Quick Fate Chain
Jump 5: Fate/Legends - Land of the Rising Sun

Starting Time: Kingdom of Yamatai - 190CE
Timeline: Grand Designs
Origin: Swordsman
Gender: Female
Age: 22

Perks
>Blossoming Sun -Free
>Mamamoto -50 **
>Beniemiya -50 **
>Traditional Japanese Art (Writing) -100 **
>Grudge Forged -200 **
>Swordsmith -400 **
>Live By The Sword -Free
>Man Slayer -Free
>Bladeless -100 **
>Shukuchi -200 **
>Sword Saint -200 **
>Root of All Swords -300 **
>Heavenly Eyes -300 **
>Goooooolden -100 **
>Nine Tails To Be -600 **

Items
>Garb And Blade -Free
>Mountain Heaven Enhanced -200 **
>First Edge -Free

Companions
>Mini Nobu -Free
>TOHSAKA -Free

Drawbacks
>Continuity +0 **
>NEETSpeak +100 **
>Drill Sergeant +100 **
>Liver Liquor +100 **
>Demon King Reborn +200 **
>Hunter's Mark +200 **
>Family Fire Curse +200 **
>I Wanna Be A Ronin +300 **
>Youkai Meat +300 **
>Yandere Battle Royale +300 **

Scenarios
>Slay The Swallow
>Final Tournament of the Blade Masters
>Insect Jar 
---------------------
The Goddess arrived in Japan a little after 180 CE-nearly two centuries after the Age of Gods had officially ended. It was a strange thing she considered, stepping onto foreign land once again, but she was perhaps the last true God that existed on this side of the world. There was still the Reverse Side of course...but that was barely any better than death, imprisoned and isolated as the Gods were amongst themselves. What little influence they had on the physical world was fading away by the decade-in a few centuries, they would barely be whispers. Yet here she still stood, more powerful than ever and only growing stronger yet not rejected by the world in the slightest.

Kama and Medb were the other two divinities that managed to outlast the Age of Gods. Medb was a much more orthodox deity-well, "orthodox" for a deity. It took a great deal of magical assistance from the Goddess's own artifacts and New Rome's magitech in order to allow her to outlive the Age of Gods; in many ways, it was akin to being on life support. Not too unlike the Amazon Queen Hippolyta, who even now relied upon the Mantle of Ages to maintain her existence. Kama, on the other hand, was just a strange freak of nature much like the Goddess herself; she subsisted on the Desires of Humanity, and thus only grew stronger as humanity itself did. In one conversation she mentioned that she wasn't originally like this, but her initial transformation into a Beast had allowed her to take on this nature...but either way, she was entirely unbound to the fading of Mystery despite her existence and capabilities.

Kiara's powers didn't rely on Mystery in the first place, and she maintained her youth through a combination of Soma and the Goddess's own divine blessing. Nero was...strange, and similarly was maintained eternally by the Goddess's help. Medea had relied upon Soma for a few centuries, but with time and effort had developed her own set of magics to maintain her immortality...though she complained about the weakening of Mystery weakening its potency over time, and that she'd need to find something better soon enough. Scathach, of course, had simply proved her unkillable nature to the world so hard that she had erased her own Concept of Death entirely and thus was both eternally youthful and utterly unkillable. By normal means, at least.

Three Deities and four-five, including Hippolyta-immortals outliving the Age of Gods, all but untouched by the slow loss of Mystery. Turning her thoughts away from the matter, the Goddess and Scathach entered the lands of Japan proper. Their first order of business was simple: finding a place where the Goddess may initiate her "attunement" ritual. 

As the two traveled covertly, they had no way of knowing that legends of The Goddess had traveled ahead of them to the far east. Legends told how the Goddess was a living calamity, how she bathed in the blood of countless armies, slew demons and gods alike, how she was disaster incarnate. Legends spoke of her terrible evil, and of her grand beauty-great enough to drive any man or woman to madness with just a single look or touch. Legends whispered of the boons she would grant on a whim, the weapons and armor she forged and discarded, tools so powerful that they could shape entire dynasties. Many looked on with horror at the approach of the Goddess...but a select few looked upon her with greed. And while the armies of Japan began to marshal to repel this "grand demon goddess", a few select beings and one family in particular made plans...

Finding a mountain that resonated powerfully with the legends of the land-both past and future-the Goddess began to prepare her ritual. The ending of the Age of Gods made things a slight bit more difficult for her, but with her immense magical knowledge and capabilities it was nothing that the Goddess couldn't adjust for on the fly...but...this land had some truly incredible legends and powers etched into it. Power that tempted the Goddess. So she took her time with the ritual, adjusting it carefully. With careful focus she even managed to tap into the effects of the curses she'd previously borne in past centuries; balancing the power of those curses against the power she was taking in, she could actively work to draw in even further power by taking on great burdens.

Scathach, of course, was rather leery of the plan and decided to stay a good distance away while the ritual itself was initiated-for safety's sake. Unfortunately that would lead to some issues for the Goddess. As a prismatic pillar of light began to split the skies, grand bolts of lightning rained down in turn-twisting the pillar of light into a whirling tornado of force. As the ritual reached its peak the Goddess was bodily launched into the sky, to land somewhere far, far away...specifically all but directly in front of the manor of a certain noble lord. Etched into her Divine Core would be a whole new curse of servitude, as well as an entropic curse and a bevy of minor curses. Laying on the scorched grass for several moments...the Goddess would eventually raise her head to the sky. Though her face could not move, an unholy light gleamed in her eyes. "All according to keikaku." She declared.

In fact, the Goddess had planned all of this out ahead of time-even taking several days on that now-distant mountain to make sure she had gotten everything correct. Her eyes were capable of spying into the distant future after all, and with the help of a great deal of magecraft her hazy sight evolved into near-perfect prediction of future events. She knew exactly what curses would be inflicted on her, exactly which lord she'd be sent to serve, even what troubles she'd be facing soon-she had carefully planned for ALL of these things.

Of course, she couldn't plan out EVERYTHING in the following three hundred years-the length of her curse of servitude this time. Just enough to make sure she wouldn't die or do anything she found particularly distasteful. If she could plan out that far, then she almost certainly would have changed her plans...but alas.

And some distance away from the mountain at which the Goddess had conducted her ritual, a strange sound echoed across the sky. Staring at the mountain, Scathach frowned as she tried to pinpoint exactly what that sound was. Now, she couldn't exactly be sure, but it sounded a lot like...

"nnnoooooooBBBBUUUUUUUU!!" A strange, high-pitched voice screamed. From the sky came a falling star, and that falling star managed to aim itself directly at Scathach. Despite her attempts to dodge the impact, the star managed to correct-course enough to keep up with the celtic warrior...and land directly on top of Scathach's bosom with a soft *pomf*.

Blinking dumbly, Scathach tried to process the existence of the strange, miniscule figure now attached to her chest. "Nobu!" crowed the figure, cuddling deeper into her cleavage. So distracted by this strange being, Scathach took no notice of the OTHER shooting star in the sky.

"WAH!" screamed the star-and from its body fell countless glittering gems...filled with uncomfortable amounts of mana.

Said star and gems proceeded to impact the ground directly in front of Scathach, unleashing a blast that would leave a deep crater and knock out all involved for at least a week. This would be but the beginning of Scathach's own bizarre adventures with the Mini Nobu and the Counter Guardian TOHSAKA.

Returning to the Goddess, it took her just a single week before she was sent away from her "lord"'s grounds. Not exactly banished...but close enough. It began with the first holder of her Curse of Servitude: the head of the family. This man was a deeply lustful, lazy, and not particularly bright man. Holding the obediance of the being rumored to be the most beautiful existence in all the world, it was quite obvious what his very first (and last) orders would be.

"Hmm..." The male head of the house stared at the Goddess standing in his backyard, he came to a decision. "Show me your true face, the vision of beauty which slays lesser men. I wish to experience you in all your glory, then make love to you."

"[Master, I truly do advise against such a thing...]" The Goddess spoke in a cutesy mix of languages, her voice and face bored and unchanging. Despite that, she could already feel the Curse of Servitude tug at her within, trying to get her to obey unquestioningly.

"I care not for your baseless assumptions of my weakness, Goddess." The lord spoke. "You may be use to the weaker constitutions of foreign men, but the men of the east are strong! It is a truth you shall come to understand in my bedchamber, but for now, reveal yourself!"

"[Very well...]" And so spoken, The Goddess revealed her true and unshielded form to the man before her-at her full power, as he demanded. 

For just an instant the lord was struck speechless and insensate at the sheer beauty before him, his mind wiped of all thoughts save for love and worship of the Goddess. And then he could speak no more, as his body was spontaneously remade by the sheer radiant power of the Goddess's Authorities present in her beauty. The backyard of the lord's manor was transformed into a verdant ********, and standing in the center was a beautiful golden statue of a man, caught smiling and with tears in his eyes. A profoundly powerful holy aura continually exuded from the statue, and even by the year 2000 CE all it would take is but to touch the statue for small wounds to be healed, skin to be cleaned, and a light beautifying effect to sweep through the body of any human who touched it. This statue would be titled "The Beholder of Beauty", and the grove around it "The Beauty's Cradle".

In the present, everyone involved was simply deeply annoyed to have a small forest spring up in the manor's backyard.

The lord's wife, however, was much more overjoyed than annoyed. Speaking to the Goddess inside the manor, she explained; "I had always hated that man, but our marriage was out of my hands...now that he is dead and I hold your servitude, I shall be the most powerful woman in all the land! Oh-hohohohoho!" 

The Goddess nodded with an unchanging expression, drinking deeply from a bottle of sake she kept on her waist. It couldn't get her drunk, of course, but one of her many curses this time around was a deep abiding thirst for the liquid-and so she drank regardless. 

Seeing the sake bottle, the lord's wife had a wonderful idea pop into her head. "You know, this calls for celebration! You are the greatest craftsman in all the world, yes? Then I have an order for you, Goddess. Make me wine-the greatest wine possible, harnessing all your power to do so! Create a wine that shall never be matched in all the world!"

"[Master, I really...]" The Goddess tried to interrupt, but the lady was already laughing to herself and imagining the grandest wine in the world. Forcibly pulled by the Curse of Servitude, the Goddess left the room and began her work: to create the greatest wine in all the world, harnessing all her power to do so.

Now, it can't be szaid that the Goddess is not experienced in the creation of wine-over the millennia she has cooked herself many foods, and cooked for others as well. She took it as a part of her Authority as a Goddess of Artifice to be skilled in such things, though her Authority applied very little to kitchencraft. This latest attunement had added an incredible level of skill atop her already extensive experience, and if that was all then the Goddess could have easily made a truly incredible-but ultimately mundane-wine. 

Unfortunately, the Goddess was physically incapable of stopping there. She had been ordered to harness ALL of her power in the creation of the greatest wine in all the world-and thus, was forced to move far, far beyond making simply mundane wine.

The Goddess forged strange and incredible blades which she used to stir, mix, and prepare the ingredients for the wine. She weaved life out of nothing, and rendered that life down for parts and traits to imbue in her wine. She Sang and harnessed the very essence of Humanity to distill its power into the wine. She forge grand heavenly constructs above the earth with her Enlightenent, capturing sunlight and Aether beyond the bounds of Earth then distilled it down in intricate metaphysical machinery which she designed specifically for this purpose. She harnessed the Eyes of Balor to excise the very concept of Death out of her works, harnessing Death itself as yet another ingredient in her winemaking. She even worked grand rituals of magic in order to capture the essence of her own divinity and beauty, render it into a workable form, and distill it down into the wine alongside everything else.

The working took merely five days, for the Goddess was swift in her works...but though the wine was nominally "complete" at the end of those three weeks, it was not "complete". It had been perfectly formulated, perfectly formed, and worked into a wine that was beyond all the world...but it was not safe to drink, not as it was. Merely the divinity within a single drop alone would slay anyone who dared to taste it save for Divine Spirits, and even then such beings would have their Divine Cores corroded by the sheer potency and flavour of the wine. Two drops would render even the weakest of mortals immortal, temporarily purging them of their very concept of death so long as the wine was in their system; even a corroded and decayed spirit would be granted a fleshly form, healthy and whole. Three drops would send the drinker on a vision quest to the very center of the Root, from within which they could witness the whole of existence spiraling around them. Or induce hallucinations so powerful that even a god of madness couldn't compare; the Goddess hadn't been able to figure out which.

The Goddess tried to explain the myriad and improbable effects of the wine to her master, but it was no use. The lady picked up the clear bottle of shining golden liquid, considering it for several seconds as she listened to the Goddess's strange words wash over her, and shouted "Kampai!" And then, with a remarkable thoughtlessness, she proceeded to drain the whole bottle dry in a matter of seconds. She smacked her lips a bit as the Goddess stared at her with an utterly gobsmacked expression. "It may not be particularly lady-like, but I've always been fond of drinking competitions." The lady of the manor shared her secret with the Goddess. She continued to consider the wine for a moment. "Truly, exquisite. A truly remarkable flavor and feeling..."

And then the wine's actual flavour and effects hit her.

It was an assault on the mental, physical, spiritual, and conceptual level. It was nirvana contained in a bottle, all of reality contained in a drop. The lady witnessed the birth of creation, and saw all possible endings for it. She saw the whole of reality, and even into the next world-a world of souls manifested amongst the stars. Her body was restructured by the enlightenment of the wine, evolved into a primordial human-then refined with the enlightenment of the end of mankind, the Ether Liners. She became both Alpha, and Omega. Her very soul stretched from the present, to the past, to the future-to all points in spacetime at once, a false existence that made itself true. For just a moment, the lady was all. And then, she was none-or rather,「 」.

"Truly exquisite." The lady murmured, before her Origin and the very concept of her existence was wiped from reality.

The Goddess watched as the Lady dispersed into motes of light that promptly ceased to exist, shrugged, and began to carefully dispose of the remains of the wine. She might have a powerful craving for wine these days, but she wasn't stupid; no way was she going to drink this without diluting it into something that wouldn't kill the person drinking it. Or, y'know, make a wine that ISN'T mashing literally every power at her disposal together and seeing what comes out the other end.

On the seventh day of her stay amongst the mortal family who held her leash, the Goddess had slain both the Lord and Lady she served by simply fulfilling their orders. Of course, a family of madmen, this didn't bother the eldest son in the slightest.

"My family has always been full of boorish fools," The young man complained, swinging a katana up and down as he spoke. 

The Goddess hesitated to call what the man was doing "practice"; though she was still adjusting to her new swordsmanship skills and instincts, she could tell that this man had a truly remarkable LACK of such. And what he was doing was not going to change that in any meaningful way-in fact, it worked to reinforce terrible habits. But, annoyed with her own speech mannerisms lately and beginning to realize just what kind of family she had been cursed to serve, the Goddess held her tongue. 

Taking this as approval of his words, the young man continued. "No, your service to our family is not merely a means of political power, or satisfying base urges. You are a goddess! I have read the legends, listened to the stories-you are the craftswoman who brings immortality and death, hand in hand! You have traveled the world slaying demons and monsters, righting wrongs and purging the wicked! And this land, yes, it is full of wicked beasts and monsters." The young man stopped speaking for a moment, and looked off to the side and upwards a ways-as if looking out to the land beyond the manor. "You have been brought in our service for a reason, I know this to be true. That my father and mother used you for such base purposes only reinforces it-you must fulfill that purpose! Yours is the power to slay the wicked, and serve humanity! Yes, I see it now!"

With a shout, the young man swung his katana at a tree. His form was horrendous, but he had enough muscle to swing with appreciable speed...but the tree was one of those trees born from the Goddess revealing her true appearance, and was thus blessed with supernatural strength and durability. Predictably, the sword shattered against the tree's bark. Despite this, the young man smiled. 

Turning back to the Goddess, he presented the hilt of the katana to her as if it was a divine treasure. "Do you not see the signs, the portents?!" He questioned her, a manic smile on his face. "Goddess of Humanity, your greatest skill and power lies in artifice for a reason! You have journeyed so far and learned so much, and it is clear to me why!" He stood, holding the katana hilt up to the sky as he shouted. "Goddess, this is my order to you! Forge me a blade which can shatter the heavens! Forge me a blade which can sunder fate! Forge me a blade which can shape the world or tear it apart with equal ease! Then, forge me a suit of armor-a suit of armor which will grant its wearer the body of a god! A suit of armor which can carry the sky, and shatter the earth! Forge me armor which only grows greater with age, which holds the essence of human spirit and will within it! Let the weapon and armor be wielded by anyone, yet only those who are chosen and attuned to them be capable of drawing out their TRUE power!"

"Then, when you are done...make me two more sets! One set of Armor for the Land, one for the Heavens, and one for the Sea! One sword for the Earth, one for the Sun, and one for the Moon! Let the wielders of these weapons and armors be the new Gods of this land, immortal and undefeatable, and through them the land itself shall be reborn!"

"Now go! Begone from this house; your purpose is not here! The signs have been clear; you do not belong in a mortal abode. You must journey, as you always have! Slay demons and monsters, punish the wicked, and seek the treasures of this land! You shall correspond with me once per month, and return at the turn of each year. I shall have further orders for you in time; until then, your quest must be unending!" 

The Goddess gave a lazy wave to the man, took a final swig from her sake bottle, and wandered away from the manor in a lazy amble. The eldest son-now the manor lord-smiled as he watched the Goddess walk away...then frowned. "Perhaps I should have asked her to remake my katana before she left-" He murmured-only to find a weave of light forming around the katana which repaired it in but an instant. "Oh, quite handy, that. Now I must return to my practice!"

The lord's eldest son was quite obviously insane and had previously been confined for most of his day to day life...but with the death of his father and mother, was now free and the ruling head of the family. This would later lead the family's holdings to utter ruin as the madman was unable to properly manage the lord's estate in favor of throwing everything into his delusions of being a warrior who slew the wicked...but would still live a long and happy life thanks to the help of the Goddess.

For a time the Goddess wandered somewhat aimlessly, not particularly sure of what exactly her orders from her master even /meant/ aside from the fact that he wanted her to forge three sets of super-powerful swords and armors. Sure, she was charged to "slay demons, punish the wicked, and seek treasures", but that didn't really /mean/ anything in a definitive way. That wasn't a real quest, or an order. So at best, the Goddess wandered blindly, looking for demons to slay, wicked to punish, and treasures to attain, all while planning out the forging of the Armor and Blades.

Then, like the calm before the storm, the Goddess began to stumble upon various monsters and demons as she wandered. Just a few here and there-youkai and oni, strange beyonds who hungered for her flesh...and then more. And more. And then a whole slew of Demon Hunters began to hunt her down as well, under some strange belief that she herself was a demon? According to her Master's orders she was not allowed to kill them for they had done no wrong in seeking to strike down evil-they were merely misguided, and should be set back on the correct path. This, of course, did not make things in any way easier.

At the very least though, it provided direction for the wandering Goddess. And it was in these adventures that she encountered the strange Phantasmal Beast known as the Swallow, and gained the inspiration she needed to forge the Armor of the Heavens. Wielding a blade formed from her own flesh and built to channel her powers well, the Goddess used pure technique and skill to strike down the Swallow with a cage of slashes that struck manifold times in an instant-several strikes at once, refracted across dimensions. She had started with just two strikes at once, but by the time she slew the Swallow she had managed to develop the technique into four.

From the Swallow's flesh, she began her work in crafting the first of the Three Divine Mantles-the Human-Divinity Terminals. This first one, the Heavenly Terminal, began with physical and metaphysical materials harvested from the Phantasmic Swallow...but that was nowhere near enough to make what her Master wanted her to make. She had to draw out a great deal of her own flesh and Divinity, cultivate it into a strange human-like being with her Authority, and then harness its existence in forging the Terminal. What she created was human in form...but mountanous in stature, dozens of meters tall.

On its surface and from an outside perspective it seemed a strange and giant suit of armor, inscribed with countless runes, swirling patterns, and esoteric designs. Its armor was foreign to all the world-blocky, thick, yet the sheer scale of its body seemed like scales. On its head was a strangely angular helmet, three eyes set into it and shaped somewhat like the beak of a grand bird. On its back were strangely glowing vents, from which would emerge grand glowing wings-allowing the Terminal to fly through the air with deceptive grace and speed. 

Underneath the armor was flesh and metal melded together, acting as one. It couldn't be called a truly "living" thing...but it wasn't wholly inanimate. Blood that was as much physical as it was metaphysical flowed freely through the flesh-like metal, and its muscles were as much mechanical as organic. In the torso of the strange mechanical beast was a-comparatively-small spherical gem, large enough for even an eight-foot man to stretch out freely yet entirely hidden and protected within the Terminal's body. Within this core was both where the armor's metaphysical heart laid, and where the control system for the entire armor-set was.

The armor was fundamentally incomplete-it was designed that way. It was essentially indestructable, but utterly immobile and useless aside from being a giant lump of beautifully crafted metal...until someone entered the Core. By entering the Core, their soul would complete the Terminal, activating it and granting it access to its countless systems. Strength enough to match a Fleshly God from the days before Uruk, speed enough to cross the whole of this island nation in minutes, internal mana engines that continually gained greater capacity and output, a Pseudo-Authority derived from mimicking her own Enlightenment and inscribing the concept of "Heaven" into the Core Systems, allowing it to enact divine miracles regarding the skies and "Heavens" to degrees...and her magnum opus, the Evolutionary Variable Ascension system. 

It was a complex calculation system existing within the Terminal, which continuously worked to observe the state of the armor, record its strengths and weaknesses, then extrapolate changes that could be made to the armor in order to increase its strengths and minimize its weaknesses. Initiating evolutions would cost the armor a truly immense amount of mana and degrade the internal mana engines, thus requiring extensive downtime between each change...but with each change, the armors would grow greater than before. And each change could be guided and selected for by the user-if the user wished, they could evolve greater speed, strength, devote more energy towards Authority manipulations, so on and so forth. They could develop biological swords, shields, weapons and tools of all types...assuming the armor had the requisite power, at least. 

Lastly were the life-support systems, which served to perpetually heal and restore the body and soul of the pilot of the Terminal-granting immortality and even refining the body and soul of a pilot to greater heights the longer they piloted. It would softcap after a certain point, never even matching ten percent of the Terminal's base capabilities...but nine percent was still essentially on the scale of a powerful Divine Spirit.

With all of these benefits, came costs. The Terminal was...picky, for lack of better word. It was both designed to be so, and actively had to be in order to function at all. While any old human being could jump in and take it for a spin if they wished, it would flat-out reject any being that lacked at least some degree of humanity. Further, most operators would only be able to access a small degree of its power depending on how well their mind and soul could "synchronize" with the Terminal. An average pilot might have maybe 5% compatibility, and would only get access to 5% of its power-enough to lumber around as an unbreakable giant and pull off some strange sky-based magic, but it wouldn't be enough to activate the flight systems let alone the E.V.A. system. An ideal wielder could bring the Terminal to a state far beyond what it was designed for. 

Synchronization could be trained of course, but only to a certain point...and an ideal natural wielder who trained to bring the Terminal to its peak could even achieve "apotheosis"; their soul would fuse with the Terminal, their body becoming a divine avatar they could deploy at will. In effect, they would become an artificial Fleshly God that was capable of continuously evolving and adapting over time. Just as the Master had specified.

The making of the first Human-Divinity Terminal, EVA-Unit 1 "Heaven", took nearly a full year. The Goddess returned to her Master's manor just as she completed it, sharing the year's achievements and fulfilling various requests of her Master...before the manor caught on fire, and her Master sent her out once again to the world so that she may continue her "holy mission".

It would take her three years before she would find inspiration for the next EVA unit, let alone any of the swords she was to forge. That inspiration would come in the form of six insect demons, formed from the shattered fragments of an iron tea kettle. Though the Goddess kept the kettle and demonic familiar held within, she would forge a replica for her own use in creating EVA-Unit 2 "Earth". It was quite similar to Unit 1, barring that it was installed with a pseudo-Authority of "Earth" rather than "Heaven", and instead of wings it sported multitudes of insectile tendrils.

Returning to her lord's manor once again for her yearly check-in, she ended up getting a surprising order from her master.

"You have lived countless millennia, haven't you?" He asked her, carefully working on a piece of calligraphic art. It was...less art and more childish scribbles, but the Goddess would give the man points for effort. "You have seen things that mankind has long forgotten, known tales lost to time. Goddess, I have an order for you. Speak, and share with me one of these tales. Share with me a tale from the beginning of the world, some grand triumph or battle you had taken part in back when humanity was young."

The Goddess sighed, and cast her memories back to the early ages of the world. All things considered...that was about the only story that fit, wasn't it? Taking care to try and make her story understandable through the strange speech curse she was currently afflicted with, the Goddess began to tell her tale.

"[Once upon a time, thousands of years in the past, there was a foolish and proud goddess with far more power than sense. She was the greatest craftsman in all the world; she had created the very first implements known as 'tools', and taught both Gods and Man how to wield them to magnify and leverage their power to grand heights. She was also a clever goddess, and had taken Authority of that young and bumbling species called 'man', when they were first born. It was by her Authority that man grew clever in tool-usage, and by her Authority that mankind learned to create that grand tool called 'civilization' that would one day supplant the world.]"

"[But though it was many millennia away, the other gods had shunned and reviled the Goddess of Humanity for her betrayal of their kind. The Goddess cared not at the time-she saw no harm in helping build up her own Authority, her Artifice and her Humanity...but while she grew stronger, the other gods knew that there was only so much strength to be had in the world. And if the Goddess would continue to grow stronger, they would soon begin to grow weaker. No deity was more incensed than the Mother Goddess Tiamat, who had given birth to mankind and all manner of beings."]

"[She was the mother of life itself, the progenitor from which all things had come-and here I had come, taking Authority over her own children, giving them tools and wisdom with which to conquer the world when all she desired was to hold humanity safe in her bosom. Spurred on by the actions of the Goddess, Tiamat poisoned the seas with her own Sea of Life and gave birth to countless monsters. With her new horde she tore down the young cities of Man and captured humanity in ten zones, where she held them. These zones were not harsh, in fact they were quite paradisiacal. Gentle gardens of life guarded by Tiamat's children, where humanity would live peacefully. There was but one rule of these zones: no human was allowed to develop that tool called 'civilization'. No clothes, no tools, no cities were allowed. Even language was frowned upon. And this, I could not allow. And outside of these zones, the most primal and monstrous children of Tiamat reigned supreme.]"

As the Goddess spoke, she called upon the World with her soul and began weaving a gentle, primal magic to create images to accompany her story-and to help disguise when her strange curse of speech played up and made her tale particularly difficult to understand. As the world around them transformed into a vision of ancient Mesopotamia, when Tiamat raged and ruled the world...the Goddess felt a pang of nostalgia, allowing herself to drift in memories even as she continued to share her tale.

"[The Goddess was powerful, you must understand...but Tiamat was, far and away, one of the strongest divinities of the age. And there was not just Tiamat to consider, but also her children-the countless monsters, the Lahmu...the Goddess was just one being, and though powerful, she would need to strike down entire armies across the world if she wished to free humanity and defeat Tiamat. Alone, she simply was not enough. But the Goddess held Authority over Artifice as well, and thus simply began to create tools that would lead her to victory.]"

It started with just a nameless magical blade, a half-assed imitation of Excalibur using subpar materials that burnt itself up to fire a blast of scorching mana. The Goddess could produce them by the dozens, even so many millennia ago, and happily did so. But that just let her clear out massive areas quickly-and others couldn't use them. So she created a metal stand and flint-system that let even the least of humans smack the flint and unleash a single-burst discount Excaliblast. Then she developed the Recapture System, which harnessed the principle of releasing energy that she had only just discovered in those days to draw energy back into the mechanism, forge it into the same blade-pattern, load it into the stand, and fire it at will.

Of course there were a thousand steps in-between, where she had to adjust the stands' durability, develop the forging system, refine the method by which energy was released and captured, so on and so forth. That went without saying, in her mind-it was all merely a part of the process of artificing. But merely stationary magic cannons was not enough to fight off Tiamat's armies, so the Goddess learned to integrate the strange energy loop into their foundations to allow them perpetual flight. Studying the will of the world and the workings of mortal magic, the Goddess learned to imbue crude consciousness to each cannon-to imbue them with orders and direct them to her will. She learned to bend the energy loop system to create a sort of energy barrier around her weapons which could be connected and extended to other instances. All of these things built up and up, until...

The scene around the Goddess and her lord showed a grand battle. On one side was an endless black tide of beings, strange twisted mouths on their head and insectile arms and legs. They chittered and zoomed across the world at impossible speeds, and where they struck the world seemed to shudder under the weight of their blows. Against them was a tide of metal and light. Strange diamond-shaped mechanisms floated in the air-and in their centers were scintillating orbs of swirling light. From each of the diamond vertices would shoot lances of light at the countless monsters, piercing them and sundering them. When a Lahmu struck at one of the diamonds a blue and white light would ripple across the construct. Sometimes many of the constructus would suddenly float together, combining into more complex shapes in bursts of light. Then these super-constructs would unleash immense blasts or assaults on Tiamat's armies, clearing entire sections of the field.

"[My Myriad Gems...It took many battles and much time to develop them, but they were quite the weapon against Tiamat's hordes. They were terrible as direct weapons, but as fodder...yes, they were perfect. It took barely a handful of mana and some clay from the earth to forge one, and soon I could match Tiamat's endless monsters against my own endless hordes. With my Gems, I slaughtered Tiamat's armies, and zone by zone began to free humanity from her clutches.]" Scenes of countless battles, of monsters and Gems that blotted out the skies, of a Goddess striking with spear and sword and countless other strange weapons against divine beings even while the Gems guarded humanity and began to purge the monsters of the world filled the manor.

With a gentle smile on her face, the Goddess continued. "[Without hesitation, I slaughtered a confused and grieving mother's children by the millions. Oh, Tiamat had certainly enslaved humanity...but it was not out of malice. She hated what I had done, but did not hate me. No, Tiamat was merely confused and despairing. She, the mother of all life, was being abandoned by her children. The Gods had turned upon her already and tried to strike her down, and in return she simply rose up and engulfed the world in her Chaos Tide. For all she wanted, was to mother us all. She wanted to nurture and create life, endlessly. She didn't want to be abandoned by her children, Humanity and Monsters alike. Civilization would pull humanity apart from the gods, pull her children away from her, and so it had to be fought. I did not understand this then, and simply saw her as a tyrant. And so I slaughtered her monsters, her children, and began to rebuild civilization without a care as I ripped her own children further and further away from her.]"

"[In time, the ten zones were freed, the armies of Tiamat were shattered, and all the remainder of her monsters corralled around the Sea of Life which spread endlessly from Tiamat's body yet was shrunk by continuously burning it away until it was naught but a lake of black mud that surrounded her. The final battle had begun, and my victory was all but assured...but gods-especially Mother Goddesses-do not die easily. For many weeks, my Gems and her Lahmu warred while Tiamat and I dueled; her children born endlessly from her Sea, while my Gems were recreated endlessly from the sheer energy in the air. And in the meantime, I simply could not slay Tiamat. No matter with what sword, spear, axe, club, torch, arrow, or more I struck Tiamat with, no matter how many times I struck her, she simply regenerated and continued to battle me.]"

The illusions twisted, showing the grand battle against Tiamat. A feminine figure of gold and white light wielding countless weapons peppered a draconic yet similarly feminine figure, black and blue and green. Tiamat stood titanic in stature, while the Goddess seemed akin to a gnat...but every weapon, every strike that the golden figure made against Tiamat shook the world and tore entire chunks from the Mother Goddess. Yet Tiamat never stopped fighting; whenever she was injured black liquid would gush from her, recreating the flesh in instant and restoring her strength. Grand blasts of red and black light lanced from her and shot to the Goddess, who would block with swirling shields of black and white light or dodge out of the way. And all around them an endless swarm of monsters and Gems battled.

"[So long as even a single child of hers lived, Tiamat could not die...and all of humanity was her children. I could not, would not, execute humanity merely to slay Tiamat. So I sought a different method. I sought a way to truly slay the Mother Goddess, and the Mother Goddess alone. Through weeks of battle and thought, I found my solution. I simply did what I did best: I created a weapon.]"

Grand bands of light encircled the entirety of the Sea of Chaos, formed from countless Gems linking together in sequence. One, two, three, four, five, six...seven bands of light. Far above, the Goddess sang a song to the world. The bands of light began to rotate, and within the Sea of Chaos a grand, cataclysmic wind began to kick up. Pressure formed, as if the entirety of the world simply grew heavier and heavier. One by one, Tiamat's monsters quite simply began to pop-dissolving from the sharp winds and immense pressure. Yet Tiamat stared above at the Goddess, unbothered. Light lanced from her to the Goddess, who defended and continued to sing.

The bands of light spun, faster and faster, and the winds within them grew sharper and greater. The pressure within simply grew greater and greater...yet Tiamat never stopped staring up at the Goddess. After a point she even stopped firing, instead simply staring at the Goddess with those strange cross-shaped eyes. The Goddess stared back, never pausing her song. And as the song reached a cresendo...the winds turned red, and the world within the bands of light was torn asunder. Reality itself frayed apart and fell to chaos, revealing the origin of existence underneath all things-encapsulated within those bands of light. Cut off from all reality by the light, torn apart by the winds, pressure, and Truth, and cast out of reality...Tiamat never stopped staring at the Goddess, even as she fell apart into nothingness. At the center was a single string of red light, which rose from the disintegrated Tiamat's body, twisting and turning...until it was caught in the Goddess's hand. 

Then the illusion fell away, and it was just the Goddess and her lord, back in that manor in the present day.

"[With this grand weapon, I slew Tiamat.]" The Goddess said, her eyes closed and lost in her own memories. "[All that was left was a final bit of essence, containing her Authority as a Mother Goddess. I took it into myself, erasing the concept of death from my own existence and gaining control over my own Sea of Life. I did alone what an entire pantheon of deities could not. Without hesitation, without consideration, I slew humanity's mother-my mother-consumed her heart, and crowned myself the queen of life. It would take me many millennia to truly understand the cruelty I had inflicted without thought, and attempt to make amends for my conquest. But that is a story for another day.]"

For a few moments, the manor was silent-the lord in solemn contemplation, the Goddess lost in her own memories. Then the lord spoke. "Goddess, I am curious. What exactly were those monsters, those...'Ra-muu'?"

"['Lahmu'; they were...humanity, after a fashion. A different idea of what humanity could have been, from an entirely different origin of life. Born to be both divine and human, without the touch of civilization and eternally reliant on the care of their mother to live. Children who would never, ever, abandon their mother.]" The Goddess explained, not opening her eyes. 

"[Tiamat was the mother of life, yes, but couldn't quite understand what it was about humanity that made it different from any other form of life. She tried, of course, but her failure was apparent in the Lahmu. They were innocent beings, without language, without individual thought. They had no need for food, for water, did not age, did not die to anything save violence. Powerful and primal...and fundamentally, they were no different from animals or even insects. They tried to understand humanity, but only ended up tormenting and torturing it. Don't think of them as cruel; they held no malice in their actions. They simply did not understand.]"

The lord nodded to himself, coming to a decision. "Goddess, I have a request for you-not an order, just a request." The Goddess opened her eyes, staring at her master curiously. "When you make the final Divine Armor...consider dedicating it to the Lahmu, the younger siblings of humanity who never got to live. Consider leaving at least one remnant of those final children of the Mother of Life that will never fade away. And, should you have the time afterwards...perhaps write a story of these events. Let humanity not forget the days when it nearly ended, and the death of our brethren that allowed us to spread throughout the world."

The Goddess smiled, and nodded.

And so, rather than the strange mishmash of artificial creatures which formed the biology of the other to EVA-Units, the final EVA...was instead forged from the Sea of Life that the Goddess was able to call upon. Its flesh, rather than chimaeric, was that of a Lahmu's. Its form was human, its core was much the same as the other...yet its pseudo-Authority called upon a fragment of the Sea of Life that the Goddess imbued into it. EVA Unit-3 "Sea" was a human-shaped Lahmu, the lost and forgotten little sibling of humanity shackled in metal and forged into a guardian for its elder species. It carried a fragment of the Sea of Life, and held the greatest potential of all three EVA Units.

Reporting the completion of the three Divine Armors to her lord, he stroked his chin as he considered the three titanic beings. "EVA Units, you call them..." He murmured. "Yes, I think I understand. These...are the Evangelion, who shall spread the word of Yamato's new gods. Now, they must be distributed. Goddess! At the northernmost tip of this land, bury away the Evangelion of Heaven! At the southernmost tip, bury the Evangelion of Earth! And in the center of this land, you shall bury the Evangelion of the Sea! Once this is done, begin to spread legends of their existence throughout the land. Write books, sing songs, spread tales! Let the worthy discover them on their own, and ascend to becoming the new gods of the land!" The lord declared.

And the Goddess did so; she buried the Evangelion of Heaven underneath the land of what would one day be called Hokkaido; the Evangelion of Earth, she buried in Kyushu. The final Evangelion, the Evangelion of the Sea...she buried under a certain mountain in what would one day be the Kyoto prefecture. Specifically, a mountain that would one day be called "Mount Ooe". And after that she returned to wandering the land of Yamato, writing songs and stories of the Three Evangelion in her spare time and when the mood struck her.

It was not long afterwards that the Goddess received a letter of invitation to a certain island some distance away, where a tournament of the greatest swordsman of ALL eras were being gathered. Intrigued and eager to practice her own ever-refining swordsmanship skills, the Goddess set out to that distant island. Upon arriving she sensed that the claims of the tournament were not falsities; somehow, this island was cut off from the natural flow of space and time itself-an island that existed both within and without reality. In such a place, it was actually quite trivial for strangers from any and every era to arrive. It was even possible to find swordsmen from an entirely different "Tree of Time".

"Senpai!" A bubbly voice greeted the Goddess as she was exploring the island. A strange purple-haired girl skipped up to the Goddess, her rather impressive bosom bouncing as she did so. She smiled and leaned forward with her hands folded behind her back, smiling at the Goddess. "Oh, I'm so glad you arrived! I'm sure you'll love the Ultimate Swordsman Festival!"

"[Who...are you?]" The Goddess asked the strange woman.

The purple-haired girl giggled and answered. "I'm...hmm, I suppose I should be called BB! I'm the organizer of this tournament! But you can call me 'kohai', senpai!"

Now, it has to be said that the Goddess was not an idiot. It was actually quite obvious what was going on here, after a moment's thought. A strange person she had never met being extremely familiar with her, specifically on an island where space and time was distorted so blademasters from every single era could all gather to duel in a tournament? The answer was obvious: this woman was someone she would meet and grow close to in the future, possibly the very distant future given that the Goddess had not seen her with her God's Eyes which, currently, could scry hundreds of years into the future to see countless possibilities. That said, her God's Eyes were honestly rather useless in this place; space and time was all twisted up on this island, rendering distant past and future unreadable. She could still see minutes, even hours, ahead and behind...but not much further in either direction thanks to the nature of the island.

Filing these thoughts away, the Goddess nodded to BB, who smiled and giggled once again. "Senpai's so cute as a little girl!" BB commented, confirming the Goddess's thoughts. "C'mon, senpai! Lemme show you around!" BB hooked one of her arms around the Goddess's, and proceeded to drag her all across the island, showing off every nook and cranny she could. 

As the evening approached BB had to leave in order to attend to her duties as the tournament organizer, and the Goddess found herself having a /fascinating/ conversation about sword philosophy with a strange pink haired woman named Musashi. Even as the blade masters of the island were called into a central plaza for an evening announcement, the Goddess and Musashi didn't pause their conversation-right up until BB put herself on loudspeaker, causing all conversation to come to a halt.

"Helloooo everyone!" BB called out. "Welcome, one and all, to the First and Final Tournament of the Ultimate Blade Masters! You have been gathered across space, across time, across the boundaries of reality itself to test your skills against one another and truly decide who, amongst all of space, all of time, and even across realities, is the Final Blade Master! The Blade Master whose sword surpasses all swords before or after! Whose blade cuts down all opposition across all reality!" BB paused there, and allowed the cheers of the hundreds of blade masters gathered from across reality to ring out through the plaza.

"I'm your host and organizer, BB! Now, for the nitty-gritty details! Now, under a normal flow of time, this tournament would last for what may be two weeks...but since time is silly here, we've taken the liberty of including a special 'BB-Token' system into your invitations! Just think about it for a second, and your invitational pass will pop right into your hand along with your current token count!" BB waited a moment to allow the various blade masters to do so, then continued. "As I said earlier, time is wonky here; the BB-Tokens work to 'stabilize' the flow of time for yourself and allow you to participate in various activities! Each Token represents an hour of stable time where you can interact with the festivities of the island, participate in matches, eat, drink, fight, and be merry! It's up to you to make the most of your time, but every single participant is guaranteed a minimum of three-hundred and thirty six tokens!"

"You can earn further tokens through a wide variety of activities; certain games on the island will grant tokens, you can gamble your tokens in duels against others on the island, and you will always earn a sum of tokens in victory during the main Blade Master Tournament! While you can gain tokens and spend them, you will ALWAYS be guaranteed to have the opportunity to spend your initial tokens-so don't be afraid to play fast and loose with your time! One token will be deducted per hour you spend on the island, maintainin the stable flow of time, but further spending of tokens will be required for certain activities so that you can experience them in their entirety without compromising your time on the island. Consult your island passes for further details at your leisure!"

"Now, there are also certain rules to your stay on this island. Outside of a sanctioned duel which both participants have fully agreed to without coersion or during the actual matches of the tournament itself, it is EXPRESSLY FORBIDDEN from attacking another participant. And don't try to weasel out of it by saying that such an attack is unintentional; the Lunar Eye System acts to monitor all activity on the island constantly and flawlessly! Sabotaging your opponent's weaponry before a match, poisoning outside of a match, and theft outside of battle are all forbidden as well; DON'T DO IT! Essentially, any attempt to negatively affect another participant's combat abilities outside of sanctioned combat is forbidden."

BB began to smirk as she prepared to say her final bits of the speech. "Now, we have just a few things left before you can get to your night-time drinking and partying. Preliminaries will begin tomorrow and run for the following three days; seventy-two tokens have been automatically deducted from all participants to participate. If you've been knocked out of the prelims, don't worry; while the preliminaries are still running, you may freely choose to challenge any participant who has passed. Should you succeed in such a challenge, you will take their spot in the roster-but be careful, because now you can be challenged too! The final tournament bracket will hold two-hundred and fifty six participants, so do everything in your power to make a spot! Those who don't will still be allowed to participate on the island, or leave early if they wish. They may not, however, challenge any of the main tournament participants after the roster has been finalized...with one exception."

BB was smirking fully now, barely able to hold herself back. "Now, one final rule! The GODDESS CHALLENGE!" A grand spotlight shone down from the evening sky onto the Goddess, who looked a bit gobsmacked to suddenly be turned into the center of attention. "We have the Goddess of Humanity herself participating in this tournament, and she has some special rules set on her! First; anybody and everybody facing her will be blessed with Anti-Divinity, Anti-Humanity, and Anti-Saver qualities by Lunar Authority, and may optionally take a variety of buffs to face her as well-from attack blessings, defense blessings, you can even request special skills and powers while facing our lovely Goddess! Though only up to three buffs may be applied per duel, so choose carefully! Oh, but that's not all! Anybody who challenges the Goddess will be granted twenty-four extra BB-Tokens, no questions asked. Further, the Goddess is expressely forbidden from turning down any challenges! That does, of course, mean that even after the tournament roster has been finalized, anybody who manages to defeat the Goddess can take her spot in the main tournament-even if she's already in the finals! The one rule about that is that she MAY turn down repeat challenges from someone she has defeated...for up to a single hour after she has defeated them."

"Lastly, every time the Goddess is challenged, I'll personally spin the Goddess Wheel." Here BB gestured, summoning forth a rather giant gameshow wheel. "What's the Goddess Wheel? It's a list of challenges that the Goddess will be forced to fight under! There's already a dozen challenges on the wheel, but all participants may submit their own ideas to the Goddess Wheel at any time; it will cost one BB-Token to submit a minor challenge to the Wheel, three BB-Tokens for a moderate challenge, and nine BB-Tokens for a major challenge. If you wanted, you can even decide to help the Goddess out a bit; a minor boon costs twenty-seven BB-Tokens to submit, a moderate boon costs eighty-one, and a major boon costs two-hundred and forty three! All challenges will remain permanently on the Goddess Wheel, whereas once a Boon is placed it will be permanently removed after it has been selected just once. I think you all know what to do here~!" BB winked to the crowd, sticking her tongue out cutely as she did so. "And just so you know, you can have the Goddess Wheel spin more than once per duel; by paying twelve BB-Tokens, I'll spin the Goddess Wheel again, adding a new challenge for her to fight under-though only up to three at a time! I trust you'll know what to do here as well~!"

"Well, that's all! If at any time you want to check the rules of both the Tournament and your stay here on the island, just pull up your island pass and it will display the information at your leisure! I'll leave you all to enjoy the night, and hope you enjoy the rest of the tournament!" BB cheered, concluding her speech. It didn't even take a full five minutes before someone challenged the Goddess.

The Goddess would swiftly become all too familiar with BB quite literally popping out of nowhere, gameshow wheel by her side, and slapping arbitrary restrictions onto her with the force of an Authority that seemed more akin to something that equalled or even superceded her own Authority as an Enlightened One than anything that an actual deity should be capable of. It was madness...but this tournament as a whole was something utterly impossible under her current understanding, yet existed regardless. So the Goddess simply accepted things as they were, and fought to the best of her abilities no matter what strange challenges she was saddled with. Fight with only one hand? Effortless. Fight without eyes? Her insight into the World substituted easily. Forbidden from using all mana, any natural strength or speed beyond the most mundane of human beings, and must fight on a single foot while in extremely unstable terrain? That one was particularly tricky...but by harnessing a variation of the movement skills attained through Breathing and Walking as well as the pure swordsmanship techniques which allowed her to refract her blade across spacetime and strike multiple times at once, the Goddess was able to eke out a win.

Using her experience with Breathing and Walking, as well as her already existing skill to refract her strike across dimensions to strike multiple times simultaneously, to form a technique that essentially allowed her to use her own bladestrikes to teleport around the battlefield was both insanity and inspired. Were it not for her years of skill in both disciplines as well as her sheer genius, the difficulty of such a technique would have made it fundamentally impossible to master-and even now, she had to rely on her qutie literally divine durability to handle the sheer strain of the technique.

If she had her way, the Goddess would never have discovered such a technique-it was far too difficult, far too strenuous, to achieve something she could easily have done with simple Breathing and Walking. But with the Goddess Challenge that BB forced on her, the Goddess was forced to improvise...and thus, discovered entirely new branches of techniques and abilities that she would never have considered before. And on this island, facing what were literally the greatest blade masters across all of space and time, that sort of experience was pure gold. A new, never-before-seen technique might mean the difference between victory and defeat, after all!

Merely getting through the first day of the Preliminaries was no easy feat for the Goddess. Where all other participants had MAYBE a single battle under their belt by the end of the day, two or three if they were particularly unlucky, the Goddess had already undergone several dozen duels. And if she wanted to stay on the island, she had to win Every. Single. One. A little unspoken rule that BB seemed to thoughtlessly toss in when nobody was looking; if the Goddess lost ONCE, she was gone. She may have been lovey-dovey to the Goddess's face, but BB was without a doubt a sadist attempting to do her level best to crush the life out of the Goddess. This, the Goddess was absolutely sure of.

Of course, a deeply unpleasant challenge came about late into the second day.

"Tyrant God, Usurper of the Sea of Life...I have returned from beyond the abyss to seek restitution for thine crimes." An elderly rumbling voice pierced the Goddess's thoughts.

She placed down the plate of food she had been eating-something called a "pizza"-and stood from the picnic table she had been at. She knew that voice. It was one of her many, many regrets during her early years. "King of the Hashshashin." The Goddess greeted. She did not turn around to look at him, not yet. "It's been a long time."

"The river of time has flowed ceaselessly, washing away old sins...but here, in this place where the flow has been usurped, thou shalt be forced to answer once more." King Hassan agreed. "Time is limited; I shall not waste it further. Tyrant of Humanity, I challenge you to a duel of blades."

The Goddess sighed, even as a strange gridlike barrier formed around her and King Hassan-cast from light falling from the three eyes in the sky. The world outside the barrier was washed away in an instant, remade into a flat, desert-like plain that harkened back to that ancient desert where she had fought King Hassan so many centuries ago. She did not watch, but knew that a circle of light had opened up beneath King Hassan-granting him incredibly powerful blessings specifically designed to pierce her defenses.

"Goddess Challenge!" BB's voice cut in, as she quite literally popped into existence between the two combatants. "Today's challenge is special! Thanks to a special contract with Gaia, the following challenges have been forcibly implemented exclusively for this duel!" Ropes of light began to descend, intangibly tightening themselves around the Goddess in a procedure she had grown all too familiar with by now. "Challenge 1: The Concept of Death has been forcibly imposed on the Goddess by joint Authority of both Gaia and Lunar Authority, ensuring that any death she suffers is final and absolute! Challenge 2: All non-self directed usages of Authority, magic, or magecraft have been expressely forbidden for the Goddess by Authority of Gaia! Challenge 3: By the Authority of Gaia, the Goddess's defeat is locked as a Quantum Time-Lock, and thus this match can only end in her defeat and subsequent erasure from pan-human history, or through a temporal paradox to shatter the Quantum Time-Lock!"

The Goddess took a deep breath, and sighed. This...was a bit more than she was expecting. Gaia clearly wanted her to be erased from this world-something about her existence was realling sticking in the planet's craw, it seemed. If she was allowed to use her Authority as an enlightened being she could easily just banish the QTL that was assuring her defeat...but external Authority usage had been banned for her. This would be quite difficult. Not impossible, though. She still had options.

"Additionally, a special set of boons has been prepared by Gaia to empower King Hassan!" BB continued, heedless of the Goddess's thoughts. "Boon one: King Hassan is granted invulnerability to anything save the flesh of the Goddess by Authority of Gaia! Boon two: King Hassan is granted invulnerability to any effect which does not harness the Concept of Death to an equal or greater degree than he himself does! Boon three: Any direct contact with the Goddess's living flesh shall exponentially magnify the Concept of Death held within King Hassan's weaponry, ensuring that a single attack is all that's required to permanently slay the Goddess! Get ready folks, because this promises to be one of the greatest duels of the age-and we haven't even gotten to the official tournament yet!" BB cheered. This match, just as all the others had been, was being broadcasted around the island for anyone interested to watch.

In the sky above King Hassan and the Goddess, a set of numbers appeared. These numbers appeared differently to anyone looking, but always meant the same thing...they started at twenty, and slowly began counting down to the beginning of the match.

At last, the Goddess turned around to face King Hassan. Though she could not change her expression due to her curses, she truly didn't feel the desire to do so. Her eyes stared into the azure flames that burned in his eye sockets. "Was all this truly necessary, Old Man?" She asked.

The King of the Hashshashin nodded. "The bells toll for thee, Tyrant Goddess. Both God and the World shall cast thee down."

The Goddess shook her head. "No, no they will not." She denied. If she could, she would have smiled. As it was, she simply drew her sword and prepared herself. The count reached zero, and in a burst of godlike speed both combatants began to battle.

Once upon a time, the Goddess was the epitome of "powerful, yet unskilled". She could throw a punch, kick, block, fight in a /general sense/...but any human being with even a few weeks of combat training would have been her superior. Of course, skill doesn't really matter when your casual punches and kicks can level mountains, so the Goddess had seen no need to genuinely work towards rectifying the situation. And for that matter, physical combat was a last resort of last resorts for her; the Goddess was skilled with manipulating the world through the Song of her Soul, through her Authority as a Goddess, and even through mortal magics. Dirtying her body with crude combat was far beneath her, when she could reshape the world around her with but a thought. This was the Goddess that King Hassan was familiar with. Powerful beyond compare, but essentially without skill-a mage at heart who was all but helpless without her magic or Authority, yet had never been far from it and so had never faced a challenge in her life.

This was not who the Goddess was anymore.

With inhuman grace the Goddess weaved her blade, deflecting King Hassan's strikes and striking back such that it was only his current invulnerability that saved his neck. No matter how swiftly the Old Man of the Mountain struck, the Goddess's blade was there to parry and deflect. No matter how harsh the blow, the Goddess managed to use a minimal amount of force to all but spin King Hassan's blade around and deflect him. With just a single step she could weave in and out of his range, moving so swiftly that it was less a form of movement and more an instantanous translocation-only there was not even a hint of magecraft or divine Authority involved. Her strikes were strange as well-sometimes powerful, with the force of a true fleshly god behind them, and sometimes soft, whisper cuts that nevertheless screamed death for anything caught on her blade's edge.

...And yet, none of it was enough to actually harm King Hassan. His invulnerability granted by Gaia protected him from every single attack the Goddess made, and his empowerment by the Quantum Time Lock ensured that despite everything, his victory was still assured. That did not mean that the Old Man would slack off in his duty in attempting to slay the Goddess, of course. He was as relentless as death itself, chasing her and striking at her over and over again, just waiting for even a single strike to make it through to take her down-

There was a flash of metal, blood, and bone.

...And suddenly, a grand cage of bone and flesh appeared around King Hassan. The eldest Hassan did not hesitate to strike at the cage...yet it resisted his blade. It was not immune, but it was sturdy; it would take him many strike to break through it. "Hmm? What sorcery hath thou wrought, Tyrant Goddess?" He asked.

She would have smiled if she could, divine blood leaking from the stump where her off-arm had been. "Just did a little magic on myself to get some breathing room." She said. Her arm definitely counted as "self-targeted" after all, and by using it this way she could circumvent the banning of most of her mystical abilities. She didn't have any expectation that it would do much more than keep King Hassan trapped for a little bit, but that's all she needed.

Because, at last, she had figured out King Hassan's power. In truth, and in full.

The Goddess dropped her blade, even as her arm began to regenerate. "You know, for so many centuries I could never quite figure out your connection with the very concept of Death." The Goddess mentioned, watching as King Hassan struck his cage over and over again. Yet her flesh, severed and dead, was powerful regardless; she would have some minutes to do her work. "But it's been a long time, I've gained new power...and now, fighting you again...I figured it out." Around the Goddess, a strange array of smithing tools formed-as if pulled from her very soul. "And given the restrictions I'm fighting under...it is only fitting to fight you this way."

With a shout, the Goddess plunged her hand into her eye socket, and ripped forth one of her own eyeballs in a spray of divine blood. Calling forth the tools of the Sword Smith's hut around her, she began to work the divine eye-pouring blood and mana into the forging freely and with a certain possessed madness. Underneath her hands a paradoxically blinding black glow began to form, and in just a handful of minutes the shape of a katana was visible beneath her workings. This blade was no natural blade however; the metal was black as pitch though the edge glowed a bloody crimson. A mist like death seemed to continuously drift off of it, yet in that mist were white dots that almost seemed to harken to the stars.

Just as she finished her work King Hassan broke through the Goddess's cage, and in an instant rushed forth to slay the Goddess while she was distracted. The strange spiritual workshop disappeared and in a clash that sounded like the tolling of a distant bell, King Hassan's blade met the edge of the newly forged katana. "Forgive me if it's not my best work." The Goddess murmured while King Hassan tried to press through and slay her. "I was working under a bit of a time crunch."

The dance of death between the two resumed, with just one change...now, the Goddess was actually able to hurt King Hassan. As her blade flew through the air, its crimson edge would flash and carve through King Hassan's own body. Where it passed the azure flames of Kur poured forth from King Hassan's body, sealing the wound...yet it was proof that this was no longer an impossible battle.

"Yet another usurpation, Tyrant Goddess? Now you seek to steal Death itself?" King Hassan asked, not pausing in his attacks. 

"Call it what you will." The Goddess answered. "It's just a prototype."

"It matters not." King Hassan decided. "Even should I fall beneath your blade, God has decreed that such an outcome is forbidden. Thine victory shall become ash on the wind, as will thine life."

"Let's test that, shall we?" The Goddess asked. With a sound of static, the Goddess jumped backwards-moving an immense distance in just an instant. Then, she breathed out and closed her eyes. A peaceful serenity seemed to encompass her, yet in her heart she became utterly empty and still. When her eyes opened, they were black-reflecting only the void. With deceptive slowness the Goddess raised her blade, preparing for a singular strike.

Feeling a sense of absolute crisis, King Hassan harnessed the flames of Kur to teleport to the Goddess and attempted to interrupt her strike before it could begin...

But it was too late.

The Goddess struck, and as she struck the world was shattered. DEATH passed through space, through time, cutting every possibility that was called "King Hassan". It passed through reality, to the very core of Gaia, and severed the Quantum Time Lock that had been established upon the Great Tree of Time. The very island itself shook and rumbled from the sheer power of that singular strike. 

At some point, the Goddess realized she had closed her eyes, and opened them. In front of her was a line in space, a scar upon reality that was refusing to be sealed. The black katana in her grip disintegrated, unable to bear the sheer strain of what the Goddess had done. And behind her, the Old Man of the Mountain knelt in the sand.

"One day...thou shalt answer the tolling of the bells." King Hassan decreed, though his voice was weak.

"No, I will not." The Goddess denied. "The bells can ring all they wish, the planet can rage, and your God can roar...yet I shall remain unbowed."

"Truly, thou art an unmatched tyrant..." King Hassan trailed off, as his body dissolved into nothingness-consumed by the death that the Goddess had inflicted upon him.

The dueling arena faded away in a burst of wireframe light, and the Goddess found herself standing beside the picnic table where she had previously been...though with her pizza gone. It took only the barest fraction of effort with her God's Eyes to discover who had stolen it. The Goddess sighed, sat down, and decided that for once she'd let this go. She wanted to dwell on her memories for now.

For a land that was caught in a strange flux of time, it was to be expected that time moved quickly. Though there was a lull in challenges that the Goddess faced after defeating King Hassan, such a thing lasted only as long as the preliminaries; afterwards, the challenges picked right back up. For the sheer joy of battle, for a final shot at making it into the tournament, for the glory of facing a goddess in battle-she was challenged for all sorts of reasons, and met every challenge with the same unchanging face as always. It wasn't like she could change her expression with the curse she was operating under, after all.

It didn't matter what sort of challenges or boons BB threw out; the Goddess held the skill and sheer willpower needed to remain utterly undefeated. The Goddess found it a little bit humorous, in a way; every other contender in the Tournament only had to have a single match per day now, for eight days-completing the tournament in just over a week. Theoretically, she also was only mandated to have a single match per day too. But due to the "Goddess Challenge", she was having close to sixty duels a day.

The constant battle made it difficult for the Goddess to grow close to any of the other participants except for when they were dueling her directly-and since the other active tournament participants were forbidden from challenges, it made it all the harder to interact with them at all. On the other hand, of course, the Goddess got to know the blade masters who didn't manage to make the cut for the tournament /quite well/, especially those who just kept on challenging her repeatedly. Every single hour. Every single day.

"Goddess-chan! Eli has returned to defeat you, once and for all!" A high-pitched and cute voice called out. All but falling out of the sky, Elizabeth Bathory appeared...clad in bikini armor. "This is where the story of Brave Eli-chan truly begins!"

The Goddess sighed, one of the few emotive actions available to her, and faced the "reskinned" Elizabeth. "[Hello again, Liz.]" She greeted the (more than) slightly insane dragon girl. "[Ankle okay? You took a pretty nasty fall after last match.]"

"Oh! It's fine; BB provides complementary healing services! The first three heals of the day are free, and after that cost five Tokens a pop!" Liz explained, kicking her leg up high and rotating her ankle just to show off that she's fine. "See, all fine!" She demonstrated. If she was wearing anything aside from bikini armor, she'd have been flashing her panties doing that. But Liz was wearing so little as it was that somehow the idiotic movement that would have normally been revealing was simply normal. Truly outstanding, Liz-chan. 

Instead of BB popping up to the side, a cardboard cutout of BB appeared that was holding a sign saying "out to lunch". The Goddess Wheel, of course, appeared just as normal. "Ah! BB, you're still out to lunch?" Liz asked. "Don't worry, Eli-chan's got this for you!" Guillessly and without hesitation, Liz skipped right on up to the Goddess Wheel and gave it a hard spin...then began shaking her arms up and down while chanting. "C'mon, Eli-special, Eli-special, Eli-special!" 

This had happened a few times; it was all bullshit, of course. Even when she wasn't "around", BB ultimately controlled the Goddess Wheel. But Liz was either too stupid or too pure to actually realize that, and thought that BB was genuinely out to lunch. And not ONCE had she actually taken advantage of that to try and just move the wheel to the option she wanted. Each and every time, without fail, Liz just spun the wheel and hoped for the best. It was just so cute, BB confessed at one point between duels, that she couldn't help but keep the charade going to see how long it would take for Liz-chan to realize that she could just /choose/ what she wanted to land while BB was "gone" on instead of actually spinning the wheel.

Several days into the tournament and over a hundred duels, and it still hasn't occurred to Liz.

The wheel slowed, and came to a stop on "May Only Counterattack"...which itself was just one option away from "Eli-Special". Objectively speaking, Liz managed to roll a pretty damn good Goddess Challenge that would greatly limit the Goddess's options...but still, Liz groaned. "Ah man, just one off!" She complained. Slumping, she began to trudge back to her starting point.

The Goddess turned towards the "cardboard cutout" of BB, and actively used her hands to manipulate her expression into a glare. The "cutout" of BB promptly flipped her sign, which now read 'C'mon, senpai! It's so annoying!' The Goddess continued to forcibly hold her expression. Sighing, the cutout flipped her sign again-which now read 'Fiiiiiiine. Since it's for you.' Then, reaching out to the wheel with her free hand, the "BB Cutout" moved the wheel exactly one space...right to Eli-Special. Letting her face go back to its cursed passivity, the Goddess gave BB a thumbs-up.

Having seen absolutely none of that exchange, Liz reached her starting position and looked back to the wheel...to discover that it had, in fact, landed on Eli-Special. She gasped in joy, and proceeded to pose. "Aha! This time it's sure to be my victory, Goddess-chan!" She cheered, even as the sky began its countdown to the beginning of the match. "Ehem! Since BB's out to lunch, I'll explain the Eli-Special for her! Basically, all your attacks do zero damage! But that wouldn't be fair alone, so there's a way to power up your attacks!"

A musical beat suddenly picked up in the background, and from seemingly nowhere a band and soundspeaker system appeared. Liz continued, as if all of this was planned. "You can only do damage to the beat of the music! And just to be fair, I can only damage you to the beat of the music too! But that's not going to help you very much, because Eli-chan is the best there is at rhythm games! I always manage to score a B, for Best!" Flashing lights shone from above, and the music in the background kicked into gear just as the counter in the sky dropped to zero. "Now, time to face Eli-chan at her very best!"

Now it was important to keep in mind that the Goddess was, in fact, a Goddess of Song along with Artifice and Humanity. It went without saying that she knew how to keep rhythm to a quite literally divine degree. Her skill in Breathing and Walking-a skill which worked to synchronize one's breath with one's action and required an incredible degree of both bodily control and an internal sense of rhythm. 

Needless to say, the duel didn't even last five full minutes.

The Goddess didn't even have to actively hurt Liz; she just tripped her up, tied her up with chains (well, swords that could fall apart into chains, just so that they were legal for the duel), and waited until Liz conceded defeat. As the music disappeared so too did the chains holding Liz down, and she immediately sprung back up.

"Ha! You may have bested me this time, Goddess-chan! But I shall return, greater and more powerful than ever! And then, the legend of Brave Eli-chan will truly begin!" Liz cheered, spun on one foot, and promptly faceplanted into the ground out of sheer clumsyness. "I'm okay!" She called out, jumping back up again and running off. Of course, Liz would be back by the turn of the hour-hoping to challenge the Goddess again to rhythm-based combat.

Time did as it always does, and continued to flow onwards. Despite herself, the Goddess found herself growing close to a few contestants. Brave Elizabeth Bathory, of course, who the Goddess felt could not be trusted on her own to actually take care of herself and unilaterally decided to all but adopt purely for Elizabeth's own sake. Another of her "adoptions" was the young swordswoman who went by the name of Beni-Enma. An incredibly serious little girl, caring, focused, and a surprisingly good cook...but rather lonely as well, and so it only felt natural to take the girl into her arms and pamper her like a mother would. 

The final companion the Goddess ended up picking up from the Tournament was an odd girl who introduced herself as Mysterious Heroine X, the Ultimate Saber Slayer. Participating in the tournament and proving her renown as a Saber was just a side-objective for her, she explained at one point. The truth was that she was hunting "The Ultimate Saber Goddess", who plagued her own Tree of Time for over a thousand years. Said Goddess was the ultimate, absolute pinnacle of what it meant to be a Saber, and so Mysterious Heroine X naturally had to hunt her down. Except, by the time she appeared in the Saber Universe, the Ultimate Saber Goddess was far and away too powerful to be beaten-no Servant nor God could so much as hope to scratch her. 

So the only reasonable option, MHX decided, was to travel backwards through time to kill the Ultimate Saber Goddess while she was young! But the Ultimate Saber Goddess wasn't originally from the Saber Universe, so not only did MHX have to travel back through time, but also across universes! And now she had arrived in the Blademaster Tournament, where legends told that the Ultimate Saber Goddess would appear within. Unfortunately...MHX couldn't seem to find her. There was no Saberface of Saberfaces around, and the Goddess herself-though matching some superficial descriptions such as "utterly divine swordsmanship skills", "power overwhelming", "beauty incarnate", and "Authority over Humanity"...was not a Saberface, and therefore could not be the Ultimate Saber Goddess.

Even when the Goddess eventually won the entirety of the tournament and became crowned as the Final Blade Master-just as the Ultimate Saber Goddess was said to have been in the distant past-MHX still scoffed at the idea that the Goddess could be the Ultimate Saber. She didn't even have an Ahoge, for pity's sake!

The Goddess felt that it was only fair to ****** MHX to join her on her own adventures, at least until the Servant from a different universe finally """found""" her target. Overjoyed, MHX agreed happily...and gluttenously, as both the Goddess and Beni-enma were happily willing to spoil the silly Saber with nigh-divine home cooking.

The tournament preliminaries took three days to complete. The tournament itself followed a schedule of "one round per day", and with 256 contestants that meant that the tournament as a whole lasted eight further days. On day twelve there was an awards ceremony, wherein the Goddess was crowned as the Final Blade Master. That left two more days to celebrate, relax, and just enjoy the pleasures of the island...and with the tournament completed, the Goddess was finally free to refuse challenges just as everyone else was. Meaning that, FOR ONCE, the Goddess could actually enjoy herself!

The Goddess found herself relaxing on the beach, clad in nothing but a bikini and bathing in the sun...when a shadow passed over her head. She opened her eyes to see a blushing yet smiling BB staring down at her. "So, how was the tournament senpai? Loads of fun, right?"

The Goddess blinked at the purple-haired women, and came to a decision. "[When we meet in the future, I am going to relentlessly bully you.]" The Goddess decided. 

"My my, senpai is such a meanie! But I like that kind of senpai too~!" BB giggled. With a flick of her hand her outfit disappeared, becoming a bathing suit...and without further aplomb she all but tossed herself on-top of the Goddess. And there, she began to cuddle her. "This is nice, you know?" She said. "I may like the gallant and incredible you who overcomes all odds...but just cuddling together on the beach is nice too."

The Goddess sighed, and conceded that point. She wrapped her arms around BB, pulling her closer, and let herself drift into a restful nap.

The Goddess and BB would spend some time together for those last two days, but time inevitably moves forward and the two weeks of the Blade Master Tournament came to a close. There was the issue of bringing Beni-enma, Brave Eli-chan, and MHX with her back to the normal flow of time, however. They were not normal beings like the Goddess were, but strange existences called "Servants"-somewhat similar to Hippolyta, the Goddess considered. And like Hippolyta, the Goddess forged each of them Mantles which would support their existence as well as tie them to the Goddess-ensuring that they would not fade away and could draw upon the Goddess's power in an emergency. 

As a final memorial of her time spent on that strange island, the Goddess got the idea to forge commemorative swords-and since she had yet to forge any of the swords that her Lord had commanded her to, this would help her fulfill that order as well. The symbology was easy to assign as well; Brave Eli's sword would be the Sword of the Sun-shining brightly, happy, and powerfully. Beni-enma's sword would be the Sword of the Moon-calm and collected, yet crystal clear in its power as well. MHX's sword would be the Sword of the Stars-mysterious and powerful, strange and awe-inspiring.

All three of the Celestial Swords-as the Goddess decided to name them-were forged from the same base alloys...that being her own flesh, blood, and bones. Painful, yes, but the Goddess was not one to skimp when she decided to make truly legendary artifacts. But once she had formed the initial ingots of the material, each was treated differently, to create truly unique weapons.

The Sword of the Sun was forged from solar fire, gathered in the skies by her own Authority as an enlightened being and distilled into nearly liquid flames by her own magic. This liquid solar fire was infused directly into the blade, forming a mystic circulatory system that pumped solar blood through the blade...and in its core was the heart of a star, gently beating. By synchronizing with the star-heart within the blade, the power of the Solar Blood within would rise to the surface and empower the wielder with the force and energy of a star. It was a fragile synchronicity however; any interruption of it, a single attack even, would cause the Solar Blood to retreat back into the blade and reduce the user back to the base level of power granted by the blade. 

But the Sword of the Sun had an answer to that conundrum; the Goddess had forged the essence of her own God's Eyes into the blade, allowing it to grant a sort of "Eye of the Mind" or perhaps "Instinct" to its wielder. As long as the wielder remained synchronized with the blade, they could effortlessly dodge every single raindrop in a raging storm and cut down a singular hair off of a fly without otherwise harming it. At the absolute peak of synchronization, the wielder of the blade would be capable of briefly tapping into the power of the Heavenly Eyes which, when backed by the full power of the Solar Blood, could forcibly enact a specific vision of the future or even cut away a destined fate. Doing so would naturally put incredible strain on the user and weaken the energies of the sword for an extended period of time, but the fact that it was possible was all the Goddess needed to fulfill her orders.

And the fact that this synchronization took the form of musical accompaniment-specifically idol and pop songs-just gave an auditory indicator on how to move in synch with the blade. And the fact that as the user grew more synchronized, they would begin glowing, generating sparkles, and forming illusions of a modern idol concert around themselves was similarly just a visual energy vent, to prevent the Solar Blood from overwhelming the wielder.

Regardless of eccentricities, it was an immensely powerful blade; even at its base power, it granted the power to unleash towering blasts of solar fire, granted incredible energy and strength to its wielder such that they could cleave mountains in half if they wished...and if they were fully synchronized, they could possibly even shatter the Heavens. Further, it granted its wielder an innate resilience, a sort of restorative immortality that kept them in their prime and let them continue to grow stronger with age-though not at the same level as the Evangelion. Instead, rather than a specific simulated Authority, the sword itself was forged into a sort of self-contained thaumaturgical foundation; by shaping and wielding the energies of the sword, just about anything could be accomplished. It held the power to both sunder and shape the world with theoretically equal ease...limited only by the skill of the wielder. The Goddess was not skilled in forging these sorts of grand foundations, but enough time, effort, and the fact that it was wholly self-contained within the sword and powered purely by the perpetual energy of the sword itself ensured that it was at least possible.

The second blade she forged was the Sword of the Moon. The Sword of the Moon was to be a calligraphy brush, compared to the brute power of the Sword of the Sun. It granted the same sort of base powers as the Sword of the Sun-the same sheer power, immortality, the mystical capabilities...but rather than the Solar Blood of the Sword of the Sun, the Sword of the Moon held an entirely different power within itself. It held a power of enlightenment, or perhaps madness, within; the Goddess had infused her own intellect, her own insights into the world, manifold sutras, mathematical formula, and learning capabilities into it. The sword was a mind without a mind, capable of calculating and comprehending endless information without possessing any will of its own...and by wielding it, the wielder would be capable of drawing on the calculation resources of the blade.

But such a thing was vastly, hilariously beyond human capability. The Goddess was naturally attuned to such, but condensed and distilled in this way, trying to harness the full calculative powers of the blade would drive most humans mad. Thus the blade locked most of its computational power up within itself and only unlocked it as the wielder passed more and more "trials" that were set to test their mental resilience and help them develop it. Wielded in full, the blade simply did not provide the same sheer power of the Sword of the Sun, but instead provided mental acuity that allowed them to perhaps apply their power to vastly greater effect. And with the complete calculation power of the blade unlocked, the Goddess made sure to include a "Void Formula" which would allow the blade to ape a fragment of the Goddess's own "Empty Cut". Not enough to sunder literally anything, but perhaps enough to cut fate and karma. Regardless, it was a blade that maximized efficiency, and allowed the user to end things with just a single attack-minimal force for maximal effect. 

The Sword of the Stars was a bit unique, as MHX was determined to aid in its forging some small amount-and did so by donating a strange material that she called "Altrium", claiming that it would be extremely useful in forging a "Saber's Sabre". It was an incredibly energy-dense and unique material, to be sure, and the Goddess was happy to include it in the forging of the Sword of the Stars. After a great deal of thought, the Goddess just decided to say "f**k it", ripped her eyes out to use them for forging a sword once more, harnessed the destructive aspects of the Principles of Mana, and accidentally created something vastly more powerful than she thought she was going to.

The power of the Heavenly Eyes was that they were capable of perceiving manifold possible futures, then narrow those futures down to a singular possibility-forcibly actualizing that future. The Principles of Mana harnessed the destruction of things in order to generate energy. In combining the two principles, the Goddess created the "Fires of Possibility"; the sword was capable of first perceiving, then burning, possible futures. By sacrificing "possibilities", the user became capable of generating incredible amounts of power-at the cost of closing them off from being able to do certain things or forcing specific outcomes. The "Fires of Possibility" were extremely difficult to control; for an inexperienced wielder, it would be all too easily to burn away their own victory instead of burning the possibility of their defeat. Such was the cost of not being a natural wielder of the Heavenly Eyes.

If the wielder had absolute control over the "Flames of Possibility" and could handle the strain of it, they would even be capable of burning away all of their possible futures for a few moments-leaving them utterly fateless. Then, harnessing the flame generated, they could carve out a strike that could shatter fate-a poor and jagged imitation of the true "Empty Cut", but powerful nevertheless. Doing so would immensely strain the very existence of the wielder, and if they are too weak or try to burn away something too powerful may even erase them from existence entirely...but such was true for the Empty Cut anyways.

The Swords of the Sun, Moon, and Stars forged, The Goddess returned to meet with her Lord once again. By this point several years had passed, and the young man who had inherited command over the Goddess had grown older. Yet...he hadn't grown up at all.

"Good. Good! Good!" The man praised, staring at the three Celestial Swords. Each held within them enough raw power to "sunder the heavens", had the capacity to "reshape the world", and could "cut through Fate and Karma". The ways they did so were all unique, but each fulfilled the requirements that the man had set so long ago. "With these, the Treasures of the Yamato have truly been forged! Though the gods have largely disappeared from the world-present company excluded-our land shall be able to raise up our own gods! But...how should the blades be distributed? How could we possibly ensure that the swords are granted to their rightful wielders, those who are worthy and deserving of the power and divinity that these blades would grant?"

The man sat in uncharacteristic silence, genuinely contemplating the question. And as far as the Goddess could tell, he did not actually consider himself worthy of one of the blades-he genuinely didn't care for the power that such a thing would grant. He may be an utter fool, the Goddess considered, but this man was at least a purehearted fool.

The man nodded to himself. "Goddess, I can see no solution. Hold onto the blades for now and search for a method of binding the blades such that only the worthy may wield them. I care not if I will die long before you find such a method, nor if you must travel the lands far beyond Yamato to acquire such means. Once said means are found, return here. Construct a temple, and place the Celestial Blades within it. The temple must describe the blades and their powers, what exactly would make a person worthy of wielding the blades, and must allow anyone and everyone to attempt to wield them. Further, it must be highly accessible for the people of this land-the temple must not be in a remote location, but one that is easy to travel to. Beyond that, I leave the details up to you."

Nodding to himself, the Lord smiled. "Now that this matter has been definitively settled, there is another matter of great importance that must be discussed." The man leaned forward, staring at the Goddess with serious and deeply focused eyes. "I have heard tales...tales of many female youkai falling in love with you, in your travels. You have spurred these advances for the most part, so the stories go. This is unacceptable! Yours must be the heart that encompasses all things, the love that can soothe even the most savage monster! This is my next order, Goddess: those youkai who seek your love, you must court in turn! You must make peace between them all, and share endless love for all!"

The Goddess sighed, and mentally crossed out that "pure-hearted" bit she'd been thinking earlier.

Years, decades, and centuries would pass. Despite her best efforts, the Goddess would never quite find a way of infusing bindings directly into the Celestial Swords themselves; Geas could be applied to the wielders, but not the swords. After a couple centuries the curses had faded away, leaving the Goddess free once more...and feeling a profound wanderlust. This land was a wonderful one, and she had left her mark in leaving behind the Evangelion-though none had been discovered yet. Still, she wished to see more of the world-and so, the Goddess once more moved on.

After finding her previous companions. What Scathach, the Mini-Nobu, and Counter Guardian TOHSAKA got up to while the Goddess spent a few centuries wandering around the land that would be called Japan...is a story for another day.

The year was 480 CE