. Got that?”

●

“I see,” said Mr. V, glancing over at Kido standing next to him.

“It takes courage to reveal that much about your identity.”

“It does. We already concluded she has no problem related to alibi or motive, so we can call her not guilty.”

“Yes! Echidna, that’s a really good decision for you!”

“Do you want me to hit you with a Yamanashi right here and now?”

●

“I more or less get it, but this three goddesses concept is found everywhere, huh?”

“Um, uh, we, uh, have that too.”

“The three goddess of Irish mythology, right? Greek mythology has the Moirai sisters and our Hecate, Selene, and Artemis have a moon or sun motif, which creates a trinity of life, death, and rebirth.”

“Doesn’t that conflict with your identity, Demeko-chan?”

“No, the Moirai sisters were originally a goddess named Moirai who was split into three sisters. Hecate and the other two were originally from different lands and they were only later treated as a trinity, so they may have each ended up that way after encountering the same concept that led to me.”

“We also have three sisters who represent the future, the present, and the past, but they work a bit differently from the Greek ones. Is that because yours were developed later on?”

“Oh, you mean the sisters who it seems like a bad idea to say their names out loud!?”

“If you applied that idea to us, I suppose Kore would be the future, I would be the present, and Proserpina would be the past.”

●

<While Europe does have regions with goddess-based myths as well as a concept of queens or female warriors born from a viewpoint of equality between the sexes, there are no mythologies with only goddesses and no known matriarchal states there, so do be careful there.>

“Who knew you could take things so seriously…”

<I always take things seriously.>

“During the women’s liberation movement that began in the US during the 1960s, Catalhoyuk’s female figurines and Europe’s goddess culture were used in what became known as the Goddess Movement and various issues there continue to be debated.”

●

Mr. V’s thoughts were simple.

“Rome had it easy.”

“Yes, you weren’t joined with another mythology after losing a war.”

“In that sense, your Scythian mythology is pretty unique.”

“As equestrian hunters, they lived a simple life and didn’t need many gods. They repeatedly migrated around Central Asia and entered Europe at around 700 BCE, so the European mythologies were already well established by then.”

“From our perspective, the ancient simplicity of Kido’s Scythians was unusual. From the Scythian perspective, the European gods must have had a lot they could borrow to use in their lives and leadership.”

“That’s right,” agreed Kido. And she looked to the last person on the list.

Dan Anne. The representative of Irish mythology.

“U-um, it’s a pleasure to meet you.”

“Likewise. …I imagine your mythology came from the indigenous gods like Demeter passing through the Celtic cultures without receiving much influence from Greece or the Middle East and eventually arriving at their end point.”

“Our end point was in the west.”

“True,” agreed Mr. V before raising his right hand.

“Then let us begin our questioning of the Irish representative.”

●

“Can they really just move on like this?”

Scarecrow’s boss turned back from where she was checking through the library shelves.

“Hm? You mean Dan-kun’s questioning? She goes last. So say the rules.”

“You know, since they haven’t found a clear culprit yet, doesn’t that mean the Irish representative must have done the flooding?”

“Yes. Everyone was declared not guilty so far. Thus, by the process of elimination, Dan-san must be responsible.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t be so sure.”

“How can you deny that logic?”

“It’s simple.” Omokane smiled bitterly. “We’re gods. Anything goes here and we all love a party. So let’s just watch and see what happens.”

●

This one should be easy, was Kido’s opinion regarding Dan.

…She barely has any connection to us, so she won’t have a motive.

That much was obvious.

This divine world existed for the terraforming, so the flooding affecting the running of the divine world had to either be an attack on the terraforming or an accident.

But Dan had no connection to the gods here, so she had next to no reason to attack the terraforming.

It was possible she had found a reason to resent them without ever meeting them, but that would prove a challenge. Unless you were dealing with a cursed god, they couldn’t express their power like that.

So when Kido asked, it was mostly just for confirmation.

“Dan-san? Do you have an alibi? What were you doing last night?”

“Yes. I was up on the roof looking at the stars.”

“Oh, isn’t stargazing wonderful? Tachikawa is bright, but the Showa Memorial Park and Tachihi are dark enough that we can see the stars from our balconies if we look in the right direction.”

<I seem to recall an idiot who fell from her balcony trying to spy on her fave, rather than stargazing.>

“That was an accident! An accident!”

“And what would you have done if that accident hadn’t occurred?”

“Eh!? Senpai, you look up into the night sky from your balcony!? Then I’ll look up at you from below your balcony at night!”

“After what must be happening to your balcony as we speak, let’s just say I doubt you’re getting your security deposit back.”

Douhai-san froze in place for a moment and then silently prostrated toward Kido.

“U-um, can you please arrange for repairs since I’m too weak a god to do it myself!?”

“Eh? Eh? What’s going on?”

You really shouldn’t think about it too much.

●

Mr. V asked the next question.

“Let’s move on to the question of motive.”

He gestured toward the group in the courtyard.

“Do any of them piss you off? If so, please come by the faculty room later on.”

“Not so fast! That’s a leading question!”

“Yeah! That’s like asking her to give my name!”

“I really doubt that one would work when she doesn’t know you.”

<Eshtar has a baffling tendency to attack complete strangers in her myths, so that would be the ordinary reaction to her.>

“With her, there really are times when you think ‘wait, did I miss an episode?’ ”

“Ah ha ha! That suddenness is what makes it so great! It’s a surprise!”

“Eshita-san? You’re scaring Dan-san, so could you be quiet?”

“Yes, ma’m! I’ll be quiet!”

“Oh, um…thank you.”

●

“…”

“Hey! Wait! Did you hear that!? She thanked me! Did you hear it!? An actual thank you! Isn’t that weird!? I mean, what does that even mean!? Seriously, did everyone else hear that!? It was so weird! I mean, me being thanked! Weird, right!?”

“What kind of life have you lived?”

“So is Mucho glitching out?”

“Given her small vocabulary, it’s possible she’s been running on 8KB.”

<Don’t be rude. I made her, so her underlying data is of the highest level. That data may have deteriorated thanks to her personality and actions, but still.>

“Heyyyyyyyyyyyyyy! All I have to do is be cute and eat Karamucho, so stop insulting me!”

“That’s a terrible defense. Also, apologize to Koikeya.”

“Thiiiis is why you need to maaaake people thank you.”

“Come to think of it, including ‘thanking god’ in your doctrines is quite the power move.”

●

Anne wasn’t sure what to say.

“Um, I don’t have…anything against…any of them.”

“Are you sure!? You have the perfect excuse to vent here!”

“Are you asking her to confess, or is this something else?”

Now she really didn’t know what to say.

But it was true she had nothing against them.

“I mean…I barely know…any of them.”

And…

“I planned to…watch the stars again tonight…so this rain…is a problem.”

●

I clapped my hands together and addressed the others.

“Okay! I just figured it out! Dan-san is a pure person who mistook the genre of this meeting! So let’s try not to do anything that will worry her! So no weird noises, no telling people to die like it’s second nature, no chugging alcohol, and no shouting nonsense she won’t know how to process! No talking about opium poppy and no discussing your past misdeeds! Is that clear? The only acceptable topic of conversation is big boobs worship!”

“With that last part, you went from doing a bad job to doing a terrible job.”

“You were just finding fault with everything you could think of, weren’t you?”

“I can accept your terms since you didn’t exclude slag-tering, but we really do need to consider Dan-san’s position here.”

“Kido-san! Kido-san! I thought excluding that one went without saying!”

●

“I’ve sort of lost track of what we’re even talking about, but what about your authority?”

This was the final question. If she could get past this one, then Irish mythology was in the clear.

But her response was accompanied by a tilt of the head.

“I’m…not sure on that one.”

“Not sure how?”

“Ireland’s mythology begins with a flood legend taken from Christianity, right?”

“And the flood is related to the land of Ireland, so their mother earth goddess would have that authority, right?”

Right. They had discussed this earlier. So…

“Oh.”

Mr. V realized why the Irish representative was tilting her head.

“The flood in Irish mythology would be part of their mother earth goddess’s authority as it is related to the land of Ireland, but the flood itself has its origins in Christianity, doesn’t it?”

“Y-you stole my line!”

They all ignored him.

●

Anne didn’t really understand this either.

“It’s part of the mythology…so it is part of my authority.”

But…

“I didn’t cause it. Do you know what I mean?”

Someone reacted to this.

“It’s part of her authority, but she didn’t cause it. Aunt, does that mean…?”

“I have no idea what she’s talking about, so maybe I should start snorting some poppy flower.”

●

By the time Kido-san turned around, Demeter-san had already dashed around behind Dan-san.

“Hey, hey, Echidna! Can’t Yamanashi me now, can you!?”

“It isn’t launched from me, so I can send it vertically from directly above or below you, you know?”

“Wouldn’t that obliterate the courtyard?”

“I don’t know if it was a crisis situation giving me a flash of brilliance, but I just thought of a new term: Vertical Yamanashi.”

“That would also spell the end for the Shinto terraforming.”

“Why does everyone just assume I’m going to Yamanashi her?”

“It’s alright! I know you can figure out a way to make it work! Can’t you!?”

“Well, if you insist, I guess I can do it…”

“Kido-san! Kido-san! You’re about to trick yourself into doing a Vertical Yamanashi! You need to stop! No Yamanashi-ing!!”

●

“I propose a truce.”

Kuwajiri raised her hand to fix this. Kido nodded back.

“Yes, this really isn’t the time.”

“See? Yet again I was right.”

Past Demeter, Athena was waving her hands in a “just ignore her!” kind of way, so Kuwajiri chose to do precisely that.

And she thought about what Dan had said earlier.

“Now that you mention it, it is true that the opening flood in Irish mythology is the flood from the legend of Noah’s deluge, so it doesn’t actually belong to Irish mythology.”

“So because it’s something that happened in her mythology, she has authority over flooding, but the starting switch was flipped by Christianity?”

“In that case, if Dan-senpai wanted to start a flood, would she need to convert to Christianity or otherwise gain the right to do so?”

Kuwajiri agreed.

But someone raised their hand.

“May I say something?”

“What is it?”

“Didn’t the boss of a certain major religion say he had repeatedly hit the flood button last night?”

●

“No, it couldn’t be. That couldn’t have acted as the switch…could it?”

“Floods are soooo much fun. But I have a Maaaac so it’s in blaaaack and whiiiite.”

“The plot thickens.”

“What do you say, Balancer?”

<I want to say it’s ridiculous, but when it comes to you gods, you never can be sure.>

●

Mr. V made a decision. He knew what had to be done.

“The Irish representative is not guilty!”

●

“Huh? Doesn’t that make everyone not guilty?”

“Eh!? Hold on! If no one else is guilty, does that make me guilty!? It does, doesn’t it!?”

“So is that a persecution complex, or a guilty conscience?”

“It doesn’t make any sense to me, but if Eshita-chan is willing to take the blame, I’m not sure I would argue the point.”

“So if we do declare Eshtar to be guilty, what happens next?”

“As initially planned, I will slag-ter all the suspects other than myself.”

“Wait, wait. But I wasn’t just found not guilty – I was found entirely irrelevant.”

●

“Then how about this?”

Kido raised a hand and made a suggestion.

“Other than Mr. V’s crime of irrelevance, some of the not guilty suspects had their suspicion only tentatively cleared.”

“There were two of those, right?”

“Yes,” replied Kido as the two in question stepped forward.

“Th-that would be me.”

“And me too. So what happens now?”

“Well. I would like to just Yamanashi the two of you and declare the case closed, but I can’t Yamanashi Dan-san because that would remove a busty goddess from the world, which would make Izumi sad.”

“At least try to hide your personal interests here.”

I prefer to be open and honest. But on the other hand, she couldn’t just let them go. So…

“How about the two of you fight a duel? The loser can accept responsibility for the incident by eliminating the flood and cleaning up afterwards.”

So…

“This would mean a duel between the representatives of two mythologies: Irish Representative Dan Anne-san and Olympus Representative Poseidon.”

Back to Chapter 25

Return to Main Page

Forward to Afterword