The five Gods died by Damien's hand without much of anything else happening.
Nobody knew of it until a few days later when Damien brought back their heads, but that had yet to occur.
By the time Damien went out to take care of them, the search and rescue operations around the Southwestern Region were already in full swing.
Tens, hundreds, even thousands of explosives had been uncovered, and more were still being found.
They were placed everywhere.
It wasn't just in cities and populated areas. Practically the entire subterranean layer of the cardinal region was a sea of explosive material.
It was difficult to find it all, and it was even more difficult to disarm.
After all, these explosives were made in the simplest, most chaotic way possible, by forcing conflicting laws together and containing them so they couldn't react.
There wasn't necessarily a deactivation sequence. It was possible to do so by weaving together a combination of laws that brought order back to the mixture, but that took far more care and effort than the armies were reasonably able to give.
That left two solutions.
Technically, only one.
The bombs had to be detonated intermittently in uninhabited areas until there were none left.
The other solution was naturally Damien Void, the man who possessed the concept of order.
He could easily disarm the entire mountain of explosives in a few moments.
However, he couldn't do it publicly and risk his enemies learning about how much Existence Law he'd comprehended.
Therefore, a plan was put in place where a portion of the explosives would be detonated for the public to see, while the rest would be handled by Damien in private.
At first, the operation proceeded slowly because the armies had to take countless precautions to be sure that the Five Gods wouldn't do any more than they'd already done.
Unfortunately, no amount of planning or effort could've saved everyone.
Because, in the first place, from the moment the Five Gods decided to escape, they'd created countless contingencies.
Damien isolated them so their direct control was lost, but even without their control, the bombs were still set to explode.
Only, there was no method to the destruction they caused.
The timing and degree of the detonations were randomized.
RUMBLE!
It was a sound and feeling everyone had gotten used to after some weeks.
No matter what they tried, they couldn't save everyone.
The randomized bombings took untold millions of lives, lives of people who had nothing but faith in the order that governed them.
It was as if the people of the order wanted everyone to know that it didn't matter if they'd been defeated and destroyed.
Even if they were all dead, they could still terrorize the world.
If there was one good thing, it was the fact that a lot of the randomized detonations happened within the group of explosives already removed from their original positions.
Just as millions died, millions were saved.
And when the news got out that the Five Gods were no more, the race to remove all threats from the Southwestern Region became fierce.
People moved with more purpose and energy. Without the threat of conscious control always nagging them in the back of their minds, they could calmly and systematically take care of everything else.
Minimizing damage was the most important thing.
Sure, not everyone could be saved. But that didn't mean that those present wouldn't try to save as many of them as possible.
That mentality was what led to the armies spreading thinly around the entire Southwestern Region.
It was good for the efforts they were making.
But there was something they hadn't considered.
'This…'
It was a coincidence, really.
The first person to find themselves back in this general vicinity was Dominic Void.
The central area of the region had been mostly ignored for a while, since the security of that region was guaranteed.
Or at least, that was the thought everyone had.
Until now.
What Dominic saw was…
'It's…gone…?'
…a hole.
When it appeared was unknown.
How it was done was also unknown.
After he found it, he immediately informed those on the backlines. Investigations started as soon as the news was transmitted, but no clues were found as to the cause.
This hole…
It wasn't always a hole.
Rather, this was a location they'd been at only recently.
It was, at some point, the Divine Order's main headquarters.
But that tall, sky-piercing collection of buildings that seemed larger than life was already gone.
All that remained in its place was a crater roughly a hundred kilometers wide and a few thousand kilometers deep.
The absence of any kind of information from the crater was concerning, but that very pregnant absence was telling in its own way.
Obviously, this event was intentional.
It was a move made by "someone" to hide things present in that headquarters that they didn't want the allied armies to know.
And to hide the things they wanted to hide, that "someone" had to create a crater this big.
Honestly, this amount of information could be gathered by anyone, but it didn't really amount to anything.
They could guess that the Straea Clan was involved, since that was the most obvious conclusion, and they could guess that "something" was going on in this place, but they'd have no way of ever knowing what that "something" was.
This time, Damien wasn't the only special person to take into consideration to solve this problem.
Of course, Damien already had the answer. He'd devoured the Five Gods' existences, so he knew more than he'd ever possibly need to know about what was happening in that place.
But there was someone who'd been able to deduce the same things he'd learned.
Without taking the easy route.
Hestia Void.
She was never a fighter, so Damien didn't train her to fight.
He made sure she'd receive an education beyond any other. He allowed her to gain practical experience and grow her mind in every way she so wished.
And as a result, Hestia had gained a talent of deduction far beyond what reality should've allowed.
Logic began to follow her, rather than the other way around.
And precisely because of that, she could infer about the things that were hidden by the destruction of the Divine Order's main facilities.
That, however, was a topic for another time.
Many people were killed, but overall, the matters of the Southwestern Region were handled properly.
The territory had fallen into Void Palace's hands, but nobody outside the great clans was aware of that.
To them, the war taking place was practically imaginary.
It was over before they realized what was happening, and the most important battles happened in places where nobody could bear witness.
Nevertheless, the world was lulled into a silence.
Almost unnaturally so.
It was something subtle that not many people had realized.
Among those on his side, Damien was part of only a handful who noticed the strangeness.
It wasn't just time and space.
It was reality.
Reality itself was subtly flexing. The degree of this warping was increasing by the day. At first, it was barely anything at all, but by the time the war with the Divine Order ended, everyone was asking themselves the same question.
"How did we get here?"
