The Baddest Villainess Is Back - Chapter 203

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Part 2, Episode 73
“Besides, even if you hadn’t awakened yet, you’ve been through all manner of trials, so you’re already half-awakened as it is……”
Garren Wilbred added to his words, chin propped on his hand.
“Amon has never seen Solomon, so she was just acting on instinct.”
“I see.”
As I listened to Garren Wilbred’s explanation, I folded my arms.
“Damn father.”
“Hmm?”
“Just because the Abyss I possess is named Solomon doesn’t make me Solomon—I’m someone who has Solomon’s Abyss. So why does this attraction and repulsion apply to me? Was it Solomon’s power that the demon was drawn to?”
He fell silent for a moment at my words, then laughed slowly.
“I’m saying that you are Solomon, Rose.”
Blink.
I blinked my eyes.
Blink.
I blinked again and this time tilted my head as well.
Blink.
Finally, as my head snapped to the side and I blinked once more, I immediately rose from my seat.
Then I approached Garren Wilbred, reached for his head—but my arms were too short for that, so I quickly changed direction and gave his thigh a couple of sharp pats instead.
Thwack, thwack.
“……Father, are you in pain somewhere? Heavens.”
Despite the solid sound coming from my vigorous strikes, he said nothing, apparently unbothered.
“You’ve missed your friends terribly……”he said. “Go rest. I’ve kept an old man around far too long. If you keep faltering like this, how will you live happily with Selena?”
I exhaled a long breath and shook my head firmly.
“Stay strong. Listen, a person shouldn’t be feeling despair. Anyway, that—tsk. How much must you miss someone to confuse them like that? Selena, and that man Solomon too, I understand now how deeply feeling and sensitive you are, whether as a…demon……”
“If you open your mouth one more time, I’ll throw you out the window, Rozelin.”
Garren Wilbred spoke in a gentle tone, a warm smile on his face. Though, for some reason, the temperature around him seemed to have dropped by about five degrees.
I quickly shut my mouth. He really did seem as though he’d throw me. Of course, given how sturdy my body was, if I hit the ground it would crack, not me.
“In any case, Solomon is you, Rose.”
“What are you talking about? A dead person……”
“The Abyss.”
Garren Wilbred stopped there and rubbed his throat.
“No, actually, what you have isn’t even an Abyss.”
Garren Wilbred slipped his hand under my armpit and suddenly seated me at the table before him.
Beyond the moonlight pouring in and touching my cheek, Garren Wilbred’s violet eyes gleamed dangerously straight ahead.
“The Wandering Selector, Solomon.”
“……Huh? A Selector? What’s that?”
“It’s Solomon’s epithet.”
“An epithet?”
“Those born in the Abyss possess epithets. Amon of Greed, Agareth of Calamity, Baal of Ruin, Saleos of Pleasure.”
He spoke the demons’ names without hesitation.
Since demon worship was a sin, only the Temple and those with explicit permission knew anything of demons. So this was the first time I’d heard such detailed accounts.
“……And you?”
“Baal of Dominion.”
Beneath quivering lips came words of arrogance unmatched.
“Solomon was the sole human ever born in the Abyss. Born simultaneously with tremendous power, he knew no restraint, and became nothing but a being driven by instinct—a mediator the Abyss itself created to prepare for the chaos demons might wreak.”
I understood well enough that there was something extraordinary about being human yet born in a place where demons emerged.
But that was all I grasped.
‘A mediator created to prepare for the chaos demons might cause?’
Unable to clear the confusion from my face, I remained silent with my mouth shut, until he released his grip on me and settled back in his chair with his arms crossed.
“He was human. His lifespan, the blood that flowed when he was wounded, his honest emotions—all of it no different from any human. And……he was just as soft and fragile as one.”
“……He was human?”
“I just said he was.”
He added with a laugh in his voice, asking what I’d been listening to, before continuing.
“Still, the Abyss granted him one ability.”
“An ability?”
“Your Abyss.”
“Which is?”
“Samsara.”
Samsara?
I narrowed my brows as I looked at Garren Wilbred.
There was no way to tell whether this man was joking or speaking in earnest.
As I stared at him, he continued.
“Living an endless life without cessation, holding within me the blessing of mortality and oblivion granted to humankind.”
Garren Wilbred turned his head quietly to look at me.
“Solomon was ours, then.”
His face expressionless, he drew a smile across his lips as he affirmed it.
“Mm…….”
I was beginning to feel a little afraid now.
“Right, yeah. Well…… seems it was quite precious, doesn’t it.”
I rubbed the back of my neck lightly and nodded without much conviction. There was absolutely no reason to pick a fight with Garren Wilbred here, debating whether it could or couldn’t be that way.
Garren Wilbred rubbed the corner of his mouth once and exhaled shortly.
“In any case, because the very basis of its existence was that, Solomon can seal away demons or destroy them.”
“……I see.”
“That sword is called a Holy Sword by name, but it’s really just a sturdy blade gifted by the elves.”
Garren Wilbred added a light explanation.
“But it was shining.”
“That’s because you held it.”
“Huh……?”
I tilted my head with my short arms crossed.
“It means your awakening isn’t far off. It burst out because Amon touched your family.”
Suddenly, a memory surfaced—the time I’d lost my memory.
Come to think of it, around that time the film had simply cut out; I remembered nothing at all.
“When you wielded it, it changed into a Holy Sword, and it seems you awakened it again.”
“What? But you said I only do Samsara?”
“Isn’t Samsara, after all, the endless repetition and cycling of time?”
He rose from his seat, came lightly behind me, tapped my shoulder, and spoke.
“Look, Rozelin. That moon will vanish when morning comes and the sun will rise. Night will fall again, and soon enough the moon will rise once more. Day and night circle endlessly and cycle.”
“……yes.”
“A human life is the same. Ordinary people, when they die, forget all memory and everything they’ve accumulated, and cease to exist.”
“……don’t they go somewhere like hell or heaven?”
He laughed at my question.
“That’s one of humankind’s most entertaining delusions.”
Horns had sprouted above his head.
His fingernails were jet black and elongated; his vast wings, when fully spread, seemed as though they would fill the room entirely. They felt as large as Garren Wilbred’s height, or perhaps even larger.
“The only place life goes after death is to the bottom of that pitch-black Abyss, invisible to the eye. There it dissolves and is recreated, born as whatever the Abyss desires.”
“……wait. Even if someone commits the most serious crimes?”
“Yes.”
“Even if someone performs endless good deeds?”
“Only if they’ve accomplished truly remarkable achievements and the gods designate them as successors would it be otherwise.”
A man who killed a hundred and a man who saved a hundred—both dissolving when dead, born the same way. It was unreasonable and unfair.
As I contemplated this, Garren Wilbred stepped back a couple of paces lightly and opened his mouth.
“All that talk about how believing in gods means you’re born into good fortune in the next life is utter nonsense. Still, the Abyss doesn’t absorb excessively corrupted souls—it tears them to shreds.”
A slender, feathered tail swayed lazily in the air.
I stared at him and spoke.
“That’s rough—I can practically hear the believers’ hearts tearing every day as they go to pray outside.”
“That’s not the case. The Temple has value simply by existing. Doesn’t mankind strengthen their will to live the moment they have something to believe in? Whether it actually exists doesn’t matter. The point is that whether it exists or not depends on how much they believe.”
I narrowed my brow, watching the man.
“Neither the hell where demons are said to dwell nor the heaven where gods are said to live actually exists.”
Having said that much, Garren Wilbred extended a long index finger with fluid grace, pointing to the floor.
“Rozelin, what lies at that bottom isn’t a hell where demons and demon lords dwell—it’s an unknowable Abyss. And what lies above that is merely a cog in the machinery that corrects the order the Abyss has created.”
“…….”
“All living things must return to the Abyss. But if there is one thing that alone does not belong to it…….”
Garren Wilbred suddenly lowered his gaze to look at me.
“It was Solomon.”
“…….”
“And that is you, Rozelin.”
“So I’m not Solomon…….”
“Samsara is the cycling of time. The wheel of life and death. Ultimately, the extension of a life that never ends.”
“…….”
“Unlike those who, when one lifetime ends, lose their usefulness and are recreated, you accumulate and build upon yourself in the repeating cycle of time.”
“…….”
“A Selector who wanders lost through the mortal realm, culling demons that have outlived their usefulness and consigning them back to the Abyss.”
Having said as much, Garren Wilbred turned sharply toward me, his eyes crinkling at the corners as he smiled—but it was a sharper thing than his usual gentleness, edged in a way I hadn’t seen before.
“That’s Solomon’s role.”

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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