Chapter 186: Once Again (5)
“AHHHCK!”
“FATHER!”
Aisha and Abel’s voice erupted with despair.
In an instant, Hades lost his balance and stumbled, falling to his knees. All kinds of things crossed his mind.
What more could he do, after having fallen to his knees in an instant before Gaionia? Gaionia, who he thought he would be able to kill without question?
Would he be able to… hold the sword with his left arm?
Sling-
Gaionia took out the sword of Santcria out of his chest.
He placed the sword handle in Hades’ left hand himself in gentle manner.
Without any time to assume his intentions, Gaionia’s hand ran up the blade slowly and forcefully broke it.
Clank-!
‘The weapon of the one who does not believe in god.’ Unlike its name, it was destroyed and was rolling on dirt.
A hollow laugh escaped between Hades’ lips.
The way Gaionia placed hope in his hands just to break it the next moment.
Indeed, it was so like him, just like he has put his children in eternal suffering.
[Did a mere human, dream of killing me and stealing away my child?]
“You bastard…!”
Hades immediately waved the broken sword threateningly but it did not reach Gaionia. Gaionia lightly took a step back and changed his arm once more.
His arm turned like a sharp awl and pierced through Hades’ stomach.
“Heurgh!”
“F-f-fath…”
Surprised, Abel couldn’t even dare to shed tears with his eyes open wide.
Abel was trying still trying to approach him even in that situation. Hades held him back with his intact arm and shook his head.
Blood leaked out of his dry lips.
“Enough! Enough! Please!” Aisha howled with a hoarse voice.
The small fist kept punching at the protection layer and started to bleed.
Blam, blam-
As if that wasn’t enough, Aisha banged her head too as she sobbed.
Blood flowed from her broken forehead onto the transparent layer.
[…]
Gaionia’s face became distorted from his indifferent expression as he saw Aisha.
He pointed with his chin and the layer holding her back disappeared at once.
“Your Grace!”
Taking unsteady steps as she almost stumbled a few times, Aisha half-crawled as she ran and sat before Hades on her knees.
“Ah, huu…”
Blood was pouring out of his severed arm and punctured stomach. Hades was forcing his eyes right open, seemingly finding it difficult to keep his sanity.
She couldn’t dare even touch him anywhere. Unable to do anything, Aisha merely sobbed.
“Don’t cry.”
“H-how, how can I…”
Hades discarded his sword and raised his left hand to slowly pat Aisha’s cheek.
Aisha’s two hands reached towards the wound on his stomach with a hollow hole on it. Aisha’s insignificant looking wounded hand was soon drenched in blood.
Was she not permitted to save Hades? No matter how much she tried to wield her powers, it was no use. Not even a handful of mana left in her restless body moved as she pleased.
“Ah, huu… Ahh, please…”
She could sense Hades’ breath getting more and more rougher. His face was planted onto Aisha’s shoulder limply.
Embracing Hades’ body with trembling arms, Aisha looked up at Gaionia’s indifferent face.
“Please…”
[Do you wish for him to live?]
Gaionia asked and Aisha closed her sobbing mouth shut and nodded like a madwoman.
Gaionia stared at her in silence and asked once more.
[Would you die in his stead? If I ask you to cut off your arm for him, would you do so?]
His cruel question could be heard even from a distance. Michael flinched as he listened.
It was clear what he wanted from that question.
But Aisha has not gained her sanity. There was no way she would give him the answer he wanted.
“Yes, yes, father. Yes. This man has no fault. It’s all because of me, see? Please punish me instead.”
Michael was about to step in but halted with a troubled face.
As expected, Gaionia’s face froze stiff.
Then he walked over and reached out to grab Hades by his head.
The body was limply separated away from Aisha’s arms, thrown on the ground as he coughed up blood.
“Ah!”
The moment Aisha tried to reach him in surprise, Gaionia’s sharp arms stood before her.
[Don’t ever, keep another being you value more than yourself.]
Squelch-!
Gaionia struck his arm deeply into Hade’s thigh, as he lay on the ground semi-conscious.
“Ahhhgh!”
As Aisha shouted and charged in surprise, Gaionia ruthlessly twisted the arm running through Hades’ thigh.
Aisha held back her breath with hands clasping over her mouth.
She could not stop him. It would only provoke Gaionia more.
No matter what she did here, her actions were making Gaionia more and more enraged.
[You may love me and your siblings. I and your siblings never put you in pain and never ask for your sacrifice.]
“Enough of…” Michael approached them without them knowing and cut in. Gaionia’s gaze was upon him. “… Your bullshit, please. You have driven this girl to the very edge like this right now. Look at her if you have eyes. She is suffering. It isn’t anyone else but you who made her like this. Get to your senses, please.”
[Would she be in suffering if those things never existed in the first place?]
Gaionia stared closely at Hades and Abel and tilted his head.
With an extremely indifferent expression, he once again added force into his hand.
“Ahhgh! Enough!” Aisha wailed.
The pierced leg was all tattered, almost about to snap off.
Looking at the awful scene, Michael bit his lips and turned his head and Aisha clasped her hand around her mouth holding back her tears.
[Do not blame me, children. My only fault is that I did not think that you would be in pain and create beings that would trouble your mind.]
Hearing those words, Aisha just gave up on thinking altogether.
Hades was within her dazed gaze. His ragged body doesn’t seem to even feel pain anymore. His face wasn’t even wincing, quietly staring at her.
Clasping her hand over her mouth to hold back her tears, Aisha drooped her head limply.
Perhaps from the start…
this might have been an absurd hope.
Why did she think that?
That she would be able to beg for Hades’ life at least if she bowed before Gaionia’s feet and pleaded.
Just why did she have such expectations? Aisha admitted. Aisha had no idea of Gaionia, who she thought she knew so well. Not even one bit.
No. There has not been a single moment she understood him properly from the start. He wasn’t an understandable being.
Thoughts of god is too distant from those of humans, attempts to understand him were always in vain.
Everything was because I love you, he says.
“Ah…”
Aisha reached her hand slowly towards Hades. His left arm also limply tilted to grab Aisha’s approaching hand.
Aisha almost crawled on her knees towards him and embraced ragged Hades with struggles.
“I’m sorry.”
An apology she once heard before. Aisha’s lips tilted into a hollow smile.
“I thought, I could, do it…”
“No, don’t speak anymore.”
“I would have, made you…”
“It’s alright. I am, I am fine.”
Cough-
Hades once more spewed red blood.
Drawing a heavy breath, Aisha quietly placed her forehead on Hades’. She could barely feel the slim breath that was barely there.
“I, promised. that I…. would, f-hagh-free y-you. That’s what I…”
“Huu… d-don’t die. please. Don’t die.”
“What, do I do… you, you would once again, kegh…”
Though I asked him to kill me, sick of the painful punishment of life, after a certain point, what I said was all meaningless.
I wanted to live on and the reason was probably because of you.
The meaning of life I had finally grasped collapsed like so, how would I be able to live as whole?
From now on, even breathing alone without you would be sin.
“…I’m sorry.”
Even down to the last goodbye, the future was cruelly the same.
Aisha held Hades’ sagging body and raised her head with difficulty.
Her expression was hollow with nothing left.
Gaionia narrowed his eyes as he looked closely at her.
A sensation so foreign that it’s almost being engraved into the heart.
It was probably his child’s emotion infecting him as well. The child he made, the child he loved the most without a question.
[Let us return.]
Though he had exhausted all the mana seeping out of his punctured heart, it would naturally recover with the passage of time.
Gaionia wanted to destroy his ‘first world’ recreated by Procreathor’s involvement and return to the happy past.
Along with Genus and Ignis, who were still here…
[Now that soul will no longer reincarnate. Not only that one, but also every being in this world apart from you and Ignis will be the same.]
Aisha raised her head with difficulties and stared at Gaionia.
Seeing her hollow eyes with no emotions left pained him
It was so sad.
To see his children in sadness.
[But the life you regarded as a punishment and suffered through will also be over. Doesn’t that make you relieved?]
Though he tried to soothe her, not wanting to see her upset anymore, her hollow expression did not change.
It was like the time when he created humans for the first time, when the humans were made of mud, and just responded to everything as Gaionia had made them to, as he had not given them emotions yet.
Gaionia shouted in rage.
[Why aren’t you happy? When I love you and I can do anything for you, why aren’t you happy? What meaning does that being hold to you, even?]
It bothered him that there was a sense of that thing’s soul left within the body.
A burning red aura was lingering around Aisha as she held the cooling down body tightly.
As Gaionia decided to end it once and for all and took a step forward, Aisha spoke in a limp voice.
“Save him…”
[…]
“I will suffer through eternity, even apart from the punishment you have given me. So please… save him.”
[What?]
Ever since she was bound by the fetters of punishment, she had always pleaded to end her painful life. There was no single exception.
Yet right now, she was saying she was okay with living in pain all her life even if it meant killing her child’s soul for her whole life.
[If you forget everything, you wouldn’t miss him either. You wouldn’t even think of him. Just as before, you would merely be…]
“Just kill us.” Michael’s cold voice cut in. “If you have no intention of granting her wish, just kill us all instead. It is you we despise the most. A life of a doll by your side is worthless compared to death itself. So just kill us.”
“N-no…”
After Michael’s voice that seemed to have given up everything, a trembling child’s fear-stricken voice could be heard.
Aisha and Michael’s head slowly turned towards someone.
It was Deborah.
She was trembling her hand in an almost sickly manner and stared at Michael with resentment.
“I-I don’t want to die. Why did you bring me here?”
Deborah sniffled and crawled with her tiny body and held onto Gaionia’s feet.
“F-Father. I don’t want to die. Please, spare-spare me. I really knew nothing. Please.”