Brazil, the Amazon rainforests.

  I wiped the sweat from my forehead, pushing through the humid jungle toward the temporary outpost of Sector "Zero." The humidity was so high that my clothes stuck to my body within five minutes.

  "It is so hard being alone..." I panted. "Endless flights, no personal life."

  "HEY! Did you forget about me?!" Yanu's indignant voice rang out from the speaker. "I am the one plotting your route, by the way, and making sure some mutant jaguar doesn't eat you!"

  "Yeah, but you're no help in negotiations," I snapped. "You only know how to make snide remarks."

  The base was buzzing with activity. Corps soldiers were bustling about, checking their weapons.

  "Where is the Demon of War?" I asked the duty officer.

  "By the shore," he nodded toward the ocean. "There's a spike in Kaiju activity there. She decided to 'warm up'."

  At that exact second, a deafening KABOOM! came from the direction of the beach, making the trees tremble. I hurried over there.

  In the middle of the shoreline, strewn with the remains of some sea monster, stood a girl. She looked about twenty, covered in the black blood of a Kaiju. She was wiping her hands on the grass when she noticed me.

  "WELL NOW, puny human? Come to interview me?" she grinned, and in her eyes I saw the reflections of a thousand tiny fires. "Let's make it quick, while I'm still in the mood to talk."

  We sat under a canopy. She took on a more "civilian" appearance, propping her feet up on the table.

  "Ask your questions, pipsqueak."

  "Tell me about yourself for the archive," I turned on the voice recorder.

  "I've been called different things in every century," she sighed, and the air distinctly smelled of gunpowder. "But right now I am the Demon of War. My powers today are rated at 60 out of 100. A pitiful sight. I remember the times when you little humans slaughtered each other from morning till night—back then my power soared to 84! BWA-HA-HA! Now that was a life!"

  She suddenly fell silent and became serious.

  "Now I mostly give out contracts. I give people power, tactical vision, invulnerability... and in exchange, they lose their sanity. They turn into my perfect warriors. A fair trade, I'd say."

  "What is your relationship with the other Primordials? For example, with the Demon of Oblivion—Aurora?"

  She immediately went quiet. Her hand, resting on the table, involuntarily clenched into a fist, crushing the wood like paper.

  "She... she..." War stumbled. "It doesn't matter. I can't say anything. We try not to cross paths. Her power... it's just wrong."

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  "Alright. And how do you feel about Subject Zero?"

  The Demon of War smirked bitterly.

  "I had a sparring match with him... a long time ago. You know what the crappiest part is? It's not just that I didn't lose... I couldn't even take a single step toward him. I simply couldn't move. My instincts, which had driven me into battle for centuries, suddenly screamed that standing before me was... We, the demons of fear, feel an aversion to humans, but Subject Zero... he is definitely not human. He is something else."

  I decided to delve into the details so the report wouldn't seem empty.

  "Tell me, why are you helping Mira? And what do you think about the Kaiju?"

  "Mira gives me the opportunity to fight," War shrugged. "And the Kaiju... they're boring. There is no mind in them. They are just a force of nature. Fighting them is like fighting a hurricane. I prefer humans. There is so much hatred in your heads that I could feed on it forever."

  "Is there anything that you fear?"

  She looked at me with a long, heavy gaze.

  "I fear silence. A world in which no one wants to fight—that is my death. But, looking at you humans... I don't think I'm in any danger."

  I turned off the voice recorder.

  "Thank you for your honesty."

  "Get lost already," she tossed out, staring again at the horizon, where the new ridge of a monster was rising from the water. "And tell Mira: if she sends me another boring contract like this, I will come to her myself."

  I hurried to the helicopter. The Demon of War was on our side, but her presence weighed on the psyche no less than the gaze of the Demon of Time. The world was hanging by very thin threads.

  I leaned back in the leather seat of the business jet, watching the clouds over the Atlantic take on the color of a bloody sunset. My head was buzzing from the sheer volume of information.

  "Alright, Yanu," I wheezed, closing my eyes. "Did you run the data analysis on the Third Generation?"

  "Naturally," the cold voice of the AI echoed from the plane's speakers. "Unlike certain 'meatbags', I don't waste time sleeping and complaining about the humidity. Listen to the report."

  I sat up straight, and a hologram with charts and classifications unfolded before me.

  "Most Third Generation demons are parasites of the psyche," Yanu rattled off crisply. "They do not attack head-on, but induce paranoia, depression, or hallucinations. There are also relatively peaceful specimens, but their numbers fall within the statistical margin of error. The average power level is 'Snake' or lower. However, Third Generation demons of the 'Typhoon' and even 'Dragon' level have been recorded. Most prefer not to fight personally, but to make contracts: mana in exchange for a piece of the soul or the vessel's lifespan."

  "I see..." I rubbed the bridge of my nose. "And what about the 'Old Battles' section? Did you prepare the data?"

  "I prepared it before you even stepped into the helicopter in Brazil," clear pride could be heard in Yanu's voice. "Check the file 'Inversion of Faith'."

  I opened the document. The lines of text made me go cold.

  "In ancient times, there were entities that were the inverse of demons," Yanu continued. "If demons feed on fear, these beings lived off human faith, hope, and love. Zeus, Odin, Ra... all those we now call 'myths'. Do you know why they became myths?"

  "Because people stopped believing in them?" I guessed.

  "No. Because the Demons of the Second Generation wiped them out completely. It was a war of extermination. The War of Fear against Faith. And Fear won. Aurora personally erased a good half of the divine pantheons from history. She didn't just kill them—she destroyed the very memory of their existence. We only know crumbs about Olympus because she decided to leave those 'fairytales' around for amusement. Half of the gods of the past are completely unknown to us—not even a shadow of them remains in the chronicles."

  I looked at the list of "erased" names, which Yanu had managed to reconstruct from circumstantial evidence, and felt the world around me becoming increasingly fragile.

  "God... so much work," I covered my face with my hands.

  "And now there's this scheme of Mira's to assemble 'Team Zero'. Zenhald, Aurora, Lucida, Second Generation Demons... Why does she need such unimaginable power in one group?"

  I stayed silent. The plane hummed steadily, carrying me back to Yokohama.