Reincarnation [5]

"Ah..."

I pulled back millimetres away from contact, leaving her mouth partially open.

"Why didn't you..."

"I guess there might be something you'd like me to do for you," I interjected, contracting my emotions, and ignoring her disappointment. 

"...Ahem. Yes, there is," back to her formal speech, "I want you to defeat someone for me."

"Let me guess, the Demon King?"

"Not quite. It is the Demon Queen."

Uhh... Okay, made sense.

I asked for extra details as it's always better to know your foes before confronting them. Know your enemy and know yourself and you will win a thousand battles, it's said.

According to her, the Demon Queen is her sister.

...?

The other Gods and Goddesses were angered by her tainted heart, so they stripped her powers and sent her to the physical world. They couldn't just kill her because it went against their will and nature.

By the way, that happened many billion years ago.

I asked about who had more authority among the Gods and she said it was the God of Creation. He created what we see and beyond... I saw it important to know about such things.

Over the years, the Gods and Goddesses sent someone to put an end to the Demon Queen's life, stopping the tyranny and fear she had over the God of Creation's creations. But they weren't able to do so, hence why I was here.

"...I see."

That meant some other people got reincarnated, but most couldn't meet the Gods or Goddesses who sent them. It was either by receiving an oracle or a blessing from the deity.

"I saw potential in you, hence why I brought you here."

"Ah yeah, says the person who wanted to give me weak abilities."

"You...! We can't just give anyone powers which might threaten us in the future!"

Aha. That made sense.

A person's nature and personality can change depending on their living environment and their experiences, causing them to be wary of who they give abilities.

"...Ah. If this is my astral body, where's my soul?"

I came to that realisation because back on Earth, an astral body was referred to as a ghost-like copy of my physical body, made of ethereal material; perhaps spirituality.

"Your soul has already been sent to your designated body."

So death can be a preservation of souls...

During my death, my soul travelled between worlds to find a new body being born, to immediately assimilate with it.

"Does everyone possess an ability?" I asked.

She answered that some people have them whereas some don't and that some worlds don't have this system. On rare occasions, an individual could gain two or more abilities.

'I see...'

Well, Earth certainly didn't have that system.

Coming from her, people gained abilities from birth, and normally what determined the ability they would have was the nature of their souls.

I asked her how beings of that world could possess abilities from the moment of birth, how exactly were abilities created, and what exactly they were.

Like, if they're fearful of a mortal possessing a powerful and dangerous ability, enough to threaten them, wouldn't they be unable to stop that person if the abilities were decided by fate, nature, and souls?

She seemed hesitant to tell me.

"...Such knowledge is forbidden to share."

Apparently, my questions were deep enough to reach sensitive stuff. It was kind of understandable as a mortal couldn't just know the secrets and inworkings of the laws that govern and bind worlds together.

"So you expect me to defeat your sister who has such knowledge?"

"..."

She remained silent.

'A dead end, huh...'

I dismissed the topic and stood up.

"If you want me to take down your sister, then I need to prepare as soon as possible," I said as I looked into her eyes, "I apologise in advance for the mess I'm about to cause," I added.

"Huh...?" she gave a vague stare as she too stood up, trying to comprehend what I said.

---------

I had the Goddess bright a human being and a kitchen knife.

I didn't know how I could hold a physical object, so I asked her about this. It turned out the handle was made of ethereal connected to a physical blade...

I pressed for details on how exactly a non-physical object contacts a physical one, and the answer I got was:

"Such knowledge is forbidden to share."

Oh well.

It was pretty obvious what was about to go down with a weapon on hand and a confused live man in front of me.

"...Wh-Where am I?! What's going on?!" he asked frantically, looking from side to side. "W-Who are you...?" he referred to the Goddess.

'He can't see me?' I asked the Goddess with my thought.

[Yes. Normal humans cannot perceive ethereal objects,] she replied, meaning that her mind reading was passive.

Ahh... Telepathy, huh... She didn't open her mouth yet her voice directly entered my head.

So the man couldn't see me and could see the Goddess because of her physical form.

"Wha-what's this...!?"

He saw a floating blade approach him. He was suddenly teleported here and a blade was heading toward him.

"S-Stop!" he commanded the blade to stop, but it was useless.

In order to survive in a fantasy world I would need to learn how to kill without moments of hesitation, hence why this man's neck was my prime target.

"N-No...!" It was not like he would grab the blade, so he was about to stand up. "Gahhh!!"

I stuck the blade in his neck, gashing his throat and soon gurgling sounds came out as blood spurt out, passing through my astral body and onto the grass.

With no reaction from his body, I looked at his lifeless eyes and grotesque neck.

If I was in my physical body, I could've puked for sure. It was that gruesome. My hands could've been shaking too, my heart beating harder than ever before. But due to instinct, I was hyperventilating despite there being no need to breathe.

"You just killed an innocent person, how does it feel?" she opened her eyes and asked.

"Yeah, right. I know an innocent person when I see one," I scoffed.

She tried to bring out my emotion of guilt by saying I just murdered an innocent person, but it didn't work.

A Goddess can't just bring an innocent person to their death anyway, so it was a stupid thing to say.

"You know," I continued, "You just lied."

It was not every day that you caught a Goddess telling a lie.

"I-It was just a test!"

"Ahh, so you can lie if it's a test?" I asked, wiping the blood off the blade with the corpse's clothing, and I stood up. "Tell me, Goddess, what do you think of this concept called a lie?"

"A-A lie is bad..."

"I see. That's why you stutter," I slowly approached her, "A lie is not necessarily a bad thing. Let me tell you."

A lie is an intentionally false statement that may or may not be intended to deceive.

To judge whether a lie is good or bad solely depends on the person telling the lie.

Suppose a person stole his friend's pen, and when he asked if you took/seen it, you tell a lie, saying that you hadn't seen/taken the pen, or maybe say that another person took it.

In that case, a lie is bad as the poor guy would seek his pen all day long, implicating innocent people, and never finding it again.

Let's create this scenario depicting a good lie:

Your friend is coming over to your house to play video games but you're throwing him a surprise party in that house. So you have to do whatever it takes to prevent him from finding out.

You lie saying that your strict parents are in the living room and that he must come back later. You can even hang around with him if need be if you're worried about him not returning.

In that scenario, a lie is good as your friend would get a nice surprise of his birthday party and all would be happy.

A lie is either good or bad depending on the intentions of the liar. That's why a lie is not a sin.

"...Understand now, Goddess?" I asked after my lecture.

I dropped the knife on the grass as my right hand went to the back of her head, our foreheads touched each other with my eyes closed, giving out all the affection I could.

"Yes... I understand..." she said in a somewhat soft whisper.

"Good...girl... Now tell me, how come I can touch you even though you're in your physical form...?"

"Ah..."

It didn't make sense that I couldn't touch a physical knife and could touch her in her physical body.

"That's because I'm in a nigh-ethereal state..."

This meant normal mortals could transparently see her and ethereal substances could contact her.

With that piece of that information, I could make out how the knife worked.

Seeing how the grass she stood on was trampled meant that she could touch physical objects in her nigh-ethereal state.

It was safe to say there was some nigh-ethereal material holding the physical blade and the ethereal handle...

"Ah...!"

"Hush..."

My left hand's thumb caressed her lower lip while my right thumb felt her rapid pulse on her superficial temporal artery.

I saw that my actions influenced her heart... I retracted my actions and picked up the knife.

"Again..."

I heard her mumble under her breath.

"A single person won't do," I said.

I had her bring more people for me to mow down. I don't know how she does it, but it had to be something related to space manipulation.

The Goddess would close her eyes whenever I killed a person as she couldn't bear to watch it. Some even lusted over her, but I cut them down before they reached her...

It was not like they could fight back either. Their paranoid physical attacks proved to be useless against an ethereal body.

After killing several dozen of them, I got used to it so I began to dissect my kills. Coming after that, I started to immobilize my prays first by tearing their tendons, and slowly torturing them to death.

Their agonizing screams would resound across the reddened garden of flowers.

I couldn't smell the blood for an obvious reason, but I was sure the scent of fresh blood was dense as the Goddess had covered her mouth and nose.

The garden was no longer of flowers, but of corpses and red blood when I finished off my 99th kill.

"A-Are you satisfied now?" the Goddess asked as I flopped to the red-dyed grass.

"...Yeah."

Now I had no problem killing a person without batting an eye.

"Time is nearing for your departure," as she said, the heaps of dead bodies and the blood vanished along with the kitchen knife.

I guess my astral body can't be separated from my main body for too long...

"Oh, almost forgot. Can multiple individuals have the same ability?" That was an important question.

"It depends on the potency of the ability," she answered.

If an ability is of a low level, then it can be possessed by multiple people but with or without different conditions and or effects.

For powerful abilities such as mine, only one individual can possess them, and no other replica could exist.

'That's good to know.'

It would be quite difficult to take on someone with the same ability as mine no matter the way I thought about it.

"Well, I guess this is goodbye," I said as I looked at my fading fingertips. "May I know your name?" I then asked with a smile.

"It's Aphrodite," she said with a warm smile.

'Aphrodite, huh... What a wonderful name...'

"Do you have any regrets?"

Regrets? I made every choice intending to avoid regret, even if the consequences were negative.

"No, none at all," I replied without hesitation, waving goodbye to her. 

'...And seem so lonely...' I suddenly remembered Asada's words as my vision blackened.

The only ones I could consider friends were her, Ciri ( an AI program), and my inner voice. But I was never lonely, even a little bit. Good luck trying to find a lonely introvert.

I will try and make friends in this world I'm about to embark on, but... Humans can't be easily trusted...

*****

"...What just happened...?" Aphrodite muttered to herself as she stared at the empty space Bryan faded from.

While conversing with him, it felt as though her mind didn't belong to her, like it was driven and controlled by him—a mortal at that.

Her, a Goddess of Beauty who has the power to evoke desire, was led by a mortal in the art of conversation? She simply couldn't believe it.

...But now that he was gone, she felt something she had never felt before, like a dog abandoned by its owner...