After an unknowable stretch of time, the long journey finally came to an end.
What happened along the way was known only to the two who walked it.
As for Lloyd's thoughts on the matter—
Ordinary.
That was his conclusion.
Though Melina had untangled her heart and their relationship had been clearly established from the start, the rest of the journey was filled with quiet affection between them.
Still, Melina's temperament remained the same. And perhaps thanks to a certain mother's influence, her views leaned conservative. So even after becoming lovers, they didn't go as far as Chaos or Elizabeth ever had. Their days were simple companionship—hand in hand, leaning close, sharing gentle embraces.
She still wasn't talkative, but she'd grown used to his presence. Even in silence, her love carried its own quiet tenderness.
Yet, somewhat at odds with that gentle restraint—perhaps inherited from a certain rustic ancestor—there was something else. She seemed indifferent to certain matters, rarely took the initiative, and even when engaged, often wore a detached expression.
But when all was said and done... the numbers told another story. Her frequency and stamina surpassed even Chaos at her most fervent during her "adjustment" period.
"Hey, Melina, I was wondering... are you—"
"No!"
Before Lloyd could even finish, Melina cut him off instantly.
On most topics—even Frenzied Flame—Melina could stay calm. But the moment this subject was even hinted at, she'd jump up in protest.
Admittedly, it was adorable.
After her little outburst, right before they left, she turned away, hesitated, then murmured,
"Um... once we're back, don't tell anyone about what happened here. Especially... that topic."
"Of course."
Lloyd agreed without hesitation.
And then...
It still got out.
Not because Lloyd talked—but because Melina herself gave it away.
"How many times have you... done it with him?"
Chaos eyed her, taking in her noticeably fuller figure—almost rivaling Marika's—and the faint aura she now radiated.
Having been through it herself, Chaos recognized the signs immediately. Comparing their energies, she noticed that while Melina's time had been shorter, her aura was denser—stronger, even.
"You always act quiet and demure, but turns out you're the real expert," Elizabeth commented with genuine amazement.
She'd thought Chaos was the seasoned one after hearing her stories. But two days later, the true master had appeared right before her eyes.
"As expected of that woman's daughter. Your endurance puts the gods to shame..."
Melina tilted her head slightly, saying nothing, cheeks faintly red.
"Alright, alright, stop teasing her," Lloyd said. "She just got back—she needs to rest."
After escorting the weary Melina—still adjusting to normal time after returning from the dungeon—back to her room, Lloyd stepped out.
Outside, Elizabeth was waiting, staring at him with bright, eager eyes.
"So... when's my turn?"
"You?"
Lloyd gave her a flat look, scanning her up and down.
"Behave yourself for a while first."
"I'm not afraid of getting burned."
"What if it kills you?"
"Then never mind."
Lloyd flicked her on the forehead, earning a yelp, then teleported back to the Erdtree.
Although a long time had passed inside the dungeon, only about half a day had passed outside due to the time difference.
Still, that was more than enough for an argument to escalate.
When Lloyd arrived, he found two drained figures—a village girl and a trembling mass—still glaring daggers at each other.
Given their original strength, their quarrel could have lasted until the end of the Age itself—perhaps even turned into a real fight.
But the village girl had just been revived and lacked stamina, while Metyr was still adapting to her current vessel. Just speaking exhausted her, so the fact that she'd kept arguing this long was impressive.
By now, the onlookers—like the Full Moon Queen—had more or less pieced together what had happened.
In short, the current state of the Lands Between was largely the result of a simple misunderstanding between the two.
Though Metyr was the Mother of Fingers, once acting under the name of the Greater Will—commanding demigods to slaughter each other and plunging the Lands Between into chaos—she wasn't truly the mastermind behind it all.
In truth, she had only been following the orders Marika gave her. It was just that, being something not of this world, her way of thinking was... unconventional.
Take Marika's "fertility problem," for example—Metyr's solution was to create Radagon. When asked to "revise The Law," she interpreted it as launching a new round of divine battle royale.
And through all of it, she had never intended harm—or perhaps simply didn't care.
If Metyr had truly borne a grudge against Marika's family, she could've easily ordered Maliketh to unseal Destined Death. That alone would have wiped out not only the Lands Between but the demigods as well.
Instead, she faithfully followed the mission given by the Greater Will: to establish a baseline order for the world, then let multiple systems compete—survival of the fittest—to find the most suitable Law to govern all.
The process didn't have to end in bloodshed. If Marika's side had possessed more advanced means and a harmonious family, they could have extracted the essence of each Law peacefully and transitioned without violence.
But...
The Marika siblings. The Godfrey brothers. The Radahn siblings. The Haligtree twins.
"If only you'd had fewer children—or at least kept your family under control—none of this would've happened!"
"Oh, please. Like this isn't all because of something you did!"
Metyr's accusations were met with Marika's sharp retort.
She had been just a village girl. If the Hornsent hadn't done such monstrous things, she might still have been living in her Numen village, worrying about finding a husband—never dreaming of becoming a goddess.
But after ascending in the Divine Tower, everything became a blur. The Two Fingers proclaimed her a goddess, assigned her a pile of duties, and called them her sacred mission.
A peasant girl had no idea how to handle that. She'd wanted to refuse, but after rallying followers in her quest for revenge against the Hornsent—and with her village destroyed—she'd been lost.
So she'd simply done as the Golden Two Fingers commanded.
And with that, the wheel of fate began to turn.
From mortal to goddess, from peasant girl to queen—from merely trying to stop a sacrifice, to founding the Golden Order Dynasty, then waging the Giant War, and finally ushering in the Age of Abundance.
Once ignorant of everything, she had been carried step by step to the divine altar by the turning wheel of fate. Along the way, she gained much, but sacrificed far more.
The Numen are kind by nature—but a true ruler can never be a good person.
Even now, she still remembers her first kill, and the nausea that struck her as she stood amid a battlefield soaked in blood.
She remembered the choices made for victory, the slaughter for the sake of the future, the newborns whose Crucible Horns she severed to keep the Golden Order running smoothly—and the "Great Caravan Incident," a disgrace to the Golden Order and a scar she could never erase.
She was a capable goddess—so much so that the Golden Order Dynasty she built was, by far, the most complete and humane civilization the Lands Between had ever seen. Even other nations (except the Hornsent) held her in high regard.
Yet she could never forgive herself.
Gold had once been inclusive and warm—but in the end, it became cold, rigid, and obsessed with purity of order.
That was the price of sacrifice—and the seed of division.
"Radagon is Marika." That phrase wasn't just metaphor.
Aside from literally being two halves of one being, Radagon was modeled after Marika herself. At first, their ways of thinking were similar, and their relationship not particularly strained.
But as time passed, their philosophies began to drift apart.
In simple terms, after establishing the Golden Order, Marika realized that to truly enforce its ideal of "immutability," she would need to create a vacuum-like external environment—
—in other words, purge everything that existed outside of gold. Yet even total purification couldn't guarantee the system's stability. One misstep, and you'd end up with another Godwyn, clogging the cycle of rebirth.
Radagon, however, believed that after coming so far, after so much effort and sacrifice, giving up now would be a betrayal of everything they had built.
Problems would always exist. Everything had flaws. When problems arose, they could be fixed. When obstacles appeared, they could be overcome. The road ahead might be harsh, but even partial progress would bring real, lasting change to the Lands Between—creating a paradise where everyone could truly live in happiness forever.
"We can't keep going like this."
"This is a necessary sacrifice."
From that moment, they drifted apart—until they stood opposed, blades drawn.
And at the root of it all...
"It's all because of that half-body you created!"
Marika glared furiously at Metyr.
Incidentally, while the Haligtree Twins were said to be the children of both Marika and Radagon, in truth, they could only be considered hers.
After all, putting aside the biological impossibility of two halves reproducing, the two of them could barely stand each other. Forget sharing a bed—just looking at one another was enough to make their skin crawl.
The reason for those children's existence was partly for appearances—to keep others from suspecting anything. But another reason was tied to the purity of the Golden Order. To maintain its untainted operation, the "impurities" within the Law—such as corruption and temptation—had to be purged.
And procreation was one of the ways to achieve that purification.
And so, here they were now.
After arguing with Metyr, the "village girl" spoke with Lloyd for a while. Beyond asking about her family, she also shared her thoughts on being a goddess.
To put it simply, they boiled down to: "I never enjoyed being the Golden Goddess," and "If someone wants to take my place, they can have it—I'm done for good."
After hearing about Lloyd's soul-manipulation techniques, Marika even asked him to strip the golden essence from her soul—whether he passed it on or destroyed it, she didn't care. She simply wanted it gone.
Lloyd agreed, but didn't act immediately.
Because the ownership of the Golden Order wasn't hers alone—and within her still resided another being, who until now had remained silent.
"Care to come out and talk?"
After a moment's pause, the village girl's golden hair turned crimson, and the fullness of her chest receded into the firm shape of a man's torso.
Watching the transformation, Lloyd blinked, realization dawning on his face.
Wait—if that's how it works... then when she and old Godfrey were together...
"I rarely came out back then."
It was clear this wasn't the first time Radagon had had to clarify that point.
And truth be told, Godfrey hadn't disliked him—quite the opposite.
After all, the first Elden Lord was a simple creature of battle. His first encounter with Marika had literally ended with her knocking him unconscious with a hammer and dragging him off.
Radagon, on the other hand, was essentially a male version of her—except, of course, for the sleeping arrangements. In every other respect, they got along fine. His temperament leaned more masculine, and he and Godfrey got along well enough to even share jokes about Marika behind her back.
But that wasn't what mattered right now.
When Radagon looked up, he assumed Lloyd wanted to ask him something—or perhaps discuss serious matters.
Instead...
Under Radagon's puzzled gaze, Lloyd gave him a big thumbs-up.
"Even the Greater Will couldn't make a perpetual motion machine. You're better than the Greater Will."
Radagon blinked.
"...Huh?"
A system with perfect self-sustaining circulation and zero loss—that had been Radagon's ultimate vision for gold. Calling it a perpetual motion machine wasn't far off.
After hearing Lloyd's explanation, Radagon had wanted to argue, to prove that his concept wasn't just a fantasy.
But then Lloyd dragged over the Full Moon Queen, pulled Ranni out of a corner, summoned the two Radahn brothers, and together, across disciplines—mathematics, physics, sorcery, incantation—they analyzed and demonstrated just how absurdly impossible Radagon's ideal truly was.
Incidentally, Radahn's so-called "thesis" had actually been written by Little Pony—Radahn himself was just the stand-in.
As members of a long line of sorcerers—each one, aside from a certain general, well-versed in magical theory—the group delivered a devastating intellectual blow to Radagon.
And at the end, the Queen of the Full Moon twisted the knife with one final strike.
"You haven't even mastered the basics of sorcery. You haven't digested what I taught you, and yet you're already off fantasizing."
"If you'd stayed a bit longer, learned a little more from me, you wouldn't have come up with something this ridiculous."
After a long silence, Radagon's crimson hair faded back to gold, and he withdrew into himself.
Having thoroughly humiliated the red-haired fool, the Queen of the Full Moon and her family—everyone except Radahn—seemed quite pleased.
Even Rykard's massive serpent head bore a rare trace of amusement.
Until—
"Oh, right, Brother, could you do that thing again?"
"You know, the one where you make me a member of your Serpent King's family..."
And then it was Rykard's turn to shut down.
...
Once Marika regained control of her body, she greeted the family warmly.
Though she had, in name, stolen the Queen of the Full Moon's husband, the Queen not only knew that Rada was Marika, but actually got along with her rather well—much like the dynamic between Godfrey and Radagon. "Close friends" wouldn't be an exaggeration.
Originally, for various reasons, the Queen had kept this fact secret from her children. But now, with everything out in the open, she decided to explain the truth and apologize for having hidden it.
"I didn't mean to keep it from you. There were just... many complicated circumstances, and good reasons why I couldn't tell you..."
Of course, while her words were directed at all three siblings, her gaze throughout the entire confession stayed fixed on Ranni.
As for her sons?
Radahn couldn't care less—just muttered a casual "Oh, I see."
Rykard cared, but his enormous snake head irritated the Queen so much she didn't bother paying him any attention.
But Ranni...
"In a sense, Marika is also your mother. And she loves you dearly."
"I believe you've already felt that, once you became a demigod."
And indeed, Ranni had felt it.
As the youngest, compared to her two brothers, she had received strange, excessive favoritism after Radagon entered their family.
At the time, she had simply assumed it was a red-haired scoundrel trying to make up for guilt in his own way—never suspecting that it was the golden-haired woman quietly watching over her from the shadows.
But in the end...
...
"In the end, Metyr's cryptic nonsense made Marika suspect she was the true villain. Marika's own Riddler failed to explain things clearly, which caused chaos. Then your family's Riddler went and pushed Ranni into pulling something extreme—and that kicked off the whole chain of disasters that followed."
After hearing their exchange, Lloyd summed it up neatly.
"My advice? From now on, the Lands Between needs compulsory basic education. At the very least, teach proper language and comprehension—so you lot can stop talking in riddles."
Metyr wanted to bring order to the Lands Between.
Marika longed for a golden age of prosperity.
Godwyn was lost in moral struggle.
Ranni wanted nothing to do with divinity.
Miquella, with a child's pure heart, only wanted everyone to be happy.
The people of the Lands Between didn't even despise the Golden Family—in fact, they admired the gentle goddess who ruled them.
In truth, none of their goals were irreconcilable. If they had simply sat down and talked, things never would've spiraled this far.
But the result...
When Lloyd pointed this out, silence filled the room.
Because as everyone thought it over, they realized—he was absolutely right.
Then, after a long pause, Marika suddenly realized something.
"Wait... if Metyr is here..."
She turned toward Metyr, her tone uncertain.
"Then... what does that mean?"
Her words hung in the air—and the silence deepened into something heavier.
Before she spoke, no one else had truly considered the question—or maybe they had all instinctively avoided it.
After all, the state of the Lands Between hardly seemed like something the Greater Will would want. Both Marika and the Queen of the Full Moon knew what had happened to the Nox, and Rykard had even openly declared his intent to "defy the Greater Will."
So now...
"Oh, you mean the Greater Will?"
Lloyd thought for a moment, then casually summoned a certain golden-haired programmer and asked directly,
"They're wondering if you've got anything to say about all this."
"I have no objections."
After a brief pause, she added,
"If I had to comment, I'd say add a class on The Law alongside your cultural lessons—so we don't end up with another mess of a Law like this one."
"It's terrible."
With that, she disappeared.
Lloyd looked back at the group, completely straight-faced.
"You all heard her."
"She said she has no objections."
The only response he received—was silence.
And dead, heavy stillness.