Shin'za held his shot when the War God was pressed by the Spirit Caller and the War Queen.

He held his shot when the War God gained the upper hand.

He held his shot when the War God disengaged.

He almost pressed the trigger when he was engulfed in an explosion of fire.

But he held his shot when the illusion was revealed and the God Slayer was stabbed.

It was only when the chains finished restricting the War God's body that he let his new weapon sing.

Time seemed to slow down as his eyes tracked the bullet, it was deceptively small for something that packed as much power as he had seen but even with the destruction he knew it could cause it wouldn't be enough to seriously damage a God as powerful as this Hachiman had proven to be, even with the contempt he felt comparing him to his Lord he could see the similarities in endurance that they both possessed, the sturdiness that wouldn't allow them to die by a measly bullet of this caliber.

...That is why he didn't target the God's body

Finally after what felt like an eternity, his bullet connected with the helmeted head of the War God, the strength of the shot blowing his head back and getting rid of his helmet completely, the small blast managing to snap the straps holding it in place even as it failed to perforate the God's skull.

But that didn't matter.

The War Queen was in range... and the War God's neck was completely exposed.

Cynthia's eyes widened as she bared her fangs, enraged. She charged at Hachiman, intent on saving the girl. As she called out for the shot from Shin'Za, Cynthia quickly called forth a hexagonal pillar of earth to rise up swiftly and throw Mitsuko directly at Cynthia and away from the incoming blast. All the while, she never stopped charging at the self-proclaimed warrior god. Cynthia did a small leap into the air, caught Mitsuko, and with a quick spin, placed her down on the ground behind her while giving the moon elf an urgent look, and kept on running without missing a beat, arriving at her summoned pillar just in time for Hachiman's neck to be exposed. With another small leap, she landed on her summoned pillar and slashed downwards at his neck, severing his head from his body in one stroke.

"One down..." and one to go, she finished the declaration in her mind, flicking the blood from her katana with a swipe in the air, then cleaning the rest off on her sleeve, in the pit of her elbow, imitating a move she'd seen performed before by that shifty Tengu princess that clung to her like a sticky barbed plant. Once she'd sheathed her blade, she turned her back on Hachiman's dissolving corpse and ran back to Mitsuko to check on her. She paid no attention to Hachiman's remains as they broke apart into a kind of salt-and-pepper colored dust, then seemingly coalesced into a crystal shape. Like the one Sybil had picked up before, it was similarly out of place and unnatural-looking—but this one was a pure white, and offered no reaction to anyone who approached to retrieve it.

After being bisected, the twin worms making up zero wheeled about, preparing to strike on Hachiman again. Perhaps by splitting down their strength, they could find how many individual assailants it took to get past Hachiman's technique. The other worm was pondering turning into a swarm of biting flies, when Hachiman unleashed his true power, and the two burrowed underground out of reflex.

Deep within the corrupted Earth, beneath the notice of the mighty combatants above, Zero returned to waiting and observing. By monitoring the tremors in the ground from their divine steps, the alien demigod was capable of analyzing their body densities and compositions. They were drawing a clearer picture of their allies and enemy alike. However, Hachiman's head was struck off before Zero could learn all they liked. They surged up out of the ground directly beneath where the god's corpse had been, hoping to ingest his corpse, but finding only scant particles in the air.

Zero resumed their humanoid form, like a sculpture melting and unmelting, and inspected the crystalline remains of the god they had slain. While Evolution Zero scanned it with every sense their biology and psionics could conjure, their fingertips microscopically scraped and sampled its surface.

---

The Japanese woman struggles to stand up as she saw Hachiman being dissolved into dust, she knows that things are only going to get more complicated from here once the gods have deduced what her group has done to the Japanese god of war, but that is a matter of later concern. She needs to tend the wound in her abdomen and direct the group to further walk toward the objective. “Hey, uhh, Illistriana san?” She asked the elven woman, the priestess of Lunara looking stunned as the group somehow manages to defeat a war deity. “Can you help me for a little bit here? I need some healing after that fight.”

The moon elf wasted no time coming to her aid and cast her healing spell, her left hand radiated with a soothing energy Mitsuko felt when she was fighting Hachiman, and soon enough the wound on her abdomen was quickly healed, the only signs that Mitsuko has been stabbed being the torn piece of clothing right where the sword pierced her body. “You should be more careful Madame Mitsuko,” Illistriana told her. “That move was exceedingly reckless of you and could get you killed! I couldn’t think of how we would navigate this… labyrinth of a city without your guidance Mitsuko.”

The gal could only smile at the moon-elf queen as she stretched her body to make sure she was still functioning. “I… appreciate that you’re taking care of me Illistriana, just don’t overly focus yourself on me and take care of the others okay?” Illistriana promptly nodded to the woman’s request. Mitsuko nonetheless appreciates that Illistriana cares about her though, there are not many people that cared about her until Amaterasu showed up and helped her rebuild her future. So it's nice to have people you can trust in this little party of hers.

“Alright!” She announced to the group. “We’re still gonna take the train tracks, this line should lead us towards Tokyo Station, and once we reach Tokyo Station, the Imperial Palace should be up ahead, where we will hopefully fight my evil alter ego deity. Let’s move!”

The journey afterward was pretty boring, Mitsuko looked at all the ruined buildings and skyscrapers that are inhabited only by the air and not much else. The woman felt a bit sad as she saw how Tokyo would look like if Humanity had gone extinct, all the fun things she has done with Amaterasu in the Japanese capital, all the life and mirth of the city, sapped away, leaving a concrete husk with nobody withering away, with nobody to witness its slow death. Such a tragedy really.

But then, just as Mitsuko was about to continue her journey, her head filled with thoughts of making this situation more lively than it is, she spotted something. And her eyes light up like the Christmas lights on a tree. “Cynthia! Shin’za! Sybil! Everyone!” She turned her body around. “Come here! Come here! Oh my goodness I didn’t expect this thing to still be here after all this time!”

The woman quickly sprinted into a platform of a long-disused station and approached a weird box-looking thing standing on its own, the years rusting away the metallic shell of the implement, but the woman knew that there should be something inside of it. “This is what we call a vending machine. It’s a sort of like… machine merchant where you insert coins or paper in these implements.” She pointed to the side, “and click the button below the drink selection.” She pointed at the buttons, “And voila! A drink dispensed!”

“But, since we don’t have currency here, I’ll just tear this implement apart and let you choose what drinks you have, consider this a… reward of sorts for successfully defeating Hachiman,” Mitsuko said, enchanting her fists with a spell before she punched the vending machine, tearing apart its outer shell and revealing the contents of its insides, a veritable selection of various drinks from jelly drinks, cafe au laits, and ramune. Mitsuko herself grabbing some water and a watermelon-flavoured drink and drank both. “Yep! It’s still not expired yet, grab anything you want! We probably won’t be resting for quite a while once we continue our journey.”