"I merely came to erase my greatest mistake—without you, my beloved sister would never have become corrupted and useless." Her voice didn't carry a tonal change. Instead, it felt like someone reading from a script.
This makes little sense; this woman feels empty compared to the past when I met her.
He continued observing her before his instincts flared. Zell's fist clenched as he stepped forward. The force behind the step carried a terrifying sound, a move so violent and explosive that the ground exploded with an air pressure that ravaged the once peaceful forest.
A deep hole remained where he stood a moment ago.
"Curious..." Astra whispered.
"Is that all you can muster as a goddess, Astra?"
"I don't understand what happened to that naive boy who looked at me with lustful and idiotic eyes when I granted you all those gifts!"
"Hmmm... well, your 'gift' placed an awful curse on me—your sister. The process that consumed an ancient being, countless lives, and her own life as fuel."
"Yet you enjoyed it, right?"
"Huh?"
"You enjoyed your second life despite giving so many grand lines; where are your beloved pets? What happened to the two you still haven't recovered? All folly, you are just another inferior human that speaks about great goals and desires and you failed. Why so many women around you when you should have only loved that idiotic rabbit!"
"!!!"
Zell didn't or couldn't speak out. He felt a sudden pain in his chest. The truth. Yes, she spoke the truth, and he understood. However, he started trying to make up for it and to change. If looked at right now, Zell has done too little and too late, especially to the goddess who saw him before he came back, the goddess who knew his true feelings back then.
"Why do you not speak? Do you blame the gift I gave you? Somehow, it made you sleep with so many women and forget your original feelings?"
"Shut up... that had nothing—"
"Then answer this question: when did you have the chance just to be happy with that rabbit and to live a happy life, building a haven for all humans to resist the coming future? Why did you strip the chance for survival by accelerating the world's fusing?"
"What...?" Zell frowned at her words. How could she speak of that day when he witnessed both the death of his beloved pets and Rika... "I...."
The truth was that he knew his sins; millions of humans, maybe more, died because of his selfish desire for power. To have the best start so he could crush the guilds that betrayed him in another world... not this one.
"ha....haha....hahaha...hahahahaha!"
I had more chances than anyone else, yet I ended up as a half-baked playboy, unable to become a full playboy who made sure I satisfied all my women or became strong enough to resist these bastards and their games.
"Ah, I see..."
Zell's body felt like a glass mirror shattered and kept together by small pieces of glue, waste tape and slime.
Anger, arrogance, desperation and regret flowed through his veins. She took the system and removed his abilities from the game. But what did he inherit from the strongest dragon in the universe? Or the most charming incubus to exist?
"Hmmm?" Still lost in her laughing fit, Astra slowly came to notice the strange aura of magic flowing around his body. By the time she noticed and her eyes widened, it was far too late. Yet she didn't look sad, frustrated or angry...
with a soft smile as a huge crimson flame wrapped around his hand, the energy from the world swirling down into his body like a hurricane, her last action was to smile and mouth the words 'that's it... you're finally free to rise above the heavens... we... my father can no longer limit your powers or growth, nor can the rules apply to you....'
However, Zell, consumed by rage, his eyes turned dark and shone with dark red iris as he called out a nostalgic ability known only to those who existed in the fallen world.
"Disappear and never show your face again!—Ars Magna!"
A brilliant red, black and silver flame exploded from his palm, blinding with its dazzling luminance and burning everything within its path.
Everything stopped moving from shock as the flames burned Astra's divine armour into mere rags, causing her body to take damage for the first time in her current life. She seemed to feel pleasure or a sense of existence as the immense beam of light enveloped her until a golden light flashed and she vanished... the flaming beam lost all resistance then wiped out the entire forest....
the explosion ruptured the earth, destroying everything for hundreds of kilometres.
Boom!
***
Zell felt a sense of emptiness, yet clearheaded for the first time since his rebirth.
Storms surged within his sea of consciousness; thunder, wind, water and fire cyclones erupted. Zell soon realised a strange thought. He used the force from the world and Ars Magna, using his left palm and attempting to kill the goddess...
When he came to the world, the southern plains all but vanished.... now an enormous crater of charcoal wasteland... He could feel the energy and power of all the creatures he destroyed flowing into him...
Eh, but didn't she take my powers!?