Chapter 61
When Pellene opened her eyes again, she couldn’t believe the situation.
Why me? Why? Even though I was a god, I died. I endured that painful process and obtained eternal rest—so why?
“Waaah!”
“Oh my goodness, my lady, congratulations! A beautiful baby girl has been born!”
“You did well, madam. Truly, you worked so hard.”
“Oh, Promeon, thank you…!”
Though trapped in the body of a human infant, Pellene’s memories remained intact.
It would have been better if her mind and psyche had also been at the level of a newborn, but tragically, Pellene was not granted forgetfulness.
Unable even to hold up her own head, her shortened limbs flailing weakly, Pellene wailed—not for the usual reasons babies cry, but for entirely different ones.
Ah, so my punishment wasn’t annihilation. It was reincarnation.
Because she could forget nothing, the punishment was all the more dreadful. Calling it punishment was almost too mild; it was closer to a curse. An endless, unknowable retribution.
Years passed, centuries passed, yet the punishment remained. Her soul, already ancient beyond thousands of years even before reincarnating into a human body, could not endure the fresh, tender flesh of a newborn and gradually began to wither.
As the gap between soul and body deepened, the body, too, was affected. The newly born Pellene was frail from early childhood.
Only after realizing what it meant to be physically weak did Pellene weep miserably at the pain she felt throughout her body.
Illness, pain, a painfully slow rate of growth, and a human lifespan far too short compared to the interminably long childhood—she had never understood it when she was merely observing humans, but experiencing it firsthand revealed how suffocating such a life truly was.
Hermane. Promeon. My precious friends who betrayed me. The great king and the hero who made me like this.
Did you feel like this too? Did you feel trapped like this? Was it because it felt unfair that only you were in that position, because you wanted to transcend humanity and become equal to the gods, that you dared to covet what belonged to others?
No… no. That can’t be it. You were born human from the start. You couldn’t possibly have felt this kind of suffocation. You can’t long for what you never had.
But having something taken away from you is an entirely different matter.
Pellene had originally been a free and powerful god. Now she was bound within a comparatively weak and finite body—and worse, an especially sickly one.
This was the price she paid for pitying such a paltry race, befriending them, and granting them her trust.
It was a perfect punishment. A truly effective atonement. Thanks to it, she had come to clearly understand just how great a sin she had committed in the past.
So now it’s enough, isn’t it?
Pellene cried out inwardly to the gods who had abandoned her. Then, without the slightest hesitation, she stepped onto the windowsill and stood.
“Miss!”
The moment the maid screamed and reached out, the child leapt down with the graceful motion of a dancer.
Her first life as a human ended in suicide.
Pellene opened her eyes again. This time, she was in the body of a boy, and the home was poor.
She despaired at the realization that reincarnation did not end with a single time, and cursed the supreme god who had taken her life without even telling her exactly how many times she would have to endure this.
As soon as her body became old enough to walk, she once again took her own life. This time, unable to find a tall building, she jumped into a river.
Dying with her head shattered and dying with her lungs filled with water were both similarly painful, but if she had to compare, the latter hurt slightly more.
Her third life was once again in the body of a girl. Not as wealthy as the first life, not as destitute as the second—and unlike before, she now had three older siblings.
This time, instead of wailing desperately and flailing her short limbs, she quietly stayed in her new mother’s arms and obediently drank milk.
Let’s calm down and think rationally. I don’t even know how many times I have left. I can’t keep throwing tantrums like this and ending everything meaninglessly every time.
Even dying had become tiresome. The first and second times had been acts of rage, but after ending two lives in succession, emptiness washed over her and even pain became boring.
I need to find out whether there’s a way to reduce or eliminate this punishment. I have to find the gods somehow. At the very least, I need to beg them.
The mind of a soul thousands of years old, trapped in the body of a newborn, began to turn calmly. Pellene set her goal seriously.
And Promeon… I want to know what kind of punishment that bastard received.
At some point, the way she referred to him had changed from “that boy” to “that bastard.” A not entirely unjustified anger, placing all the blame on that human, flared like a cold fire.
I hope he’s suffering at least as much as I am.
The gods had declared that Promeon, too, would pay for his sin, though they had never said how. She was curious what form that atonement had taken.
She hoped that his punishment was at least as severe as hers—no, far greater and heavier.
The longer she had cherished and trusted him, the greater the betrayal and the deeper the wound. Her rage turned into hatred and clung hideously to her heart.
She felt certain that no matter how many times she was reborn, this grudge would never fade.
Pellene first tried to understand the era and country into which she had been reborn.
In her first reincarnation, she had been born in a completely different generation from Promeon and Hermane. In her second, she had taken her life in despair before she could even grasp the situation.
Only after inhabiting a human body for the third time did she begin to properly take interest in her surroundings.
As a result, she learned that she had been born as the daughter of a low-ranking noble in a kingdom called Hermeon, founded not long ago—and that Hermane and Promeon had been engraved in legend as a great king and a hero, respectively.
They’re already in the realm of legend? Not even history, but legend?
Just how much time had passed? And if more time passed, would they be elevated from legend to myth and preserved there?
Humans who were not gods, yet ruling over myth—it seemed deeply contradictory to Pellene.
Then again, both legends and myths were ultimately human stories, so perhaps it wasn’t such a contradiction after all.
As soon as she reached an age where it would not be strange for her to read, she ran straight to the study and devoured history books.
Humans, who had once had no writing, now recorded events and thoughts in letters and passed knowledge down to later generations. It was a phonetic script, far simpler and more efficient than the ideographic script Pellene had used when she was a god.
According to the history books, this script was the masterpiece of King Hermane. Knowing how intelligent Hermane had been in life, Pellene did not doubt the truth of that claim.
There was, however, one puzzling point. Like fire, writing had originally been the exclusive domain of the gods, and they had arrogantly guarded it, fearing humans might covet their treasures.
Regardless, Pellene could easily imagine Hermane daring to create letters herself for the sake of the humans she ruled, even at the risk of divine retribution. That was the kind of irreverent king she had always been.
And yet, it was strange that the other gods had not punished Hermane and had instead left her alone. No matter how thoroughly Pellene searched the records, she could find no mention of the king incurring the gods’ wrath.
Could it be… that they no longer had the power to punish humans? Because Promeon stole the fire?
Pellene recalled the curses she had hurled at the other gods before being struck down by the supreme god’s lightning.
The gods’ golden age had passed. They no longer possessed the power to control humanity as effectively as before, and that was why they had grown even more fearful and enraged when Promeon stole their precious weapon.
Perhaps they still had enough power to impose the punishment of reincarnation on Pellene, a fellow god, but not enough to punish an insolent human king who had imitated them by creating writing.
As evidence, in the era of Pellene’s third reincarnation, humans no longer worshipped the old gods.
Once-crowded temples had been closed and reduced to mere ruins of the past. Ancient rites had been forgotten, and old religions had shattered into fragments, surviving only as faint legends in human memory.
The gods… disappeared? Am I the only one left here? Did they go to another world?
In despair that made it feel as though the world were collapsing, Pellene weakly speculated.
This vast universe surely held more than one world, so it was likely that the weakened gods had sought a new home and crossed into another dimension. But if that were truly the case…
Then how am I supposed to find you? I have to find you to make this punishment of reincarnation stop!
Having lost her divine power and bound to a human body, Pellene no longer had the ability to open gates between dimensions and pursue the other gods. Her heart went cold with fear and hopelessness.
And what happened to that bastard Promeon? Don’t tell me I’m the only one who was punished…
If the gods, having lost their dominance over humanity after having their fire and weapons stolen, neither punished Hermane nor remained in this world, then Promeon might also have escaped without any punishment at all.
The thought that she alone was suffering, trapped in this frail human body, while the one who betrayed her and caused all this might have gotten away scot-free, made her blood feel as though it were boiling backward.
Pellene searched for records of Promeon, combing through every history book within reach. The result was not pleasing.
The hero Promeon, who first mastered the use of fire, passed away at a young age. After the hero’s death, his lover, King Hermane, laid the foundations of humanity’s first nation.
Died young? That could hardly be considered a complete punishment.
Humans generally feared death, so an early death might have been sufficient atonement, but Pellene, who had come to hate her former friend, wanted him to suffer far more severely.
The one remaining hope she had was the possibility that Promeon’s death, though recorded in history, might not have been a simple death.
Maybe you, too, were subjected to the punishment of reincarnation like me.
The thought that Promeon, who had died back then, might now be living in this same world in a different form made her heart race with an indescribable emotion.
If that’s true… could I meet you again someday?
If we meet again, I want to kill you with my own hands. I want to see you weeping and begging for forgiveness. Gritting her teeth, Pellene let her grudge burn.
