The announcement cast a faint silence over the room, but it was soon broken by Void.
"So the big guy found his home, huh? Tsk, such good luck," he said out loud, and it somehow lightened the pressure in the room.
Anteris had been with them since the beginning of the journey.
And even though he was mostly quiet, his presence had always been there.
When they came across danger, he moved first toward it to ensure their safety.
Throughout the journey to the upper realm, he had been like a faithful guardian.
To hear he was gone now was a bit saddening, but when they also thought of him having reconciled with his race, it made them happy instead.
When Ryuk felt the group reconcile with Anteris’s absence, he continued.
"Now, what’s with calling her a monster and trying to end her? What happened after I left?" Ryuk asked, confused, and noticed them all turn to look at the girl.
He turned to look at her, too, and currently her legs were swinging around the seat by Ryuk’s side, almost like one who couldn’t sense the pressure in the room at all.
"After you and Anteris left through the portal," Elder Celine began, "we all returned to the spacecraft."
"A couple of hours passed, and there was a small hailstorm.
"So, I tried to move the ship to a place less affected, and that was when she began."
"Her hair began to glow, and the gravity in the room destabilized with every object hovering into the air."
"The last thing I saw was Isha and Rak running toward her, then light exploded and... everything went blank," she explained.
Faintly, Ryuk could piece things together.
"What makes her a monster, Ryuk" Rakshasa called out, "Is that she possesses an energy far beyond what she looks like."
"There have been tales of Otherworldly gods hiding their essence within lower beings."
"They always look harmless and innocent, until the god takes over, and then they can render millions of people dead in a heartbeat."
"They call them God Vessels, and while I doubted that before... I’m now 90% sure she’s one."
"Or how would you explain such a level of power?" she pressed.
’God Vessels?’
That was a new one.
But he also knew Rakshasa was more knowledgeable than he was.
Her words couldn’t be doubted, and truthfully, her fears were reasonable.
Rakshasa was at the Apocrypha stage, Elder Celine and Isha at the Eternity stage, yet all of them had been paused in place by her bizarre power.
How could one so young possess such power?
What was the source of it?
"She was afraid you guys were planning on leaving without me. That was why she flared out," Ryuk defended, but Rakshasa only scoffed.
"That does not explain her otherworldly power, and we’ve suffered twice now from her hands."
"The first time, we couldn’t get close to her or we risked getting forced to the ground."
"And now, we couldn’t get away from her, stuck and rendered unable to move an inch."
"We were defenseless, Ryuk."
"If she had grabbed a pipe and run it through our hearts, we wouldn’t have been able to react."
"Who knows if that’s what will happen next?" she said, her reasoning hard to ignore.
Elder Celine spoke out,
"You’ve helped her escape her imprisonment, Ryuk, just like you helped the others, too.
But now, without the ability for effective communication between us all, her being here puts us all in danger."
"I can effectively communicate with her," Ryuk replied.
Silence reigned for a while before Elder Celine exhaled and debated before replying.
"Can you guarantee that she won’t flare out like she did before?" she asked, and Ryuk’s eyebrows creased.
That was a hard thing to guarantee.
He barely knew her, and talking to her until she promised never to harm them again wasn’t something that could be done in just a couple of minutes.
"I can," he said, turning to them before continuing.
"I just need more time."
"That is the only thing you don’t have," Isha whispered silently beneath her breath, but it didn’t escape his ears.
It left him speechless for a few seconds.
His lips opened to say something, but closed again eventually.
Isha wasn’t wrong.
More time was the last thing he had right now.
[They don’t want her around anymore, Ryuk. They’re scared of her, and for good reasons.]
[If you force her to remain, things might not end well,] the system notification blinked before his gaze.
’So, what should I do then? Throw out a little girl into the Dark Void?’
[She might be a little girl, but she’s not powerless. She’ll survive.]
’Tch,’ he clicked his tongue silently.
The system had always been brutally logical, never wrong, but neither morally right.
"Fine," Ryuk called out to them, and they turned to him.
"She’ll be leaving the ship."
He watched as they silently exhaled in relief.
"Before that, let’s go over the plan."
"How’s Isha’s memory deciphering going?" Ryuk asked, getting into the important stuff as Elder Celine tapped onto the surface of the air rhythmically, and soon enough, the holographic panel began appearing all over.
She wiped three over to Ryuk, who widened them.
A head bubbled up from the side, and he turned to find her big, rainbow eyes blinking at the golden panel, rainbow hair spread over his shoulder.
Somehow, he couldn’t find it in his heart to be annoyed.
’What’s this?’ she asked directly in his head, as Ryuk turned to the holographs.
’It’s a map,’ he replied telepathically.
’A map,’ she whispered in return.
"That dot. Why is it blinking?" she asked, and he turned to the map.
On it, a red dot blinked steadily.
"That’s where we are now on the map.
"And that blue circle," Ryuk said, pointing to the circle about 10 centimeters away from the red dot,
"The...Beast Ha....ven Realm?" she read out the label that circled it, albeit with slight difficulty.
"Yes. That’s most likely where we will be heading next."