Damon felt dizzy.

The pregnant one looked directly at the drone, calm and faintly curious. That expression surely didn’t belong on the face of a woman standing in an active S-rank danger zone.

"Someone get me a channel to Lesser Goddess’ phone!" Damon barked. "Ah, why the hell are you walking toward a twin rift instead of away from it?!"

On the monitor, the pregnant woman had stopped walking. She was looking at something ahead of her, something the drone’s camera hadn’t picked up yet. The road before her was dark, but the darkness wasn’t empty. A faint, sickly purple glow pulsed against the treeline.

"CONNECT ME!"

The comms officer’s fingers flew across the board, and a phone vibrated in a small purse. On the drone feed, Damon watched the Lesser Goddess pull out her device, glance at the unknown number, and answer it.

"Hello?"

"Goddess, what are you doing there?! Also, don’t answer random numbers that easily! What if it was a scam?!" Damon’s voice exploded through the headset.

"Ahem! Are you sure you want to get even more famous than you already are?!" He didn’t wait for her to answer. "Which I don’t care! Your help is fucking appreciated. But you’re pregnant!"

Cecilia paused. Well...

"Did you call my boyfriends?" she asked.

"Of course I did!"

Another pause. Then, on the monitor, Damon watched her smile lopsidedly. The purple glow caught the edge of her cheek, outlining her silhouette in eerie violet. "Aren’t you glad this will end quickly?"

The line went dead.

Damon stared at the monitor. The Lesser Goddess had hung up on him. She had hung up on him!

"Cecilia Araceli!"

***

Cecilia severed the phone’s connection and stored it back in her little bag. She hummed, then turned to the two gods behind her.

"You two," she said. "Are you sure you didn’t stage all of this on purpose?"

The scene behind her was not encouraging.

Whatever divine intervention had lifted Bunny’s fear earlier had apparently filed its paperwork and clocked out for the night. The All-Oblivion was once again in full retreat from the horror genre, his face buried deep in the crook of Momo’s shoulder, his shovel clutched in one trembling hand like a child’s security blanket.

Momo, for her part, was patting his head soothingly. Apparently, her body was more limited than his. All-Memory didn’t get the permission for the same freedom of movement that All-Oblivion enjoyed in mortal form. Acrobatic zombie-slaying was off the table.

"You see," Momo said, chuckling softly, "being a deity is more like improvisation and adaptability rather than ’Hmph, as expected,’ or ’Heh, as planned,’ you know?"

Cecilia’s expression flattened into a deadpan that could have withered flowers. "Isn’t that just irresponsible, then? This place is also still not that far from the grave. What if whatever lich monster the undead were controlled by got their hands on more corpses?"

Bunny raised his face from Momo’s shoulder. His eyes were still squeezed shut, but there was a flicker of indignation in his voice when he spoke. "Child, that grave is a holy ground now. You think my divine tears amount to nothing?"

Cecilia raised her eyebrows.

Right.

Hadn’t this god... cried and slobbered all over the ground back there?

"Just focus," Momo said. "Once we take on the mortal body, we lose some insight over everything that happens. But this is still within expectation when you always expect the unexpected."

"The command we gave the seed upon integrating you to this world is to give you the correct challenge," Bunny added. "It’s all within your potential to complete. But no, we didn’t stage this."

Cecilia blinked. She swiped another horde of zombies away with a casual flick of telekinesis, sending them tumbling into the treeline like ragdolls.

"Integrating..." she repeated slowly. "Not creating...?"

She turned the word over in her head. The first world had been created, a world built from scratch, seeded with a concept and allowed to grow. But this world... this world she had been integrated into.

"So..." Cecilia’s eyes narrowed. "This world is different from the first one. The school romance one...?"

TAP!

Momo’s hand shot out and slapped Bunny’s lips. Bunny flinched, more from surprise than pain, his eyes flying open for a brief moment before squeezing shut again.

Momo sighed. "You still forget she has a quick head on her shoulders? Watch your words."

Bunny cleared his throat.

"And, Goddess," Cecilia pressed, her brain already firing at lightspeed, "you said too that the first world was created specifically. You didn’t include this world..."

Integration meant the world already existed. She had been inserted into something pre-existing, and the dangers here were not custom-crafted tutorials but real consequences with real teeth—

"Ah, stop! No exploding brain today!" Momo waved both hands in front of Cecilia’s face as though physically dispersing the train of thought. She huffed and puffed, then rounded on Bunny. "You already know what I told her. You should’ve known not to say things carelessly!"

"Yes, yes, blame it all on me," Bunny muttered, still not opening his eyes.

Cecilia understood now.

Somewhat.

The first world had no real danger. It was truly a world where she could learn any kind of basics. A sandbox, perhaps. A tutorial, like a padded room. The only danger was Oathran’s wish to disappear and be forgotten.

But that meant... even in that world, a solution existed. At the time, was she truly too rash and mindlessly offered half of her soul...?

No. Save that for later.

In this world... she could actually die. Perhaps not die die, because the purpose was still just to make her stronger.

But there were real consequences. Real stakes. Especially with the egg inside her.

"Seeing that you’re okay, it seems this knowledge is safe to tell," Momo muttered, more to herself than to anyone else. Then she straightened up. "Alright! We’ll tell you the details as we go. Now—"

She gestured toward the purple glow pulsing ahead of them and the growling that was growing louder by the second.

"—we have a pair of rifts to close."