"I'll take care of it!" Hearing what the Tiga-world Su Mo had said, the Su Mo from the Danmachi world stepped up. "I've already made all the preparations. I should be reaching the Artemis arc soon, and if things go smoothly, I should be able to obtain the Moon Goddess's power." He'd long been ready. All that remained was the right timing.
"Then I'll leave it to you," Tiga-world Su Mo nodded. "The basic version of Luna Mode only requires a minimal amount of moon-related divine power. But with your world's divine forces, I suspect you might even be able to go straight to 'Cosmic Luna Mode.'"
Luna Mode was one of the more basic transformation systems, and thus not too difficult to develop. Even acquiring a derivative form of the Authority should be enough to activate it. However, the gods of the Danmachi world were on a different level. Artemis, for example, had enough destructive force in canon to wipe out civilizations and scour the surface of the world—even without using her full divine power or equipment.
If he could obtain such overwhelming strength, then the resulting transformation definitely wouldn't be just the baseline version. At the current pace, if the Danmachi Su Mo succeeded, the Tiga Su Mo was confident he could push the mode into its miraculous evolution.
"A breakthrough from quantity into quality," he mused. "If Luna Mode can merge with Solar Corona Mode to produce Eclipse Mode, then I suspect that Cosmic Luna Mode and Cosmic Corona Mode together might be able to evolve into the Future Mode."
"The final evolution of Ultraman Gaia!" Tiga-world Su Mo's eyes gleamed with excitement. Every Ultraman's ultimate form was impossibly powerful. If he could successfully fuse Cosmic Luna and Cosmic Corona modes, the power he'd gain might not even be much weaker than the legendary Shining Mode. At the very least, he'd no longer be so easily overpowered by monsters like Gatanothor. If he could even crack that beast's impenetrable shell, then victory might not be just a fantasy.
"Future Mode, huh…" The Danmachi Su Mo was visibly moved by the thought. "Looks like I need to step up my game too." He made up his mind to investigate the current state of the Artemis familia once he returned. Since so much hinged on obtaining lunar Authority, he couldn't afford to be careless.
After wrapping up the discussion about Tiga-world Su Mo, the others began to fill him in on everything that had happened during his long absence. They were just getting to the topic of new recruits when a ripple passed through the white mist of the Mist Space.
New Su Mo had returned. Seeing that another version of himself had arrived, the Slice of Life-world Su Mo wasn't surprised. He already knew that many versions of himself had come before. This newcomer was probably one of the earlier arrivals. With that assumption, he smiled at the group and announced, "Mission accomplished!" Then, without needing a prompt, he walked over and initiated the memory-sharing process.
The Su Mo from the A Certain Magical Index world immediately focused, scanning his own internal power. "As expected," he murmured, "Gabriel and Gabril do share the same divine nature."
"But this blessing seems pretty high-level. How'd you manage to get it?" he asked, slightly puzzled. He had originally assumed that only a basic angelic blessing would be needed for the ritual, but the one they got was far more potent—though that wouldn't affect the ritual itself. Slice of Life Su Mo simply shrugged. "Because of my constitution, I couldn't receive low-level blessings," he said casually. "So, Gabriel gave me hers directly using her angelic halo. I guess that made it stronger." He didn't seem surprised. After all, if it took Gabriel significant effort to grant the blessing, then it obviously wouldn't be weak.
"…Fair enough." Index Su Mo's expression turned a little odd, but he accepted the explanation. He was well aware of the God Slayer physique's magical resistance. That resistance could be bypassed through internal blessing methods—but based on the newcomer's tone, his relationship with Gabriel didn't seem intimate enough for that kind of direct link. Still, with results like these, there was no reason to complain. Stronger blessings were always better.
Once he confirmed that the nature of the blessing met the ritual's requirements, he immediately began constructing the spell. Acqua of the Back ritual was one of the simpler ones. It merely amplified strength based on divine properties. Gabriel's Authority encompassed "water," "blue," and "back." So, as long as the caster was under moonlight, the spell could boost their physical power across the board—whether it was muscle strength or the force behind a weapon swing. This kind of straightforward, foundational boost was extremely effective, especially for Su Mo—whose base physical capabilities had already reached terrifying levels.
His power alone was already nearing the level of a Heracles-class god of strength. Now, with the amplification from the ritual, he had fully stepped into the realm of Authority. At this point, aside from Heracles himself, there likely wasn't a single rogue god who could stand on equal footing with him. Killing a rogue god in a single punch wasn't entirely out of the question.
However, the ritual wasn't without its limitations—it required the user to be under the influence of moonlight in order to activate its full potential. That constraint significantly limited the spell's effectiveness.
As for the original wielder of the ritual, Acqua of the Back, he could bypass this limitation by relying on conceptual elements like the "projection" of the moon. Even in the absence of actual moonlight, he could receive the same effects and blessings due to his unique traits. That was a result of the stigmata he bore, which held the essence of a Holy Mother. It was through this divine nature and the widespread reverence for the Virgin archetype that he was able to circumvent divine punishment, freely switching between angelic and conventional magical rituals.
Because of that, even something like the projection of the moon—a mere illusion without actual moonlight—was enough to trigger the ritual's enhancements in his case. But this flexibility was unique to Acqua of the Back. For anyone else, using the ritual meant strictly adhering to the moonlight condition. Even Su Mo wasn't exempt; he could only trigger the ritual when bathed in genuine moonlight. Yet, Su Mo didn't particularly care about this flaw. He simply turned toward his counterpart from the DanMachi universe.
"This ritual—if we want to lift the moonlight condition—we'd need the power of a moon goddess."
"So, I'm counting on you!"
That was precisely why he was so calm. With so many versions of himself across different worlds and so many power sources to draw from, breaking a small restriction like this wasn't a big deal at all. If moonlight was a strict requirement for activating the ritual, then all he had to do was get his hands on lunar Authority. Once that happened, the condition would be naturally fulfilled.
Even Acqua of the Back, who benefited from Holy Mother worship, still needed at least a fabricated moon projection to simulate the effect. But once Su Mo acquired the moon goddess's Authority, he himself would become the full moon. No more external conditions. The ritual could be activated constantly and effortlessly.
"Got it!" Su Mo from the DanMachi world gave an "OK" gesture in response to the Index world's Su Mo. He hadn't expected the moon goddess's power to have this many applications. But that was a good thing—it was finally his turn to carry the team for once. And it felt pretty great. After giving his DanMachi counterpart a quick heads-up, Su Mo from the Index world soon completed the ritual's construction.
"Now among the Right Seat of God's spells, Only 'Divine Punishment' from Vento of the Front, and 'Light of the Right' from Fiamma of the Right are left."
As he finished the construction, he couldn't help but think about the remaining two. The 'Divine Punishment' spell from Vento of the Front was more of a tool for bullying the weak, but Light of the Right from Fiamma of the Right… that one was actually quite tricky. He even had Index helping him build it, yet progress was still slow. They were stuck at the step involving attribute transformation. Hearing this, the Su Mo from the Fairy Tail world fell into thought for a few seconds. "So, in the end… do we have to rely on the Godslayer Su Mo to kill Michael at least once?"
Acquiring Michael's attributes would probably be the most straightforward way forward. But the Index world's Su Mo shook his head. "That would be ideal, sure, but divine summoning rituals have their own limitations. Summoning Michael specifically has an extremely low probability. Instead, it might be more viable to defeat the Last King first—maybe he's carrying an artifact related to Michael. If we can get our hands on it, we might be able to summon him that way." Among all the gods, Michael was one of the few who'd never descended to the lower world. What a pity.