968
"...You said you're in the City of Calamity?"
Medici gave him a rather strange look and said, with certainty yet some confusion, "Shouldn't I be inside the City of Calamity? She didn't kill me. I can feel it. I haven't actually died."
A Death Imprint claiming he wasn't dead was a horror-movie development from every angle.
Death Imprints were supposed to be unconscious things that only wandered endlessly by the river and dragged passing creatures into the water. Even the record that gave him "memories and a self" didn't include what had happened inside the City of Calamity ("I didn't even know Cheek was fighting you now!"). Even Ouroboros was stunned. The instant he heard those words, he abruptly sensed something, but the difference in their levels prevented him from accurately "seeing" the truth.
What exactly had the City of Calamity done?
"What are you doing in the City of Calamity now?"
"Fighting Cheek," Medici answered frankly. "She wants to become a dual-pathway true god, then try accommodating part of the City of Calamity, and finally advance to the Great Old One, Calamity of Destruction."
"You know quite a lot. But for the gods on Earth, the best route to becoming a Great Old One should be to become a single-pathway true god first, then make contact with the Sefirah, gain preliminary control, and only then become a multi-pathway true god. Well, with Earth already in this state, there's really no need to keep putting up with all that red tape. Cheek is in the Astral World now. How did you manage to appear there... The only thing there connected to the City of Calamity seems to be 0-01." The Outer Deity thought for a while, then asked casually, "By the way, a question off the topic. Not on