Chapter 376: The First of My Seven Original Sins
Translator: imperfectluck Editor: Pranav
Both sides had difficulties communicating with each other because one side was glaring at the other with cold gazes of enmity.
Yet communication was necessary, or else I’d remain utterly confused about the situation. How could I possibly have expectations for the future like this?
I felt rather strange. Even though I didn’t have any memories of these Evelyns, when I looked at them I felt a mysterious sense of nostalgia. Her every word would strike my heart, giving rise to an abnormal sense of intimacy which started to influence my sense of logic and reason.
“In the past, we used to be good friends... the best of friends...”
The elegant Silver Dragon smiled faintly, an inscrutable smile filled with numerous emotions and expressions.
Her Sapphire Dragon and Black Dragon heads remained in a deep sleep. These heads were the Second and Third Sisters, which led me to the conclusion that each head had independent wills. Perhaps this was why she had to maintain her dragon form and was unable to leave the underground cavern... obviously an abnormal situation.
Indeed, there were plenty of multi-headed creatures in this world. Hydras, for instance, were a species of dragon with nine heads. However, if each head had their own will, then a heated discussion would be required just to decide which direction to walk in.
The great majority of multi-headed creatures had only a single will controlling their heads. The only known exception was the Two-Headed Ogre, a joke of a species well known for always fighting with itself.
“What’s going on with Cher?”
This was clearly the three-headed dragon who Cher referred to as her adopted mother. Yet this Silver Dragon was saying that she was Cher’s daughter. If that was how it was...
“You—you—are you my granddaughter!? What the hell?! I’ve become a grandfather so quickly!? I need to tell you first that I’m not going to give you the years of birthday and spending money I missed!”
“Pa-hah.”
Alright then. Those Evelyns all chuckled. Even the Silver Dragon looked at me helplessly with no trace of her earlier elegance.
“...Your brain seems to be more broken than it was two hundred years ago. Well, from a certain standpoint, you aren’t wrong... Hey! Don’t run! Nobody here is asking you for your money!”
“Cough—I wasn’t trying to escape! With so many granddaughters, I was only intending on going out to by some candy for everyone.”
“We aren’t your granddaughters!”
Their retorts were filled with helplessness. In their memories, although Roland would sometimes act ridiculously, he was still reliable—most of the time, at least. But now why did they feel that his brain wasn’t working anymore? Had he really gone senile with old age?
I, however, was in utter internal chaos. I mysteriously obtained ten granddaughters at once? “The powerful sure have messy lifestyles” was far too insufficient to describe the current situation. I could only act ridiculously in order to ease the chaos in my heart.
“Cough—to explain this, we must first talk about lust. What’s your understanding of lust between men and women? That’s right, I’m referring to Lust of the Seven Original Sins.”
It appeared that it was time for an explanation. I hesitated for a moment before giving my answer.
“Lust is the one of the most basic animal instincts, next to gluttony. Under the effect of hormones, lust drives an individual to find an outstanding partner for the purpose of reproduction so that their species continues to evolve.”
“...It’s your own fault for being single your entire life.”
“I’m sorry, I actually have a girlfriend.”
“Really? She must be quite pitiful. Her boyfriend doesn’t understand love in the least.”
Alright then, allow me to skip over the boring explanations. Evelyn didn’t intend to hide anything from me. It was only a matter of time before I understood just what in the world was going on over here.
Lust of the Seven Original Sins was Evelyn! Whoops, I meant Lust of the Seven Original Sins was Cher!
That’s right—Lust was Cher. And Evelyn and Cher were separate individuals. And their complex mother-daughter relationship was apparently my responsibility as well.
Whatever happened back in the day wasn’t anything good; at the very least, Evelyn seemed to have no intentions of explaining it to me.
“You want to know what happened back then? It’s only natural you wiped your memories—it wasn’t anything good for you. Why do you want to remember? You wanted to forget everything in the first place.”
I always hated it when people looked at me in pity—it made me feel stupid. But, for some reason, when Evelyn looked at me in pity, I didn’t feel that way at all. I felt a rather familiar and intimate sensation.
“Could it be that I’m a masochist who loves others’ condescending gazes?”
“No, I think you’ve simply gone senile with old age. This is the friendliness between a patient and a doctor.”
As always, the silly cat’s comments arrived right on time. According to our agreement, now that she was able to speak, her split-off wills in the Slimes had returned. The Slime Calamity had officially ended.
Yet Evelyn’s next words left me literally speechless.
“Some things happened between us back in the day. The result was that all of us died.”
Alright then. There were far too many things to comment on about this statement. Harloys and I were astonished—we didn’t even know how to respond to that. But Evelyn’s next words had even more parts to comment on, so we gave up trying to comment about the situation.
“Cher... was called Cherry back in the day. She killed me, but you didn’t want me to die. You wished to break the boundaries of life and death, which was why you...”
The more I heard, the more I felt a chill in my heart. It would seem that the me from back in the day was even crazier than the current me.
In the past, my good friend Evelyn had died because of me. And so I did some rather insane things in order to break the boundaries of life and death.
“Why does this scenario sound so familiar?”
“Lisa and Elisa... You haven’t matured at all.”
“I don’t deny it.”
However, unlike what had happened with Lisa turning into Elisa, this situation was most likely related to me meeting with frustrations in love. The me from back in the day was even more extreme and ridiculous.
Why did I say that this was the result of love frustrations? That’s because Evelyn provided me with my own handwritten notes—they were, indeed, written with my own familiar handwriting.
[...So-called love is nothing more than a mistaken impression created from the product of hormones and animal instinct. Lust’s only use for living creatures is to reproduce and give birth to a better future generation. And Lust’s overall goal is the evolution of the entire species. In that case, if I extract everything about love out of my soul, will I be able to create a unique specimen which can cause female souls to reproduce by themselves? Truly interesting. I’ve decided to name this specimen “Lust” of the Seven Original Sins... System Notification: Since your handwriting sucks, here’s what your notes say. No need to thank me—this is a free service provided to you by your kind System. By the way, I think this first section could totally become the motto of the FFF Group.]
“Interesting the hell!”
Alright then, my System did not respond to my forceful retort. Meanwhile, Evelyn continued to explain:
“You combined part of your soul with my soul and Cher’s. Cher is now continuously going back and forth between life and death. Once her body is ready, the trap you placed within her will activate and then create a new ‘Evelyn.’ That’s why I myself don’t even know if I’m your good friend Evelyn from the past or if I’m simply a copy of her soul.”
With assistance from my own notes along with Evelyn’s explanation, I could extrapolate what must have happened back in the day.
Evelyn, Cher (formerly Cherry), and I must have been good friends. Then something must have happened—most likely an internal conflict, betrayal, or something along those lines. The result likely was that Evelyn died while protecting me and was killed by Cher. I became furious and wished to take revenge for Evelyn as well as resurrect her, which was why I used Cher as an experimental subject.
However, limitations in my power level back then made my experiment only a half success. While the host Cher could use her life as nutrition to create a new Evelyn, the price for breaking the boundaries of life and death was that Cher herself would have to die. Again, due to my lack of understanding in undead magic at the time, this half-success of an experiment thus had something coincidental and miraculous occur.
Elisa and Lisa were also two separate individuals. The real Evelyn’s soul had long since returned to the River Styx, and summoning her soul was destined to fail from the very beginning. This method could only make a replica out of soul shards and memories put together. Meanwhile, the host Cher didn’t truly die but instead reverted to an infant baby who retained no memories whatsoever.
And then I myself had died as well, causing this abnormal experiment to sink into a vicious unbroken cycle right from the very start. Every time Cher matured and reached a certain level, the trap within her soul would activate and create a new Evelyn out of her physical body and soul.
As the original goal I set for Lust was to evolve stronger and stronger genes, each new Evelyn would be genetically superior in every way. And as this entire system and the new Evelyns evolved, the original Evelyns would simultaneously obtain the new Evelyn’s more advanced genes. The entire Evelyn dragon group was evolving together with each new generation.
“At first, I was only an ordinary person who possessed a minor amount of Dragon Bloodline, and since my soul was trapped I had multiple-personality disorder. After that my power evolved to the level of a dragon descendant, then SemiDragon, Half Dragon, and then True Dragon level... Up until now, I have been born eight times, and Cher has experienced eight lives. I have also raised her eight times as her mother. After so many years, I’ve long since lost all feelings of hatred towards her for killing me. Now I sincerely hope that Cher can have her own happy life. And the only person capable of breaking this cursed cycle and truly giving Cher a new life is likely you, as you created all this.”
Apart from opening my mouth wide agape and wanting to bury my head in the ground like an ostrich, I had no clue how to react.
“You should have figured it out by now. Cher back then was your first ever lover. But the current Cher no longer has any relation to her, so please don’t be angry at her anymore. Also, if you remove this abnormal curse, you should be able to become more normal yourself.”
That’s right—curse. I sacrificed a particular emotion, love, in order to curse Cher so that she would forever regret and be in pain, using her soul to make up for her past mistake. This was a perfect example of a revenge curse.
From a certain standpoint, the me from back in the day was rather foolish to have paid such a price just because of something like a failed love or betrayal.
“...I failed in my first romance so I stopped believing in women and love? Where did such a pure youth appear from?! Was I really that immature?”
[You were even purer and more immature than you can imagine. You instantly made yourself forget about Cher after dying that time. Wasn’t it because you were worried you’d feel pained if you recalled her? Ahh, such a beautiful and twisted first love. Truly, first loves should all have such a bittersweet taste.]
“To hell with bittersweet! This is just like toxic poop!”
[You use poop to describe your first love? Whoa, you have such extreme interests...]
Alright then. My System seemed to be getting more shameless every day. It appeared as if she had been waiting to pounce upon this chance to make such a joke.
Indeed, Evelyn herself technically didn’t count as my creation. She was independent. On the other hand, Cher, who was also Lust of my Seven Original Sins, was indeed my creation, naturally making her my daughter. As for the rest, the relationship between us all was so messy that I truly didn’t wish to ponder upon it.
Suddenly, I recalled what Evelyn the Seventh mentioned earlier, that “Little Eleven would be born within the next two years.” Was Cher about to enter a new cycle of dying and reverting to an infant?
“What’s the exact condition for triggering Cher’s death and starting this cycle over?”
Although my premonition told me that the answer would be outrageous, I still asked my question.
“...Love. The moment Cher falls in love with someone, her life will begin a countdown.”
I collapsed, helpless. Was the me from back in the day truly that stubborn? This was obviously way overboard.
“You forced your first ever lover to continually die and start all over again every time she falls in love with someone? Roland, you’re truly so pure, pure to the point of twisted.”
I found myself powerless to counter anything my silly cat said. I could only say one thing as I turned around to leave.
“I will stop this cycle. But I first need to take a look at Lust Cher’s internal structure. I shall find a way to stop this.”
“No need to leave so quickly! I still wanted to chat with you! Forget it, remember to visit again soon. We can have a chat next time.”
The Copper Dragon Evelyn shouted after Roland, while the other Evelyns watched in silence as he ran off in such a ragged manner.
A long silence pervaded the underground cavern, until one voice finally broke it.
“Why did you only tell him half of the truth?”
“Half is enough. Cher has such a pitiful life. It’s enough to just take care of her problem. First Sister, if you really wanted to explain everything to him, you wouldn’t have missed this chance yourself.”
The Sapphire Dragon who had been in a deep sleep opened her eyes. She was the first ever Evelyn and the three-headed dragon’s main personality. Yet she had been in a deep sleep for all this time... or, more accurately speaking, she had been pretending to be asleep.
“I was forcefully suppressing Third Sister. You know how much Third Sister loves Cher and hates Roland...”
“Who among us doesn’t hate him... We all hate him for ignoring Evelyn’s dying wish, for being an idiot who was in such love with Cher; we hate him for activating this damned cycle of life and death all for that one sentence, for intentionally stepping into a certain-death trap and using his own death to activate this curse. Roland is truly an ultra bastard who makes others hate him so easily.”
“While we have so many frustrations, he actually dared to get a new girlfriend? It’s his fault we didn’t want to tell him.”
This time, the one who spoke was surprisingly the icy Blue Dragon Evelyn.
That sentence? Yes. Evelyn had left one part out of her explanation—her dying words to Roland: “If reincarnation is real as you say, I hope I can become your lover in my next life. Until then, don’t fall in love with anyone else.”
Was this Evelyn’s unwillingness? Her final grudge? Her hopes for her next life? Anyhow, Roland indeed had the ability to transform these unwilling words into reality. It was precisely the sentence “don’t fall in love with anyone else” that made Roland cut off everything related to love in his soul and entirely abandon it.
The unfortunate part was that previously, before his final reincarnation two years ago, he had still remembered Evelyn even though he had forgotten about “Lust” Cher. But he had lost such a critical memory about Evelyn after his most recent reincarnation—it was no wonder the Evelyns were so angry at Roland.
“From the moment we were born, we possessed all of Evelyn’s emotions and memories. But if we really are Evelyn, then why are there so many of us? Just what exactly did Roland do back then...?”
Each and every Evelyn was an individual. It followed that they had different reactions toward this situation, as they had different personalities. Some Evelyns felt motherly love towards Cher, while some still possessed feelings for Roland. Other Evelyns wanted to kill him more than anything else, while some hoped to stop this unending cycle. There were Evelyns who looked forward to the birth of new younger sisters, and there were some who wanted to continue from the past and have a romantic relationship with Roland. Some Evelyns even believed themselves to have nothing to do with the past.
By now, everything was far too messy to calculate.
But Roland’s troubles were only beginning.
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