"...It’s not impossible.”

Nightchaser quickly regained her composure and walked toward me, sneering as if she could see straight through my intentions.

"That is, if you’re actually useful to me.”

"..."

"If you want to learn the method, prove your worth. I don't care if you control deep-sea creatures or not. If you can’t reach a level where you’re useful, you’re nothing.”

She wasn’t wrong.

I quietly accepted it, and Nightchaser glanced at the seawater I controlled before speaking coldly.

"What you're making right now are just fragments. At best, they’re like insects running on instinct.”

“...”

"Create higher life. If you can’t even do that, you have no value.”

Fortunately, the first step wasn’t difficult.

After about 3 days of effort, I created an otter. Nightchaser looked at it, scoffed like it was nothing special, and then took me to a strange place.

A sandstorm blew into my eyes, making me frown.

It was a desert that stretched on endlessly.

"You’re lacking—and slow, but considering you were just born, I’ll let it slide. If you can create life, then create a world. You said you lived in the Abyssal Sea, right? Recreate that here.”

This time, I frowned. I didn’t even know where to begin.

"How am I supposed to make a world? The only authority I have is making something like this otter.”

"If you created life with your authority, then use that.”

Nightchaser replied while looking at the otter slowly dying in the sand.

"...What?"

"You made that otter with your power, right? Then the more otters there are, the more your authority grows. Try increasing them.”

"You want me to make males and females and let them reproduce?”

"That’s for you to figure out. When the sun rises and sets five times, I’ll come back. By then, turn this desert into an ocean.”

"..."

Leaving those words behind, Nightchaser disappeared.

I blankly stared at the empty space, then tried to create another otter, before realizing that if I relied on reproduction, it would take years just to get two pairs.

'Animals won’t work.’

I broke the otter down back into seawater and thought over what Nightchaser had said.

'If the life I create spreads. Does that mean my influence expands with it?’

But that didn’t quite fit. Outer Gods usually just destroyed worlds, not nurtured them.

...Or maybe?

"Oho."

Five days later.

When Nightchaser returned, she widened her eyes in surprise at the desert now filled with shimmering water.

"That was fast. I didn’t even tell you how.”

"Was this the right method?”

To make one’s power multiply on its own.

Perhaps in the very, very distant past, this was how gods originally grew their power.

But in the primordial world that Great Void longed for, not a single god like that, who nurtured and acknowledged life, remained.

What existed there was nothing but hell.

And the reason for that—

"Yeah, that’s right."

Nightchaser nodded casually, affirming my guess.

"This way is far more efficient.”

Instead of increasing living beings as apostles, they turned disasters into their apostles.

More precisely, decay, the deep sea, swamps, fire, and so on. They took the remnants devoured by such forces and reshaped them into their own power.

They weren’t ruling life, but death.

That was far more efficient for growing stronger.

I had done the same. Everything submerged in my seawater had become my apostles.

The method of subjugating everything that had already been ruined was overwhelmingly effective. Just like how I had turned this desert into an ocean in merely five days.

As I mulled over that, I let out a sigh while looking at Nightchaser, who smiled in satisfaction.

"So you were testing me.”

"That too.”

She admitted it without hesitation.

She had deliberately made me create life, then guided me toward letting it reproduce as if that were the correct answer.

Even though she knew that without abandoning that method, it would be impossible to flood the desert within 5 days.

"But not every god thinks smartly.”

"...”

"Back then, there were actually more who chose the foolish method. Of course, they were all weeded out. But for someone like you, who was just born, I had to check which type you were.”

Up until now, I had understood the word ‘Outer God' to mean ‘a god from outside.’ And that meaning was technically correct.

But its meaning seems to be closer to ‘fearsome beings outside the realm of comprehension.’

If even a single Outer God escaped this Abyssal Sea and reached the surface, the world would instantly become the kind of hell the god governed.

"If I had just raised otters, what would you have done?”

At my question, Nightchaser smiled quietly with Linmel’s beautiful face.

"Do you really want to know?”

"Is there a reason you can’t tell me?”

"If you knew, I don’t think we could stay allies.”

"..."

"Don’t worry. You passed. You’re still lacking, but I’ll make you into a proper Outer God.”

With that, Nightchaser brushed it off and stepped into the gently sloshing sea.

"If there’s anything you want to know, ask. Even if it takes a hundred or thousand years, I’ll answer. “

“...”

“Yeah, raising you definitely seems useful.”

No matter how intently I stared at her face as she said that, I couldn’t read her intentions at all.

Maybe I would never understand an Outer God’s true thoughts, not even if the world itself ended.

"....You—what are you, exactly?”

It didn’t even take a month for me to realize that thought was wrong.

Nightchaser was actually the type whose emotions showed on her face more than expected.

*t*t*

There was only one thing I wanted to do with the authority of creation.

'How do I use this to defeat Great Void?’

He might have once been human, but Great Void was now the very consciousness of an Outer God and one that had defeated all the Outer Gods within the Abyssal Sea.

On top of that, the being that God devoured was one that had reached the Heavenly Realm. At this point, he was completely beyond normal standards. Something akin to a god among gods.

If I treated him as being on the same level as these defeated Outer Gods, I’d be in for a rude awakening.

Even these defeated Outer Gods were far beyond me.

That was why I aggressively focused on how to use the authority of creation offensively.

"How do fights between Outer Gods actually work?”

"You don’t need to know.”

A week had passed since I started shaping my own sea using the authority of creation.

I had formed a body of water about the size of a lake and was trying to figure out how to control everything submerged within it according to my will. Floating lazily nearby, Nightchaser snorted.

"What? You planning to kill me or something?”

"I just want to be able to resist when you try to kill me.”

"Ahaha, how ambitious.”

Before I realized it, part of the sea I had created had vanished as if a hole had been punched through it.

"You can’t fight me. You’re barely a month old, and you think you stand a chance?”

"I see..."

I looked at the chunk of ocean that had been eaten away and nodded as I felt my control destabilize.

"So if you lose the world you control, that counts as defeat.”

"You learn fast.”

An Outer God was essentially a phenomenon.

Taking Nightchaser as an example—as long as water surfaces existed, and those surfaces belonged to her, she couldn’t be erased from this world.

However, if someone could eliminate all still water from the world and dry up every lake, then Nightchaser, having lost all her domain, would become something that couldn’t even be called anything anymore.

"Of course, you can’t actually kill an Outer God. After all, one cannot control every water surface forever…”

“...”

"That’s why we get thrown into the Abyssal Sea, where even Outer Gods can’t escape. I’m a bit of a special case, though.”

If the only remaining flame in existence were buried at the very bottom of the Abyssal Sea, then the God of fire would have no choice but to be there as well.

And once they realized it, they were already trapped in this hell that they could never leave.

"That’s why no one could stand against Great Void.”

Nightchaser muttered while looking up at the artificial sky.

"Even if someone defeats them, you can’t just sink the sky into the Abyssal Sea. There’s no way.”

That wasn’t entirely true.

Great Void had once been defeated and sealed within the body of the First Mage.

And as for a way to cover the sky…

"It’s not impossible."

"More importantly, why aren’t there any deep-sea creatures here? It just looks like water.”

"...Look closer.”

I quickly created a few anglerfish.

The more my domain expanded, the more exponentially my capabilities grew.

I could now produce those flying fish that I had painstakingly created before with a simple flick of my finger.

Of course, the more deep-sea creatures I created, the more seawater I consumed.

I needed more seawater.

—more space.

"Nightchaser, I’ve completely covered the desert. Is there anywhere else?”

"...What? You’re already done? I thought it would take at least a year.”

"Go look for yourself. What should I do next to make my world stronger?”

"Hmm. Fill up what you have first. This time upwards.”

The endless desert had completely turned into an ocean, and from there, I slowly increased the depth.

But even that had limits. The sky, which seemed so high, was actually quite low. That must be the mid-layer above.

I also increased the number of deep-sea creatures living within it to an enormous degree. In just 2 weeks, it had become a massive fishery. Nightchaser couldn’t hide her surprise.

"You’re growing way faster than I expected. At this rate, I think it’s about time I explain the plan…”

"It’s not enough.”

But I wasn’t satisfied.

After swallowing it whole, the desert turned out to be much smaller than I’d thought. At best, it was just a large lake-sized domain. If I wanted to conduct experiments to handle Great Void, I needed far more space.

I considered escaping and trying this in the real world, but drawing Great Void’s attention was the last thing I wanted.

If I were going to do this, I had to be somewhere like this place where I wouldn’t have to suffer from any consequences.

"Is there really no other space? It feels like if I push past the boundary, I might be able to expand further.”

"If you want to die, go ahead.”

Nightchaser, who had softened a bit seeing my growth, suddenly spoke sharply.

"That’s Corrosion’s domain. It may be asleep now, having given up on escape, but it once ruled territory so vast even I struggled against it. Be satisfied with what you have.”

"Hmm…”

"Still, good work. Next time, I'll introduce you to an ally. Stay put and don't do anything. Waking that one takes time.”

"..."

I didn’t bother answering.

Because I was going to do it anyway.

After that, Nightchaser didn’t show up for about a week.

Then a month passed.

And just moments ago…

"Nightchaser."

"...You."

Nightchaser reappeared, her eyes trembling as she looked at me.

Or rather, at the expanded world.

"What did you do?”

"I expanded the space.”

"...What about Corrosion?”

Without a word, I pointed toward the seabed.

There lay the remains of what had once been the domain of the Outer God called Corrosion, now completely submerged beneath my seawater.

Nightchaser stared blankly at the scene, then slowly stepped back.

"You killed it?”

"Not quite. I just made it so it can’t come up from the bottom.”

"What do you mean by that?”

"I just tried doing something similar to what’s being done to us.”

After swallowing even Corrosion’s world into my sea, I simply crushed the garden beneath it.

Because right now I was capable of manipulating the currents to the point of maintaining pressure over entire spaces rather than on a specific individual.

"I guess the pressure’s too much. It’s trying to get up, but it can’t. I was lucky.”

"..."

After consuming even Corrosion’s domain, I was no longer the same fledging Outer God who had first arrived here.

I clenched my fist and organized my thoughts.

'At this rate…’

What I had learned in this place was quite simple. My Abyssal Sea possessed an absurd speed when it came to erosion and expansion.

IF that was the case…

Then there was one way to trap the sky.

—Make it fall.

"Nightchaser.”

"Y-yeah?”

For some reason, she seemed shaken as I asked.

"Great Void is the Outer God of the sky, right?”

"...Y-yes.”

"When the sky moves, does he get dragged along with it?”

"I mean, yeah—but how are you supposed to move the sky?”

At that, I shifted the depth.

The ground slowly split open, and the deep sea rose upward.

Like a miniature version of the Abyssal Sea we were in, the deep sea now existed above our heads.

"Like this."

"What are you trying to…”

Nightchaser’s expression turned deathly pale.

"...You’re planning to submerge the world?”

"Something like that.”

Expand the seawater.

Expand the domain, again and again, until the entire world was covered by the ocean.

However, if only the land were left floating, like how these Outer Gods keep their domains suspended, then a sky would form beneath the Abyssal Sea.

I gritted my teeth as I watched the deep-sea creatures swim beneath the translucent dome of the Abyssal Sea.

"Now I can finally reach it.”

It felt like my hand had just brushed the edge of the clouds.