I look at Mom’s castle, which is being pushed through the universe by my avatar. I fortunately managed to get close in time, but my body has taken too much damage to enter the bubble now without it bursting.

So I’m just slowly following behind, my body barely moving except for the weak fluttering of my wings that propels me forward.

’I still need to decide where to stop the castle...’ From right here, I start stripping away Baeh’Wa’s levels. She’s too strong for the standards outside the abyss, so I reduce her level to just 10,000.

Since her focus is on survival, having level 10,000 will let her do just fine outside the abyss anyway. It’s enough that she won’t be easily killed, but not so much that she can cause unchecked chaos.

"I feel lighter..." I murmur, feeling a dangerous weight lift from my shoulders. I think the avatars of the primordial goddess have stopped seeing me as a target, maybe because I just did a huge service for universal balance.

"So close... just 7 billion levels and I’ll have the maximum level among goddesses... but now those 7 billion will be the hardest." I’m so close to being able to kill Elysia and have no more threats, and now that we’re outside the abyss, I’m anxious to see my adorable daughters!

’From the state of the universe, about 2 to 3 years must have passed since I left...’ It’s really crazy to think so little time passed here, while in the abyss I spent over 40,000 years.

"...Tsk... this is going to be a problem." I see the planets around me literally collapsing and destroying themselves. Some stars are also collapsing near me—effects of being the Goddess of Apocalypse. Everything that’s on the "edge" is being destroyed.

’If I don’t fix this, the planet with all its life forms will probably be destroyed.’ This universe is more durable than it should be, but the reality isn’t that things here have longer lifespans—it’s that Mana has strengthened the existence of everything.

But this universe is already very old. Stars and planets tend to live from a few million to a few billion years. A star like the sun, for example, would last about 10 billion years before turning into a red giant, and there are stars like red dwarfs that can live for trillions of years.

Planets themselves don’t exactly have a set duration, but are generally destroyed by various factors. What matters in this information is the fact that many of the stars and planets in this universe should have already met their end.

But Mana won’t allow it, keeping things stable. But now my presence is fixing the natural order of things, which would be the complete destruction of these things.

However, it’s happening passively, so I need to turn this off to stop causing automatic passive destruction.

’This universe, counting from its initial creation, has been forming for a few trillion years. But if we’re counting from when the goddesses emerged, then it’s only a few billion. Either way, much of what exists should have already ended...’ I need to find a way to turn off this effect.

I’m sure that if I get too close to the planet where all the races live, it will be destroyed—either on its own, or by the collapse of the star it orbits.

’Though, I have to admit, it’s quite beautiful watching stars and planets collapse just because I’m here.’ This just shows how important the roles all goddesses fulfill. In the past, there was a Goddess of Apocalypse.

If she were alive, things never would have lasted this long, which shows that her death really affected how the universe works.

’There were about 30 goddesses... considering fundamental aspects of the universe... 30 is a number that would cover most problems...’ Since there are avatars watching over the most important points, goddesses would be like a universal filter for general problems of creation.

Anyway, we still have plenty of time. We’re far from the planet, and I have to move the castle steadily, so it’ll take at least a year for me to return to the planet.

And in a few days, when my body has regenerated and my Mana is stable, I’ll go inside the bubble around the castle to talk with Mom and Azraelith.

...

...

...

"Big sis Aqua!!! We’re almost there!!" Lycoris says excitedly, looking out the window of the moving carriage, while Olivia is quietly reading a book.

"Yes, Lycoris, we’re almost there." I look outside the window, smelling the blood and seeing the chaos of the battlefield. From what I know, we’re "camping" our troops at a base built near the entrance of the elf forest, which is where we’re heading.

’Even corpses are materials, food, and used in magic... seems like they take that very seriously.’ I watch soldiers carrying dead bodies and throwing them into a machine that Mom Pandora built by herself. It converts and refines corpses into things.

Like oil, bone meal, solid magic fragments, processed meat, and various other things extracted from the corpses to use on the battlefield, so resources are always available.

"The war seems pretty brutal." I murmur, curious about this first experience in a war. From what I’ve read, the war in the past against the humans was the biggest problem.

While the war with the beastmen ended almost instantly, finishing on the first day because Aokitsu was a very bad leader back then, and the elves and dragons were ignored.

Currently, the dragons don’t even have room for a war due to some damage Mikael did to them, and the elves are the only ones at war with us. Though it’s an almost passive war of attrition since they don’t have much room for advances while we advance nonstop.

"Waaahh!!" I grab Lycoris’s tail when she almost falls out of the moving carriage, having leaned too far out the window.

"Lycoris, don’t hang out the window." She looks at me sheepishly as the carriage shakes because the dirt road is quite damaged. Lycoris sits down in her chair quietly out of embarrassment.

’Calypso went ahead. She must already be organizing everything... I hope she doesn’t keep all the fun for herself!!!’

...

...

...

"Miss Calypso and Kaelith, this is the current situation!" A soldier hands me a paper, then hands one to Kaelith beside me. We both read the situation report.

’Yeah... it’s working out...’ We’re deliberately dragging out the war against the elves. With the current strength we demons have, we could wipe out the elves at any moment. We could end the war in one month with a full-scale invasion.

But war generates money, and moves a lot of money. While we drag out this war, we’re stealing resources—wood, gold, and other metals from the elves—while also slowly destroying their territory.

Pandora would be proud. We demons used many of her ideas to create our own, and we realized that dragging out the war against the elves will allow us to grab a lot of resources and move the economy.

Besides, it also motivates the demons in the kingdom. Despite the casualties we suffer, most soldiers’ lives are disposable, and their families are compensated if they die.

Many demons come for the military benefits they receive, which are worth the risk. So for now, this war will still last some time—probably 6 months, because if we take too long, expenses will start to exceed profits.

"Things are going great, don’t you think, Kaelith? I never imagined things would get this heated!!" Kaelith agrees with me when I say this.

"So what do you think about Pandora’s daughters joining the battle? Honestly, it’s a bit complicated for me... I’m kind of a bad teacher, and Pandora already made that clear in the past, so I don’t know how to handle the fact that her daughters are coming to learn." I ask Kaelith for her opinion.

"Hun? Ah, yes! Pandora’s daughters will be arriving soon, won’t they? What are you going to do about that? What will they be participating in?"

"The front lines, and they’ll have command of a small portion of the soldiers at Elena’s request!!" I say quickly to Kaelith.

"Will you be there?"

"Uh... hmm... m-maybe I’ll show up to check on things a little..." Someone has to look after them, but it won’t be me. I’m not good at that. They’re too smart to learn anything from me, so it’s better to let others handle them.

"...Let them figure things out on their own! If something goes really wrong, we can send other people. Besides, Pandora left some shadows inside their shadows! So there are sharks, wolves, etc.!!" Pandora obviously wouldn’t leave them without a "security system," so I know they’ll hardly face extreme danger that would kill them, I think.

I’m not really sure. They do have shadows, but I don’t even know what commands the shadows have.

"Oh, that’s good. Having to look after them is kind of weird. They’re already kind of ’adults,’ so you can’t treat them like children since they’re not." I say to Kaelith as I turn to the soldier.

"You can go. And say we’ll be sending more troops to the forest soon." I say to him, handing the papers back, while Kaelith also heads to the door.

"I’m leaving! I have some soldiers to lead!!" She jumps out satisfied while I throw myself into a chair, hoping Pandora’s daughters don’t cause chaos.