The One Who Fell From Grace

Chapter 20: The end is nigh? Part 1

Time skip 10 minutes, location Diadem of Light

Musashi strolled along the one of the pathways on the Diadem of Light. She was carrying a cardboard box filled with all sorts of different looking artifacts.

The Diadem had all sorts of different shrines, in the style of Shinto shrines. Though most were old and collapsed, with nature starting to take them over. Musashi could tell they were dedicated to beings she had never heard of before.

She stopped at one shrine one on one of the smaller five islands that was still standing. It was quite big compared to the other shrines.

It seemed that each island had multiple shrines, some bigger than others, but most were destroyed and being reclaimed by nature. But as she made her way to the central island, a massive building in the shape of an octagon, with a garden in the center of it and a grand hall in the center of that, was built on the island.

She cautiously crossed the bridge, though found that it was sturdy. She looked around as she got closer to the building and at least from where she was it seemed almost completely fine, besides a bit of faded paint, which was a dark red now.

She passed through the massive gates and found herself inside a massive beautiful hall. The hall was mostly dark inside as the only light was coming from the outside. She looked around confused as she wasn't sure where to go, as she didn't know of the central garden.

She just wandered around using her aura to light the dark area around her. Though her aura wasn't that bright and only lit a meter or so around her. But now she came to an area that was bright and saw part of the roof had caved in. She wandered around that area for a while since she could see the area much better compared to other places.

But she didn't find anything that could help her and went into another area. She wandered for a long time and found that the octagon shaped building circled around the island, which she hadn't known. But now after a while she finally found her way into the central garden and immediately noticed the great hall at the center.

As she got closer she could see that it had to be at least fifty meters long, ten meters wide, and fifteen meters tall at the tallest. But it didn't even fill half the diameter of the central garden.

She got closer and saw that one end of the great hall was collapsed with moss starting to over take the building. The wood looked old, yet as she now tested to see if the wood could hold her weight, it felt solid. She made her way in and found the inside could possibly hold hundreds if needed.

She set her box down and now started to take out the artifacts. There were several dozen in different forms, but most could mistakenly be seen as simple trinkets. But one major artifact was much more clear that it wasn't normal.

At first it seemed like a normal rock, about the size of a man's fist. But it glistened a beautiful navy blue, and the surface seemed to have a thin layer that moved like ocean waves.

Musashi seemed to look at the rock for a moment before muttering "hopefully this watatsumi actually works. Otherwise..." though now she shook her head "stop that Musashi! This will work... it has to work" She continued on, setting up the artifacts for the ritual she had planned to do.

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Location 7,000 kilometers west of San Diego

Now what looked to be a relatively small fleet of modern ships could be seen. Only the USS Ronald Reagan, USS Laboon, USS Ramage, USS Benfold, USS Hopper, USS Chafee, and Edith Mærsk could be seen. But in actuality there were a massive amount of ship girls that were stowing their riggings on the ships there, so that it was harder for them to be detected, and so they could go faster. They were deep in Abyss Empire territory and communication with anyone else was cut off.