“Creeeak! Kweee!”
The Goddess of Time makes a pig-squealing noise. Even the gods suffer when their necks are choked. Realizing this, Sen tightened her grip even more.
“Return my brother! I said return my brother!”
With thick tears flowing down, Sen was bursting with emotions opposite to her usual ordinary self.
Watching this, Adriana felt a pang of hatred swelling in her chest.
Sen thought that once the apocalypse was over, she’d have a family.
But now that the apocalypse was beaten, Daniel was gone.
For Sen, who believed she could live normally, it was a hard situation to accept, but she was pretending nothing was wrong.
Now that the Goddess of Time, who was practically a culprit, had shown herself, Sen’s eyes turned wild, and she exuded the fierce killing intent from her assassin days.
“It’s you!”
A dagger that she thought she had discarded shot out from somewhere. Sen aimed to stab the goddess but—
Whoosh!
Her hand was immobilized in mid-air by the mana ring on her wrist.
“……!”
With bloodthirsty eyes, Sen glared at the Grand Witch blocking her path. Her once-cat-like demeanor had transformed into that of a wounded wolf, pushing against the old woman’s skin.
Yet, the Grand Witch remained silent and firmly restrained Sen’s movements.
“Let’s hear your story.”
“Story? What story!”
Creek, crack!
Sen was gripping so hard that the mana ring was rubbing against her skin, blood starting to trickle from her wrist.
“Sen!”
Concerned for her, Adriana hurried to stop her, but it was too late. Sen used the mana ring constraining her to propel herself into the air.
Wham!
“Guhh!”
A flexible kick landed squarely on the goddess’s jaw. The goddess toppled over the sofa, her long silver hair spilling all over it.
“There’s no beast like you indeed.”
This time, the Grand Witch restrained her legs too. Sen screamed, tears streaming down her face.
“It’s that woman’s fault! That woman made my brother die! She forced him to endure time that broke him in a world frozen in place! And you want me to just let that go? Just watch?”
“Ahhh!”
“Come here! I’m going to rip you apart!”
As Sen roared, the Goddess of Time caressed her throbbing jaw and backed away. After losing all her strength, she realized how dangerous it was to come to this continent.
She never imagined she would take a hit like this from the humans she had been ignoring all this time.
“Seeing you like this, McLean would surely be delighted!”
“He’s gone anyway! My brother is gone!”
Although it had only been three years, Sen had worked tirelessly to wash away the blood on her hands from the Chokugen Faction. It’s natural that good deeds can’t cover up her dark past.
Still, she lived trying to help others as much as she could. At least she wanted to be someone who provided help instead of harm to others in the future.
But that three years of determination shattered the moment she laid eyes on the god responsible for it all. She would kill the goddess.
Completely consumed by killing intent, Sen struggled.
Keeping quiet and hiding in fear wouldn’t change anything. The Goddess of Time emphasized once more why she had come.
“Are you so hot-headed that you can’t understand what I’m saying? Let me make it clear. We can save Daniel McLean!”
“Don’t lie! What are you trying to take from us with those sweet words again?”
Sen shouted, her face flushed with anger.
Her voice filled with resentment made the goddess fall silent for a moment, but she wouldn’t back down.
“Think about it! Daniel McLean is dead. After that, neither I nor the God of Life can intervene. There’s a specific god available.”
The answer didn’t come from Sen but from Adriana.
“The Goddess of Death…….”
With a heart full of doubts, Adriana muttered, and Sen quickly turned her head to look at her.
Adriana also asked the goddess with a grim expression.
“Can a dead person really be kept like that?”
If that’s the case, in the end, everyone’s fate would be dancing in the hands of the Goddess of Death.
However, the Goddess of Time shook her head.
“No, just because someone is dead doesn’t mean I can wake their soul at will. Especially since I’ve lost my powers now.”
“Then……?”
“It must be due to Daniel McLean’s uniqueness. He’s linked to me; his mental strength itself has surpassed that of a human. He rejected it until the end, but you could say his essence is akin to that of a demigod.”
The Goddess of Time speculated that perhaps because he had mixed with her power for too long, he could awaken midway instead of merely sleeping in his soul state.
Even she didn’t know everything about the parts involving the Goddess of Death.
Taking a breath, the Goddess of Time clearly explained again.
“So, right now Daniel is trapped by the Goddess of Death, suffering torment and torture! The only way to save him is through resurrection, and surprisingly, it’s possible for him.”
This time, the Grand Witch, who had been silent until now, raised her hand and asked.
“How is that possible?”
The question she’d been waiting for!
The Goddess of Time clenched her fist and shouted.
“Eris Anen Seriere. If the elf Daniel McLean believed in until the very end has his fragment, it’s entirely possible!”
Her shimmering gaze sparkled like her silver hair.
“With that, we’ll save Daniel from the magical beasts stretching from the Goddess of Death!”
*
“Urrggh!”
The Goddess of Death, drenched in sweat, sprawls on the floor. Standing beside her, I wipe the sweat off my forehead with a satisfied smile.
“Phew! Isn’t this nice? The ability to sweat even after being dead is quite the blessing.”
“I seriously feel like I’m dying. I can’t take it anymore.”
Dragged into forced exercise by me, the Goddess of Death was crawling on the cold floor. The chill enveloping her entire body seemed more pleasant than she expected, expanding the area she occupied.
With a relaxed expression, she looked like she could fall asleep at any moment if it weren’t for the hard surface.
“Hey, take a shower first. Lying around like that is just uncomfortable, you know?”
The Goddess of Death showed no signs of getting up. She was playing dead like a pro.
“Get up! I want to wash but there’s no place to wash!”
“Stop touching me. They say even bears move on if you play dead; why can’t you just let it go?”
“You know? Playing dead in front of a bear isn’t the best strategy.”
“Have you tried it?”
The Goddess of Death raised her head slightly to glance at me. With a questioning look, I shrugged and answered.
“No, I read it in a book.”
“True, why would you play dead in front of a bear? The bear should be the one playing dead.”
“……”
Not a completely wrong statement, so I kept quiet. Anyway, I urged her again, insisting we needed a place to wash, but the Goddess of Death was growing visibly irritated.
“Where on earth would a dead person find a place to wash! I’ve never needed to sweat in my life, so I don’t need that!”
Then, Daniel McLean smacked his forehead and, as if realizing something, hesitated and took a step back.
Then he naturally pinched his nose with his fingers.
“What’s that about, why are you doing that?”
The gesture greatly displeased the Goddess of Death. She slowly got up, leaned against the bed, and asked, “What’s wrong with your face?”
“I mean, it’s nothing.”
“Your ‘nothing’ face is not nothing at all! You’re making me feel very uncomfortable. What’s the issue?”
“…Think about it.”
Daniel deliberately took a step back, his gesture suggesting he didn’t want to be close to her only made the goddess more annoyed.
“Having lived since the creation of the continent and never having bathed even once means you must be really filthy, right?”
The Goddess’s face turned a bright shade of red.
Just moments ago, she wailed that she’d never get up again, but now she shot upright, shrieking.
“That’s not how it went! I don’t bathe because I’m not dirty! I’m perfectly pure and clean without needing a wash!”
“Sure, sure. It’s just that male students often don’t realize how bad their rooms smell. They all get used to it over time.”
The Goddess of Death approached him angrily, stomping her feet.
“No! That’s not it!”
I know.
When she hugged me earlier, it wasn’t a stench but rather an enchanting and captivating scent that enthralled the senses.
Still, I hoped that by saying all this, she might create a bathroom or some place to wash.
And—
“It feels like it’s been ages since I had a proper conversation.”
I realized that I was chatting away much more than before, feeling a sense of joy.
After being silent for such a long time, just waiting for Eris, it was, aside from the conversations I’d had with the Goddess of Time, truly the first in a long while.
I couldn’t help but smile a little.
