Aydra's gaze sharpened.
Renher continued quietly, "Last time I trusted power that wasn't fully mine, I died."
The words fell without anger.
Only certainty.
"I won't repeat that mistake."
Aydra's patience thinned.
"These are the only cards available," she said firmly. "You will choose one."
Renher met her stare without blinking.
"I won't."
A flicker of genuine anger crossed her face.
"You misunderstand your position," she snapped. "There is already a disturbance on our end. This audience cannot continue indefinitely."
Renher shrugged lightly. "Then send me to the gateway of death."
The temperature of the chamber dropped.
All childishness vanished from Aydra's face.
Her voice became low. Resonant. Heavy with law.
"If you refuse to choose," she said, "I can personally extinguish this final fragment of hope you cling to and cast you into the void."
The angel added calmly, "Your soul and name would dissolve completely."
Renher nodded once.
Aydra frowned.
He did not waver.
Second by second passed.
Then—
Aydra slumped back into her chair.
Frustration finally erupted across her small features. She crossed her arms tightly, puffing her cheeks in visible irritation.
"Bring me tea," she muttered. "Camellia this time."
The angel bowed instantly and glided from the chamber.
Renher watched the entire exchange in absolute silence.
Then—
He smiled.
Not arrogantly.
Not triumphantly.
Just knowingly.
After a while, Renher spoke.
"Why aren't you sending me to the gateway of death?"
Aydra did not answer.
Her eyes remained fixed on the distant swirl of galaxies.
Renher continued calmly, "It's not that you won't send me."
He tilted his head slightly.
"It's that you can't."
Aydra remained silent.
Renher's confidence solidified.
"My death wasn't supposed to happen. And because of that, you are bound to correct it."
Her fingers curled slightly.
Renher leaned forward now.
"You're the arbiter of balance. You cannot repay imbalance with injustice."
Aydra's silence became confirmation.
Renher smiled faintly.
"Which means one thing."
He straightened in his chair.
"You need me more than I need you."
At last, Aydra turned her head.
Her childish irritation was gone.
Only divine calculation remained.
"You are far more troublesome than your fate suggested," she said quietly. "There will be no new cards. That is absolute."
Renher nodded. "Fair."
She continued, "But the imbalance you perceived in the cards…"
Her eyes narrowed.
"…can be adjusted."
Renher's lips curved slightly.
"Then we finally speak the same language."
Inside, his thoughts raced in quiet triumph.
He had suspected this from the beginning.
The Goddess of Balance could not force an unfair outcome.
A debt of life demanded repayment.
And now—
Renher held the stronger hand.
He folded his hands calmly.
"Very well," he said evenly. "Then let us discuss how we correct these… imperfections."
Aydra exhaled slowly.
The stars behind her throne shifted.
Negotiation had begun.
Renher leaned back into his chair, the low glow of the chamber reflecting faintly in his eyes. His expression was calm, but his mind was already several steps ahead. Every reaction Aydra had shown so far, every hesitation, every denial—he had catalogued them all.
He had found the seam in the gods' authority.
Now, he pressed.
"So," Renher said at last, his voice steady, unhurried, cutting through the lingering tension like a blade through silk. "How do you plan to rectify it?"
Aydra hesitated.
It was subtle. So subtle that any lesser observer would have missed it. But Renher caught it—the fraction of a second where her breath stalled, where her composure wavered.
Her small hands tightened around her teacup.
"We can… alter the conditions," she answered slowly. "Adjust the overall ability of some of the cards so they are not completely biased. Their growth curves, their limitations, the way their potential unfolds… those things can be reshaped."
Renher watched her closely.
The faint tightening at the corner of her jaw.
The restrained frustration in her eyes.
She didn't like this position.
Good.
He nodded, satisfied. Inside his mind, permutations unfolded at dizzying speed. Every card he had seen, every flaw he had identified—he was already weaving better versions of them.
Aydra met his gaze again, her face now veiled behind a mask of forced neutrality.
"What specific changes do you propose?"
Renher leaned forward slightly, resting his forearms on the edge of the floating table.
"I'll start modestly," he said. "I'll take the Pyromancer card—but I'll rectify it."
Aydra's brows knit together.
"Explain."
"Grant it immunity to water-based suppression."
"No."
The word struck like a gavel.
Renher didn't flinch. "Why?"
"Because water and fire must counterbalance each other," Aydra answered firmly. "Negating that interaction collapses an entire elemental framework. You are not requesting refinement—you are requesting erosion."
He inclined his head in acknowledgment. "Then let's try again."
He lifted another invisible proposal between them.
"Swords-master. Give it resistance to external magical interference. A clean duel against spell-based disruption."
"No."
Another denial.
Renher's eyes narrowed slightly—not in anger, but calculation.
"Then give me the Elemental Archer," he said. "With a recoil rule—any damage within five meters gets reduced by half. Balance through consequence."
Aydra's patience finally cracked.
"Absolutely not," she snapped. "You are drafting laws as if reality were parchment. You are not proposing balance—you are rewriting nature."
She took a slow breath, visibly forcing herself to stabilize.
"Next time," she said tightly, "present something that does not insult the fabric of worlds."
Renher smiled faintly.
Now he understood the boundaries.
After several moments of quiet internal deliberation—measuring survivability, long-term adaptability, hidden scaling—Renher finally made his decision.
"I will take the Beast Tamer profession."
Aydra's eyes sharpened.
Interest replaced irritation.
"And?"
"I will not be bound to a single beast."
"No."
The refusal came instantly.
"That would destroy the exclusivity of soul contracts."
Renher raised a single finger.
"Then impose one restriction on the beasts themselves," he countered. "Limit their evolution type. Their bloodline purity. Their elemental core. Choose one. But in return, allow more contracts."
A long silence followed.
Aydra studied him.
Slowly, a smile curled at the edges of her lips—not childish, but calculated.
"…That," she said softly, "is finally a proper negotiation."
She was about to finalize it when—
BOOM.
A loud noise vibrated throughout the space.
The sound shattered the chamber like a divine bell being struck by catastrophe.
The entire palace lurched.
A monstrous tentacle—slick with black ichor and writhing void-light—punched through the celestial wall. Star-glass exploded into shimmering fragments as darkness poured inward like a living flood.
Renher was thrown from his seat.
The world lurched.
Aydra's smile vanished.
"Prepare retaliation," she commanded.
And then she vanished.
The angel followed in a streak of radiance.
Renher staggered to the fractured window.
Outside, the sky was torn.
Aydra stood behind the angel as he raised a blazing longsword, holy energy flaring into a protective dome around them. The air screamed as the tentacle struck again.
Renher's spine went cold.
That presence—
It felt familiar.
Like an echo from a forgotten battlefield.
The clash erupted instantly.
Light versus abyss.
For a moment, it looked flawless.
Then—
Everything failed.
The angel was struck.
Thrown across the battlefield.
His armor cracked.
Golden ichor bled from the fractures.
Aydra screamed his name as she tried to complete a spell—
Too slow.
Darkness devoured the field.
The chamber shook violently.
Renher hit the floor hard.
The light vanished completely.
Darkness poured in.
Not absence of light.
Presence of something else.
Aydra's voice trembled in the void.
"This… is not natural."
Renher stood in the suffocating dark, heart hammering.
For the first time since his death—
He felt truly powerless again.
Renher's breath came shallow.
Too shallow.
The darkness did not merely blind him—it pressed. It wrapped around his chest, around his thoughts, around the very instinct that had guided him through wars and betrayals alike.
This is wrong.
His mind, trained on battlefields and in courts soaked with treachery, refused to descend into panic. Fear whispered. Strategy answered.
Calm down. Observe. Fear wastes air.
But even as he commanded himself, dread pooled in his gut like ice water.
This presence… this was not divine.
It was not bound.
It was not structured.
It was hunger given form.
For the first time since arriving in this celestial farce, Renher truly felt what it meant to stand between creatures who treated reality like parchment. Gods argued over balance. This thing did not argue. It consumed.
A bitter thought surfaced.
So this is what waits beyond the chessboard… the hand that flips the table when it grows bored.
His fingers tightened around the fallen sword he had picked up earlier—mortal steel, laughably fragile in a battlefield where even angels bled light.
Yet still… he held it.
Because that was what soldiers did.
Because even knowing it was useless, letting go would mean surrender—and Renher had never surrendered while breath remained.
Aydra had sounded afraid.
That realization struck harder than the tremors.
A goddess afraid.
Not feigning.
Not testing.
Afraid.
His pulse hammered.
Then what does that make me?
A pawn standing between collapsing kings.
Another realization cut deeper.
If Aydra fell here…
There would be no negotiations.
No rebirth.
No rectified fate.
Only oblivion.
And perhaps—he thought grimly—that was the true cruelty of gods.
They offered hope only until something greater grew hungry.
The darkness shifted.
The pressure deepened.
Renher swallowed.
If this is the end… then I will not meet it shaking.
Not because he thought he could win.
But because whatever watched from the other side of this suffocating abyss would at least know one thing with certainty—
Renher did not vanish quietly.