The Dark Rebirth of Pandora: Revenge of the Abyss

Chapter 726: A Little Shark

A few hours passed while Echidna told several interesting stories about her life. Her life is hard, but it’s not bad — her sister gives her a good life. But now, I’ve decided to take a different path.

"You... you’re already an adult, aren’t you? Why do you choose not to accept growing up?" I ask Delphina, who is still clinging to my tail and biting me. I’m taking a little stroll through their home. In the future, this place ceases to exist. As the goddesses die, their dwelling here fragments.

And it becomes the "Empty Universe," the place where the goddesses hold meetings together with Aradia. Who would have thought that chaotic place with such a messy appearance was once the childhood home of all the goddesses.

"...If I grow up... I’ll have to do things..." Delphina answers me. She was the first goddess to change her consciousness, the first to stop being mentally a child, but she kept pretending to be a child and refused to let her body evolve into the adult phase.

A rather curious choice, made so that no one would bother her, since if she were the first to become an adult, some would get jealous.

"Isn’t living as a child boring when you already have the mind of an adult?" I ask her, having been through that myself, considering I was already eighteen years old in a zero-year-old body.

"...What are you? You reek of pure darkness, you smell like the purest light, and you don’t emit any malice or goodness... you seem... like Mama Oriane." Delphina proves to be quite perceptive.

"You’re a good predator." I stroke her head. A great predator, indeed.

"Tell me, little Delphina, how many of your sisters do you think will die in the next few million years?"

"...Almost all of them."

"Good answer. And do you know why?"

"...Because we all want different things, and we’re going to fight. So I want to stay away from them." She answers everything correctly.

"You’re right again. Without a doubt, you’re all going to fight a lot." Oriane created them all too different, but with too much power and without a strong authority figure, since the avatar that appears to talk to them is too gentle and cries if she’s mistreated.

"You have many younger sisters." I saw several goddesses who never even got to be worshipped. Goddess of chaos, goddess of creation, goddess of time, goddess of stability, goddess of chronology.

Goddess of reality, goddess of stability, goddess of the cosmos, goddess of mutation, goddess of evolution, etc.

All of these are currently children who will die long before creating their races. They all die in these conflicts, and their functions are assigned to their still-living sisters or to avatars of the primordial goddess. Of course, there are a few more, but in general, their fates are all the same: death.

They’re all goddesses who seem to have connections with one another, but their domains are quite different.

’Goddess of Stability... if she had become a powerful goddess, she would be one of the strongest, surpassing even Echidna in power... and the Goddess of Chronology would be capable of altering the very order of the goddesses’ history, rewriting events... if she were alive, they would all be much more united...’ It’s lamentable.

Out of all the goddesses, in the end, only "6" remained influencing the universe. Out of more than 20, so few being left was one of the things that ensured they never had the close bonds they should have.

"You know your power is stagnated, right? If you chose to become an adult today, you would be the second strongest goddess of all." Incredibly, Delphina has that potential. She has the second highest latent potential among her sisters, but having delayed her growth shattered her potential.

"That’s fine... too much power attracts problems." She refuses to want that. I smile at her, because she’s still the same adorable Delphina I married, the same lovely girl who didn’t even know what the penises she had were for.

"Your innocence is truly something adorable. Alright, you’re going to have a good future. You don’t need to get involved in fights that aren’t yours. Now, could you stop biting me?"

"..." She mumbles a complaint and takes her mouth off my tail.

"Are you strong?" She asks, confused.

"More than you could imagine, but don’t worry too much. I know you’re worried I might do something to Oriane, but I really am someone who knows her well, and we have good ties."

"...If you hurt Mama Oriane, I’ll... I’ll... do something to you. I don’t know what yet, but I will." She shows the same jealousy that adult Delphina has, since adult Delphina hates Grimm precisely because Grimm "tarnishes" Oriane’s existence.

"Hahaha, you can rest easy... Oriane will be coming in a few days. You should get ready to receive her. I bet she’d like a tight hug." When I say that, Delphina runs off with her short little steps, heading to her room.

"What did you think of your conversation with them, Pandora?" Oriane appears, asking me.

"...It was interesting. Although most of the goddesses linked to the universe’s balance cried and ran away from me, so I couldn’t talk to them. But I enjoyed talking with Delphina."

"She’s just as interesting as the future Delphina, and it’s also great to see that she had so much potential but chose to sacrifice part of it to live in peace. It shows a good mentality for a goddess."

"I won’t judge your choices, as I’ve already said, but I will praise this choice you made when creating Delphina."

"She’s a sweetheart, and I must admit, in terms of behavior, Delphina was always the wife I liked the most. Before I was omnipotent, I loved all my wives equally, but Delphina had her charm. Her mixed personality — submissive, innocent, aggressive, and bold — was a delight."

"She was the best of both sides, the best of submission and the best of domination." I say to Oriane, who seems thoughtful.

"Would you like us to create a scenario recreating a similar situation, with me acting in a way similar to Delphina?" She makes a good proposal.

"Maybe later. I still want to talk with one more goddess in particular... I want to interact with the child Goddess of the Apocalypse. She didn’t talk much to me after asking my name, but she seems thoughtful, and I know she wants to talk to me."

"Besides, it’s interesting to see what separated them. The fact that the Goddess of the Apocalypse is the glue that kept them united for so long, and her death having changed so many things..." Currently, none of the various goddesses have died.

But in a few million years, most of them will start dying. Many won’t even reach adulthood, dying as children. Also, Echidna said that tomorrow she’ll be able to become an adult, but the reality is that she won’t, because at the moment of becoming an adult, she’ll get scared and give up.

All because she’ll be afraid that when she loses control and becomes a monster, she might end up hurting her sister. So she’ll give up and remain a child for some more time.

"As soon as we finish here, Oriane, we can go to another universe as you said. We’ll see what kind of interesting scenarios might be there."