When creating avatars, the Goddess would always birth them from human hosts. He had human parents, just like Dina. He was different from the other ouroboroses, who had been fully formed from nothing. He was birthed as a human in order to better understand his role as a child of divinity, and so he could be closer to humanity as a whole, blending in with them. This, in turn, saved him from a tight spot.
However, even though he’d survived, he lost all his power. On top of that, he would surely be completely erased if he were to ever be found by Alovenus, so he had no choice but to run and hide disgracefully. Unable to go out and interact with the world at large, the only way he was allowed to spend his days was in hiding, scared of the Goddess’s wrath.
Normally, this would be the end of it. He would have most likely just spent eternity unable to act, with hiding as his only recourse. At first, unable to fully give up, he had used what little remaining power as the Goddess’s avatar he had left to stop his own time, indefinitely lengthening his life span in a bid to survive. One day, my chance will come, he believed. One day, I will be able to make a comeback.
However, a hundred years passed. Then a thousand, ten thousand, and eventually resignation took over his heart. This was all just impossible from the beginning. Even the ouroboroses are basically dust in front of the Goddess. Not just the ouroboroses—even Mizgarz and the rest of the universe are just a speck to her. How am I supposed to win against someone like that? I, who lost all his power as an ouroboros and more?
This resignation sapped him of all hope, and eventually, he allowed his own time to move again. He had a long life span, but as a living creature with his internal time in motion, he would eventually reach the end of his life span. Either that, or he would starve and die.
Having fully sunk into despair, he sought a peaceful end as a base creature. If he had been left alone, the man would surely have died with no one noticing. The man himself also considered that to be a fine option.
There is no hope in the world of man, no justice, and my very reason for existing was rejected by the Goddess. There is nothing I want, and nothing of beauty exists in the world. So it would be best for me to just disappear like this... he thought.
“Um... Dina?”
That was why the voice he’d heard was like the gospel of happiness come to his side.
Having put up a human-repellent barrier, no one should have been able to get close. However, the girl had a bracelet that would locate an agent of the Goddess and warp her there. The bracelet had led Virgo to him, who possessed the same signature as Dina.
Seeing the girl, the man’s breath caught in his throat. How beautiful, he thought. He wasn’t looking at her face or figure. The soul he saw was whiter than any he’d ever seen.
The shock that ran through him was like lightning. For the first time since his birth, he’d fallen in love with somebody. For the first time, he’d found something or somebody he wanted.
The time spent talking with the girl, Virgo, became an irreplaceable treasure to the man, and every day he waited in anticipation for her arrival. This might even have been the first time he felt that being alive was a good thing, as well as the first time he’d ever felt happiness.
She made him happy, brought joy to his life, and allowed him the experience of having fun. The will to live, which he’d lost, came bubbling back within him. I want to look at that smile forever, he thought.
When she joyfully spoke about another man named “Minamijuujisei,” he finally realized that he was in love with her and realized what jealousy felt like. And yes, when she came to him with tears in her eyes, he realized what anger and hatred felt like.
Ah, I see now. No wonder they’re all stained black. The fact that such overflowing, uncontrollable emotion even existed inside of him surprised the man. I want her to remain smiling forever, he thought. I never want to see her cry.
That was why he couldn’t forgive the man who had brought her to tears. Hearing that this man’s life span would mean leaving Virgo behind soon made that feeling even worse. Someday, she would again be left crying. Someday, when she lost this man, she would be left wailing in lament.
He paused. Unforgivable. This mustn’t be allowed to happen, he thought.
That was why the man—Sanieve—resolved the following. I will protect this girl’s smile, even if I have to kidnap her to do it. The world doesn’t matter anymore. He no longer cared what happened to Mizgarz, what the Goddess thought, or anything else. To Sanieve, neither his mission as an ouroboros nor his mission as an agent of divinity was worth thinking about anymore.
I can live for just one person. If I have the strength to protect this girl, that’s fine with me.
So, Sanieve put Virgo to sleep, deciding to forcefully take her along with him. She might resent me for this, but that’s fine with me. She might even come to hate me, but that too is... No, I don’t think I’d like that. Just imagining it has me close to tears. Still, I can do anything for her. I can become a demon for her. I can make the entire world my enemy. I can even face down the Goddess. For this girl’s smile, I would happily become hated by everyone else. Yes, let’s turn the world into an enemy.
Sanieve looked down at the sleeping girl lovingly. Then, he brought his lips close to hers...
He hesitated. “No, this isn’t gentlemanly. It must be mutual.”
As if swearing to protect her, he brought his lips to the back of her hand.
After that, he used his powers as an offshoot of the Goddess to read Virgo’s memories, taking special care to avoid her more private moments.
As I am now, I can’t just take her away. I don’t have the power.
According to Virgo, there were many other level 1000 monsters in this age besides her. Sanieve was not so arrogant as to believe that he could escape from them, so he searched through Virgo’s memories for something that would allow him to retake his complete form. What he wanted was something akin to a lump of high-purity mana. If Sanieve could get his hands on that, he might even be able to reconstruct his ouroboros body. But there’s no way something like that would just be conveniently...
“There is one,” Sanieve said after a moment’s pause.
Sanieve had found high-purity mana just conveniently lying around. This was not just a turn of phrase. The item he was looking for had truly just been dumped on the ground as if it didn’t matter. It was on the moon, in the back of a storeroom in Maphaahl Tower.
Knowing an especially dangerous item such as this was treated like trash made Sanieve’s head hurt. On the other hand, that also meant that Virgo’s master was insane enough to just stuff something like that in the back of a storeroom. Sanieve was lucky that Virgo had remembered it, and he was equally lucky that her master had seemed to have forgotten it.
Sanieve carefully created a crack in space—an Exgate—and shoved his hand through it. Quickly, before anyone notices but without hurrying. In basically an instant, he had taken what he wanted from the storeroom and closed the gate. What he had in his hands was something that Lufas had created some time ago and completely forgotten about—a golden apple.