Chapter 211: Chapter 81
Seijirou opened his eyes and found himself in a completely pitch-black space, but the darkness wasn’t oppressive; rather, it felt like a vast, weightless vacuum, devoid of direction or temperature.
He sighed, his voice echoing in a way that suggested there were no walls for miles. "Well, this looks familiar."
He thought of the grueling, near-death training he had undergone with Retsu’s grandfather.
Basically, this wasn’t the first ti his consciousness had been pulled into a ntal landscape or a spiritual void.
And in! this world, the deeper you went into your own power, the more often you found yourself standing in the "waiting room" of the soul.
"So... you must be here, right?" Seijirou called out to the nothingness.
There was silence.
Like a long, heavy pause where even the sound of his own breathing seed to vanish.
Then, a mont later, laughter sounded.
It was a lodic, tinkling sound, like silver bells caught in a spring breeze, and honestly, it was a laugh that carried an intoxicating warmth.
"Fufu~! Indeed! It is I!"
Seijirou turned around, and his eyes widened in shock.
There, standing before him was an incredibly beautiful woman, her long bright blonde hair flowed like a river of liquid gold down her back, held in place by a shimring golden laurel wreath crown.
She wore a white Greek toga that clung to her form with divine precision, accented with golden embroidery that seed to glow with its own internal light.
She didn’t just look like a person, but she also gave off a palpable sense of divine authority as the air around her shimred with a golden haze, and just looking at her made his heart beat with a rhythm that wasn’t entirely his own.
You could tell, without any shadow of a doubt, that this woman was a goddess.
"Hi! I’m Aphrodite, the beautiful Goddess of Love! The first wife of Hades! Yes! That’s right! ! Not Hera, not Hecate, and certainly not Lady Nyx! It’s ! And also the creator of this world!"
Seijirou stared at her, his expression flat as he took in the grand introduction, the competitive jab at the other goddesses of the Greek pantheon, and her claim to the throne of the underworld.
After a beat of silence, he blinked.
"Moving on," he said, waving a hand dismissively. "If I’m not wrong, you must also be the one I t last ti, right? The ’Other Seijirou’? Also, why did you call
here?"
Aphrodite smiled faintly and nodded, her eyes sparkling with a mischievous glint. "Yes. I took on a form you were more likely to listen to back then. Tell ... did my advice help? Did it lead you to the path you sought?"
Seijirou nodded slowly, rembering the crossroads he had faced. "Yeah. Greatly. It kept
from making a choice I would have regretted."
"Good." Aphrodite chuckled, her golden ornants jingling.
"So, back to my question," Seijirou pressed, crossing his arms over his chest. "What do you need
for? I’m pretty sure I’m currently lying in an ICU with holes in my stomach, so I’m assuming this isn’t just a social call."
Aphrodite didn’t answer imdiately, and instead, she turned away from him and snapped her fingers.
In an instant, the black void beneath their feet transford and a massive, glowing image of the planet appeared in the vast empty space, rotating slowly.
It was beautiful, but as Seijirou looked closer, he could see veins of dark, oily purple pulsing across the continents like an infection.
She stared at the globe lovingly, though a hint of sadness touched her features. "What do you think of my world, Seijirou?"
"It’s bullshit," Seijirou stated bluntly. "Seriously. Why are NTR and absolute human depravity so prevalent in your world? Aren’t you supposed to be the Goddess of Love? Or is your love that twisted?"
Aphrodite sighed, a sound that seed to vibrate through the dinsions. "You’re right. But this world... it wasn’t supposed to be like this. My vision was one of harmony, of the heights of human passion and the beauty of connection."
"Yeah. I can see it." He said, sarcastically.
She ignored him and continued. "But Seijirou, do you know? You are special. Putting it in a novel’s terms... you are the protagonist of this world. The central figure of the book."
Seijirou looked confused, his brow furrowing. "You have a very warped perception of the word ’protagonist.’ My life has been one evil after another."
"Let
finish." Aphrodite raised a slender hand, stopping his protest. "Many years ago, when I was creating this world, crafting its laws, its people, and its destiny, a fragnt of an Outer God actually attached itself to my creation while I was distracted. That fragnt was a cosmic parasite, a piece of a primordial being from beyond the universe. It was so deeply attached to the core of the world’s reality that to destroy it, I would have been forced to destroy the entire world itself... and I couldn’t do that. This was the first world I created entirely for myself. It ans a lot to . So, the only solution I found was to seal the fragnt away deep within the spiritual fabric of the earth."
Seijirou’s eyes narrowed as he looked at the purple veins on the holographic globe. "That fragnt... could it be... the thing the ’Mister’ was using?"
Aphrodite nodded. "Yes. But not entirely. There are countless more fragnts, but they have mostly been eliminated, and the one from Mister is the biggest of the remaining ones. Anyways... my seal was perfect, a divine lock that should have lasted for eternity. There was no way for that thing to escape on its own. But I underestimated human curiosity... and human greed. They went digging for power they didn’t understand and they even managed to crack my seal, releasing outer god’s influence back into the atmosphere."
She gestured to the globe. "The world beca chaos. All sorts of depravity happened, all sorts of evil scattered. My world, which was supposed to be a testant to love... was ruined, and it beca a breeding ground for the very things I abhor."
"But," she continued, her gaze turning back to Seijirou, "I also noticed sothing during that era of darkness. I noticed that native human, those born of this world, could actually kill and destroy the fragnts without the catastrophic consequences I faced. Basically, you could prune the weeds without killing the garden."
"When I saw that, I hoped then that humanity would succeed on its own," she said, her voice dropping. "But I was hoping for too much. The corruption was too fast, and the fragnts too clever. That’s why I decided to choose soone. I decided to give them my blessings, my favor, and hope that they could lead humanity to erasing those fragnts forever. I chose you, Seijirou."
Seijirou remained silent, his mind racing.
"But," Aphrodite said, her expression darkening, "it seems the fragnts noticed my actions and they realized you were the threat, so they attached themselves to you during your early life, slowly corrupting your soul. Throughout your growth, you began to display that depraved behavior you hate so much. You beca the ’Corrupted Seijirou.’ Yet, even then, your real personality would manifest in brief flashes, causing you to help others in your own twisted way."
"I was afraid you would be completely lost to the void," she admitted. "So I made a desperate move. I decided to split the world into two separate planes of existence. One beca the ’Ga World’—the reality you believe you are in now, where I suspended ti to prevent the corruption from spreading further. The other beca the ’Real World’—the place you rember coming from."
Seijirou’s breath caught. "So my life there..."
"Your ’Corrupted Self’ was left behind here, frozen in ti," Aphrodite explained. "While I sent your pure essence to that other world to live a normal life. I left you to ’play the ga’ in that other world. In truth, that ga was a therapeutic simulation designed for you to remove the influence of the fragnt from your soul. Every ’Bad End’ you avoided, every ti you chose a path of virtue or genuine connection over depravity, a trace of the corruption was cleared. And when you finally ’cleared’ the ga and reached the true ending... you finally beca free from the fragnt’s touch."
She stepped closer to him, her divine aura warming his skin. "So, I brought you back. I fused the two worlds once again, returning the ’Clear’ you to the body and the life that had been waiting. Right now, you are the Seijirou who has conquered his own darkness. And now, I need you to do the sa for the rest of my world."
Seijirou looked at his hands, then back at the Goddess. "You’re telling
I’m a repurposed save file sent to fix a glitch in the universe."
Aphrodite giggled, the sound light and airy. "If that’s the way your modern mind understands it, then yes."
Seijirou sighed.
His life, just got even more complicated.
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