"----"
A comfortable silence filled the room, gradually erasing Shien's call that had seemed almost like he was talking to himself.
The words Shien had shouted at the ceiling received neither a reply nor any reaction, making things somewhat awkward.
Yet Shien did not look embarrassed. He kept staring at the ceiling—or rather, as though he were looking through it at some distant space beyond his sight—and spoke.
"If you can hear me, then call me over. I have something to ask you."
Shien made his request.
Clearly, he intended to put his earlier idea into action.
Even so, Shien's words still brought no response, nor did they provoke any reaction.
Shien did not mind. He simply waited quietly, as though sensing something.
Then, at a certain moment, Shien's heart stirred, and he smiled.
"Here it comes."
With that murmur, the surrounding space finally began to distort.
In an instant, the scenery changed, space twisted, heaven and earth turned upside down, and Shien felt as though he had been thrown into a vortex. Everything spun around him, and the view before his eyes became like a kaleidoscope—distorted and bizarre.
No one knew how long that lasted.
".This seems a little longer than usual, doesn't it?"
That was how Shien felt, and he frowned.
Normally, the moment he was summoned, he would immediately arrive at the temple within that sealed land of the Divine Realm and meet the Goddess who had summoned him.
But this time, the summoning seemed to be taking rather too long.
"What exactly is...?"
A trace of suspicion arose in Shien.
But just as that suspicion surfaced, the spinning sensation finally vanished.
The space around him became a solemn temple.
The atmosphere in the air also became completely different from before, filled with a sacred feeling.
Shien