Chapter 23

The blaring glow of the morning sun stung the backs of my eyelids, forcing me back into consciousness. My arm was freed of the excess weight of her sleeping form and I was left without the warmth that just two nights together had left me accustomed to. Unable to open my eyes once I noticed this, and with my heart screaming in my ears, I blindly reached beneath the sheets to where I remembered Yua sleeping just a few hours before. But all I felt was the smooth cotton afront to my wishes as I was greeted with nothing but the bedsheets we once shared.

        I gripped them, clenched them, squeezed them until it hurt and thought to use every ounce of strength I'd earned in the dungeons with her to rip the sheets off the bed out of anger, but my limbs fell limp. I'd slept well enough, but I hadn't the energy to move any more than what it took to press my forearm over my eyes to blot out the sun, just so I wouldn't have to see the other half of the bed be empty.

        I waited and waited. Thinking that she'd just gone downstairs to request the innkeeper to start breakfast early so we could get a jumpstart on our day. Pondering if she'd gone to fetch us some water since the tea we had with dinner wasn't enough to replenish what we lost sweating so much in the dungeons. Or, maybe, I was just hoping that she'd gotten uncomfortably sweaty sleeping next to me after our heated conversation last night and left to take another bath so she wasn't scrunching up her nose from the smell all day long.

        It wouldn't have been hard to confirm any of these wishes. All I'd need to do was get up and go downstairs and search for her. I could even just use my right as her master to search for her outline through the walls. I'd find her, or I wouldn't, and I'd have my answer. But it didn't matter. The sheets where she'd been laying were already cold with the morning chill.

        She'd been gone for a long while… and I'm the one that gave her the right to leave.

        "I guess she was right…Maybe I am… sad? Wish she picked a different word for it. Sad just doesn't really compare to this."

        It was impossible to continue denying it now. I don't even know why I was trying in the first place. Maybe it was just me trying to look tough for her, the girl that loves strength? My heart was still gripping at my throat from the inside, trying to wring my neck to get up and go looking for her, but in truth, I didn't feel much different. I felt worse, that much was certain. I knew without a shred of doubt that I was in love with her, but her loss didn't make me feel empty. The emptiness was already there. It was always there. Just waiting for her to fill it. I thought the black void inside me had already bottomed out years ago, but the empty bedspace beside me just dug a little deeper.

        The alarm I'd set on my smart phone went off, stealing away with the morning silence and my chance to grieve.

        I was always too cheap to buy a dedicated alarm clock and overly relied on my phone's alarm function, even though it failed me fairly often. It was due to my own cheapness that I had to pick out an incredibly annoying alarm sound just to wake my ass up, because no matter how much sleep I got, it was never enough and, unfortunately, my job demanded punctuality.

        With the well-trained reflex of a man that hated getting up in the morning more than just about anything else in the world, I smacked the touch screen icon to shut it up. Naturally, it took three attempts to end the alarm for good. Feeling its smooth glass against my fingers, I was struck with a sudden, overbearing thought that I couldn't have ignored if my very life depended on it.

        My smart phone wasn't reincarnated into the new world with me.

        Shooting up in bed fast enough to almost jettison my blanket into orbit, I immediately scanned my surroundings. This clearly wasn't my room at the Lazy Cat Inn. The pointless wardrobe in the corner of the room was replaced by a couple of tightly packed bookshelves, each lined with the various anime figurines I'd collected over the years. The window overlooking the outdoors bathing area was nowhere to be seen, as the only permanent fixture in that part of the room was the doorway leading to what was clearly a bathroom that most definitely wasn't there the night before. I recognized it by the light switch on the wall next to it that only seemed to work half the time you flipped it and whose plastic covering had been burned a dark shade of brown due to an electrical mishap before I even moved in.

        But the most noticeable change was the familiar computer sat on a desk in the corner of the room, right next to the bed. Its monitor was still aglow with the light of a game that had been left to run overnight.

        I was back in my apartment on Earth.

        That same lonely place where not even those I could barely call friends would ever visit. My apartment was small, maybe three times bigger than the room I had been renting at the inn, but it didn't matter since I was the only one that lived there. Other than my cat Lucy, of course, but she was nowhere to be found. She hadn't set out upon her morning duties of making sure I woke up in time to feed her, as she usually did.

        I was back on Earth. The fact that all I needed to do to prove this as an irrefutable fact was to get up and run all over my apartment to check if I was truly alone conversely kept me rooted to the bed. The one person I wanted to be next to me was gone. And she was even further away than I thought.

        "Yua… Was all of that a dream?"

        I tried to use my right as her master to locate her, but nothing happened. No inkling in the back of my mind told me which way to look and no outline appeared on any of the four walls surrounding me. I couldn't even open my menu. There was no HUD, no list of abilities I could use to fight my way out of here and no stats to be leveled up. And the only thing telling me the time was the mocking glow of my smart phone.

        "My dreams must have run wild after gaming all night again… Guess getting a chance to start over really was too good to be true."

        "I wouldn't say that."

        I was just about to rub the lingering remnants of that dream from my eyes when a soft, amorous voice rang out next to me. I froze, my back stiffening with the knowledge that I should've been completely alone. Carefully balling my hands into fists to fight off the intruder that shouldn't have been, I readied myself to jump out of bed, only to find an absolute goddess of a woman sitting in my desk chair that had most certainly been empty not even a minute before.

        She was a goddess, not just in terms of looks, but a literal Goddess. She was the same aethereal beauty I met only days ago now. And she was here, in my bedroom. Her long, wavy blonde hair floated up, never to touch her bare shoulders, as if each and every golden strand of them were light enough to float in air. She wore that same provocatively sheer dress that left so very little to the imagination and that openly ensnared me as she hid nothing. Regardless of how she looked or where I looked, the gentle smile painted over her lovely lips was that of a concerned mother figure above all other mother figures in existence. That smile alone was enough to sooth the tears that had built up.

        "But how? If that was a dream, then why are you… Did I die again?"

        She stood and walked over to me. The contents beneath her dress becoming clearer as the distance between us closed.

        "It wasn't a dream," she said, her voice echoing throughout my mind as if to remind me that she could read my thoughts. "That world is your reality now."

        "Then why am I…"

        "Why are you back in your bedroom from Earth?" she smiled, somehow looking mischievous and sympathetic at the same time. "Because I thought this would be a nice place where we could talk privately."

        "B-But I thought you said you weren't going to talk to me anymore."

        I distinctly remember her only being able to give me a few points of advice when she first brought me to the new world, because she didn't want to interfere too much in the realms of mortals.

        "That is true, but I don't see this so much as interfering. Just speeding things along, so to say. I am just here to talk."

        "Talk about what?"

        She sat on the bed and turned her voluptuous chest towards me, as if tempting me to look. Yet, the expression on her face was so gentle, that that simply couldn't have been what she was after. However, none of this mattered as that same expression took a sudden turn for the worse as it was instantly overtaken by a frown so impactful, that it might as well have fractured reality itself.

        "At first," she started. "I would have wanted to commend you on a job well done. For taking the path I asked you to take and finding your happiness. But you didn't, did you?"

        "I-I did! I went exactly where you wanted me to. I went East. I found Amoranth. And I…"

        "And you what?" she echoed, raising a brow. There was nothing accusing about her expression or body language, but I gulped anyways.

        "… And I found the slave house."

        "And what did you do there?"

        "I bought a sla… Yua."

        The Goddess, an ephemeral being that should have been excused from all the bodily functions that we humans required to survive, inhaled sharply through her nose. But it was when her silvery pupils focused on me that any of the burgeoning complaints I had for following her directions died out before the thoughts had the chance to fully form. The disappointment exuding off of her was so tangible, so powerful, that it felt capable of bringing about the destruction of an entire world.

        Fearing that she, as a goddess, might actually do just that and wipe out the world she mad and where I met Yua, I jumped in to try and dissuade her.

        "I-I only bought her because I was… lonely. And I was… Um…"

        "Your excuses sound pretty weak now that you want to give voice to them, don't they?"

        That word, excuses, stung like a thousand poisoned daggers to the heart, but I couldn't refute her. I knew what they were. And I let them excuse my wicked actions anyways.

        She nodded, affirming my thoughts before she looked me in the eye again. Her silvery pupils were no less sharp, but her tone was anything but accusing. It almost felt warm. Like she was nothing more than a loving teacher trying to set their student back onto the correct path right when they noticed them slipping.

        That said, what she said didn't hurt any less than it would were she to have yelled it at me.

        "Do you think that a bit of loneliness and an out-of-control sex drive is all you need to commit an act that you yourself view as a sin? You're lying to yourself. If that's all it took, you would have assaulted someone years ago. You're better than that, you just refuse to let yourself see that."

        I opened my mouth, feeling a dozen or so of the excuses my mind conjured up teetering on the tip of my tongue, but she held up a hand and forced my mouth shut. She didn't cover my mouth with her palm, nor was her action so intimidating that it stole my breath. It was an unseen forced that clenched my jaw shut for me and that pinned my tongue to the bottom of my mouth, rendering me incapable of speech.

        She continued.

        "Do you remember what I said happens when a good person dies? I know you do, because I gave you the power to remember."

        With my Memorization trait nowhere to be seen, but apparently still active enough to remember our last conversation, I nodded and the pressure holding my jaw shut loosened. Even though it didn't really hurt, I rubbed it and recited what I remembered her telling me back when we first met.

        "You said that if they were a good person, they'd get reincarnated into the arms of a loving family, and that if they were a bad person… Well, I guess you never finished that part."

        I distinctly remember her voice trailing off, as if she, the very being that overlooked all of reality, found that little factoid to be too painful to mention out loud.

        "So, what, was I rotten enough back on Earth to warrant all the trouble I've found in the new world?"

        I knew I wasn't the best person back then. I'm still not. But I kept mostly to myself. I don't recall hurting or wronging anyone enough to say I deserved any of this hair-tearing trouble.

        The Goddess shook her head with a rueful smile, her wavy hair flowing through the air in little ripples as she let out an ephemeral sigh.

        "Not at all. And that's not why I brought it up. You clearly don't understand. That's why we're having this conversation now. For all that intelligence you claim to have, you sure don't seem to want to use it. Look at me, Alex," she said, cupping my cheek in her palm. "Your life on Earth was your reincarnation."

        "…What?"

        "Yes. Just two short life time's ago, you were a magnificent person that did many great things that would have earned you a permanent place in what you call heaven. You were reincarnated into what you call modern day Earth because your past self earned a peaceful, easy life. So, as a reward, I gifted you with a pair of loving parents, a good strong and healthy body and an intelligence that was well above average. Only, something went wrong. Some decision you made twisted these gifts against you. You forsook them all and you shut yourself off from everyone instead of using them to your advantage to build that better life."

        "H-hold on, I'm still trying to wrap my head around this reincarnation business."

        "What, did you think it was your first time meeting me when you were hit by that truck? That you were the only one to be reincarnated? I hate to break it to you, Alex, but you're not so special. Would you like to know how many times we've truly met?"

        "… No thanks. Knowing that would be the same as knowing how many times I've died. So, yea..."

        That one death I remember, and I barely remember it, was all I needed to say I had more than enough experience. But it did bring up another question.

        "What did I do in a past life that earned your praise? And if I can remember every aspect of my previous life on Earth, this Earth, why can't I remember the one before it?"

        "It doesn't matter," she said, letting go of my cheek. "What your past selves did has no bearing on what your current self does. All that matters is whether or not you took what you were allotted in life and mad some good of it, or some bad. I've seen countless people born in the deepest, dirtiest parts of the gutter pull themselves up out of the muck, only to become some of the greatest people to have ever existed. Others took all the gifts they earned in their previous lives and used them for evil, wicked things. But you, however, did something that might even be worse than all that. Worse than bad. You did nothing."

        "I…"

        As if giving me a moment to process what she'd said, the Goddess pushed aside the blankets that I had wrapped myself in and moved closer to me atop the sheets. Where she had once been facing me, she pulled herself over to sit beside me, letting her feet dangle over the side of the bed. The warmth her presence exuded somehow both pressured and soothed me, even as she slipped her fingers between mine.

        She continued.

        "You could have used all you had to become someone great. A scientist. A doctor. An engineer. An Archeologist. Or you could have been a special effects artist on a movie set. Or a painter. Or a writer."

        As she listed just about every job I'd ever wanted for myself, none of which I ever had, it only felt like the nail she'd been hammering in all this time was being driven deeper. I never told her any of this, of course, but it shows nothing if not how long she's been watching me.

        "You could have been any number of things if you'd only just applied yourself. But instead, you used your intelligence as an excuse to never try, because minimal effort was all you ever needed to get by."

        "I know that!" I said, ripping my hand away from hers. "I realized my mistake years ago. And I've…"

        "Been hating yourself for it ever since? You're not supposed to hate yourself for your past mistakes. You were supposed to learn from them. You were smart enough to see your flaws, so you can't expect to tell me you weren't smart enough to fix them."

        "I tried. I've tried countless times. I know I need to put myself out there and stop hiding, but it's not enough. I can't just pretend to be someone I'm not. It's not that easy. I can't just be the sort of guy that can walk up to anyone they find on the street and have an hour-long conversation about nothing and still find it enjoyable. I tried. Part of why I bought Yua was to have someone to talk to and, even if that was just an excuse, I was serious about it. And I still can't…"

        In the middle of what was amounting to be a tirade meant for me to blurt out all my misgivings about the world and of myself, I blinked back the tears I'd only just noticed forming in the corners of my eyes, but when I opened them again, the Goddess was right beside me again, holding my hand.

        "And that is why you keep failing. Just like everything else in your life, you're half-assing your way to fix what you broke. Putting yourself out there isn't the first step you should be taking. That's just asking for failure. You don't just build a working rocket ship without a basic understanding of physics."

        Carefully, lovingly, she pressed a thumb to my cheek. That single touch allowed the tears I had been holding back to flow, as if she willed them to, just so she could wipe them away. It sounded like she was telling me my life was a lie, but there was nothing in her smile that suggested malice.

        "… Then what was I supposed to do? Where did I go wrong?"

        That seemingly innocuous pair of questions caused her smile to brighten ever more and I was sure that somewhere, in the vast emptiness of space, a new star was born from nothing.

        "The answer is so simple, that I fear you'll just beat yourself up even more for not seeing it. Honestly. Do you have any idea what it's like being able to read the mind of someone that is constantly bashing themself? I'll tell you; it's depressing. Even for me."

        "Haha… Sorry."

        With nothing more than an intensely sympathetic smile to back up her actions, she pulled my head into her chest and ran her fingers through my hair, her movements in tune with the rhythm of her heartbeat.

        "What you need to do is simple. Maybe not easy, but simple…. Get out of your head."

        "… What do you mean?"

        "Stop assuming you know everything. Stop assuming you know what and how others are thinking and feeling. And most importantly, start listening to people."

        "But I have been. Listening, I mean."

        "No, you haven't. You're hearing what people have to say, but you aren't treating the things they say as if they matter. Take Yua, for example. You claim to love her and that you want to treat her like a person instead of a slave, but…"

        "I do. And I am!"

        "… If you love her, then why does she still call you Master?"

        I couldn't answer. With every fiber of my being, every brain cell in my head threading fragments of thought together into something even remotely useable, I tried to think of a reason, but I couldn't.

        But she could.

        "And that is your problem. A new problem to go along with all the others you've claimed for yourself. To you, Yua is just another NPC that happens to have a pretty face, but she is very real. And she has very real thoughts and emotions that you are acknowledging, but also ignoring entirely because they don't fit in with your view of the world."

        The Yua I first met was an indignant girl that would harass me with snarky comments every chance she got. Then, after just one day of knowing each other, she changed completely.

        "But she's…"

        "You don't believe in the person she's showing herself to be because you yourself can't let it be true. The kind of girl she started off as yesterday morning is not a version of herself like you keep thinking. That's just who she is. The arrogant, snarky bitch she used to be, was just the façade she wore because she was scared of you."

        "What? How could Yua of all people be scared of me?"

        Sure, with the slave spell in place, I could do any number of things to her and she'd be forced to accept them or deal with the consequences of refuting me, but that wouldn't stop her from beating the ever-loving shit out of me if I did something she really hated. Even if she hurt herself in the process. And the way she used to act didn't look even remotely fearful. This was the girl that faced down boss monsters that were several times larger than she was without flinching. The only time I saw her scared was when… she thought I was going to hit her… And when I got hurt in the dungeon.

        The Goddess shook her head, removing mine from her bosom so she could look me in the eye again.

        "It's not the slave spell that scared her. It was you and how you might have used it against her. She's already said as much. She was scared because she thought that you, like all the other men that visited that slave house, just wanted her for her body. When you proved that wasn't the case, she opened up to you. When you showed her that you really cared, the circumstances with which you met no longer mattered to her."

        "So, what you're saying is, that I need to listen to her better?"

        "In part, yes. But that alone will never be enough until you get out of your own head. Take that old neighbor of yours whose name you never bothered to learn as another example. You thought you were in love with her because she was kind enough to smile at you every morning. But she wasn't doing so because she was fond of meeting with you. No. She smiled because she was scared. She'd noticed you watching her multiple times and, as large as you were, she wouldn't have been able to defend herself if you tried something. To her, you were an unknown. A person whose motives, while pure hearted, were impossible to decipher. So, she smiled and tried to give you no reason to pounce on her."

        "Wha… But I wouldn't have… How could you even suggest…"

        The Goddess held up her hand and, unlike before, the force that clamped my jaw shut didn't appear.

        "I know you wouldn't have done any such thing," she said with a supremely comforting tone of voice. "But she didn't know that. Your inaction regarding your feeling towards her and your lecherous gaze, the same one you keep turning on me, even as I'm trying to help you, are the causes for her discomfort."

        "S-Sorry… But, I mean, it's kind of hard not to look."

        "I know," she said almost proudly. "I dress like this because I knew it'd be the form you found most comforting."

        "Comforting isn't exactly the word I'd use for what you're wearing, but… If that woman was so scared of me, then doesn't that mean I really never had a chance with her? That I died chasing her for nothing?"

        "See? There you go bashing yourself again. Yes, asking her out like you planned would have been a failure, but only to the extent that she wouldn't have become your lover. She would have rejected you, but because you went into it planning to take that rejection and use it to better yourself, instead of just forcing her to see things your way, she would have understood that you weren't a bad person. She would have lightened up around you and those daily smiles would have turned into daily conversations that you would have come to cherish. Had I not intervened, of course."

        "… How can you know that? What happened to not being able to see the future?"

        "Hahaha. I can create a whole new world with the snap of a finger, and you think I can't do something so trivial as see the future?"

        "Since when is seeing the future trivial…?! Wait, no, if you can see the future, why…"

        "Why are we having this conversation? Simple. It's because I saw that you were in the process of messing up your life all over again and that you needed help. I only got in the way because you would have been incapable of using her rejection to better yourself. You just didn't have the mindset for that. Yet."

        "… And just what in my past lives did I do that was so great that it earned me help from a literal deus ex machina?"

        "Oh, look at you. Slinging around concepts you don't fully understand like you're already a master of them. That's another part of you that needs work. I may be a goddess of sorts, but this conversation is not meant to resolve your impossible problems. You already have all you need to solve your problems right here."

        She prodded my forehead with her index finger and, while I was expecting some sort of divine revelation to strike me, all I got was a small burst of pain.

        "Alright, then if you intervened because I wasn't capable of doing what I said I would, did you really have to make someone else kill me? You probably ruined their life. And, hell, you told me to go East!"

        "Hahaha. Stop deflecting!" she laughed. "I was telling the truth when I said that I gave the man that killed you an epiphany. And no, I didn't ruin his life. There were several street cameras whose footage showed that you walked into the street when the light was red. With that, he was quickly exonerated. Besides, the guilt he feels over what he did to you is what will ultimately bring him closer to his daughter. She will forget her complaints about him and comfort him in his time of need."

        "I, uh… Even if you claim it's for the benefit of all of us, you still killed me. That's kind of evil, isn't it?"

        "Not at all. It's pragmatism in its most uncomfortable form. He kills you; the guilt overwhelms him to the point where even his estranged daughter feels the need to step in and save him in his darkest moments. Then, together, they discover that their problems with one another are nothing compared to what not having each other means for them both."

        "I'm sorry… but it sounds like you used my literal death as a learning experience for them."

        "I suppose that, in a way, I did. Yes. But in doing so, I gave you a chance to live a new life. A life you always wanted. One where nobody but you remembers your past mistakes, so you could start over. A clean slate. A world you could only dream of, much like this one, right?"

        With that, she gestured to the room as a whole and the walls around me making up my old apartment fell away, revealing the world outside to be exactly how I remember it. The roof above ascended up into the sky until it vanished behind the clouds without a trace. The same white void that felt mindbogglingly endless, but still oddly comfortable started to bleed back into view, looking exactly as it did when I first met her.

        "And likewise," she continued. "I told you to go East because that is where the nearest Adventurer's Guild and means to train yourself were. You were the one that bent and broke my advice to suit your whims."

"Ah…"

        Maybe that was why going to the guild for the first time felt so right. It feels so obvious. When I set out in this world, I wanted to work hard and see my numbers, my level and stats, grow as proof that I was improving. And instead of doing that, the first thing I did was take a giant leap backwards.

        "It's not up to Yua to fix you," she continued, nodding with my mental reasoning. "You may have bought her for that reason, but things will never work out like that. All she can ever do is help you and she's been trying to do just that. You just aren't listening to her."

        "I thought I was…"

        With a forever gentle smile and a small beckoning gesture made with her finger, another unseen force helped me off the bed and to my feet. There, standing before the Goddess, she wrapped her arms around my back to hold me. Contrary to what her status as a goddess might make you think, she was short enough so that, when she embraced me this way, it was her face that pressed into my chest.

        "The path I chose for you was not the only one available to you, though. You could have gone anywhere and everywhere. You could have struck out on an adventure all your own, but instead, you listened to my guidance. For that, I want to offer you one more bit of advice."

        "W-What is it?"

        "My guidance brought you to this moment, but from here on out, your decisions will not only affect your life, but the lives of everyone around you."

        "… I feel like that's just how things are supposed to be."

        "Haha. Exactly. Now, our time together is limited, as always. You have to go…"

        "W-Wait, if you can see the future and you guided me to this moment, does that mean finding all those rare items had nothing to do with my Luck? Did you just put them there for me to find?"

        The idea of dumping all my points into Luck being a gigantic waste aside, that meant that finding the Silver Ring of Regeneration, the Elderwood staff, that chest full of gold coins… and Yua. Were all of those just arbitrarily meant to be found, regardless of what I did?

        The goddess shook her head, her gentle smile never wavering in the slightest.

        "I built this world per your desires. You wanted it to run on the logic from your favorite video games. So, your stats will directly translate into the world itself. More Strength means you will be able to lift heavier objects. More Magic means the spells you cast will become more powerful. And the more Luck you have, the more often good things will happen to you. It's the same for everyone else, but how you progress is entirely up to you… All I did was point you in the right direction."

        "Then, Yua… Meeting her really was all luck?"

        "Yes and no," she said, sounding entirely honest. "You were the one that chose to go to that place that day. But who is to say whether or not your luck caused the events surrounding that action to occur? I can see the future, but it is more or less an educated guess based on all the knowledge I have at my disposal. The concept of Luck, however, can be quite finicky. Like your own, the stats of others also have a bearing on their surroundings. Like Yua and her own treasured Strength that allowed her to successfully defend you from all those attacks that should have killed you."

        Thinking back to when I first learned that beast-kin were naturally stronger than humans and that it probably had something to do with how Yua acted before I intervened in her leveling, I remembered when I first took notice of the Merchant Albert's cute rabbit-girl slave and how he explained to me that slavery was legal. He used the rabbit-girl's strength as an excuse to buy her, to help out in his shop. But he clearly got more out of it than that. 

        Buying that sort of companionship, for any reason, sounded both wrong and disgusting in both worlds. In any world, but the thought that I didn't have to be alone anymore and that I could cure the loneliness was just so tempting.

        Then I met that dog-kin slave out behind the Lazy Cat. It was her openness that pushed my desires even further.

        Then Alphonse played my temptations like a fiddle and convinced me to give into sin. To buy a person. But that was my fault, of course. I'm the one that chose to go to his shop that day. I chose to stay despite my misgivings. His stats and abilities had nothing to do with it. I was just weak. I am weak.

        "… Why doesn't Yua hate me? She likes strength, which I clearly do not have."

        "That is something only she can tell you. And from what I've seen, she already has."

        "But we've only known each other for a couple of days. How can she already be so accepting of me, the man that bought her like she was some kind of sex toy?!"

        "You cannot control who loves you," the goddess said, hugging me tighter. "She was a slave before you met her, she is your slave now and you have given her permission to speak her mind. So, I'll say it again… Why aren't you listening to her?"

        "I…"

        I didn't know what to say any more. My own guilt over buying her made it impossible to think that she could ever feel any sort of positive way towards me. All those smiles must have been forced. All those times she saved me in the dungeon had to have been because it was her duty as my slave to defend me.

        All those things she said just before we went to bed had to have been…

        All those tears of gratitude when I ate with her must be…

        The pure happiness she shared with me when I told her how strong she's become and when we beat the third floor must be…

        "See?" the goddess said, petting the back of my head like I was a crying puppy. "You've been punishing yourself all this time by refusing to see the forest for the trees, because you think your eyes are lying to you. The morals of your old world don't necessarily translate directly to this new one. You think you've done wrong, but nobody else does. Including her. She understands the world for what it is and, in her eyes, you aren't just her master, but someone who genuinely cares about her. That alone is something she spent the last several years in that slave house thinking she would never have again."

        "But…"

        "Stop getting in your own way, Alex," the goddess said, grabbing me by the cheeks and forcing me to look into her eyes. "Think about it, Alex. Really think about how the slave spell works. In just the first day you were with her, you groped her, ogled her every chance you got and you even kissed her when she was feeling weak and defenseless. And none of this caused her to want to hurt you. If it had, the slave spell would have kicked in and hurt her before she even had the chance to act on those desires."

        "Y-Yea, I did all those things, but she…"

        "Alex, if you think her mental fortitude was sturdy enough for her, someone that was born and raised to be a fighter, to completely forget her anger and not want to raise her fist against the person that hurt her, then you are an even bigger idiot than you think you are. She may have gotten over her distrust of you faster than you believe possible, but has she done anything to make you actually believe she dislikes you, in any way?"

        "N-No. If anything, she seems to take my own mistakes and rework them into her own. But that's because she was trained to be subservient, right?"

        The Goddess gave a half nod.  

        "And because, for all your efforts, you're letting her think she is."

        Master…

        "All you need is a little more confidence in yourself and you can make your life a happy one."

        "But… Then why did you make my confidence boost trait based on my level?"

        "That one is for you to figure out on your own."

        She smiled, giggled and pressed my face into her chest once more to embrace me. Her beauty was the most astute example of otherworldly and yet, despite the thinness of her dress making it all too easy to see the perkiness beneath it as she hugged me, I didn't feel the least bit aroused. Just warm and comfortable. The way the tea she let me sample the last time we met did.

        Why was this more comforting than stimulating?

        "It's time to for me to go, Alex."

        "C-Can't you stay a little longer? I still have so many questions."

        I threw my arms back around her, but she lifted my face up to meet hers once more. One las time. The warmth of her gaze was felt almost like all the angels in heaven were reaching out to pull me through the pearly gates, only she was trying to leave.

        "It's time for me to go. I have already meddled more than I usually would. Besides, there is someone waiting for you on the other side, remember?"

        "Waiting for me? Does that mean Yua really chose to stay?"

        "Just take what I've told you here today and use what you know to come up with your own answers," she said, ignoring my question. "I can't just give you all the answers or the solutions you find will be meaningless. You're not the villain you're making yourself out to be."

        Smiling like a mother whose child just learned to walk on their own after months of rigorous effort, the goddess leaned into me and pressed her lips against mine. And my consciousness slipped away from me yet again.