14 Somewhere, In The Middle Of Nowhere

"Zombie chick, you're adept in this kind of thing, give me your input."

"I practice Buddhism, not occult activity."

"Why are you not bald then?"

"Not every seeker of dharma needs to be bald."

Both Stehno and Oren tweeted their thoughts amongst themselves.

As they were in the presence of a superior existence who were patiently waiting for their answers on whether they wanted to become the 'Meisters' or not.

"I thought both of you would answer immediately," the deity, Yujin-no-Mitama wryly remarked.

"I have a fair share of people that I manipulated," said Stehno, still in a respectful manner. "What you're doing reeks of what I'm usually doing."

Nobuko, the giantess youkai, ascended from the shallow water of this neverending realm as if suspended on a rope, not even a single drop of water from her dry hair.

She placed a tea making set onto the wooden platform where both Oren and Stehno occupied, mustering their minds to make sure of the legibility of this offer.

Despite bearing the size of what would be a child pinching the plastic toy sets of a playhouse, Nobuko was surprisingly delicate and gentle in her brewery. The elegant aroma wafted up the yokai's all too large fingers as she poured the beverage.

Had Oren's arm not been battered to pieces, she would've clapped, impressed. "I appreciate the kind gesture, gentle apparition."

"Call me Nobuko, everyone calls me that! Hehehe~"

"I'm actually not a tea person." Stehno blatantly pointed out with a deadpan. "I'm a coffee enjoyer."

"Accept the good will, lest your morning be filled with ill omens." Oren happily sipped on the steeped tea, forcing her non-functioning arms to stay functional. Either that, or she forgot that her wrist bones were near fragmented.

"Says the one who rejected my good will."

"I accepted it in the end."

"Unwillingly."

"What kind of response do you expect me to have then!?"

"You two look really close." Yujin-no-Mitama smirked, with a hand hovering in front of the lips.

""We're not.""

Both Oren and Stehno ended up glancing at each other.

Then, a smug arose from the corner of Oren's smile.

"Now that I think about it, aside from how surreal and sketchy this event is, I see no demerit in the offer of your divinity, Yujin the Honorable." Oren took another sip of her tea, a small trickle of blood started to fall on the edge of her lips, probably due to the inner organ damage that she got after fighting with a literal superhuman. "As long as you heal my wounds, I can assure your divine presence that I'm up for all kinds of tasks. This isn't even mentioning the fact that I get to find Occam's reincarnation~"

"You know that aspect of the offer is the biggest bait to get us to accept their terms, are you not?" Stehno raised one of her brows, a little bit confused. But, she seemed to read some length of hints on where it was all going.

Oren closed her eyes, savoring the flavor of the tea on her tongue to its fullest. "As long as there is a possibility of reuniting on Occam's side, I'll do whatever it takes." As she opened her eyes, a prominent mark of venom appeared on the very gaze she set on everyone. "If the offer is all for naught, then I'll just find my way to crawl back from the deepest of hell, even with my face and nails scraping the sunder and skies towards where the wheel of progress should be kept.

"A five meters tall youkai exists, and so does a deity befitting the image of grandiose and torment but the patience of a skyscraper. Meaning that nothing is truly impossible to achieve in this lawless nature of a world. Shouldn't you be thinking the same? A devotee will remain faithful, a false lamb can only be a guideless pariah in the end."

Even after hearing that, Stehno maintained her deadpan expression till the end.

"You said that you're a buddhist practitioner."

"I am."

"Then why are you colliding with a demon?"

"I'm a deity," Yujin said with a vibrant smile.

"Because I would choose the opposite option of what you choose, even if I were to sell my soul to a demon," Oren snarked.

"I'm a deity." Yujin said, still vibrant as ever.

"This is no time to be petty. You're pretty much giving yourself to the hook and sinker. Especially with how visible the fisherman who's holding the rod is."

"I'm a deity," Yujin said, cracking both the knuckles and neck.

Just before the tangent could turn into a hot and feisty divine retribution, a sizable gate of light appeared out of nowhere, creating a big ripple on the shallow water while presenting its sudden glow near the ever smiling deity, a go-lucky giant youkai, and the two women on a wooden platform.

Then the light transformed into a rather familiar door—a door that could be found on many front of modern houses.

"'Tis deity hast arrived, Kivas mine son!!"

Then the door opened, revealing a lethargic yet excited petite figure that was near identical with the early self-proclaimed deity, holding an identical torch that the Yujin-no-Mitama was holding on her monstrously-looking extra hand on her dorsal.

"Ah, greetings from your son, Mother," Yujin replied casually.

""Mother??""

Stehno and Oren then replayed the sentence that had just been said by who appeared to be Yujin's mother. It immediately clicked them with realization.

""Son!?"

"The concept of genders merely holds triviality to deities. With an exception to some." Yujin wryly smiled.

For a mother and a son, the two of them looked extremely similar with some exceptions: The gold concentric circle on Yujin-no-Mitama's pair of dark sclera appeared to be zesty white in hue. The hair also appeared to be as dark as a void in contrast to Yujin's golden hair.

The flickering torch that she possessed also shifted its hue and gradient color from blue, to red, and to yellow. With an oriental dress with the theme color of white and black, it was easy to differentiate the two from one another despite the similar trait and appearance.

Besides, unlike Yujin-no-Mitama, the mother didn't possess a monstrous bottom half that crawled the shallowed sea like a quadruped, nor a giant mouth and arrays of teeth that could easily sink down the hardest of metal.

"I daresay, the two of thou might still possess an inkling of skeptical flame." The mother suddenly disappeared from sight, only to appear almost instantly on the wooden platform, sitting cross-legged with her elbow anchored to the thigh, the hand supporting the chin, while the other hand maintaining the crackling torch with a grip. "Be wary nary, as not only shall mine son and I bestow our blessings and knowledge to thy spirits, our sole goal is also to keep this bright sapling of thou alive."

Unlike Yujin-no-Mitama who possessed a gentle and soothing presence despite his revolting appearance, this mother deity possessed a pressuring aura in contrast to her human appearance.

"Sae-no-Mitama is mine epithet." Her snake-like grimace was ever daunting with her sadistic half-lidded gaze. "And the two of thou shall be the first apostles we grant to the world of Hisoutenshizen."

Yujin-no-Mitama's lower half began to disintegrate as the rest of his human-half manifested as a replacement, dazzlingly descending onto the wooden platform.

Before decapitating both Oren and Stehno in a single motion of his finger.

'"To fuel the blood for our Virtuosic War.""