As Arad got summoned toward Therisa, he called Gojo and asked him to hold his back. He was certain that he could beat Poppy, but he didn’t want her escaping like before, so Gojo was there to catch her.

Gojo, of course, didn’t mind helping Arad, and he immediately went on the hunt. As Arad was summoned and started fighting, Gojo was already lurking in the shadows of the city like a wraith, keeping an eye on everything and anything, trying to block all of Poppy’s escape paths.

It was then that Gojo noticed something strange: the space where Arad and Poppy fought, and the space outside their fighting area was strange. It was like they were separated dimensions, but still just one. It was an impossible reality that he even questioned his sanity; he might’ve gone mad and lost his mind, but he wasn’t.

Arad and Poppy were indeed fighting in an enclosed sub-space, a strange form of not space manipulation, but reality warping dominion that far surpassed anything the void dragons could. It was quite weird, but Gojo wasn’t that strange to it. He had felt such a thing before when fighting Korah, the god of gluttony.

At that time, Cain Lisworth, the Overgod, had used his elemental expansion to separate reality and allow Gojo and Korah to fight without trashing the world, but Gojo, who noticed something off, only attributed it to Korah’s divine nature.

Since Gojo noticed a similar pattern, he now went on the hunt, suspecting that some god might be behind Poppy and helping her. He used all of the tricks Yog taught him to sneak up on divine beings, and started sniffing around like a bloodhound.

The more Gojo looked, the clearer the image became, and he quickly started to see past the strangeness of this attack. There was the flood of blood, Poppy’s sudden attack, and all of the chaos, yet... the city wasn’t going into panic. With hundreds of people dead from the flood alone, he would’ve expected a bigger shock to spread through the entire place, but it didn’t.

Weren’t Arad’s wives supposed to be fighting the blood monsters nearby? Why can’t he hear the echoes of their fights? No, why can’t he even remember their faces? Did Arad even have wives? Gojo couldn’t even remember Aella’s face, and he knew her for a long time.

Gojo was confused, but all of his senses screamed that something was horribly off. He couldn’t put his fingers around the source, but just knowing that something was wrong was enough for now. He has to find it before he too gets consumed by whatever eldritch magic is playing, so he started acting.

First, he made a quick call to Lucy and asked her to get their failsafe plan ready. If something is powerful enough to manipulate his mind like this, he wanted to make sure he wouldn’t die. Arad would burn the universe to ash if Gojo died in a mission that he sent him on.

Lucy confirmed that she is ready to start the plan if he were to die. So now, Arad didn’t need to fear death. But still, he also wanted to add another layer, so he called Yog. He didn’t want to get her involved, because she honestly makes everything more complicated, so he only asked if she could... help him if he needed to, with Death herself.

Yog quickly confirmed back to him that he wasn’t on Death’s list for anytime soon, and that even if he was... Death would suck on her toes if she wanted to, so getting Gojo’s soul back and riving him won’t be a problem. Yog would hate to lose such a talented wizard and an overgod vessel so early on.

With his back covered, Gojo noticed that the effect of the strange magic on his consciousness and sense of reality was already warping his mind, so he started without delay. Using his own magic, he put himself under a mind control spell and instructed himself to track the scent of strange notes in mana around him.

With that pinged, they fell into something akin to a trance as he lowered himself down and started silently crawling through the shadows of the city, following the traces of the reality warping magic by using its effect on himself.

If heading in a direction warped his mind, then he would follow, since the caster should be at the centre of it all. But through it all, he kept analysing the magic and trying to understand it, but with each step, he kept understanding that he knew nothing about magic.

Gojo was fairly skilled at magic, and probably the only person the goddess of magic was personally teaching from time to time; he had the right to be confident in his skills with spells, but what he was seeing now was utterly alien.

The magic covering the city wasn’t any form of regular spellcraft, but a mixture of the abomination’s eldritch magic, and the god’s divine magic all forced to coexist and tear the fabric of reality apart. The eldritch magic tore the concepts of reality temporarily from the world, and the divine magic took fragments from parallel timelines to mend the shattered reality into a new version that the caster liked.

This level of power wasn’t anything that he had witnessed anyone use, and it was already above what is possible for the void and time dragons, even if they combined their effort. Whoever was casting had to be an appalling, abhorrent, unholy, abominable titan on a whole other level. It couldn’t be Nyar himself, since that abomination can’t use divine magic, but it also couldn’t be a god, since they won’t be able to use eldritch magic.

That only left a few people to suspect, but the most possible answer was that the abominations had managed to turn another god, as they did with the god of war, Alexander. That would make Poppy manipulated by an agent of Nyar, explaining this entire relentless harassment of Arad.

With that guess in mind, Gojo braced himself for a deadly fight that would put his life on the line. Once he finds the caster, he would have to force them to break the magic, and that would summon all of the gods to his help. At least, Yog, Amaterasu, the Mother of All Life, and Death herself were around.

Could those four neutralize the threat without causing a disaster? Gojo didn’t know, but they were their best bet in this situation. He could only hope that the clash would end quickly. But, by knowing what he knows now, he was almost certain that what awaits him is a deadly opponent, so he got ready with each step as he crawled across the streets, in the houses, and eventually ended up in the sewers, swimming like a crocodile through the rancid water.

It was pretty disgusting, but Gojo did prefer it to walking, since it would help mask both his sound and smell naturally without the need for magic, and the caster won’t be checking through shit and piss for a void dragon.

Gojo’s human mind had already gone dormant, and the only thing that remained was the consciousness of a predator, and his prey was the caster. He had to sneak up close and kill it with a single attack if it looked too dangerous.

But then, he could see her, Poppy, sitting on a barrel and shitting herself for some reason. Wasn’t she supposed to be fighting Arad above? He was certain those two were still fighting. But what quickly drew Gojo’s attention was that she was the source of the strange magic, which was surprising. Was she that powerful? No, he doubts she was built like that, otherwise she would’ve directly attacked Arad.

With that, Gojo considered several things, and came to the final conclusion that Poppy is the one casting the magic, and that casting the magic probably prevents her from fighting with the same body, which is why she had a clone on the surface fighting Arad.

This Poppy was the real body, and the one on the surface was a fake. He’ll have to catch her before she runs away again, and maybe get her to spill everything about that magic she is using.

"Damn it... I won’t survive long to find them." She mumbled, and Gojo used that chance to get out of the water and sneak up behind her. Just what kind of magic did she use? He couldn’t help but smile while waiting to find out.

"Find Who?" He asked, and she strangely turned around without being surprised in the slightest, which almost made Gojo shit himself thinking that she was that powerful to have noticed him, and yet thought nothing of his power.

"Arad’s mother and Yog, of course... what are you on about?" But a second later, her face paled like ash, she pissed herself, and jumped back as fast as she could in utter terror.