The place I teleported to was a vast, open space.
The ground beneath my feet glowed faintly everywhere, and the horizon seemed to stretch on infinitely, blending into the sky in an endless illusion.
Filling this seemingly boundless space were enormous magical formulae arranged in geometric patterns.
And nestled among those formulae, like spiders spinning threads through a web, were countless tiny figures.
My clones.
They were here hacking the system.
Here—at the very center of this world, the place that governed the system's core, where the Goddess was sealed.
At the heart of the magical formulae, there she was.
The Goddess—half her body gone, the rest dissolved into the space around her.
From her mouth, system messages poured out ceaselessly, like a curse.
『Proficiency has reached a threshold.』
『Experience Points have reached a threshold.』
『Proficiency has reached a threshold.』
………
She had only one mouth, yet the voice came layered over itself, echoing from multiple directions at once.
A voice I'd heard far too many times before I ascended to godhood—so many times it made me sick.
The thing I used to call the Voice of Heaven.
Turns out it really was the Goddess's voice all along, so I wasn't exactly wrong.
I approached the Goddess, who continued reciting messages with a hollow expression on her face.
Then I drove my hand-blade into her remaining upper body.
『…!』
The Goddess's face twisted in agony.
But I paid it no mind and drove my hand further, piercing through her body.
『Error. Unauthorized external access detected. Initiating countermeasures.』
The agony vanished from the Goddess's expression, and at the same time, pain shot through my hand.
I ignored it.
Without hesitating over the pain, I began the hack.
The Goddess's body twitched and spasmed violently.
She governed the system's core, rooted deep into this world.
I was directly interfering with that, temporarily seizing control of the system.
What I was interrupting was the effect of the Ruler Skill currently being activated.
The caster—and the target of that Skill.
I was initiating system-level intervention on both sides.
The caster, needless to say, was Sensei.
The target was Natsume.
The Skill's effect was to sacrifice nearly all the soul's power to the system—including Skills, Status, and Skill Points alike.
But this Skill was never meant to be used on others.
Sensei had forcibly modified it to target someone else.
Pulling off something that reckless placed an enormous burden on the user.
In the first place, activating this Skill was practically tantamount to suicide.
By intervening through the system, I inhibited the Skill's activation.
Even so, it had still gone off more than halfway, and the effects had already taken hold.
Natsume's Skills were gone, and his Status had plummeted.
That didn't matter to me.
The problem was Sensei.
Forcing that Skill to activate had caused a backlash that erased Sensei's own Skills as well.
That alone would have been bad enough, but on top of that, the effort of shielding Natsume's soul had pushed Sensei's own soul to the brink of collapse.
There was no time to waste.
I pieced together the fragments of Sensei's crumbling soul, mending and restoring it.
Somehow, I managed to stave off the collapse.
It wasn't exactly damage-free, mind you.
I exhaled and pulled my hand free from the Goddess's body.
In an instant, the Goddess healed her wound and, as though nothing had happened, resumed murmuring system messages.
Unbelievable.
What kind of fool pulls stunts like this?
If things had gone just a little differently—if I hadn't intervened—Sensei's soul would have collapsed and died.
And soul collapse meant no reincarnation was possible.
Total, permanent death.
Truly, this was reckless beyond measure.
Through my clones, I watched Sensei and the others.
Natsume, in a panic over losing his Skills.
Yamada, frozen in stunned bewilderment.
And Sensei, battered to a pulp but mustering every last scrap of bravado to convince Natsume.
"This world does not belong to you. Use this as a chance to reflect. I recommend you go on living as a normal person from now on. Taking Skills and becoming stronger—there's nothing good that comes of it…"
Hm?
He's denouncing the act of taking Skills?
Why?
The question nagged at me, but I found no answer.
It felt like a fishbone lodged in my throat—unsettling and unresolved.
Whatever.
Sensei, one way or another, what you did this time was all for nothing.
Even if you stripped Natsume of his Skills, nothing would ultimately change.
Natsume would never reflect, and more importantly, Sensei's Skill wasn't complete.
No matter how many Skills he tried to erase, the unconventional usage led to nothing but a half-baked result.
The Skills Natsume lost—the soul power that had fueled them—most of that energy still remained with Natsume.
Skills were simply a convenient, structured form of soul power made tangible through the system.
They were a customized interface for the soul's otherwise unwieldy energy.
In other words, as long as the soul power remained, acquiring new Skills was entirely possible.
Something as straightforward as Skill Points only reflected the surplus soul power that was freely available.
Natsume had certainly lost his Skills.
But the vast majority of that energy was still in his possession.
So it was obvious that it would return in a different form.
All Sensei had accomplished was briefly slowing Natsume down by a single step.
I couldn't imagine the maddened Natsume stopping over something like this, let alone experiencing a change of heart.
Humans weren't that noble a species.
I looked at the Goddess.
Sensei, the Goddess—why were they so willing to throw their lives away for something so pointless?
Trash was trash.
No matter where you looked, it was beyond saving.
Why couldn't they understand that?
And why were they willing to sacrifice themselves to save something like that?
I couldn't comprehend it.
Ugh, it was infuriating.
What did they think their lives were?
Wasn't it the duty of every living thing to fight and struggle to survive?
Yet here they were, throwing their own lives into the gutter one after another.
And it was all the more infuriating because they were exactly the kind of people even I recognized as worth something.
So I'd destroy it all.
The Goddess's devotion, Kuro's anguish, the Demon King's resolve, Sensei's compassion.
I would tear it all down.
The world?
I didn't care.
If it was going to be destroyed, then let it be destroyed.
I'd sooner save the people I'd acknowledged than worry about that.
What Sensei had activated was a Skill of Offering.
Its effect was exactly what the name implied.
To offer up the soul power constituting one's own Skills to the world.
Sensei had forced it onto Natsume in an attempt to offer up his Skills and Status.
The result was a half-success, half-failure.
Skills were made of soul power.
And what happened when you lost soul power rapidly?
Well, if the power holding your soul together suddenly vanished, it would collapse. Simple as that.
Sensei had sacrificed his own soul to hold together the soul that was about to crumble—Natsume's.
And now I had held together Sensei's soul in turn.
Which, in the process, had cost me some of my own energy.
Wonderful.
I'd been trying to conserve as much energy as possible in preparation for the fight against Kuro.
But this time couldn't be helped.
Still, I couldn't let Sensei pull the same stunt again.
I was a god, so wasting a bit of energy felt like no big deal to me. But for Sensei, the damage to his soul had been catastrophic.
If he tried it a second time, I wasn't confident I could stop the collapse again.
And I had to control Natsume's movements as well.
Left unchecked, he'd only bring ruin.
All right.
Decision made.
I'd originally planned to just observe, but this time I was going to intervene—hard.