A Villainess Should Be Strong

Chapter 97: To Be A Replacement

A course of burning pain stretched out and filled her entire body, making her be consumed by pain. She retched out like a madman, wanting to erase the uncomfortable feeling she was submerged in.

"Bear with it, my dear. Bear with it all... I don't care what you look like in the end, I don't care what you'll end up as. As long as my sister.. my beloved comes back to my side," Heine calmly said as he wiped the blood he used to draw on Estelle's forehead with a clean cloth.

Estelle couldn't see herself, but there was currently a very prominent mark embellished on top of her skin. It was unsettling.

It held a domineering aura to it, somehow. It was the motif of a crown that spread out like an elk's horns. From the crown's center, two lines were drawn on each side to resemble the crown's handle.

Around it were scriptures of a foreign language not known to man. It looked like scribbles, but it had an important meaning.

Estelle gulped as she took in a deep breath of air to soothe herself even the slightest bit off of the pain she was feeling.

Heine looked at her with a piercing gaze. It was as if he was no longer looking at the girl he guided for years.

What did Heine see in her body? Estelle's high perception dictated that Heine could not be seeing herself. He was not talking to Estelle Clareste, the Duke's daughter.

He saw something deeper. Behind Estelle's peripheral outlook.

Souls. Estelle's attention was brought to souls. She was filled with a sense of anomality.

Her soul was indeed special, but the only memory she retained was that of Reina. And in that life, she never had a sibling.

Thus, Estelle refused to believe that Heine was seeing herself as the past life Estelle, Kirisaki Reina.

What was it? Something beyond Estelle and Reina. Did she have another life?

What did this body contain that enraptured Heine in such a deranged way, and who exactly was this sister Heine talked about?

Memories. Estelle thought, perhaps there were memories she had forgotten. Memories that were sealed and cast away from her.

The seals that were placed on her, did it have anything to do with the dilemma she was facing? Estelle couldn't believe herself. Couldn't believe what she was experiencing.

Why should she be wronged for something that she wasn't aware of?

She was Estelle Clareste. She accepted the part of herself that included Kirisaki Reina's persona, but her lives had merged easily with the current of time that took her attention off of her past life.

She wasn't all that attached to her past life except for the hatred she carried to this world. The revenge she wanted to enact on Hikari.

Aside from that, she was content in accepting her new life as Estelle.

"Sister really is too cruel.. For that mortal man, you actually threw me and the esteemed Absolute away. Your soul was shattered by a mortal because you revealed your weakness to them. How could you do that?"

[The Absolute..] Estelle recalled the name.

It was an entity the Ruler had mentioned. The Creator of all. The Ruler had only talked about the entity slightly, but she remembered that the Absolute was the highest being.

The first Creator.

Estelle wondered. Her shattered soul, the Absolute, and her experiences.

It should all be related in some way.

Her covered past, the Ruler never mentioned something like that. He only told her that her seals would unleash an unknown her.

From this point on, Estelle had an internal debate.

If the 'unknown her' the Ruler talked about was the same as Heine's desired figure, then the shattered soul that Heine mentioned should also be her.

Her soul was shattered in the past?

The same soul she possessed right now?

Was that the truth she longed to discover?

Then, when she was still Kirisaki Reina, which soul did she have? The shattered and incomplete soul, was that the same one?

Was that the reason why she couldn't be like others? Possessing no emotions and being much more exceptional than her peers, to the point of being a crazy individual?

Estelle hated it.

Hated the thought of everything.

Hated that she had so many unsolved questions in the first place, and yet new ones kept getting thrown at her.

"Sister, wasn't what you did to us far too cruel? Did you not think about us at all? You are that former world's Creator, and yet you were betrayed by your own 'subjects'. Your world was destroyed by that person, you know? Don't you feel hatred towards them? Bloodlust?"

Heine was projecting his 'sister' onto Estelle. His eyes did not even see Estelle for who she was. He saw his sister, who had her soul shattered.

Estelle didn't have those memories. Even if Heine's sister was her past life, she still didn't have the memories. And that was what led to further confusion.

Unlike Heine, who leaned more towards her past life, Estelle was the complete opposite. She refused to accept that Heine's 'sister' was inside her. That 'she' was a part of Estelle's soul.

Because it was something foreign, something unknown. It wasn't a new statement that people feared the unknown.

Anybody would have a hard time accepting that sort of fate. Being told that you had an alternate persona hidden within yourself all this time, that never got detected even after so many years.

Two lifetimes without realizing the truth. How ridiculous was this plot? How would someone voluntarily comprehend everything in one go?

(A/N: Yeah, Estelle is right. How ridiculous is this plot I made? Am I drunk? Yes. Don't worry beloved readers, it's only going to get even more crazier from this point on because I love torturing everybody involved :))). )

"But sister is too kind, you wouldn't think of such sinister plots. If so, let me be the one who worries about all those schemes. I will continuously support you.. For you are my one and only sister," Heine continued his rambling.

Estelle controlled her breathing pattern as she felt the pain increase as time went.

She couldn't cast any magic, couldn't speak, and her senses were deluded. Her breathing was messed up, as she struggled to get air into her lungs more often than not.

At this point, Estelle was on the brink of fainting, but she persevered. Because she couldn't faint here.

If she fainted, that would truly be the end. She had to go through this, just to seek a chance.

A loophole she can manipulate to get out of this trouble.

She was indeed supposed to see Duke Miller and present him with the ring, but Estelle was sure that this wasn't the right way.

The old man was standing on the sidelines and letting Heine do everything.

Estelle was even more scared when she thought about what the old Duke would do.

This was, according to Heine, the 'initiation process'.

What would the real deal be? Wouldn't she just evaporate out of existence?

Her years worth of struggling, would all of it go away?

"Your memory will soon return.. I wonder if you will hate me. It's all fine for me, sister. As long as I get to stand beside you and protect you for an eternity, I will be satisfied. But I wonder why you don't understand it?" Heine's expression was terrifying.

Like a lunatic, Heine mumbled nonstop as he sprinkled an unknown substance on top of Estelle's head. It was purple colored, and at a glance, it looked like nothing but simple dust particles.

The moment those purplish dust particles touched Estelle's wound and the blood spread from it, Estelle screamed. The loudest she ever belted out in her entire life.

The dust brought out something within her that she never knew existed.

The burn escalated as she felt it not only affect her body, but also her soul.

Estelle had a bad premonition. The previous time this happened, she was sent to the Eterna.

And the Ruler had told her that only Value 0 entered Eterna. Even so, she was sent there.

To recuperate her damaged soul.

But what Heine was currently doing was harming her soul and reducing the soul count.

The soul count that she had painstakingly raised back up to 100 in her stay over at Eterna.

[Was he waiting for this the entire time? WAS THIS WHAT THE RULER MEANT BY A FATED ENCOUNTER?!!] Estelle was enraged.

The Ruler knew everything, so the being couldn't have missed Heine's plans. The being must've known, but it couldn't tell Estelle because it would be against the world's rules.

The fated encounter, was it about how she had to maximize her soul count before undergoing this horrendous process?

But she doubted it. The process that the Ruler showed her should not be this extreme. That being would warn her or at least seek another way if that was the case.

This was too crazy for her to handle. Her soul count was depleting at an unbelievable rate. It was nearing twenty digits in mere minutes, which was a line the Ruler told her not to cross if she wanted to continue her life.

It was the 'safe' line. Beyond this, she would definitely be dead.

And by dead, she did not mean mortality on a physical level. Her soul would be deleted and she would be sent into the Eterna as a true Value 0.

Estelle was convinced that Heine was trying to replace her.

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