Sanieve held his hand over Virgo, who was assaulted with an intense sleepiness, making her eyelids heavy.
Virgo was, in fact, level 1000, and though she was immature, she was still a member of the Imperial Thirteen Heavenly Stars. It was only natural that she was resistant to status effects, and sleep should not have worked on her. The fact that Sanieve had managed to pierce through those resistances was not normal.
Se...i...
Eventually, Virgo was unable to resist anymore and fell asleep, and Sanieve hugged her limp body close.
ＥＸ－５
In the past, the Goddess brought six ouroboroses, powerful dragons, into the world. They were arbitrators made to maintain this world’s balance, and each embodied one of the seven elements that existed in the world. The Ouroboros of the Sun, Ouroboros of the Moon, Ouroboros of Fire, Ouroboros of Earth, and Ouroboros of Wood all presided over their respective elements.
Finally, there was the Goddess’s avatar, an offshoot of Alovenus born with her memories and a portion of her power in order to be her representative. As the leader of the ouroboroses, the avatar was given the two elements the Goddess preferred the most—the dual elements of Water and Metal. This ouroboros that would be the Goddess’s agent was given the name Ouroboros of Heaven in order to signify that it was filled with heavenly will.
Though it was supposed to be something like a clone of the Goddess, the Ouroboros of Heaven was given a male’s body to further strengthen it in combat. However, that was most likely when everything started to go wrong. In order to better lead people, he was given the ability to see the color of their souls. Those who were just had souls that shone white, while evil people’s souls were stained black. This specific ability was chosen so that he could avoid judging those who were pure and judge those who were evil when no one else would. The mission given to him by the Goddess was to persecute the evil and protect the good.
This was the second mistake. Because of those eyes, he ended up going down the wrong path. Black, black, black—everyone, everywhere is black. To him, the least objectionable souls were those of newborn children, who were born gray because of a lack of good or evil in them. As people grew, their souls gradually darkened, getting further and further from the ideal white. There were only a handful of souls that trended towards good. The vast majority were black, and they were both fleeting and weak.
The ouroboros grieved. Why are humans so wretched? Why do they so easily step onto the path of evil?
The small section of good people became fodder because of their good nature, forced to suffer misfortune throughout their whole lives before dying without being rewarded for it. Meanwhile, the more skilled the evildoers were at deceiving and using others, the more they were able to heap misfortune on other people while they themselves were able to sip on sweet nectar and be happy. Justice did not win against evil. Whoever won became justice.
The ouroboros was angry. No, this is not how the world should be.
Therefore, the ouroboros acted according to his duty and handed down judgment. He went on a rampage, heedless of what the Goddess had said, in an attempt to purge the world of black-souled people and only leave those with pure, white souls. However, if the evil people who comprised ninety-nine percent of the world had to be killed in order to save the just one percent, then the world of humans would no longer be able to function. It was true that those with just souls ought to be commended, but how could society and the whole of the human world be expected to survive if all who were left were babies and saints, who were unable to calculate profit and loss?
The idea that if the world was only full of good people, then everyone would be happy was neither a good nor realistic outlook. In fact, it was only allowed in fairy tales for children. Reality was different. In reality, people who could calculate profit and loss and were able to make the heartless decisions that were sometimes necessary were needed to make the world turn. People were creatures with intelligence, and that came with a certain measure of malignancy. Having intelligence also meant having cunning. If evil were removed from people, then all that would remain were humans without intelligence, like Adam and Eve. They would no longer really be people. Instead, they’d be more like monkeys.
Of course, that didn’t mean the truly incorrigibly evil fiends of the world should be respected. Humanity had its own rules—rules to protect the group, and rules that needed to be respected. These rules were called laws, and they had to be abided by. Those who couldn’t do so were free to be judged. All this meant was that those who couldn’t follow the rules were unneeded. This followed the rules of nature as well, as even in the animal kingdom, those outliers would be exiled from the group.
From a different perspective, those who could follow the rules were deemed compatible, even if they were evil, and they would never be persecuted for it. If a hypocrite were to keep up their lies all the way to their death, fooling everyone, then they were no different from the real thing. On the other hand, if a person were to break the law and force their sense of justice onto others, then they would be deemed incompatible with society and tried for it, no matter how good their intentions were.
In short, justice in the world of people was one of intelligence and reason. What was considered evil within it was basically just a lack of those qualities.
The Ouroboros of Heaven did not understand that. He, who could see the color of a person’s soul, could only display his disgust at those who were evil while prizing those who were good. In a sense, he was pure.
However, being pure was not an excuse. It didn’t matter what his motives were. Massacring the vast majority of people would make him a wicked deity rather than an agent of divinity, and his actions would be considered a curse rather than divine judgment. So, it was only natural that he be tried for his actions. Those who greatly deviated from the rules of the group would be eliminated. Not even an ouroboros was an exception.
“That’s weird. Why did he fail so badly? Because he was a man? Because I gave him too much power? Or maybe because of his ability to see the color of people’s souls? Hmm... Well, whatever. Let’s just take this failure as a lesson for the future, and just get rid of him for now. Good work. Now it’s time to disappear.”
The last thing he’d heard was the Goddess’ voice. The infuriatingly carefree notice was one of imminent, inescapable death.
Just as Dina was unable to resist being taken over, he was unable to resist the Goddess’s will as her offshoot. As such, the poor ouroboros who idealized humanity too much was erased by the Goddess. Later, his name would be one-sidedly stolen by the Ouroboros of the Sun, who had taken over his position as leader of the ouroboroses.
Later, Alovenus would create Eros as a test attempt at an Ouroboros of Water, but in the end, he was a failure who would escape as well. As a result, the Goddess finally achieved balance by creating an avatar after omitting their role as an Ouroboros, shaving off a lot of power, and making their gender and personality as close to her own as possible. The newest iteration of those avatars was Dina, which meant that even all that didn’t stop them from rebelling against her. This Goddess could truly do no right.
However, the Ouroboros of Heaven—rather, the former Ouroboros of Heaven—was not fully dead. He had all his mana taken from him and was destroyed as both the Goddess’s offshoot and as an ouroboros. However, his human part was left alive, so he managed to barely survive.