Beyond the Bloodline-Chapter 418: A New Beginning

Angela remained standing in silence for a long time, even after Larry left, long enough that the Hero eventually returned to find the forest in ruins and her standing beside a fissure in the ground with a blank expression.

"...what the hell happened here?"

The forest looked like the site of a massive battle, and at the sound of his voice, Angela finally looked up, then around, before her gaze returned to him.

His earlier words, that she was just ’waiting for something to matter’ again, echoed in her mind, and without saying anything, she teleported to another part of the forest, channelling cosmic energy into the memory gem that held what was said to be a message from her family.

Unaware of it herself, as the video data streamed into her mind, her lips began to curl upward ever so slightly, and by the time it ended, something that could be called a faint smile had formed on her face.

"Oh, so you can make other expressions?"

"!"

She spun around at the sound of the Hero’s voice, her eyes narrowing at him immediately.

"Hold on a second," he said, cutting her off before she could respond. "You do know you made no effort to hide your presence, right? It’s kinda hard to miss the immense amount of magic power you’re exuding."

He quickly explained how he had found her, and she didn’t reply, removing him from the forest without a word before sitting on the ground and replaying the message from her family again and again.

’I...should go back home.’

That was the conclusion she came to, an obvious one, but as that thought crossed her mind, the events of the previous night resurfaced.

If she returned home while still unable to control the new power connected to her Envoy title that she had only just discovered...

’No...I have to control it.’

A spark appeared in her once dull amber eyes, for she had now found a goal worth pursuing in the life she had deemed meaningless.

Her constant encounters with the Hero had created the cracks, and the message from her family had flowed through them.

’If I can control it, it might be easier to rid myself of it for good...!’

With such hopes in her heart, Angela began to do something she hadn’t done in years.

Train.

Power Control Training.

The Hero continued to visit as usual, though he never received an explanation for what had happened on the day she met the Drifter, Larry.

Unlike before, she wasn’t just sitting motionlessly by the lake she had reconstructed. Sometimes, she spent time inside a small cottage she had built for herself, and at other times, she was in different parts of the forest.

Years passed in that way, and Angela, having reached the ’bare minimum’ of near-perfect control over the Chaotic Cosmic Power within her—a level she hadn’t believed attainable before—decided it was time to return home.

But when the moment came to tell the Hero, she found herself unable to do so.

’Why?’

She stared at him with narrowed eyes, and, feeling her gaze, the man turned away from the tree he had been planning to climb for fruit and looked back at her.

"What’s wrong?"

"There’s nothing wrong. It’s just that I... I ne...e...d..."

Her words trailed off again, and when the man tilted his head in confusion, she ended up saying what she hadn’t wanted to.

"No. It’s nothing."

’I’ll tell him tomorrow,’ she thought.

But she couldn’t tell him the next day, nor the one after that, nor the one that followed.

Time continued to pass with her unable to tell him she wanted to leave, and unable to understand why she found it so difficult to do so. She thought about it over and over, but couldn’t find an answer as to why saying something so simple felt impossible.

Eventually, there came a day when the Hero didn’t come by as he usually did.

’Maybe he’s busy today.’

With that thought, she ended the day as usual, but when the next day came, he didn’t show up again.

’Probably has something keeping him occupied. He is a ’Hero’, after all.’

That was what she told herself the following day.

But then days turned into weeks, and weeks eventually became a month without the Hero ever returning.

’Why isn’t he coming anymore? Is he tired of seeing me? Wasn’t he the one who started bothering me in the first place?’

Questions like that filled her mind, and just when she finally got fed up with waiting and decided to go find him herself, he appeared for the first time in a month.

"Sorry, I was busy trying to deal with something. Family business."

"...huh?"

She blinked in surprise, her expression a mix of confusion and relief at seeing him again, but the Hero, noticing only her confusion, continued to explain.

"I may not look it, but I’m actually nobility. And since I’m also a Hero, I’m apparently considered quite the catch among the aristocracy.

My nation’s king was trying to marry me off to his daughter to tie me to the Royal Family, so rejecting him was troublesome. Also..."

Angela’s mind stopped processing his words from the moment he mentioned ’marriage’, and whatever he said after that never registered.

’That’s why he didn’t come for a month? Because of that king?’

Slowly, a dangerous thought crept into her mind unbidden.

’If the king was trying to make him marry into their royal family, then...should I just get rid of the royal family so they don’t bother him again...?’

"Are you listening?"

"!"

She snapped out of her thoughts at the sound of the Hero’s voice, blinking in surprise as she realised he was suddenly standing right in front of her.

"Are you okay?" he asked, a trace of concern in his tone. Then, his expression changed into a smug grin as he added, "Ah, did you miss me?"

At that moment, something seemed to click in Angela’s mind, and as she thought about her reaction earlier to the idea of someone else marrying him, she came to a conclusion.

"I see."

She reached out and took hold of his face, looking into his eyes, though her focus wasn’t truly on him, and muttered quietly to herself.

"I’m in love with you."

For a moment, silence hung between them. Then...

"...I’m sorry, what?"

The Hero was understandably stunned, but Angela was already lost in her own thoughts.

Releasing him, she folded her arms and walked off to the side, nodding to herself in understanding.

"I see. That explains everything. Now I understand why I still tolerate your presence despite having found you annoying on repeated occasions."

"Ouch..."

She ignored the Hero’s remark and continued muttering to herself as though he wasn’t there.

"That’s also why I’ve been unable to tell you I wanted to return to my home universe. I’m simply reluctant to separate myself from you."

"Wait, what?!"

"That also explains why I sometimes find myself wanting you to come here even on the days you usually don’t."

Unable to bear it any longer, the Hero moved quickly, grabbing her to pull her out of her stream of thoughts.

"Alright, hold the fuck up, missus."

"Hmm? What’s wrong?" she asked, tilting her head slightly. "I was only making a logical conclusion based on the facts present."

Seeing her blink at him with clear confusion, the man could only sigh in disbelief.

"I’ve never been in a relationship myself, but I’m pretty sure all the people who have didn’t start off this weirdly. Even I can tell you’re skipping a lot of steps here."

"I’ve never been in a relationship myself either," she said plainly.

At that, the Hero rolled his eyes, muttering with heavy sarcasm, "Colour me surprised."

Not understanding his sarcasm, she continued speaking.

"I suppose it would be a first for both of us."

"Yeah, it wo—wait!" He stopped himself mid-sentence, raising his brows as he asked, "Why are you assuming I want to be in a relationship with you anyway?"

At this, Angela tilted her head slightly, her expression genuinely curious.

"You don’t?"

For a brief moment, silence reigned supreme before the man sighed and muttered.

"...I do..." 𝚏𝕣𝐞𝗲𝐰𝕖𝐛𝐧𝕠𝕧𝚎𝚕.𝐜𝚘𝗺

"Then the feeling is mutual, as I expected. There would be no logical reason for your persistence in coming here to see me year after ye—"

"Yeah, let’s put the logical reasons aside for a bit, okay?" the Hero interrupted quickly before she could continue another weird analytical explanation.

And so began Angela’s relationship with him, in a rather ’chaotic’ manner, fittingly enough.

◇　◇　◇

Angela’s return home was delayed again, but this time she wasn’t confused about the reason why.

She also left the forest for the first time in years at the Hero’s insistence, and time went by like that, their relationship deepening with every passing year.

However, she was soon faced with a problem her mind hadn’t even considered before.

The Hero began to show signs of ageing.

Her Deathless Immortality aside, Angela’s power was on a level where her ’lifespan’ was ’infinite’, so the idea of ageing had never once crossed her mind until she noticed the first traces of it on him.

It was then that the reality finally dawned on her that he was a ’mortal’.

At that realisation, she immediately decided that something as trivial as mortality wasn’t going to be a problem.

The solution was simple.

If his lifespan was short because he was mortal, then all he needed to do was become a Higher Existence.

And so, it was in that way that she forced him onto the path of acquiring power he had never even imagined a single being could possess.

It was a long and monotonous process, but when she asked him the question, "Do you want Death to do us part?", the Hero’s motivation meter was mysteriously filled to the brim.

His lifespan grew alongside his power, growing from the few centuries it had been when she met him to millennia, then tens of millennia, and so on.

The matter of lifespan was what once again reignited her desire to return home, and after catching an unfortunate passing Drifter and using them as a messenger to inform her family that she’d be returning soon, she turned and revealed her intention to go back to the Hero.

The Hero had come from a single-parent family, and unlike him, that parent had no desire to increase their power for a longer life, content with what they already had after seeing their son bring home the woman he wished to be with.

It was only after that parent’s passing at old age that Angela began her journey back to Zanerth, this time with the Hero, who was now her husband.