My eyes went wide as I saw Kruz’s body scattering away. His sword strike had shattered her illusions, and yet she remained in this form. Granted, that could simply imply that the ability putting her in this state wasn’t from her Illusion domain, and was rather from her Transformation and Disguise domains

What was even more impressive was that she stopped his divine artifact sword with one hand. That showed just how much divinity Mara had to reinforce her hand enough to withstand it.

Once Kruz had completely faded away, and his sword shattered to pieces, Mara brushed her hands off. “I’m going back, now.” She said calmly. “This should be more than enough help for you all.”

After saying that, her body vanished, causing my eyes to twitch. Didn’t they not have a transportation god? If she can ‘transform’ her coordinates to teleport, how does that not count?

Either way, she was right. The balance of power had been fairly even before she stepped in. Now that she had killed Jordan, Kruz, and several other active gods, there would be no excuse if we couldn’t win this fight.

Thankfully, both of the gods that I had been fighting were among Mara’s victims. I couldn’t tell if that was a coincidence, or something that she had intentionally done to protect me. Either way, it gave me more freedom once the fighting resumed.

Everyone, focus the Keeper! Or so I assumed. Lana seemed to have taken over command of the guild after Kruz died, and she knew that if I was slain, they would be able to immediately return home.

Her words snapped the other guild members out of their trances. They all turned to face me with fierce gazes, mobilizing their divine powers. Not so fast. Dana called out, appearing next to me. Now that Mara was gone, and Kruz slain, there was nothing that could stop her darkness from covering the battlefield. I wasn’t able to show my full power with that guy around, but now it’s different!

As the divine powers of fire, ice, light, and various other attacks came towards us, Dana cracked her whip again. The attacks heading our way disappeared into the darkness, swallowed by the void. Visually, Dana’s attacks carried the appearance of darkness, but I knew the true purpose of her whip after training together with her.

Her whip allowed her to designate a ‘zone’. In this zone, she could freely open paths to the void. These paths could form incredibly powerful shields by simply absorbing attacks that would come her way. Finally, the zone acted as her sanctuary to enhance the power of her shadows.

“Just stay by me, boss.” Dana said with a toothy grin, her voice now audible within this altered space. “If they thought that trying to kill you first was the right answer, we’ll just show them how sorely mistaken they were.”

Lana’s eyes flashed as she analyzed the field around them. Her domains seemed to be able to provide her information that would have been otherwise inaccessible to her. However, before she could share her findings, her eyes went wide and she let out a gasp of pain. A small, delicate hand had pierced her chest from behind, her divinity quickly dyeing itself red.

“You shouldn’t turn your back on us.” Scarlet muttered to her as Lana’s body began to dissolve. While the other gods had been distracted with trying to launch a combined attack, those from my pantheon had been free to attack them from behind. Most of them managed to secure a clean kill, while the rest only managed to injure their targets.

Regardless, the scales had been tipped even further in our favor now. Of the originally nearly ninety gods, only fifty remained. Although they still outnumbered us, their primary combat forces had all been killed. At this point, they were no more than a bunch of low-ranked gods trying to cling to some invisible strand of hope.

Taking a deep breath, I ended my Elemental Embodiment. Trying to launch an attack while Dana was using her whip like this would just get in the way of her defenses. It was better for me to let the others clean up at this point.

The rest of the battle was, honestly, predictable. The enemy gods began to fall one after another, each death causing their side to lose the power to defend themselves. In under ten minutes, the last of the gods had been killed. That said, I couldn’t help imagine how much differently this battle would have gone if Mara was still on the enemy team. If that had been the case, I doubted that we would have gotten through this without major casualties.

Congratulations! You have successfully repelled the invasion of Keeper UpperLevel!

Assessing the value of forces deployed in the invasion…

5,264 enemies assessed!

1 enemy converted!

150,000 points have been awarded as a result of your successful defense!

I let out a long sigh when I received that confirmation message. Thankfully, all of the preparations that we made in advance had worked out for us. Had we done this fight on Earth, the civilian casualties would be unimaginable.

Let’s head back to the Citadel. I sent my voice out, golden mist wrapping around us once again.

Mara was watching the illusion with a shaking gaze by the time they returned, finally letting out a sigh of relief. She had gone back to her smaller form, seeming even more timid than she had been before. “Did I… did I help?” She asked, as she could never remember too clearly what happened when she brought out her ‘aggressive’ side.

The Keeper looked at her, blinking, before letting out a light chuckle. “Yeah, you helped a lot.” He nodded his head. “I don’t think we could have won without you. Not without losing some of our own.”

Now that he said that, Mara looked around. The gazes in the Greater Pantheon had changed subtly. They didn’t look strictly kinder, but more… dignified? As if they were only shells of themselves previously.

“Thanks for the support.” Aurivy walked over with a grin, ruffling Mara’s hair and making the little goddess flail her arms. “Don’t worry, we won’t ask you to fight or anything like that. Consider this a well earned retirement.”

Mara’s eyes went wide at that comment, looking over to Aurivy. “R-Really? You don’t… need me to do anything?” As long as she could remember, there were people giving her missions, or asking her to fight.

“What, you want to be put to work on the front lines again?” Aurivy asked with a teasing smile, to which Mara rapidly shook her head. “Then don’t. You’ve already helped us out a lot. You deserve your freedom.”

“That said.. I do have one small favor I’d like to ask of you.” The Keeper said, and Mara’s expression fell. He blinked, before letting out another laugh. “It’s not spying, or killing, or anything like that. I was just hoping that you could maybe teach us more about the Divine Circuits that you mentioned before?”

“Oh!” Mara nodded her head quickly, shaking away her previous disappointment. If it was just teaching, that was something that she could do just fine. She lifted her hand up, creating an illusionary projection of her own divine circuits. “There’s really not much to explain.”

“Usually, we do this whenever we get our first domain, to make it easier, so I think it might be harder for the rest of you. You just have to gather up all of the traces of each individual domain to turn into the greater nodes. Afterwards, create openings in those nodes, called ports. Each port will be restricted to one type of power from your domain, creating a path.”

“For instance, you can see right now that two of my paths are lit up from my Illusion domain, which come together to form a basic projection power. The ports these paths lead to are ‘Visual Projection’ and ‘Synchronization’.” Mara had a smile on her face as she said that.

“Once you have your nodes and ports set up, you can start merging paths together to set up power nodes. Each power node is somewhere that two or more paths converge to create a divine power. A power node can be as specific or general as you like, but it can also have its own ports. For instance, my Synchronized Visual Projection can lead into a Remote Viewing node by adding in other paths.”

“The hardest part for all of you will be to separate your multiple domains to get started. Once that’s done, the rest of it shouldn’t be too hard?” Mara gave a small nod as she said that.

The Keeper and the other gods nodded their heads seriously, as if committing her words to memory. Once she had finished, the Keeper smiled. “In that case, is there anything that you would like to do now?”

“You don’t want to interrogate me about my world or anything like that?” Mara blinked, expecting that there was still a lot more that she was going to have to ‘teach’ them.

However, the Keeper shook his head. “In truth, information about your world was already leaked fairly recently. That’s why we were able to prepare so well. It just didn’t include things such as the method of using your divinity like that.”

Mara nodded her head slowly. “Then… would it be okay for me to play Fragments of Acidia? I always wanted to try that in my world, but they never really gave me a chance.”

The Keeper chuckled, nodding his head towards the red-skinned woman. “Ashley, get her set up with a Virtual watch.”

Ashley smiled wide, walking over to Mara and handing her a small device that could fit on her wrist. “Come on, I’ll help you get this set up.” She said, before gently guiding Mara out of the room.

As I watched Mara leaving the room, I couldn’t help but think back to what she had said before, during the fight. The concept of an illusion is an illusion itself. Clearly, the more mature Mara had far more experience using this domain in combat, and had developed her own insights about it.

Part of me wanted to ask Mara to help me train my Illusion domain, but I quickly decided against it. Like Aurivy said, she had earned her retirement. Not only did she willingly convert, preventing us from having to fight such a dangerous opponent, but she had helped in the battle itself. I could tell just by looking at her that Mara hated fighting, despite how powerful she was.

Even her mature self only fought the bare minimum to ensure our victory, before coming back here. Having her teach me how to use my powers to more effectively kill… no, I would rather just focus on what the mature Mara taught me during the fight, and integrate those insights into my combat style.

I shook my head, looking over at Tsubaki and the others. “I’ll be going back for the time being. I want to try to master this Divine Circuit method she mentioned, and make sure that it’s possible with our laws. Once I’ve finished determining that, I’ll be back to either help you get your own set up, or let you know that it is not compatible.”

Tsubaki gave a firm nod of her head as the warm blue light wrapped around me, sending me back to my Admin Room. It was time to get to training again…