BZzzzztt!!

Aphrodite's otherworldly form started to spasm and release unknown waves of pink and white, causing the world to feel a powerful pressure. A pressure that contained within it all the soul-wrenching pain the Goddess of Love had kept bottled up since time immemorial.

Her big, beautiful pink eyes softened as she ignored her own body. "It looks like my time, too, is up," she said as she went back to running her hands through Azmodeus's fluffy hair. "Some part inside me hoped that you would wake up and we would ride our way to eternity… together…"

"But the main part of me knows that is not possible," she murmured as she took her husband's head off her lap and gently laid it down on the flowing green grass.

As parts of Aphrodite's immaculate figure chipped off and blew into the wind, the way she looked at Azmodeus never changed.

When around 30% of her body had chipped away, she suddenly turned her head down and bit her lips. "This will be the last time," she mumbled. "The last time that I'll bother you with my presence."

The wind whistled and the moon's glow focused on the Goddess of Love's sorrowful words as she couldn't bring herself to look at the man whom she had forcefully succumbed to excruciating torture for countless millennia.

"...I always was annoying, wasn't I?" She suddenly said in a tearful voice. "Every version of myself was always in your way… They cared not for what they lacked or what their presence meant for your aspirations…"

"I've always just wanted to be closer to you…"

"...Was that so much to ask…? To want to return to the way that things once were…"

"To return to him…?"

Drip, Drop. Drip, Drop.

Dark stormy clouds formed in the previously clear skies as an onslaught of rain beat down on a pitiful girl that had already been beaten down to the dirt for her entire life.

Azmodeus was her salvation. He was her escape from her terrible, controlled life in a birdcage.

And yet even he, too, left her…

"...In the end," Aphrodite mumbled as she ran her hand through Azmodeus's hair one last time. "I never got to tell you that we had a daughter…."

Drip, Drop! Drip, Drop!

The rain suddenly increased in intensity. It poured down so hard that Aphrodite's cracked, beautiful face was shrouded by the droplets streaming from her eyes. Her expression was completely out of view as she clenched the hem of her dress until the whites of her knuckles were visible.

"I-I named her No-Nora… Don't you remember…?" She said in tears. "T-Thatt wass the name that yo-you told me not to c-choose…"

Aphrodite's goddess facade cracked and shattered as she broke down into tears and let the waterworks work together with the rain to stain the soil.

"S-She always used to ask about her papa," she murmured in bits and pieces. "I-I… I… I would tell her that her papa was out fighting the strongest of monsters… I.. I would tell her that he would one day emerge victorious and return home to his two girls…"

By this point, Aphrodite was already bawling her eyes out as her cracked nails dug into the mushy soil right next to her husband.

"...It… It has been 500 Chaos Eras since that point in time… After… After a while, Nora would no longer ask about where her Papa was… W-Whenever I would bring up the matter and tell her that you would be home soon, she would put on a facade and wear a fake smile… And… And she would tell me that it would a-all be okay…"

"Th-That 'we' would all be okay…!"

Drip, Drop! Drip, Drop!! Drip, Drop!!!

"But everything would not be okay!! I was not okay!! I am still not okay!!!"

Aphrodite poured out all her pent-up emotions right along with the rain, letting the man she loved more than eternity know how she felt!

No response.

Aphrodite dug her hands into the dirt so hard that her nails cracked and broke off. However, even with blood oozing out of her fingers, eyes, and lips, she never once heeded the pain and relented.

"Just like before," she murmured in an almost inaudible tone. "Just like before… you don't respond to me…"

After a moment of lying there, Aphrodite suddenly turned her head up and stared right at her husband. "I bet you would hate me more than you already do if you knew that, contrary to last time, I would be the one to leave you this time," she said as she forced a smile, trying her best to stop more tears from falling.

CRACK—

"This time… I got one over on you…"

As the last of her body cracked and fluttered into the wind, Aphrodite made sure that her joyous smile and tear-stained face were the last thing she ever showed in front of her husband.

"I hope you find your happiness… away from me," she said in despair.

"...This is my final goodbye…"

Aphrodite's saddeningly fake smile was the last thing to vanish into the wind as her entire existence faded into oblivion.

—-------

A few minutes after Aphrodite's final departure.

"Humu…?"

Azmodeus slowly opened his drowsy eyes and leaned up from the grass. He immediately felt that something was not right, but he was unable to pinpoint what exactly that something was.

"Why don't I remember how I got here?" He asked himself in confusion. "And why do I feel like I was here with someone, or multiple people, but I can't remember who they were…?"

There were so many unexplainable questions, but no one left to answer them…

After a few seconds of getting nowhere in his brooding, Azmodeus shook his head to clear his mind. He then rose from the ground and refocused on his goals.

First and foremost, he needed to make his way back to the Omega Dome and take up a long-term mission that would bring him to one of the neighboring nations. As a 3rd Generation Knight Apprentice, he had every right to request this.

If possible, though, Azmodeus hoped he could receive a mission that kept him away from the Omega Knights. If it were all possible, he would prefer to tell them that he wished to 'prove himself by himself' and go in as a lone wolf.

...

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by lotustale.com