[: Daniel POV :]

As the words left my lips, the room became silent.

The air seemed to thicken, carrying the weight of emotions suppressed for centuries.

Eirini, now a vessel for Goddess Penia, clutched her chest as tears formed in her eyes.

“He remembers… after all these years, he remembers…”

Penia whispered, her words barely audible.

The tears flowed down her cheeks, exposing all of the emotions she had concealed for centuries.

With tear-streaked cheeks, she approached me.

Her eyes, clouded by anguish, fixated on me as if seeking redemption for past failures.

“Daniel,” she whispered between sobs, “I failed him….”

“Grid suffered because of my choices”

“I.. couldn’t protect him, and now he’s gone forever…” She cried.

“Everything happened because of me!”

She screamed as the weight of her guilt tore her heart.

Her tear-streaked face displayed a kaleidoscope of madness, with eyes bloodshot and reddened from tears.

“I-If I had made a choice, I could have saved him!”

Her voice trembled, caught between the emotions of despair and madness.

The decision of her past had tormented her, driving her to the path of sorrow and insanity.

“I-I can’t even ask him for forgiveness…”

The words echoed with a haunting plea that lingered air.

At the same time, it seems like the goddess was lost in the ocean of regrets.

“M-My Grid is gone…and I can’t even save him!”

Madness took hold as she pulled at her hair.

It just shows how much the goddess had been consumed by her despair.

It was to the point that some of her strands had been torn away.

“Because of me!” She pulled her hair, “He’s dead!” She shouted.

While she was in madness, I stood calmly while watching her antics.

However, as the goddess was in sorrow, she turned towards me.

There was a glimmer of hope contained in her intense gaze.

Here it goes.

At that moment, her expression was distorted with a mixture of disbelief and yearning.

“Grid…?”

She whispered, the word escaping her lips like a fragile prayer. frёeweɓηovel.coɱ

Her widened eyes seemed to search for a familiar essence, a trace of the one she had lost.

“That’s right…you’re Grid!”

She declared with a false realization as she was trying to find a false desperate hope.

For a moment, silence reigned, broken only by the echoes of her fading cries.

“No, I’m not Grid,”

I spoke gently, attempting to dispel the misconception that had taken root in her distraught mind.

“No! You’re Grid!”

Yet, the goddess’s eyes refused to release her grip on the glimmer of hope she had found.

She approached me and she touched my chest, and her voice trembled as she uttered, “It’s you… I can feel him within you. You carry his essence.”

It seems the reason that she had was the same as the previous 3 Goddesses.

Just because I held their lover’s essence, they believed that I, too, was their incarnation.

Even though I try to sympathize with their feelings, what they’re doing to me is too much.

Even so, I gently pushed her hand away, attempting to dissolve the situation.

“I understand your pain, but I am not Grid”

“Even though I have inherited his powers, it doesn’t mean that I am him”

“Please don’t confuse me with him” I declared firmly.

“No, you’re Grid!”

However, her grief seemed to overshadow any attempt at consolation.

She even seems to be getting more violent as I can sense that she was boiling with rage.

“No matter what you say, you’re Grid!”

She forcibly grabbed my hand tightly and she gathered her strength as she didn’t allow me to escape.

“Don’t do this Eirini” I exclaimed.

“You can’t fool yourself with a false hope!” I added as I hoped my words would shatter her illusions.

However, that did not work.

Instead, it worsens the situation.

“I don’t care!” She shouted and she exuded a tremendous aura, far from anything I had experienced.

“Even if Grid is no longer here, you have inherited his essence, so that means you’re him!”

She declared and she was fooling herself even more.

“Which is why, this time, I won’t ever regret my actions,” She said.

With a look of madness, she gazed towards me and as I stared toward her blank eyes, Penia began moving closer towards me.

She was still holding my hand, and with her unlogical strength, I couldn’t move an inch.

Without knowing when she kissed me on the lips.

Even though I knew this would happen, I had tried to avoid it.

Yet, once again, I was caught in the goddess’s love lives.

I could feel her warm lips on mine and I never thought a goddess’s kiss could be so passionate and even daring.

It felt like she wanted to consume me whole.

Moreover, her tongue was twirling inside her mouth as though she was greedy for it.

She even freed her hands from my hands, but that doesn’t mean I could escape from her.

Instead, she placed her hands on my cheeks as she pulled me closer.

She didn’t stop kissing me and it felt like it was an eternity.

At the same time, I kept wondering why the Saintesses never helped me once.

But upon looking at them, I understood why.

For a moment, all of the 3 Saintesses were smiling eerily.

As I gazed at their eyes, it contained a different aura.

Perhaps, it was the aura that belonged to the Goddesses they believed in.

Afterwards, I realized that perhaps, all of these 4 Goddesses had worked and formed a plan.

I wasn’t sure, but I had a feeling that they created this mission to find a worthy vessel that could absorb their lovers’ essences.

Otherwise, a normal player would have exploded upon consuming the Forbidden King Fruit.

Now, I, who had fulfilled each of their mission flawlessly had fallen into their plans.

I knew that this was all my choice.

I was greedy for the forbidden king fruit powers, and now, I was caught in a more complicated situation.

I don’t regret my choice and as much as I hated how they were treating me, they didn’t harbour any bad intentions towards me.

A few minutes later, once Penia was satisfied with kissing me, she released her grasp on me.

“It has been a long time since I kissed…and I never felt this good…”

She claimed with an expression that explained how much pleasure she had.

“But too bad that time is up…” She muttered with a look of regret.

Yet, her intense gaze hadn’t left me.

“Otherwise we could have done so much more” She said with love in her eyes.

It felt like, if she could control the situation, a worse action than a kiss would happen.

Even if I was a man, there’s a limit to that.

“But, even though I have to go, I would leave a gift for you,” She said.

[: You have received the Stigma of Poverty from Goddess Penia:]

“I hope you like it and with this, I could be by your ‘side” She declared possessively.

At the same time, it seems that time was up and she has reached her limit for intervening too much.

“This won’t be the end, my lover…” She approached me as she lifted my chin with her fingers.

“We will meet again one day and by then, we could do whatever we want” She said while licking her lips.

“Goodbye love,” She said her final words as the consciousness that possessed Eirini started to disappear.

Eventually, Eirini who had regained her consciousness couldn’t help but look around with confusion.

“Eh…? Did…that happened?” She questioned.

She, who had behaved calmly ever since I had met her, was now panicking with her cheeks flushing.

“That’s right…” I declared with a tone of awkwardness.

This was a situation no one would ever experience, yet, I had experienced it 4 times already.

“I…forgive me! I did not expect that to happen!” She bowed her hair and she was sincere with her words.

“Don’t worry, I don’t blame and it’s not like you intended it to happen?” I said.

It wasn’t her actions nor did she want to do it.

We were both victims of the actions of a goddess, hence, I couldn’t blame her.

“So, don’t worry about it too much,” I said once more.

“You…forgive me…?” Eirini questioned.

“Why won’t I? It wasn’t you who had done it, so it’s not your fault” I declared.

As I turned around, I didn’t notice that Eirini was touching her lips in curiosity.

It seems that it was an experience that she had never experienced before.

Now that she had felt the sensation of a kiss, she was attracted to it.

At this moment, a seed of curiosity had been planted inside her heart and she was gazing at my back with a mixture of curiosity and yearning.

She wanted to experience it once more, but because of her personality, it was still a realm that she wasn’t unsure of.