Chapter 338: Aftermath

Arthur floated above the churning surface of the sea, his fingers wrapped tightly around the throat of the last living Godking, the god's legs kicking uselessly against water that no longer offered any purchase. Behind him, a huge gash across his own chest slowly stitched itself back together, muscle and skin knitting closed with the same efficiency that had carried him through the entire fight, though even he could feel exhaustion settling in. The Godking beneath his grip managed to force out a few broken words between labored, choking breaths.

"T... this is not the en..."

He never finished the sentence. Arthur's grip tightened and with a sharp, decisive twist the sound of a cervical spine cracking echoed briefly across the otherwise silent battlefield before the god went completely still, his divine aura sputtering out like a candle pinched between two fingers. 

Arthur sealed the body before he set about the next task, methodically searching the wreckage scattered across the shattered islands and seas for the remaining seven bodies belonging to the Godkings he had killed throughout the earlier stages of the fight. One by one, he sealed them away inside the Spear of Heaven, intending to study them later, when he had the time and clarity to properly examine exactly what made a god's body function the way it did.

He had barely finished sealing the last of them when he sensed several new presences approaching from the far edges of his perception, faint but unmistakably powerful, likely drawn by the chaotic aftershocks still rippling through the Divine Realm from the battle. He didn't wait to find out who they were or what they wanted. He teleported away without hesitation, leaving the wreckage of the battlefield behind him, and reappeared moments later in the familiar space where Steve had been waiting.

Steve looked him over with an expression that hovered somewhere between amusement and concern, taking in the drying blood, the torn remains of his clothing, and the general aura of someone who had just fought considerably more than he probably should have. "Quite a commotion you caused there," Steve said dryly, arms crossing over his chest.

Arthur simply shrugged, "I found a way to kill these Godkings permanently."

Steve's eyes widened immediately, all traces of dry humor vanishing from his expression in an instant. "Did you kill all of them?" he asked, the words coming out faster than usual, an edge of genuine urgency slipping into his tone.

Arthur shook his head. "Although I killed all nine of them, I only killed Theia, the Goddess of Light, permanently." He said it plainly, without any particular emphasis, as though reporting the weather rather than the death of a being who had existed for longer than most civilizations had recorded history.

Steve exhaled slowly, visible relief loosening the tension across his shoulders, though the gravity in his voice when he spoke next made it clear the relief only went so far. "I don't know what you used to kill her," he said carefully, "but I'd recommend not using it again." He let the words settle for a moment before adding, quieter, "Not unless you want the World Consciousness taking a much closer interest in you than it already has."

Arthur nodded, understanding the implication clearly enough. He had no intention of drawing that kind of attention onto himself, not when he still had far too much left to accomplish in Thyrandel. As for the particular Minor God responsible for actually killing his friends, the one whose death he still fully intended to see through, he had already worked out a solution that avoided the problem entirely. He would simply drag the god away from Thyrandel first, somewhere beyond the World Consciousness's reach, and finish things there instead.

Steve seemed to read at least part of that resolve from his expression, because he didn't press the matter further. Instead, he shifted the conversation toward more immediate concerns. "We should head back now," he said. "There's a lot changing in the world, and most of it isn't good." He paused, considering his next words carefully. "Now that so many influential Godkings have died, the demons are bound to notice their absence eventually. And when that happens..."

He didn't finish the thought, but he didn't need to. Arthur understood the concern well enough without it being spelled out. Once the demons realized just how weakened Thyrandel's protection had become with the death of the Godkings, they would move to exploit that vacuum without hesitation, and there would be nothing standing between them and free reign over the mortal world until the Godkings from other pantheons eventually revived to fill the gap. 

There were, technically, a handful of neutral Godkings scattered across various factions who might have stepped in during the interim, but Arthur held no particular faith in their willingness to prioritize Thyrandel's safety over their own interests. Until circumstances changed, he had already decided he would remain in Thyrandel himself, filling that gap personally.

There was another reason weighing on that decision as well, one he hadn't fully voiced even to Steve. He had noticed that the restrictions sealing Thyrandel away from outside interference seemed to loosen noticeably faster whenever he was physically present there, and the timing made it difficult to dismiss as coincidence. If his own presence was somehow accelerating that process, then remaining in Thyrandel to look after the people affected by these growing changes felt less like a choice and more like an obligation he couldn't reasonably walk away from.

They returned to Thyrandel using the same spell they had relied on to first reach the Divine Realm, the world folding and reassembling around them until they found themselves standing just outside the familiar walls of the manor. They entered quietly, and Arthur noticed that Selene had already fallen asleep, curled beneath a blanket in one of the sitting rooms with the exhausted, unsettled look of someone who had cried herself into rest rather than drifted off peacefully. 

He chose not to wake her, letting her sleep undisturbed, and instead made his way back to Avalon alone, leaving Steve to inform Eveline about what happened in the Divine Realm.

…

The following days passed in a steady rhythm of practical work as Arthur focused on stabilizing Avalon against whatever consequences might eventually ripple outward from the deaths of nine Godkings. He set up a handful of countermeasures throughout the city, contingencies meant to hold in case gods or demons ever decided Avalon was worth attacking directly.

Food security in particular had remained a persistent, nagging problem for longer than he cared to admit. Avalon's population had grown substantial enough that more than half its food supply depended entirely on imports from neighboring kingdoms, and food was hardly the only resource stretched thin. 

Mages and martial artists alike relied on specific herbs, minerals, and rare materials to fuel their cultivation and growth, resources that Avalon simply didn't produce in sufficient quantities, regardless of how carefully Arthur had planted precious herb gardens and fruit orchards throughout the city in the past. 

What little Avalon did produce tended toward exceptional quality, but never in quantities large enough to meet demand, leaving most citizens still dependent on merchants traveling in from elsewhere.

To address at least the food half of that equation, he installed several food fabricators throughout the city, futuristic devices originally designed to instantly generate meals by rearranging subatomic particles and basic molecular raw materials like carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, into fully formed, edible dishes. 

The technology had originally been built with Krozonite biology in mind, but with a handful of careful modifications, he managed to adjust the output enough to make the resulting food safely edible for humans and the other species living throughout Avalon as well. 

Producing ordinary food through the fabricators turned out to be entirely achievable, though the more specialized resources needed by mages and martial artists remained frustratingly out of reach, no matter how he adjusted the underlying molecular templates. 

Still, solving even half the problem meant one less thing demanding his constant attention, and he made a private note to only rely on the fabricators if Avalon ever found itself completely cut off and unable to trade, a scenario he genuinely hoped would never come to pass.

Selene had returned to Avalon not long after, though the grief over losing people close to her still lingered visibly in the quiet way she carried herself through the following days, a heaviness that no amount of time seemed to fully lift on its own. Arthur made a point of sitting with her when he could, gently reassuring her again about the eventual revival of those she had lost, and only after hearing it repeated enough times did some of the tension finally begin to ease from her shoulders, her expression slowly settling into something closer to calm rather than grief.

As the days continued to pass, the wider world outside Avalon began shifting in ways that were impossible to ignore. The Order of the Church, which had long served as the primary link between Thyrandel and the nine Godkings, suddenly found itself entirely cut off from the Divine Realm, its usual channels of communication gone silent without explanation. 

Meanwhile, the Minor Gods who might have otherwise stepped forward to fill that silence had grown too frightened to act, retreating into hiding one after another as they sensed their respective Godkings dying in rapid succession, leaving no one remaining to maintain contact with the Church at all.

The battlefield situation across the world grew steadily more chaotic in the meantime, as increasingly powerful demons, several rivaling Minor Gods in raw strength, began pushing into contested territory more aggressively than before. Arthur found himself repeatedly going to the battlefield to eliminate them personally, and after the first handful met their end at his hands, the incursions of the Minor God level demons slowed dramatically, then stopped altogether. 

Unlike the gods of Thyrandel, who could count on eventual revival even after suffering death, the demons enjoyed no such second chances. Every one that fell by his blade was gone permanently, steadily thinning the ranks of an army that could not afford to keep losing its stronger members so carelessly. 

Arthur suspected, with fairly reasonable confidence, that until the restrictions sealing Thyrandel loosened enough to allow Major God level demons through, the remaining forces would think twice before sending anyone on the Minor God level, unwilling to keep feeding their best fighters into a fight they had no real chance of winning.

***

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