"You can have it all," I said, narrowing my eyes as I watched her.
This didn't feel like a coincidence, not even slightly.
Liliana. That was the name she went by in the game, no middle name, no surname, just Liliana.
"Really?" she asked, her voice soft and uncertain as she looked at me, and I nodded. She stepped forward and started cutting into the meat the same way I had done, quiet and careful about it.
At first glance she looked fragile, almost delicate, but that was about as far from the truth as you could get, because Liliana was one of the most powerful villainesses in the entire game, and her arc was the one I could never clear no matter how many times I tried, the third arc of the seventh act, the one called The Hurt One.
But what was she doing here? None of this added up. Was she involved in the first Arten Raid somehow?
I didn't think so.
[So what are you going to do now?]
Can you tell me what's going on? I thought back.
[Privilege.]
Screw you.
I turned my attention back to her. "Where did you come from?" I asked, hoping to get something useful out of her.
Liliana wasn't just any villainess, she was the ultimate villain of the entire game, with powers that had no clear upper limit, and I was pretty convinced that the supposed ten acts mentioned in the guide were a flat out lie, because I never managed to beat her once. No matter how much I leveled up the protagonist and his harem, cough, companions, she was always ahead.
When the game started she had been an ally, staying close to the protagonist through the first three acts, but everything changed during a specific background event that I had tried countless times to prevent and never could, which was her second awakening, the point where she started pulling away from the protagonist and aligning herself with someone else entirely.
With Amael.
Yeah.
It happened during the Darkness Arc, the sixth arc of the second act, and I hated that arc more than almost any other part of the game. The first year students were on an exam on a desolate island in the Higher Realm, and everything was going fine until agents from the Order of the Voiceless God showed up hunting for the avatars of the primordial gods, and from there everything fell apart. The worst part was that the protagonist had to choose who to save, and with so many people to protect he inevitably left Liliana behind, and by the time he reached her, Amael had already gotten there first.
That was when she awakened.
It was like one of those NTR scenarios I couldn't stand, and no matter what I tried I couldn't get the protagonist to her in time. Looking back now, it was Amael's death in the fifth act that drove her over the edge in the seventh, the thing that started her descent.
"I... I came from..." she began, but her words trailed off and started again without getting anywhere.
Right. The game never gave her a proper backstory.
"So you don't really have a specific place you call home?" I offered, trying to make it easier for her, and she paused and looked at me for a moment.
"Hm." She nodded once and took another bite of the meat.
A very cute monster.
[Somehow that description is accurate.]
"I've always lived in the forest," she said finally, her voice quiet and even, "I don't have a home."
I stared at her.
Wait.
What?