Chapter 26

She rationalized it by saying it was all because of my father. From then on, I grew to truly loathe a father I had never even met.

Ugurtz, who was her lover, was a man of the underworld. Still, he never treated me poorly. We weren’t particularly close, but I actually found his sense of distance more comfortable. Even so, whenever my biological mother tried to hit me while he was around, he would step in and stop her.

On a day when the rain fell heavily, my biological mother hanged herself. She didn’t die immediately. She struggled and writhed in agony for quite a while, and at the time, as I watched her, I didn’t bother to set upright the chair she had kicked over. I don’t know why. I just didn’t want to. Perhaps I was still angry at her for hitting me that day. I don’t remember.

Only after she died and the funeral was over did I suddenly realize that I had committed murder. I felt an awareness that I had crossed some line as a human being, and at the same time, I felt regret.

I should have set that chair upright. As time passed, the guilt—which I couldn’t speak of to anyone—began to swell in size, becoming too much to bear.

Then, at some point, all that resentment shifted its target toward the existence of my father. My mother went insane because of my father. My mother hanged herself because of my father. My father was the reason I was beaten. My father was the reason I killed my mother.

The logic of a child who wants to evade responsibility.

In the end, I decided I had to kill my father. It felt like that was the only way everything would be wrapped up neatly.

In my youth, I sought out the Melas family with that very murderous intent.

Naturally, the Melas house was turned upside down by my sudden appearance, but in the end, they accepted me. Unexpectedly, my father acknowledged my biological mother’s existence without much fuss. He also judged that the timing of my birth didn’t conflict significantly with his own timeline.

I had no interest in my stepmother or my stepbrother. I only followed my father with my eyes, measuring the timing for when I could kill him. It seemed that in my stepmother’s eyes, my behavior looked like the affection-starved actions of a child craving her father’s love.

And they say that after my father heard that from my stepmother, he didn’t know how to treat me, so he just left me be for the time being.

Regardless, after quite some time had passed, I found myself knowing the layout of my father’s mansion perfectly. My heart hadn’t withered away in the meantime. I think it was because I had such a firm goal from the start that there was no room for other emotions to intrude.

And when I judged that the opportunity had arrived, I finally moved to kill my father. I put blowfish poison into his tea. But he never drank it. My stepmother, who had suddenly barged into the room that day, smashed my father’s teacup and slapped my cheek without saying a word.

Attempting to kill my father—that was the first and last reason my stepmother ever laid a hand on me.

I wondered how she had known, but it seemed a servant had sensed my suspicious behavior recently, felt a foreboding, and informed my stepmother. No matter how careful I tried to be, I was just a child, so my actions must have been very clumsy in the eyes of adults.

I naturally expected to be kicked out. But neither my father nor my stepmother threw me out, and from that moment on, my stepmother always kept me by her side, personally overseeing my emotional and ethical education. If she had time to spare, she taught me poise.

In the eyes of others, it must have appeared as though I were deeply loved despite being a stepdaughter. Thanks to that, I rarely faced unreasonable treatment outside for being a bastard child. After all, if a child is loved by the mistress of the house, no matter how much of a bastard they are, others would have to keep the existence of the Melas family in mind before doing anything to them.

The time she spent clinging to a stepdaughter with whom she didn’t share a drop of blood was by no means short. No one would ever truly know the blood-and-tear-filled effort it took for her to finally reform a child who was a murderer.

And when time passed and I was chosen as a Saint candidate, I thought that I must become a Saint, even if just for my stepmother’s sake, to become something she could be proud of, but because there was a candidate with such outstanding potential at the time, it didn’t go as I had wished.

Things have flowed on somehow since then. And I still haven’t achieved anything that my stepmother could be proud of. I think it’s a bit of a shame that I can’t repay the grace I received.

The suffering I endured after marrying the Count of Lallanne was, of course, difficult and painful, but perhaps it wasn’t such a high price to pay when compared to the weight of the sins of murder and attempted murder I had committed at such a young age.

So, if I had to choose one regret in my life, it would indeed be concerning my stepmother.

Furthermore, that very regret was the driving force that allowed me to endure in the ruined Lallanne territory. I had certainly given up and ignored the situation for a time, but after I was practically reborn, I struggled to fix things somehow, if only to repay the grace I had received from Anne.

Though I had no choice, it was a fact that I had become a pipe for the Master, scattering elements of danger across this land, so I had decided to take my own measure of responsibility.

Because of the things I had done, from starting with the Count to reaching the Master’s avatar, the Master crossing dimensions was already an inevitable stage.

Therefore, I turned the Lallanne territory into a third dimension and severed it from this world by luring the Master to descend and trapping him inside. In the process, the Master cursed me with divine punishment, but by escaping that place just before its dissolution, I was able to narrowly block his interference with my soul. Thus, the Lallanne territory became the Master’s prison.

Even if other Otherworld gods attempted to follow the Master’s path and descend, they would be isolated in the Lallanne territory and could not reach this world. I had been able to return because I had connected the coordinates before moving the territory, but things from the Otherworld, even if they managed to break through the territory’s barrier, would simply become lost in space. Their only option would be to return to their original world. That is, if it were even possible to return.

Even though the world was severed, the leash around my neck was still held by the Master, and because it had been severed, I could no longer draw upon the Master’s power. Therefore, the divine power I currently possess only depletes the more I use it and cannot be replenished. Things like moving land beyond dimensions are also no longer possible. From now on, I will only become weaker, so the wand the Saint gave me earlier is, in practice, of little use. But I couldn’t necessarily call that a bad thing.

I was a messenger who had lost their god, but on the other hand, I was also an avatar of the Master. As long as the Master, the original self, has lost his ability to interfere, the Master’s authority scattered across this world will shift to me. Since I have neither the power nor the will to operate it, no more of the Master’s kin will be born, and the abnormal phenomena caused by them will likely subside. The things already born won’t have much power, so they will be easily dealt with.

Only after wrapping up my share of the responsibility could I say I had reached the current peace.

Honestly, I could have been satisfied with protecting only the small number of people I cherish. In the first place, it would have been a much easier choice to simply comply with the Master and protect only myself and my surroundings, without needing to walk a dangerous tightrope.

But the reason I insisted on the difficult path was partly because I couldn’t trust the Master, but also because Anne’s influence was not small. It wasn’t so much that I was genuinely inspired by lofty and righteous things like responsibility or a mission, but I couldn’t bear to make the long efforts and love Anne had shown me go to waste. I was able to summon the courage to risk my life because I thought that even if I couldn’t be a source of pride, I at least had to avoid being a shameful daughter.

If another abnormality related to the Master arises in the future, I will look for a way to solve that as well. I have braced myself for the possibility that my current life might be endangered. That is what responsibility in the right direction should be.

Of course, separate from such resolutions, personally, I don’t really want to stray from my current simple and ordinary life. If possible, my wish is for it to continue on without any major incidents. Quite desperately, at that.

I sometimes wonder if I’m just craving this because I was never able to be ordinary, but if I think about it carefully, I never really aspired to an eccentric or luxurious life even when I was young.

In the neighborhood where I lived at the time, I belonged to the relatively well-off side, so from Felix’s perspective, it might feel like deception, but I think I had a character that didn’t have much greed as long as the basics were met. If I hadn’t had that murderous intent, I would never have had a reason to go looking for my father.