Having traversed countless realms, can you possibly be as clever as me?

"Then I am the Dragon Emperor of Another Dimension!!!"

Thus, the demon Dongjiang and the saint Dongjiang clashed once more, unleashing their full power and showing no mercy. The world within Pandora was blasted to the brink of collapse, the heavens and earth shaking!

All other bullshit reasons didn't matter at this moment; for Tsurugi, this pleasure was everything. Even if it was meaningless, even if it was just him wasting his own life.

At this moment, there was only one thought: to blast the other side (himself) down!

"Hahaha, damn it, that's powerful! You angel are about to be blasted down by me!"

"Go to hell, take my Savior and Demon Slayer Fist!"

264

"Dragon Emperor's Other Dimension!"

"Heavenly Feather Dragon-Slaying Dance!"

"Susanoo!"

"Heavenly Lock Moon Slayer!"

"I fucking have no idea what to name this move!"

"Me too!"

Three days, six days, ten days

Within the backup world of Pandora's Box, Tsurugi and Tsurugi have fought to countless peaks!

The earth shattered, the ocean was destroyed, and the sky cracked.

The Pandora world that was replaced, which was already on the verge of destruction, was shattered in the battle between angels and demons!

War! War! War!

For their own beliefs, for each other's justice, for—the fucking insane!

Fight!

Even though they had severed their consciousness from each other, they were still the same person with the same will, and thus, after becoming skilled in battle, they understood each other's fighting methods.

Who knows themselves better than themselves? Unless they're the kind of person who takes self-deception as naturally as breathing.

Not to mention the two sides who were watching the show from behind the scenes, placing bets on each other.

Heaven and Hell, Demon Tsurugi and Saint Tsurugi—whenever one side shows signs of giving up, it begins to bestow blessings and buffs upon the other, pulling them back from the brink.

Heaven: Caw! Harder, harder, kill him!

Hell: Damn it, don't stop! You've been enhanced! Get going!

And so, this battle, which should have been decided on the same day, dragged on for more than half a month.

Although they initially found the battles quite enjoyable, they've really run out of steam by now.

"Stop, stop, STOP!!!"

Demon Tsugumi stopped Saint Tsugumi from unleashing a lightning whirlwind attack. Seeing Saint Tsugumi's body, now restored under the holy light, Demon Tsugumi simply deactivated his transformation, looking utterly exasperated.

"Do we really have to continue fighting like this?"

"Emmmmmm, perhaps?"

Saint Tsurugi lowered his gun and twisted his severed neck.

"What if we don't fight? What about the outcome of our battle? What about the world?"

Hearing Saint Tsurugi's righteous words, Demon Tsurugi silently raised his fist, and the other side immediately understood.

—Rock, paper, scissors!

The two thrushes spoke in unison and then started playing rock-paper-scissors!

Yes, what else can we do?

Should they each accumulate their ultimate skill and clash?

What's the difference between that and rock-paper-scissors?

Then the demon Tsugumi won.

"Fine, you win. The Age of Gods Reboot Project is up to you!" Saint Tsurugi readily conceded defeat.

Is it child's play? It is indeed child's play, but the most important thing is that after fighting for so long, both Tsurugi have begun to genuinely feel that this whole thing is really boring and meaningless.

If it were for something worthwhile, then so be it. But to end up killing yourself over such a nonsensical world...

Moreover, Demon Tsugumi quietly unearthed a document that had been deciphered and obtained by AI in the everyday manga world, but had remained undeciphered.

E.S. Stein's Diary!

He read the thing aloud to the sage Dongjiang, word by word, and then he saw another version of Hongwen.

"Damn it, when we get back we'll make them wish they were dead!!!" he roared.

"There's so much dog shit, both ancient and modern, we really can't stop collecting it, we can't stop collecting it!"

"I agree," Demon Tsugumi nodded in approval.

"But if we keep getting bogged down in these messy things, it'll only get more troublesome. If we're going to do it, we'll have to finish the planning and come back to do it together."

Okay, that's secondary!

Although Dongjiang vowed to leave no one alive when he returned, things like Tutu were just everyday matters to him, as natural as eating and drinking.

Another reason for stopping the fighting is that they can't let their self-inflicted conflict become a farce in the eyes of others!

"A bunch of fucking bastards!" Saint Tsurugi raised his middle finger at the sky without any hesitation.

Although the light of heaven helped him more than once, the flames of hell also saved another version of him more than once.

The battle took a turn for the worse halfway through. After the initial excitement of the fight, the two Tsurugi felt more and more like clowns, performing for others' amusement in the arena.

The thought of things turning out this way left me completely drained, so I decided to just settle things with a game of rock-paper-scissors.

Of course, it cannot be said that they gained nothing at all. In fact, from a purely financial perspective, Tsurugi received a rather generous reward.

The demon Tsurugi has almost perfectly fused with the power of the Heart of Albion. Moreover, he has also been able to perfectly fuse with the powers he has mastered.

The combined power of the demon form is more than three times stronger than before entering Pandora's Box!

The same goes for Saint Tsurugi. In this battle, his Heavenly Knights leveled up from Lv2 to Lv3, unlocked several more Paladin skills, and fully mastered the function of the Spear of All Things.

This time, I guess I'll finally get to practice in the training room and level up properly.

264 >>

"Your plan isn't necessarily doomed to fail," Demon Tsugumi shrugged.

"Since you've already pulled the tower down and can't put it back in, and we're already here, why not use Britain as a pilot project when we come back? If it goes well, we can continue with the Age of Gods return plan~~~"

"Don't be so wavering! Whatever, just open the door, get out, and then leave this world."

Saint Dongjiang said impatiently, throwing over the half of the tiger talisman in his hand. Demon Dongjiang picked it up and combined the two talismans into one.

In an instant, with a flash of light, the two thrushes merged into one.

"I need everything now!!!"

Tsurugi twisted his neck and made a comfortable sound, feeling his whole body and unified mind. Never before had he felt that a well-rounded mind was such a good thing.

Moreover, the increase in strength shown on the panel is real!

Just treat this as a practice session. Once I'm out, I'll explain things to Nero, clean up the mess, and then leave this world.

After all, Tsugumi was already feeling annoyed!

Just as he was about to leave Pandora's Box, Tsugumi's expression suddenly froze.

One question is, can a box only be used for entry and exit when it is open?

When Tsuruga came in, Pandora's box was open.

And now, it's closed.

"Quack!!! Which son of a bitch dared to lock me up? I'll kill you when I get out!!!"

Tsurugi cursed loudly at the tightly closed box door.

However, is it possible that no one outside closed the box, and it was actually Tsugumi's own intense fighting that caused the box to close? Or perhaps this damned box has a thoughtful intelligent design from the Olympus Machine God that will close itself if left unclosed for a long time?

He didn't know, and Tsurugi wouldn't even consider that possibility; after all, he was the kind of person who never engaged in internal strife.

So, Tsugumi had to start thinking about how to get out.

He seemed to have forgotten, or rather, never paid attention, that in the world of Illya, the magical girl who appeared in Pandora's Box, there were mentions of some peculiar temporal properties related to the box.

I don't know how much time has passed.

What might have seemed like only a day or two to Dongjiang was the box being opened as he continued to pound the ground.

Dongjiang immediately charged out like a wild dog that had been released from its reins.

"I, Old Thrush, have been imprisoned for five hundred years, and today I'm finally out!!!"

He burst out of Pandora's Box with a scream, and the first thing he saw was Hiel.

It's obvious that she opened Pandora's box.

"Secretary, you did a great job! You helped me open the box. Even though you only got out a day early, I'll credit you for it!" Dongjiang said, full of praise.

However, Hierer's expression was strange. After several rounds of silence and contemplation, he said to Tsurugi in a low voice...

"You've been missing for over a year, and it took me a long time to find this unusual box?"

"what?"

Tsurugi looked at Hier in astonishment, and then, with Hier's patient explanation, she learned that Pandora's Box itself, as a world backup system independent of the timeline, has no internal time flow.

In other words, time feels incredibly slow inside compared to outside.

Tsurugi has indeed been missing from this world for a year.

Why didn't you say so sooner!

"I didn't know you had this." Hield the bear shrugged.

"You want me to help? How am I supposed to go?"