Chapter 351: Combined Resolve, United Hearts
Listen While Reading: Pavel Kalatsei - Follow The Light (Songs To Your Eyes)
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I felt my Cosmic Heart gaining many tiny cracks as I kept infusing my Cosmic Energy into the machine.
This might be because instead of using this energy on myself or my abilities, I was letting it all out, something I was not used to, actually.
This put a tremendous strain on my Cosmic Heart, which wasn’t the biggest or the strongest out there.
It was supposed to be tough; it was made out of a Constellation Sealing Stone, with Sepa inside!
Yet… it was gaining cracks!
“Sepa…!”
“…!”
I asked for her help, but she seemed to have fallen silent.
Yeah, I can tell why.
Why wouldn’t she?
If my Cosmic Heart breaks and shatters, there’s a chance she can get out and finally free herself from me.
If I were to die, she would die with me, but if it’s shattering like this…
Her Cosmic Soul can slowly leak out and…
She can free herself.
Yeah…
I know.
Yet even then, who else can I ask for help about this?
“Sepa… You… you’re really considering it, aren’t you?”
“Anna… I… I…”
I smiled sorrowfully.
“It’s fine.”
“Eh?”
“You can escape.”
“W-What?”
“I don’t want to force you to stay with me, and I don’t… I don’t really want to enslave you or something else.”
Yeah, she was being punished for trying to kill me, I know.
But I also think she has redeemed herself already.
By a lot.
She has helped me a lot, more than I could have imagined.
Without her help, I think I would have died a few times already.
She’s been there for me all this time, and it was all because she was forced.
I don’t want to force her anymore.
I see her as an equal, as…
“You’re my friend, not a slave…”
“Anna…”
“So go…”
“But if it’s shattered, you’ll die?!”
“It’s fine… I think I can survive with the Hero Title. But my Cosmic Powers might vanish after this.”
Yeah, it was fine.
If I give it my all…
“Two Million Nanomachines Extracted! W-We’re doing it! A little bit more, everyone!”
My masters can be saved.
Sacrificing my cosmic powers seems like such a bargain.
“…”
“It’s fine, Sepa… I want you to be free… With Bastet too.”
“I…! Anna… I really want to…”
She was doubting herself, but she really just wanted to leave.
Maybe she was having conflicting emotions…
I was a bit surprised.
“You hate me, don’t you?”
“Ah…!”
“I made you suffer, and it was my fault you ended like this…”
“Anna…”
I clutched my fists as I resisted the pain.
At the end, I started crying.
“I’m sorry…”
“…”
I felt Sepa’s warmth for a moment as I saw her manifestation appear in front of me.
She was crying too.
“No, Anna! I don’t want to leave you!”
She wrapped her cosmic body around my body.
“S-Sepa?!”
“I don’t want to leave you! I want to stay with you!”
“B-But…! What about your life as a Constellation?! I forced you to do this. I... I enslaved you; I don’t want this anymore!”
“It’s not because of that! I… Being with you was the first time that I felt my life even mattered.”
Her big eyes glanced at my own.
“It was the first time I ever felt like I was worth anything…”
“Really? But you’re a Constellation, still above all of us…”
“You don’t know how it is, do you? So lonely… I never mattered… I was nothing but a shadow of the greater gods.” She looked at the floor sorrowfully. “Bastet was my only friend… And even then, because of my status, we could only see each other secretly.”
“Sepa…”
I felt moved by her words.
The first time she mattered…
Was her life that sad?
I can’t believe it…
At first I really thought she was just a ruthless centipede goddess.
But I guess I should have never judged a book by its cover.
Ironic coming from me, I know…
“When I was put into that crystal, there was a part of me that didn’t really care…” Sepa muttered. “I lived a pointless life, afraid of everything… I was a Constellation, but it didn’t matter, because everything else was so much stronger… so much better than me! I was nothing but… a forgotten goddess and a forgotten story…”
Then she kissed my forehead with her little mandibles.
“But you’re the person that made my story matter! You were… When your story entwined with mine… It made me special… for the first time in my entire life!”
“Really?”
I smiled lightly.
“Yes… I don’t want to leave your side, Anna… You’re… as you said… you’re my friend!”
She hugged me tightly, coiling her long body around mine.
FLAAASH!
And I felt something within her, her powers, surging endlessly and coursing through my body.
Her Divinities, her Dao Roots, and Dao Branches.
Her powers…
My mind seemed to be brought somewhere else entirely.
An endless desert, a sea of dunes.
The cold and dry wind washed away everything.
There, a little centipede moved across the sands.
Seeking prey, only to find corpses.
She ate them vigorously; she had nothing else to eat.
Every day, every night, it was like this.
She would go to the corpses, and eventually, she would find large bugs, pests, and rats.
She preferred the tastier, fresher meat and hunted them instead.
Over time, she continued hunting these little critters, freeing the people of that small village of pests.
When the people discovered that a centipede of golden color had been eating all the pests and protecting them, instead of fearing her grotesque form, they enshrined her.
“She is the protector of the dead!”
“She devours the pests!”
“A little guardian, a goddess!”
They kneeled before her, and as she sat over a small altar, they constantly prayed to her for better harvests, and she went out of her way to hunt down every pest in their farmlands.
Then they prayed for her help in hunting fish, and she went to the rivers and hunted fish for them…
For not just a couple of years, but dozens, then hundreds of years…
Eventually, she had a small little temple.
The only Temple of Sepa, in a forgotten village of Ancient Egypt.
But all good things eventually come to an end.
The people slowly started to forget about her.
“Everyone? Won’t you come to the temple anymore?”
She wandered around the village, but nobody would come closer to her.
People had new gods, always.
Eventually, better gods that protected their farmlands appeared.
Better gods that protected the dead were born.
And she, Sepa…
Was forgotten.
Her temple slowly fell apart without maintenance; the winds of the desert were unforgiving.
The village was abandoned, as people moved to larger cities within Egypt.
And eventually, the only one left was her…
“Where’s everyone… I… I thought I was a goddess?”
She felt lonely.
There was nobody with her other than the moon.
And the sun.
Eventually, as she died of old age, despite being a mythical creature.
FLASH!
Her Soul absorbed the Records of the Story, and she ascended into a Constellation.
Becoming another star in the endless cosmos, Sepa awakened anew, welcomed by dozens of other Egyptian Constellations.
“A little one this time? Hmm? Ra glared at her once and then never again.
“Hah! Isn’t she an inferior version of myself?” laughed Anubis. “Well, if you don’t have anywhere to go, come to my Underworld, I might have some job for you, corpse eater.”
“A centipede… how curious,” Osiris' eyes shone brightly, glancing at Sepa, and then he smiled. “A peculiar future awaits you, little one…”
“Indeed,” Isis nodded by her side. “Welcome, Sepa.”
“A-Ah… I’m honored…” Sepa was flabbergasted; to be even talked to by these almighty gods was simply insane.
Yet even they forgot about her…
Eventually, the only friend she had was her.
“Why are you a centipede anyways?”
Little Bastet, born a Constellation, walked around her giant castle in the Realm Beyond; a huge jungle surrounded it, where she played with Sepa.
“I… was born as one,” said Sepa. “And you?”
“I was born as a cat!” said Bastet, giggling innocently. “But Dad never lets me see anybody… So I always feel lonely… You’re the only friend I got!”
“A-Ah… I’m honored, princess,” Sepa smiled.
Her only friend, the friend that was killed, was betrayed by the other Egyptian Gods after her father, Ra, died.
After that…
Sepa, sustaining the last Fragment of Bastet’s Cosmic Soul, truly fell into eternal solitude.
As time went on, she grew bitter, and her animalistic instincts took over.
She became ruthless and angered at the world, at everything…
Once she saw that a young Hunter didn’t want her help, she felt enraged.
“You don’t want to become my Avatar?! Seriously?! I am a Constellation…! I-I am like everyone else! What do I have that you don’t want from me?! I-I also matter! I ALSO MATTER!!!”
She grew mad, ending up breaking the rules as she sponsored a monster without intelligence, the boss of the Dungeon where I landed when I first woke up from my coma.
And eventually, as the monster was defeated and Sepa lost even more of her powers, she was punished for breaking the rules.
“You can’t be serious… Wait a second! This is not fair! I-I…!”
She tried to ask for forgiveness, but only received cold stares from them all…
Even from Anubis, whom she believed still cared about her a little bit.
“I… Hahah… I truly don’t matter a single thing, do I?”
As she accepted her fate and ended with me, she was bitter and angered; she hated me.
But I saw it; slowly, she warmed up to me…
More and more…
And more…
Her Story, which had been stagnant since ancient times, began to blossom with every action we did together.
Finally, at my side…
I guess she was finally mattering.
FLAAASH!
I felt a connection between our souls like never before.
A contract similar to a master and a familiar…
No, wait, this was different.
Sepa was sponsoring me!
“I offer you my all, Anna!” she said.
I felt the cracks of my Cosmic Core rapidly heal.
“You are my little avatar already, aren’t you?” She giggled. “So I won’t let you go now! I sponsor you with everything I have! My Soul, my Authorities, my Dao Root… And my Story!”
Ding!
[The Constellation: {Trillion-Legged Millipede That Swarms The Cosmos} has offered everything they have to sponsor you!]
[You have become the Avatar of {Trillion-Legged Millipede That Swarms The Cosmos}!]
[Your Cosmic Heart is absorbing their power, rapidly regenerating all damage, and infusing you with more Cosmic Energy!]
FLUOSH!
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