Villain's Odyssey: Enslaving heroines, Conquering Villainesses
Chapter 35: Alter

Chapter 35: Chapter 35: Alter

A magnificent carriage powered by ether rolled down the busy streets, attracting the eyes of merchants, buyers, passersby, as well as beggars. A young man sat inside this luxurious machine and looked out the tinted glass of the window for a short while, before turning his attention back to the eyes of the maid seated across from him. The young man himself was dressed in a night-sky blue shirt and white trousers that contrasted sharply against the shirt, highlighting his silver hair that caught the filtered light streaming through the carriage windows.

"So... how long has it been since I arrived at the mansion?" the young man asked, looking directly into the lady’s emerald green eyes. Her hazel brown hair, styled in curls, flowed down her back in an elegant and majestic sway. She was dressed in black and white maid attire, which emphasized her dizzying curves.

"...It happened a week ago?" she said, and he frowned with what appeared to be genuine confusion.

One week? he thought, the timeline catching him off guard. He definitely hadn’t anticipated that length of recovery.

[Your soul had to recover from the effect of enslaving Vivian]

Soul?

[As I said... emotions are a part of the soul]

...

"I see... How about the healer... what happened to her?" he asked, making sure to pose the right questions that wouldn’t make him seem suspicious.

"She returned to her kingdom," she replied with professional detachment.

"...Um... so, am I headed to the academy now? ...isn’t that a bit too early?" he asked, allowing a note of uncertainty to creep into his voice.

"The duke wishes for your quick recovery," she said matter-of-factly.

In other words, he wants me out of the mansion as quickly as possible, he thought internally, confirming the suspicion he’d harbored about why the conversation with the duke seemed odd. It seems I didn’t fool him in the slightest, Azalea realized with growing concern.

[You don’t feel emotions... portraying them might not be as easy as you think]

Then with Anna... he thought, realizing his fears were founded. There was something going on behind the scenes. If it was true that he truly wasn’t displaying emotions as he should, that only meant she was seeing through him from the very beginning. But then, why did she begin to open up just like Vivian? What exactly was he missing? What exactly was this entity keeping from him?

If Anna and Vivian had seen through him from the very beginning, then that only meant he had a VERY huge problem brewing beneath the surface.

Is... it possible to unseal my emotions for a short period of time? he thought internally.

[It is possible... but you do understand what that means, right?]

I do, but I want to see how having emotions would feel like... I seem to have forgotten the sensation entirely, he admitted.

[But it would react to your blessing]

My blessing?

[Yes]

My enslaving blessing?

[No... that’s not a blessing. Are you not aware of your blessing?]

What blessing? Did I have a blessing? he thought, his eyes widening slightly despite his attempt to maintain composure.

[You did, and you still do. Wait a moment...]

[Analysis being carried out] a robotic voice suddenly reached his hearing, cold and mechanical in contrast to the entity’s usual tone. Suddenly, he felt a strange sensation wash over him—like invisible fingers probing the depths of his consciousness—but it lasted only a moment.

[I see,] the voice returned, sounding rather amused by whatever it had discovered.

What?

[It seems you yourself intentionally made yourself unaware of your own blessing]

WHAT?!

[Hmm... You are more interesting than I initially thought]

Azalea’s mind raced in overdrive to comprehend what he had just heard. How was it possible he had a blessing yet was unaware of it? Wasn’t he supposed to be unawakened? How then did he awaken a blessing in the first place? It made no sense whatsoever. And what did it mean that he was preventing himself from knowing?

Something isn’t right, he realized with growing unease. He couldn’t use ether for as long as his memory served him, and he knew damn well he wasn’t going senile. So there was something more to this puzzle he just wasn’t aware of. Was it the goddess’s influence? Perhaps. So was it the initial system he’d possessed that made him unaware about... wait, no. The entity clearly said HE HIMSELF had made HIMSELF unaware of HIS own blessing.

...Explain. No matter how much he analyzed it, his brain just wasn’t processing enough information to come up with a reasonable explanation. He was getting nowhere with pure speculation.

[...]

[DING!]

[Request: Recover hidden memories]

[Payment: 2 souls]

What? his eyes widened at this unexpected development.

[It’s about time, don’t you think... now you can ask as many questions as you want, with just the right price, of course,] the entity spoke into his head with what sounded suspiciously like satisfaction.

And now...

Now, Azalea finally understood the true nature of what he was dealing with.

This was no simple god or benevolent guide.

It was probably an entity related to death itself.

Souls, huh? he pondered. That only meant he would have to kill... a lot of people at that.

Fine, you will get your souls, but tell me this... Did I really compromise the barrier that day? Did I cause those deaths? he asked, a suspicion forming in his mind. His thoughts were piecing together fragments of a larger, more disturbing puzzle, and it seemed the situation was even more complex than he had allowed himself to believe.

Throughout his stay at the academy, aside from his mundane affairs—which involved hovering around Isabella or carrying out missions assigned by the system—there were times when he felt... strange. Certain times he would wake up somewhere, at some place he didn’t remember going to... or just wake up in his room without remembering when or how he had gotten there. Those times he had waved it off, thinking perhaps Isabella or someone else had carried him to his dorm after he’d collapsed from exhaustion... but now... now the pieces were starting to form a terrifying picture.

[...Yes]

His eyes widened in horror as the confirmation hit him like a physical blow.

An alter ego, he realized.

The revelation hit him like a sledgehammer. All this time, he hadn’t been the only one in control. There was another version of himself—one that acted when his conscious mind was dormant, one that apparently had access to powers and memories he didn’t even know existed.

Just how much could he even trust his own memories.

’This is problem,’ he thought.

It was really was a problem.

Could it be someone else was using him? Someone else asides the goddess?

"We are here?" He looked out the tinted window of the carriage to find a huge building.

The carriage stopped and he took a deep breath before walking out, his mind still processing what he had just heard. From what he could remember, he was clearly with Isabella and the rest of his classmates before the whole incident happened, so just how exactly did it happen? What exactly was he not seeing in all of this?

’Wait... what exactly is my blessing?’

[...It’s...]