The Assembly

Southern Japan, deep in the Western Pacific, the Sea Nation.

The army of sea yokai that had set out to invade the land had now returned to their home. The once-empty Sea Nation was now bustling with activity once more.

The attempt to march upon the land had been thwarted, and the legions of the Sea Nation had suffered heavy losses. Furthermore, because Miketsu and the ancient god of the sea had fought nearby, the entire Sea Nation had been caught in the crossfire, with many buildings collapsing due to the powerful turbulence.

Despite this, there was little gloom in the hearts of the sea yokai. Instead, they were filled with joy for one simple reason: the Sea Nation had been revitalized. A path that had been destined for extinction now showed new hope.

Within the Sea Nation, countless sea yokai were busy. Some were repairing damaged houses, others were tending to tiny sprigs of seagrass just emerging from the silt, and many were gathered at the clearing where the sea rock martial statues once stood. There, they were using rock to construct a new building. Before the structure, a torii gate carved purely from sea rock already stood tall.

Otakemaru and Kujira stood before the torii, watching the construction of this shrine, which possessed a distinct undersea style. Otakemaru spoke up.

"Hmm, it looks like this is being built quite quickly... it shouldn't be long before it's finished."

"Yes, because everyone knows it was Inari Okami who ultimately saved the Sea Nation, they are incredibly enthusiastic about working on her shrine... perhaps everyone wants to take this chance to receive a bit of her blessing," Kujira replied to Otakemaru. Hearing this, Otakemaru couldn't help but let out a sigh of relief.

"Whew... I never expected that the Sea Nation would end up worshipping a land deity. I wonder how I'll explain this to Sister Suzuka when she returns..."

"Rest assured, Young Lord. Once the Lord of the Nation learns of the circumstances, she will surely understand," Kujira said to Otakemaru, who then turned his gaze toward the west.

In the sea and sky to the west, Otakemaru could see several faint lights slowly ascending.

"By the way... how is the situation on Uminari's end?" Otakemaru continued slowly, watching the rising lights. Beside him, Kujira responded respectfully.

"Everything is going smoothly with Lord Uminari. Following Inari Okami's oracle, we are putting all our effort into excavating the wreckage left on the battlefield by the First Emperor during the great war a thousand years ago. Once excavated, the Golden Man controlled by Inari Okami carries it back to the land... However, due to the sheer volume of wreckage and the difficulty of excavating some parts, it will take a considerable amount of time to complete it all."

"It won't be finished anytime soon?"

Watching the mecha giants in the distance dragging various metal remains to the surface, a look of longing reappeared in Otakemaru's eyes. He couldn't help but marvel inwardly.

'So cool... if only the Sea Nation could have one of those...'

Above the sea's surface, Miketsu sat within her spaceship, using her will to command the mecha to continuously salvage metal remains from the seabed. At this moment, a vast pile of metal wreckage floated on the surface beneath the spaceship, held aloft by a strange power.

"Sigh... when will this ever end?"

From her seat, Miketsu let out a long sigh. More than ten days had passed since she had slain the ancient god of the sea. During these ten days, she had been primarily occupied with handling her own remains. She had originally thought that since her remains could move and fly, handling them would be quite easy, but it turned out to be a massive project.

The First Emperor had not forged all of her remains into mecha; the parts turned into mecha only accounted for about a third of the total. He had used the rest to mix with other substances, smelting them into alloys to build a fleet that supported the mecha in combat. Most of this fleet had sunk to the bottom of the ocean. Miketsu needed to dig up all the parts containing her remains and send them to the land.

And that wasn't all. According to Suwako, because of the First Emperor's actions, her remains in their current state could not be used directly for resurrection. They had to be reprocessed first.

"This really is a hassle..." Miketsu sighed from her seat as she recalled her conversation with Suwako not long ago.

...

"What? You're saying my remains can't be used directly?" Inside the Inari Secret Realm, Miketsu spoke in surprise to the frog god who had flown over from afar.

"That's right. Because the resurrection ritual requires recreating a new body based on the remains of an ancient god, the remains must at least maintain a rough approximation of their form in life. Look at the state of your remains now. How is this any different from being ground into dust and scattered to the winds?" Suwako said seriously, looking at the several mecha giants standing in the clearing.

"This..." Hearing Suwako's words, Miketsu was momentarily at a loss for words. Indeed, she also doubted that the ritual could be completed with these Gundam-like forms. If she tried to recast an ancient god's body using these robots, heaven knew what kind of thing would come out...

They had to be a single unit at the very least... They were so scattered now that there was no way they could be used directly for resurrection. Resurrection used the remains as a foundation, utilizing external energy to reshape the body. If the remains were in this state, wouldn't the reshaped result just be a shattered corpse? She would die on the spot the moment she was revived.

Miketsu thought this through and agreed that Suwako had a point. The current state of her remains truly could not be used directly for resurrection.

"So... I need to melt these things down? And then recast them into the original shape of my skeleton?" Miketsu asked, looking at the mecha before her. At the same time, she wailed inwardly... 'No, these are all so cool. It would be such a waste to melt them down...'

"Hmm... I don't think melting them down is necessary. The remains used for resurrection only need to have roughly the right posture; there aren't many requirements for the details..." Suwako mused, stroking her chin before continuing.

"Since your remains were turned into mechanical puppets by your followers, you can simply find a way to disassemble these puppets and then assemble them all together. As long as they roughly form the original posture of your remains, it will work. This will save much more time than a complete recasting, though it will require someone with expertise in this field."

'Assemble them all together? Isn't that just a combination?'

Recasting was hard to accept, but a combination—wouldn't that be even better?! Just thinking about it was exciting!

Hearing Suwako's words, Miketsu's eyes lit up. She immediately thought of Eirin and the large group of lunar engineer rabbits on her side; there would be absolutely no problem regarding technology.

However, Eirin had recently gone to the Lunar Capital to help with the reconstruction. She would need to be notified to return.

Looking at the moon, which was faintly visible even in the daylight, Miketsu made her plans.