TGGG — Side Chapter: Raphael’s Observation

Deep within Istellia’s divine sanctum—a realm where time flowed differently—a small chibi angel hovered in quiet observation. She was Raphael, the administrator of Fantasia. Her delicate wings were folded neatly behind her as she fixed her gaze on a scrying mirror, scenes flickering within its depths like fragments of a story.

While casually munching on rainbow-colored popcorn, her eyes stayed locked on a particular figure: a young man, no older than his early twenties, fearlessly challenging the scenario before him. Indeed, at the center of the mirror was Maximillian Anderson.

At first, she’d thought of him as nothing but trouble. Reckless, arrogant, and prone to provoking chaos wherever he went. She still remembered how he’d tried to reason with her—to stop her from executing a human that didn’t know and overstepped his place with nothing but strange, infuriating logic. But the more she watched, the harder it became to ignore the pattern woven into his every move.

He adapted with unnatural speed. Fought like he knew how the System worked before it revealed itself. He threw himself into scenario after scenario like a lunatic—always taking the most difficult route, always fulfilling the hardest extra condition.

And most curious of all—perhaps even alarming—were the suggestions he made. Ideas even she, a higher being, hadn’t considered.

“Compulsory scenario completion,” she muttered, chewing slowly as she recalled the proposal he’d given her just under a week ago—one she had since passed on to Istellia and implemented as a god’s decree.

It was a brilliant move. It had tightened control over the divine warriors without causing much unrest or suspicion. The previously stagnant flow of progress within Fantasia had quickened, and strong divine warriors had begun emerging one after another.

That kind of thinking wasn’t normal. Not for a mortal. Not even for a clever one.

She zoomed in on a particular scene—the fifth scenario. Maximillian, this human… was pretty clever in his way to clear scenarios—manipulating terrain, coordinating with his comrades, exploiting enemy behavior as if he’d seen it all before.

“This isn’t intuition. It’s as if he has understood Divine Will more than us…” she whispered.

But that wasn’t the only strange thing about him. He also possessed abilities that Raphael had never seen before. Powers inherited from sources he shouldn’t have had access to. Raphael had seen countless divine warriors rise and fall, but never one that was anything like him.

And no matter how she tried, she couldn’t fully identify his class or skills. The System showed his class as “Swordsman,” and it was as if they were deliberately obscured, hidden from her view.

Even more troubling was that she couldn’t read his mind the way she could with others. Well, not fully. There was a haze around his soul—something woven into him that resisted divine perception. She had seen it only once before, among the shattered remnants of beings that had touched divinity.

But how can a mortal possibly come in contact with divinity? Let alone wield it? she thought, creasing her eyebrows.

A faint chill traced her spine as she came to a realization.

Was he truly a mortal? Or had Lady Istellia summoned something far more dangerous—something far more useful?

“Does Lady Istellia know something about him?” Raphael muttered, tapping a finger against her chin.

Her wings gave a faint flutter as she leaned closer to the scrying mirror, trying to peer deeper into the threads of fate tied to Maximillian. This was one of the powers that she mastered as a higher being. But the strands bent away from her gaze, defying her attempts to follow them to their end, as though fate itself was evading her.

Regardless of the mystery surrounding him, he had become vital to her goddess’s cause. If nurtured properly, he could become her strongest agent. Most mortals were cogs in the grand design. He, however, appeared to be something else entirely.

If left unchecked… he might become something else entirely. Something dangerous.

But the potential was there. If her goddess could amass even more faith through Maximillian’s actions and rise in power, then Raphael, too, would ascend alongside her. That was how the divine hierarchy worked—faith empowered gods, and gods elevated their servants.

Of course, it wasn’t just blind loyalty that compelled her. She truly wanted the best for Lady Istellia. Not simply because she served her, but because she believed in her potential—the vision of a new goddess forging her place among the stars. A realm where imagination reigned supreme could reshape the very foundation of Divine Will.

And Maximillian might be the key that made that possible.

As that thought crossed her mind, a sudden ripple disturbed the surface of the scrying mirror. A glowing alert blinked into view before Raphael’s eyes.

“Duel to the death…?” she murmured, curiosity flashing before her eyes. “Between Maximillian and… Graham?”

She floated a little closer to confirm what she had seen. The Grand Colosseum had been officially registered for a sanctioned duel—Graham as the challenger, and Maximillian had accepted it without hesitation.

She remembered the growing tension between the two. Graham’s increasing hostility, his grip over Fantasia, and the clashes between the two. It had been building toward this moment. After all, nothing in Fantasia escaped her notice.

Still… a duel to the death.

“This is going to be interesting.”

Graham had long been a thorn in her side. But as much as she disliked him, she had no grounds to remove him. His status as the strongest divine warrior under Istellia made him irreplaceable, and his men were all elite divine warriors.

But if Maximillian could truly defeat him here, on a sanctioned field, by divine law… Then this might become the perfect opportunity. If he could not, then Raphael would know that he was nothing special, even if she would come to help because of the favor that she owed him.

With that thought in mind, she disappeared to oversee the duel herself.

Chapter 68 | Chapter 69