“Why?! I was trying to save you! It’s hard and painful, isn’t it? Didn’t you want to change your current self?! Then why won’t you take the power?! What’s wrong with jumping on this new power without any thought and using it as your own with pride?!”
Sei considered his response for a moment, then said, “I’m happy that you’d go so far for someone like me, but I don’t need it. If I took it, I would no longer be myself, after all.”
Sei got up weakly before he looked the Goddess straight in the eyes. His eyes were not filled with conviction. Sei wavered a lot, and he was weak as well. He was just a frail boy who, even now, seemed like he was about to collapse. Even so, he was trying to walk on his own, and that was what made him human. Humans didn’t need anything silly like cheats or hacks. Humans were perfectly capable of moving forward without them.
“If I were to take your power, I would then be moving as you desire. If I did that, I would just be a puppet. Even if I did gain power here and now... If you just gave that power to a puppet with no will or ego... Between me and that puppet, what would be the difference?”
“Well, that’s...”
The Goddess couldn’t answer the question. Rather, she knew the answer. However, she couldn’t say it.
There was none. There was no difference.
If Sei had accepted the Goddess’s boon and moved as her script required, then he would just be a puppet. Put bluntly, anyone could fulfill that role. It didn’t need to be Minamijuuji Sei. It could even have been a simple mannequin with no mind at all. However, admitting that would mean shining a light on the Goddess’s own contradictions. It would reveal the fact that she wasn’t saving humans; she just wanted to feel like she was.
Having been confronted with this truth, it was as if everything the Goddess had done up until now was being rejected. In other words, it was a complete and utter defeat, even without a fight.
“Just give it up, Alovenus. It’s your loss.” Lufas seemed as proud as if it were her own accomplishment as she patted Sei’s head. Alovenus had yet to be taken down. She had yet to even be challenged to a real fight. However, she’d just lost to Minamijuuji Sei, even without such things. “This kid Sei and you are just different.”
“I... Are you saying that I am somehow...less than this powerless boy?”
“Lesser or greater is of no matter at your level. As I said, you’re just different. You aren’t even standing on the same stage as this kid.”
Lufas’s thoughts were thus: Imagine a stage. If two men fought on this stage, you would think that the winner was strong. However, if one of them ignored the rules and took to the stage wearing full armor and armed to the teeth with guns and blades, would you still think they were strong? No, you wouldn’t. That person would just be a cheater and a coward. You would consider them weaker than weak, a person who ran away from a fair fight.
“In my opinion, if there were a power in this world that would make anyone the strongest and undefeatable, and if there were someone who could use that power without shame, then that person would be the weakest in the world, one who was unable to actually fight anyone, someone who was just hopelessly weak. Wouldn’t you think so?”
After a moment of silence, Alovenus responded. “What are you trying to say?”
“It’s simple. You have not been saving people. You took people who would have been able to walk on their own, gave them power, and robbed them of that ability. You made them weak.”
“You...of all people...are going to say that...?”
“I can say it because I am me. After all, I did that myself in the past,” Lufas admitted.
Two hundred years ago, Lufas had clung to power. She had drowned in it. Using power strong enough to let no one close, she had taken control of the world and filled it with fear. That was exactly why she’d lost and had been sealed. Lufas had not been the strongest being in the world. She may have been the most powerful, but she had also been the weakest. As she was now, she could honestly admit that.
“Do you think so too...? Do you also think that what I was doing was not saving them...?”
There was a moment of silence. Then, Sei said, “I think that you truly are kind. You truly wanted to save them; at least, that’s what I think. But you’re too powerful. You can’t even understand what it means to be saved. I mean, you’ve never once been saved yourself, after all. And no one’s ever been around to correct you either.”
The Goddess was not some sort of villain. She was just deeply mistaken. So why was she mistaken? When had she become mistaken? Why had no one corrected her? All that was proof that she had never once been saved by someone else.
“You are the one that needs saving first, Goddess Alovenus!”
“Grk... Urggh...!”
Alovenus’s expression warped and twisted as she looked at Sei. She couldn’t understand him. He was the most worthy of being saved; he was a pure human who should have been saved first and foremost. Even so, the boy had just rejected her and told her that she was the one who needed saving.
Just what have I been doing, then? Is he seriously saying that I’ve spent all this time, this eternity, simply going around in circles fruitlessly? I won’t accept it. It’s not true!
With that, Alovenus disappeared completely from the world of Sei’s inner psyche. For her, this had been an undisguisable, inexcusable rout.