"Shut your mouth!"
Before Su Mo could utter the words "God is dead," the archangel, who held the seat at God's right hand and was known as "He Who is Like God," roared and charged forward.
He even disregarded the threat from Jibril behind him, brandishing his thorny, fiery sword, seemingly ready to sacrifice his life to prevent Su Mo from speaking those words.
"How dare you speak to Master in such a tone! Insolence!"
Jibril raised her spear, aiming mercilessly at Michael's back. She had never been a tolerant or generous person. Since the enemy had revealed a weakness, there was no reason to let it go. With her power, she could have cut down this archangel, whose glory filled the heavens, before he even reached Su Mo.
However, just as Jibril was about to make her move, Su Mo suddenly stopped her. "I've suddenly had a new idea. Leave this one to me. You handle the remaining angels."
"Yes!"
Although she was a bit puzzled, since Su Mo had spoken, Jibril would naturally not disobey his command.
After giving his instructions, Su Mo looked at Michael, who was charging towards him, and raised an eyebrow slightly. "Just for speaking the truth, you're getting this worked up?"
"The way you say it... it would be strange if he wasn't worked up!"
Hearing Su Mo's detached tone, Shiroyasha on the side couldn't help but retort.
She had heard Su Mo's deduction earlier but hadn't shown an overly surprised expression. Evidently, she had known the inside story about God's death beforehand.
Based on her reaction, Su Mo deduced even more information.
But what needed to be done now was not to piece together the truth, but to deal with Michael.
So he raised his hand slightly and activated a Gift that should have belonged to Artoria.
A transparent and invisible barrier, like the boundary at the edge of the world, unfolded, isolating Michael's attack and simultaneously drawing the archangel into a different world created by the Gift.
Su Mo's figure disappeared along with it.
"This is... they've entered the game field?"
Seeing this scene, Shiroyasha wasn't too surprised.
For the Asura Gods and Buddhas of the Little Garden world, creating a planet or a small galaxy as their game field was nothing worth mentioning. Of course, a game field that could withstand the Light of the Divine Right was relatively rare.
She sensed the power of the Halloween Queen's boundary in the Gift Su Mo used. If she wasn't mistaken, Shiroyasha glanced at Saber Alter, who was fighting the angel army with Jibril. What Su Mo was using should be the Celtic pantheon's strongest defense, the ever-distant utopia, Avalon.
With the strength Su Mo had shown before, Shiroyasha wasn't worried that he would be defeated in a one-on-one battle. She was just a little curious.
"Is there something that needs to be handled specifically in a game field?"
With this kind of formation, and having already hit the enemy's breaking point, was there any other choice now but to go all the way?
"It can't be that he still wants to negotiate at this point, right?"
Thinking this, Shiroyasha shook her head with a self-deprecating laugh.
How could that be? Looking at Su Mo's consistently decisive style, it was impossible for him to make such a choice.
And the facts were indeed so.
After entering the isolated fantasy land, a game field free from any observation or surveillance, Su Mo's first words were—
"Your Lord is dead!"
"Shut your mouth! Heretic!"
For an angel, these words were as malicious as cursing their mother.
Michael was naturally enraged on the spot. Boiling flames extended from his wings to the ground, and a light that could incinerate the sea of stars converged in his hand. As the only one among the four archangels qualified to sit at God's right hand, Michael's divine might had always been considered to be like the Lord's.
The previous Vice-Regent of Heaven had fallen to become Satan, who could rival God. The current Vice-Regent of Heaven was him. Although he couldn't win against Jibril in a clash of Cosmic Truths, in terms of basic power, he far surpassed her.
"Inside Avalon, you can't deploy that level of defense anymore, can you!"
With Michael's eyes, he could naturally see the power Su Mo was using. Judging that this was a good opportunity, he immediately rushed forward.
A monstrous sea of fire, accompanied by the scent of thunder and sulfur, fell from the sky, the same power that had once destroyed the sinful city of Sodom.
Faced with this aura of destruction, Su Mo did not dodge, but allowed the mythological ritual, the Sword of Victory, that surrounded him to act.
Following Su Mo's will, the Sword of Victory did not directly deploy its judgment ritual but instead extracted a key authority from the Sword of Bahram and deployed a golden barrier.
With the characteristics of Verethragna's Golden Sword, any attack carrying divine power could not break through this golden barrier in the slightest.
Among the three strongest races of Little Garden, only the Divine Spirit race posed almost no threat to Su Mo.
After casually blocking Michael and preventing him from advancing an inch, Su Mo finally spoke leisurely. "If I'm not mistaken, you don't know the truth about God's death, do you?"
"In fact, you're not very clear about the history of Christianity's expansion either. Your understanding of Christianity is limited to what's recorded in mythological history."
"Because you've already been replaced. You're not the same Michael who fought from the dawn of Little Garden to the present!"
Michael's specific situation was actually not difficult to deduce.
Those who had fought their way through from the dawn of Little Garden, even Shiroyasha who now chose to convert to Buddhism, would not place too much naive expectation on the pantheons.
Otherwise, she wouldn't have immediately locked onto the pantheons as the masterminds after Su Mo proposed his theory.
They all knew that while the pantheons had progressive significance, their internal structure was also hopelessly corrupt. If it were them, they were capable of anything.
The establishment of the Floor Master system was in itself to allow the lower world of Little Garden to break away from the direct interference of the pantheons and develop freely. For someone like Michael, who held too many naive fantasies about Christianity's past, he shouldn't be an old-timer of Little Garden.
And it just so happened that if he was a new Michael who had been summoned from mythological history not long ago, many problems could be explained. The reason why what he held was a simulated divinity was because the one who could grant him the original divinity was no longer there.
Considering this timeline, it was clear that Christianity had once suffered some great misfortune. In this misfortune, both the one and only God they worshipped and Michael had perished. Thus, a second-generation Michael, who had not inherited the memories of his predecessor, appeared.
Hearing Su Mo say this, Michael, who was struggling to break through the golden barrier to no avail, frowned deeply. "Why are you talking about this? Does it have anything to do with you?"
Although his expression was quite resistant, he had sideways confirmed Su Mo's statement. He really was a new god who had been born only a few hundred years ago, and the God of Christianity had indeed fallen.
"Of course it's related!"
Seeing the anxiety and confusion in the archangel's expression, Su Mo smiled slightly, spread a hand, and said in a phantom-like tone, "Even though you've lost your Lord, you still have me!"
"?"
Michael was stunned on the spot, not understanding what Su Mo was saying.
Uttering words that left the other party dumbfounded, Su Mo waved his hand and actually removed the golden barrier, completely exposing himself to Michael's attack range.
At the same time, the Pantheon was activated, and the aura of the original divinity belonging to the one and only God of Christianity emanated from Su Mo's body, from the inside out.
Just as depicted in the famous painting "The Creation of Adam," Su Mo extended an olive branch to the angel before him.
"Although it's just one of my many identities, I can also become the faith in your heart, the god you believe in. I permit you to offer your faith, and I will also grant you a Gift."
"For example, the original divinity, the Light of the Divine Right. At least it's more presentable than the counterfeit made by the Son of God."
"..."
Hearing Su Mo's words, Michael's eyes widened, and for a moment, he didn't know what to say.
What a madman, what mad words.
This was more than just presumption; it was a hysterical madness that challenged the very bottom line of his psyche.
"D-devil! Heretic! Madman!"
Only a devil would use such audacious words to bewitch others. Only a heretic would be so arrogant as to demand that others, even him, an archangel, worship him as their Lord.
If before he had declared Su Mo a Devil King only as part of his duty, then at this moment, the look in his eyes as he looked at this presumptuous being contained fear.
Seeing his reaction, Su Mo calmly asked back, "What, as an angel created by God, are you planning to betray your Lord and obey the Son of God's orders?"
Never one to miss a chance to stir up trouble, Su Mo further intensified the other party's psychological conflict.
"The Son of God? No, this is a heretic's slander!"
Although he said this, Michael's expression became fearful.
Information that he had deliberately ignored all along flooded his mind: why had the almighty Lord died? Why hadn't the Son of God resurrected the Lord? Why, besides Gabriel, had almost all the four archangels been replaced?
At this moment, these pieces of information intertwined, causing him to begin to question his faith.
However, as the war god of Christianity, he would naturally not be truly shaken by this, let alone choose to defect. No matter what, he could not listen to the words of this heretic who slandered the Lord's glory. So he quickly strengthened his resolve, intending to defeat the heretic before him first.
Even if ordinary means were ineffective against him, he could absolutely not abandon the duty entrusted to him by the Son of God.
So—
"O Lord! Protect me! Jesus Christ, protect me, my great enemy is before me!"
Michael called upon the holy words to enhance his spiritual rank and raise his state to its peak.
And at this time, Su Mo's voice sounded simultaneously. "I refuse!"
The moment his voice fell, something unexpected happened.
The spiritual rank that Michael had enhanced with the holy words, after Su Mo spoke, was as if it had been stripped away by some invisible force, directly losing half of its bonus.
Sensing this change, Michael was stunned on the spot.
How is this possible?
All this time, this ritual had never had a problem. Even if the Lord was not present, the myth itself would respond to this prayer. Now, although the Son of God had still responded to him, the Lord's response had suddenly disappeared.
And it had disappeared at the exact moment Su Mo spoke.
His eyes widened, and he looked at Su Mo before him with an incredulous gaze. "You... what is this?"