"Olga, I admit that everything was my mistake. You are still young, there is no need for you to be so obstinate about me" Chromie's face was filled with regret.
Even if he had thousands of justifiable reasons, it didn't change the fact that he was the one who betrayed her love – their love.
From the very moment he chose to regain the Farnate family's glory, he had slowly been unable to turn back. He began walking on the so-called path of the 'Protagonist'. The moment he sacrificed his sense of smell to obtain Spirit Vision, he began giving up on his past step by step.
When he used the soul of a Soundless cultist as the catalyst to activate his Spirit Vision, he was influenced by the stubborn emotions contained within, taking his very first step down the abyss.
If he was able to give it up at this point, he would still have a chance to return, but once he became determined to kill Birosius, he already had no other choice.
He killed Birosius, and even dispatched the Evil God Bardimor who descended upon his body, thus gaining the attention of the church; otherwise, there was no possible way for him to become the Saint Hunters captain from a criminal in a mere three years' worth of time.
As for the sacrifices and hardship he faced during that process, only Chromie himself knew.
However, no matter how much he explained, the core reason behind it all was that his love was insufficient, and that was the true reason why Olga was sorrowful.
"I'm sorry!" Chromie's sword sliced through the walls of the house and jumped out. As soon as he did, the entire building came to life, becoming personified.
After all, the soul that was infused into the house was a human soul, and the most powerful soul in Olga's hand as well.
Chromie left without returning, thus leaving Olga alone in the town of Lohr. He had thought that Olga would leave Lohr to return to the Academic City, after all, he had constantly been telling her to do so before his disappearance.
But he had underestimated Olga's obstinance towards him, believing that he had been murdered by the Sun Shadow church, or by the Evil God Bardimor on that night.
Because of that, Olga began moving from place to place, ultimately joining the Hermit Order. If it was the Sun Shadow church that killed him, she would take her revenge on the Sun Shadow church; and if Bardimor was the one who killed Chromie, she would summon him once again and kill him!
In the end, the situation was much better than she had thought, and was also worse than she had thought.
Chromie did not die, the fact that he joined the church's Saint Hunters didn't matter, the fact that his body became slightly handicapped also didn't matter.
Under the manipulation of the soul, the entire house became alive, turning into a giant made of bricks and cement.
Standing on the giant's shoulder, Olga's light blue dress fluttered in the wind. She looked down at Chromie, shouting at him through the voice of her soul: "Hand over your soul!"
Chromie observed the foreign, yet also familiar young girl. He understood clearly that her heart had never changed, what changed was him.
Sacrificing his love, Chromie could still understand his own heartbeat towards Olga in the past, but his current self could never feel love towards her again, only guilt.
"Olga, you need to return to your body soon" Chromie spoke honestly and avoided her attacks.
He was borrowing the sprout of the Moon Tree to hold authority over the aspect of silence, but this was, in essence, different from the cultists of the Soundless cult. Whenever those people wanted to enter the aspect of silence, they needed mana and the magic ritual carved on their bodies as support; not only would they not be flexible, their own sense of self would also be assimilated by the aspect of silence.
On the other hand, since Chromie held the authority over the aspect of silence itself, he could utilize it as naturally as breathing, his Sword of Tranquility being only one of many applications. As long as he could correctly utilize the difference in the aspects, it would be extremely difficult to restrain or even touch him.
"Do you still remember those small blue flowers we once saw?" Olga asked.
She was referring to a type of small blue flowers that looked like umbrellas. During their travels, they had seen a large field of them in the wilderness, beautiful and eye-catching, unforgettable at the mere sight of them.
At the time, they didn't know the name of those flowers, but the flowers had blue petals and a yellow stem, which coincided with Olga's favorite way of dressing.
Shak shak!
A series of noises resounded, causing Chromie to open his eyes wide. That was the sound of a dying life, the soul shackles that belonged to Olga had been broken.
"Among Lord Negary's researches, there was once a subject called 'Soul Materialization'. The body will grow old and change, but the soul would not" Olga's soul blurred briefly, and as a large amount of soul linking substance erupted, her soul once again became solid.
"Humans change too easily, Chromie. I shall extract the love I held for you into a lifeform of pure soul, one that will never change" Olga's soul rapidly transformed: "While your soul shall also be extracted to eternally stay by my side"
The soul is derived from the [Origin], a soul is the manifestation of the truth of the universe and the laws of each world. Once a living being died, their [Origin] would leave, leaving the remnant soul behind to undergo different changes depending on the world.
For example, in the Flame world, remnant souls would become Evil Spirits; while the rules of the Moon Tree world dictated that a soul would either head to the Unrepenting Abyss or a Divine Kingdom of God depending on their faith.
As for the reason why the [Origin] would always leave after a living being's death, Negary was still unclear.
However, that didn't stop Negary from researching the 'Soul Materialization' project, the creation of a unique soul lifeform independent of the body.
Negary studied the Unrepenting Abyss, studied the soul linking substance, then studied much soul-related knowledge, which ultimately resulted in a method for the soul to retain the [Origin] while also not being rejected by the world for a prolonged period of time.
The soul linking substance was the connection between the soul and the living being's body, but in truth, it could also be thought of as the connection of the soul to the world. And only once this connection was broken would the [Origin] choose to leave.
After witnessing the other aspects of reality, Negary had a certain thought: What could be considered a living being?
Plants are living beings, but when observing plants from a normal perspective, most would not be able to see their soul or [Origin]; yet at the same time, one would easily see the sentience of plant lifeforms as soon as they observed from another aspect of the world.
Insects were also the same as plants in this way, entities with insufficient sentience in the normal aspect of the world, but once observed from another aspect, they would prove to be living creatures the same way humans were.
The same could be said for air, dirt, and other objects. From this aspect of the world, they were truly and undoubted nonliving objects, but that wasn't always necessarily the case.
Due to this line of thinking, Olga followed the method Negary taught her and was able to infuse souls into other objects, then manipulate them through the soul linking substance.
The next step of this research was naturally Soul Materialization. If all things were living beings, then would the world itself not be a living being as well? Then one would be able to form a connection with the world itself through a huge amount of soul linking substance.
This essentially meant that your body was the world itself, and since there was now a connection, the [Origin] would naturally not leave.
Of course, one consequence of this procedure was that one's soul would become deeply intertwined with the world, depending on the follow-up procedures and the world's characteristics, the soul lifeform would turn out differently.
One of the more inadequate results was turning into a type of earthbound spirit. One's soul would become bound to a certain patch of land, which under normal circumstances, as long as it wasn't completely destroyed, would effectively grant the soul eternal life.
On the other hand, if the results turned out more desirable, the power obtained from this procedure wouldn't be inconsiderable either.
