A Villainess Should Be Strong

Chapter 102: Desperate Sacrifice

The blasphemous man.

His name was Aleksei, a mortal man who met Estraea during her travels down to the world she had created.

He was the catalyst of all. The one who set fire to the fuse that would eventually incur a chain of endless suffering for everybody involved.

The mortal man was no longer there, as he had long become another deity that stood alongside the likes of the Absolute once the tragedies came to a standstill. He was never recognized for an official post, but he was there.

The man who stood behind all the plans to recover his 'loved one'. Estraea's former lover, and the one brought everything down.

____

Heine was strong. He was strong in the sense that he could move the world accordingly. To suit his will.

Although he didn't have absolute control, he was strong enough to bypass a lot of restrictions. And with it, he also hid his power and set it to not only grow exponentially, but also in a certain rate that would not trigger any strong suspicions.

The reason Heine possessed so much control over the world was because his past self, God Astarte, helped make the world they were currently dwelling in.

In addition, his soul was complete, unlike Estelle's. Thus, he was able to regain control of the world and abuse the mechanisms related to it with miniscule repercussions assisted by his divine status.

Heine was a madman. He didn't know what he was doing most of the time, but he followed his natural instincts and beliefs. He was aware that his methods were not the best, but he kept pursuing it because he believed that it was right for him.

Heine never trusted anybody wholeheartedly and kept proceeding while sealing off his own mind away from the world. It was crazy how he managed to keep himself intact, because during the first struggles he experienced, he had to go through them all without any help.

Yes. Just like Estelle, naturally he had his own backlashes and challenges. There was no way Estelle became the only one who had to bear pain.

Heine always strove to achieve nothing but the best result through the shortest way, even if it meant harming himself.

Because he was crazy and blind. But to himself, he was sane. The sanest person ever.

Because he was internally confused, but he wouldn't know where his rights and wrongs were located at.

And he continued on like that. Tumbling over again and again, coming back up, and harming himself even more. Just to chase his dream of reuniting with his sister and soothing the itching pain of loneliness and longing for the Goddess' return.

Heine' gaze darkened as he felt his throat dry up from the lack of care he gave himself. His body's internals were all messed up, but he covered it with illusion magic.

With every step and every breath, he was in pain. But it didn't matter.

Because ultimately, once his plan succeeds, he would have no further use for this body.

He didn't care about their mortal appearances. Once they returned to the upper realms, everything would fix itself.

As such, his plans also concerned Estelle being harmed. Because he only prioritized her soul. The beautiful soul he admires and loves for an eternity.

With such deranged thoughts, he made the ultimate decision to continue on with the process. He brushed off the uncomfortable feeling he was getting as recoil from Estelle's soul. The turbulence inside the Goddess' item was high.

_____

In the upper planes, rested an androgynous man with white hair and empty eyes. His back leaned against a gigantic tree, and the realm around him was pure

With each passing second, he felt like he was disappearing. Him, the highest being of all, also faced repercussions from the tragedies that elapsed thousands of years ago.

-Haa..

He took in a deep breath, pinching his glabella with a weak force. No longer did he exude power and liveliness. He was slowly rotting away, slowly killing himself to save the woman he had once created.

His heart was filled with regrets every single day. There were no occasions where he didn't feel a pang in his heart whenever he witnessed the girl being harmed.

Even so, he couldn't interfere. This time was special, however, as the God Astarte's incarnation dared to commit such blasphemous actions that would affect many.

-The rest is up to you... Everybody is suffering, no one is left out of the game. What did we do that caused such a great effect? Where did we go wrong?

The voice that helped Estelle, his identity was naturally, just as Estelle had suspected. It was the Absolute, the one and only highest being that stood above all.

Even though his name was the Absolute, his power was now restricted. Because he had to pay a price for his reckless thoughts that contributed to the current problem.

Their story was a painful one.

Once, the world belonged to only one person. The entire universe was in his hands, the first life that existed.

He, the Absolute, used to have no humanoid body. He was just a string of consciousness, like the Ruler. He coexisted along with the World Tree, Yggdrasil. The one and only center of the universe, the one that kept the cogs of fate running.

After him, Estraea was created. The second life that came to be.

He created Estraea to be his partner. An equal to himself, who had the entire universe to himself.

It wasn't only based on loneliness. He, too, recognized the need for there to be life if the universe wanted to progress.

Goddess Estraea was the bane of his existence. Not long after she came alive, he felt like it was getting increasingly harder to revert back and go on without her presence.

That Goddess would then eventually grow up and meet with a desire to create more life other than the few Gods they were able to bring up. A desire that he wished never came up.

Because he was lenient, he let her do it. He adored her more than one would love another. It surpassed love, it was their literal existences that were tied together.

They had a special connection, as they were the first lives to ever exist.

Creating Gods was obviously much harder than creating most lives. Even him couldn't do it at his will. Divinity required special requirements and intricate designs. Estraea could wield similar powers like him and create her own living beings, but she couldn't create Gods.

Only the Absolute had the power to bestow divinity upon a creation, and even then it wouldn't be due to his efforts.

They had to possess qualities suitable to be a deity. Yggdrasil, the World Tree also had to approve of the creation. Because ultimately, only the World Tree could birth out a new deity. In total, there were seven divine figures, including himself. The rest were only subsidiaries of the Gods.  Estraea was his most perfect creation, the one he wholeheartedly poured his heart and soul into making.

Within those seven Gods, however, existed one anomaly. Originally, he was a mortal. But through receiving Estelle's soul during an event, he was able to acquire her power. He was the only one not born from Yggdrasil.

Aleksei was his name.

This name meant a lot to different people. One would consider him as an enemy, and another would treat him as the best comrade ever.

He, too, would've looked upon him favorably if not for the things that happened. Things that caused them to fall apart like this, not reuniting even after more than a thousand years.

Seeing Estelle's suffering in the realm he isolated her into, the Absolute leaned against the World Tree in sadness.

Aleksei was a hard individual to discuss. The Absolute didn't know whether he should hate the man, or in fact, keep the amiable relationship he had with him on the basis that they were working together to rescue Estraea.

But still, it couldn't be refuted that he was the one to start it in the first place.

He let out one more defeated sigh.

Above him laid the eternal body of Goddess Estraea, his one and only companion at the beginning of the world's creation. The body was preserved using his own powers, which drained him because of how unbalanced the vessel's state was.

The pristine, beautiful visage of Goddess Estraea was bewitching to the eyes. And yet, he found it hard to look at her because of all the painful memories that he would be reminded of.

-Estraea...

Mumbling her name weakly, the Absolute went into deep sleep as he had exhausted a lot of power in trying to surpass the world's restrictions and connect with Estelle's mind.

He was now just like everybody. A powerless being that had nothing but his flashy titles due to the power he once wielded.

But every good thing needed a sacrifice. And in order to rescue Estraea and prevent her from disappearing completely, he had done the taboo. The most perfect creation was just as hard to manage as it was hard to create.

The Goddess Estraea was someone that he desperately wanted to keep not just because of their memories together, but because of the longing he had. The embedded longing he felt for the deity.

Their existences were connected, and losing her meant that it would be like losing a part of his own existence.

He missed her. So bad that he had to restrain himself from doing inexplicable things.

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