Lilith slowly stood up, brushing herself off as the final traces of her pink aura vanished. Her face was deadpan, completely stripped of its usual cheerful energy. "Fine," she said, her voice chillingly quiet. "I'll share my secrets. But I absolutely refuse to say a single word while those three Goddesses are in this room. I don't trust them, and I never will."
Seraphine rolled her eyes, throwing her hands up in exasperation. "Are you serious right now? What kind of childish logic is that?"
"It's my choice," Lilith retorted coldly, turning her head away.
"Did they ever actually do anything to harm you?" Seraphine pressed, taking a step closer.
Lilith went completely silent. For a long, heavy moment, she just stared at the floor, the tension thick in the air, before finally muttering, "...No. Not them specifically."
"Then what is your problem?!" Seraphine cut her off sharply, not letting her retreat into her shell. "Haruto brought us all here for a reason. He clearly stated that he wants us to build genuine trust and stand in unity as a household. If they haven't done anything to you, you have no excuse to hold back."
On the outside, Seraphine looked like a beacon of absolute bravery and authority, completely commanding the room. But internally? She was absolutely terrified. Her heart was hammering against her ribs so loudly she was worried the others could hear it.
What on earth am I doing?! Seraphine thought, a sudden wave of sheer embarrassment hitting her. I'm standing here acting like I own this entire mansion and like I've been Haruto's wife for years! This is so embarrassing... Oh my god, I want to crawl into a hole and die. But no, I can't back down now. I've already set the stage, so I might as well maintain this strong impression to the very end! Stealing her nerves, she kept her posture perfect and her gaze locked onto Lilith, waiting to see if the stubborn princess would finally break her silence.
"Look, I just don't trust them!" Lilith snapped, digging her heels in as she looked away stubbornly.
"But why?" Seraphine demanded, stepping closer, her voice echoing in the tense hall. "Give us a logical reason, Lilith!"
"Because there is a reason!" Lilith shouted back, her voice tight with a deep, hidden pain.
A heavy, suffocating silence fell over the room. Aside from Haruto—whose sharp analytical mind had already deduced the complex algorithms of her past—absolutely no one in the room could comprehend why she was acting this way. The confusion was palpable.
Aeterna, still trying to maintain her innocent facade, looked up with wide, worried eyes. "What is even happening right now? Why is everyone fighting?"
Lilith's cold, sharp gaze instantly whipped around, locking onto the little girl. The warmth she usually showed the child vanished completely. "What about you? Are you a Goddess too? Because honestly, you're looking incredibly suspicious to me right now. There is no way you are just a normal, ordinary child."
Aeterna froze, her breath catching in her throat.
Lilith didn't stop there. Her paranoid glare swept across the room, pointing directly at the butler and the maid. "The same goes for Rutherford and Asobi! Who even are you people? The only one here whose data actually makes sense is Toya—I already know he's just a scholar from Volcano Village who came to the Academy to study. But what about the rest of you? Are you all hidden Gods playing a game with me?!"
Hearing those harsh, accusatory words, Aeterna felt something inside her shatter. This was the same Lilith who had spent days carrying her around, doting on her, spoiling her with gifts, and playfully begging to be her mother. To have that very same person turn around and look at her with such cold, naked suspicion completely broke the little girl's heart. Tears welled up in Aeterna's eyes as she shrank back, utterly hurt.
Seeing Lilith spin out of control and start attacking a child, Seraphine lost her patience entirely. She lunged forward, grabbed Lilith tightly by her shoulders, and gave her a violent, grounding shake.
"Pull yourself together, Lilith!" Seraphine yelled right into her face.
The physical shock forced Lilith to snap out of her tirade. She stumbled back, breaking Seraphine's grip, and tightly clutched her own head as if fighting off a massive, throbbing headache. She went dead quiet, her breathing ragged as she tried to process her own erratic emotions.
Throughout the entire chaotic ordeal, Haruto stood absolutely still in the center of the room. He didn't intervene, and his face remained as unreadable as ever. With his eye narrowing slightly, he simply stood back, observing the scene like a tactical player mapping out a complex grid—quietly analyzing every single person's reaction to see how the pieces would move next.
The grand living hall plunged back into a dense, uncomfortable silence. No one dared to utter a word. Rutherford, Asobi, and Toya stood completely still, while Aeterna quietly wiped a tear from her eye, hiding behind Bellona. None of them could wrap their heads around Lilith's sudden transformation. The vibrant, playful classmate they thought they knew had completely vanished, replaced by a paranoid, defensive girl pushing everyone away.
Seraphine stood her ground, watching Lilith fight off her headache. Instead of pressing further or yelling, Seraphine chose to stay quiet. She gave Lilith a few minutes of absolute silence, allowing the heavy tension in the air to settle and giving the princess the time she desperately needed to calm her racing mind and stabilize her erratic emotions.
Once Lilith's breathing finally slowed down and she lowered her hands from her head, Seraphine took a soft step forward. Her tone was no longer aggressive, but it carried an unyielding weight.
"Alright," Seraphine said quietly, looking directly into Lilith's eyes. "I think you've had enough time to collect yourself. It's time for you to start speaking."
Lilith looked up, her expression exhausted but defensive.
"You've let out all your anger, you've screamed at the Gods, and you've thrown your suspicions at everyone else in this room," Seraphine continued, crossing her arms. "There are no more excuses left, and I don't think you have any more bottled-up rage to throw at us. If we are ever going to build the trust Haruto wants, we need to know the truth behind that anger. So, tell us your story."
Lilith's gaze swept across the room, lingering on the faces of the goddesses she distrusted before finally landing on Haruto. He didn't say a word, but his steady, unwavering crimson eye seemed to act as an anchor for her. Slowly, the tension drained from her shoulders, and she sank back onto the couch.
"Fine," she muttered, her voice regaining a bit of its usual clarity. "I'll talk."
Watching this unfold, Haruto made a mental note in his internal log. Seraphine has a remarkable talent for emotional manipulation—or rather, social calibration, he analyzed. She managed to settle an energy flare and stabilize a volatile member just by shifting her tone. It's a specialized skill that none of the combat-focused goddesses possess. Definitely a support trait.
Lilith took a deep breath, her eyes clouding over as if she were looking at a screen from a different era.
"The truth is," Lilith began, "I'm a reincarnator. Just like Haruto. I came from the same world he did."
A ripple of shock went through the room, but everyone remained silent, honoring the rules of the meeting. Even Toya leaned in, his curiosity piqued by this sudden revelation of a second "Out of Bounds" entity.
"But there's a difference," Lilith continued, her voice growing distant. "I didn't arrive here recently. I didn't come here a few months or even years ago. I landed in this world three hundred years ago."
She looked at her hands, which were trembling slightly. "I've been playing this game far longer than any of you realize. For three centuries, I've had to navigate this reality, and the things I saw... the things the Gods of that era did... that's where it all started."
"When I first dropped into this world, I was just a small child—barely three or four years old," Lilith continued, her voice sounding completely hollow as she stared blankly at the floor. "I didn't choose this path. The Goddess of Beauty at the time simply picked me on a whim. There was no grand test, no selection trial, nothing. I was spawned into this reality at Level 0 with absolutely zero money, zero stats, and just a few basic, low-tier survival tools."
She clutched her knees tightly, her knuckles turning white. "From the very beginning, the system hammered it into my head that a reincarnator's life is pure, unadulterated hell. So, I made a choice right then and there: I completely cut myself off from society. I don't even remember the exact location anymore, but for 150 grueling years, I survived entirely inside a massive, isolated jungle."
The room was so quiet that even the crackle of the fireplace sounded loud. The goddesses listened intently, their expressions shifting as they realized the depth of the history she was uncovering.
"For a century and a half, I had absolutely zero human interaction," Lilith said, a bitter smile touching her lips. "While other reincarnators were out in the open, the Gods treated them like disposable pawns, forcing them into brutal missions. I avoided all of that. I stayed hidden under the radar, grinding away in that jungle by doing small, tedious tasks, slowly accumulating tiny amounts of experience data. Day after day, year after year, I leveled up without catching the eye of a single divine entity."
She proudly raised her chin, though her eyes remained dark. "Usually, when a reincarnator gains a bit of power, they try to pull off some grand, heroic stunt. They catch the attention of other Gods' factions, get dragged into divine proxy wars, and ultimately end up dead. But I didn't play their game. I became the very first reincarnator in history to secretly reach Level 99 entirely on my own merit."
Lilith's breath hitched as she reached the climax of her past dataset. "The moment my profile officially unlocked Level 99, the spatial boundary broke, and I finally set foot into the High Heavens. I expected a grand welcome, or at least some answers. But do you know what I found? Every single God in that realm looked down at me with nothing but raw terror and disgusting hatred. They couldn't handle the fact that a human had broken their level caps without their permission."
She let out a heavy, tired sigh, leaning back against the couch. "I chose to ignore their pathetic stares. I didn't want their thrones or their wars. After 150 years of isolation and surviving a brutal jungle grind, I honestly thought that reaching the max level would finally grant me the one thing I actually wanted: a quiet, peaceful life."
"The moment I ascended, the first person I went to find was the Goddess of Beauty—the very entity who had summoned me to this hell in the first place," Lilith said, her voice dropping into a chilling, mechanical whisper. "I honestly believed that since I was her chosen champion, she would protect me. I thought she would finally grant me the peace I had spent 150 years bleeding for."
Lilith paused, a completely hollow, mocking smile stretching across her face. "But do you know what happened instead? I remember her expression perfectly. I remember the exact, disgusting words that came out of her mouth."
She leaned forward, her violet eyes wide and unblinking as she mimicked the goddess's sweet, poisonous tone:
"'Oh, my precious, lovely little vessel... the sole purpose of your miserable existence was simply to grind your way up to Level 99 for me. Now, the true meaning of your life has finally been fulfilled. Your destiny is complete. Come now, let me absorb all of your hard-earned power. You see, you were never a real person to me—you were just a purification filter meant to refine this energy for my consumption. So be a good girl, surrender your soul to me, and accept your death. Dying by my hand is the only true salvation you will ever receive.'"
Lilith clutched her head again, her entire body shaking violently as the memory corrupted her emotional files.
"When she said those words, my literal soul shuddered," Lilith spat out, her voice cracked with raw, resurrected horror. "A century and a half... 150 years of starving in a jungle, fighting monsters, freezing in the dark, and pushing my body past its absolute limits... and for what? It was all just a setup? I spent my entire life grinding just to be treated like a piece of livestock? I worked that hard just so a God could fat-trim my stats and slaughter me?!"
"Then... what did you do?" Seraphine asked, her voice barely a whisper, completely captivated and horrified by the story.
Lilith looked up at her, a dark, chilling smile slowly spreading across her face. "What else could I do? I challenged her. Because my power was entirely purified and forged through blood and survival, I won. I slaughtered the Goddess of Beauty and took her place."
The smile she flashed was deeply unsettling, sending a cold shiver down the spines of everyone on the couches. But Haruto didn't flinch. He recognized that exact, creepy smile—it was the same one she had flashed him back when they first met, a glitching mask of a broken player.
"When I killed her, the system automatically designated me as the new Goddess of Beauty," Lilith continued, her voice hardening. "But the High Heavens couldn't accept reality. The remaining deities were completely humiliated that a mere human had not only broken the level cap but had also assassinated a god and stolen her throne. The entire divine realm declared war on me."
She clenched her fists, her eyes blazing with memories of the battlefield. "A single human girl against thousands of gods. I fought them all off, painting the heavens red. I managed to slaughter half of their entire army on my own. But just as my interface was about to transition to Level 100, someone blindsided me. A god stabbed me in the back. To this day, I still don't know who delivered the fatal blow. But that is exactly why I will never, under any circumstances, trust a god again."
Hearing this final piece of data, Haruto's single crimson eye widened slightly. This was information he hadn't fully calculated yet. A genuine wave of shock rippled through his internal processor; he hadn't realized her trauma ran that deep into the cosmic lore.
"But if you died back then... how are you sitting here right now?" Seraphine asked, completely invested in the narrative.
"Because the God of Creation—the primordial entity whose essence now resides inside Haruto—intervened," Lilith explained, her gaze softening as she looked toward him. "He gathered my broken data, granted me a second life, and asked me if I wanted to become his official reincarnator. I looked him dead in the eye, apologized, and told him I'd rather permanently delete my file than serve another deity."
She took a deep, shaky breath. "But he didn't get angry. He simply smiled and said, 'I respect your hard work and your absolute dedication to survival. Tell me, what is it that you truly desire?' I gave him a simple answer: a peaceful life that I can actually enjoy. And he granted it to me, sending me to this era."
Lilith finally let out a long, peaceful sigh, looking directly at Haruto with absolute sincerity. "That is the real reason why I love Haruto. I want to stand by his side and give him the exact same peace, warmth, and comfort that I was denied for hundreds of years. Ironically, he is the reincarnation of the very god who saved my soul. So, there it is. That's my story."
Haruto sat in silence, his single crimson eye fixed on Lilith. Inside his mind, his analytical processor was flagging a major inconsistency in the data. Something doesn't line up here, he calculated. The timeline and the mechanics she described have a slight glitch. However, seeing how fragile the atmosphere in the room currently was, he chose to keep his mouth shut and let the scene play out.
Lilith clenched her fists, her voice trembling with leftover rage. "That is exactly why I despise the Gods. To them, we humans are nothing but a joke. A game. They only create us to act as disposable tools for their own selfish gain!"
Hearing this blanket accusation, Ivory suddenly stood up from her couch, looking deeply offended. "Wait, that's not fair! Not all Gods are like that, and we certainly aren't!"
Lilith let out a harsh, mocking laugh. "Oh, please. Don't act all innocent with me. I know how the system works. Three hundred years ago, when the entire High Heavens declared war on me, you three were probably right there in that divine army, swinging your weapons at me!"
The accusation caught the three goddesses completely off guard. Ivory, Lustra, and Bellona looked at each other, their faces filled with genuine confusion. "We have absolutely no memory of any war like that," Lustra muttered, shaking her head. "We don't know anything about a Level 99 human ascension from three hundred years ago."
Lilith rolled her eyes. "Wow. At least you're excellent liars."
Right at that moment, a specific file unlocked in Haruto's memory. He suddenly remembered the exact status conditions of the three goddesses when he first defeated them and brought them into his party. When they became his subordinates, the system had completely wiped all of their data and memories older than one hundred years. Since their internal databases had been formatted, it was a literal fact that they couldn't remember anything from three hundred years ago.
Haruto quickly pulled out his notepad, scribbled down the explanation, and handed the paper over to Lilith.
Lilith frowned as she read his neat handwriting. Her eyes widened in surprise. "What? What do you mean their memories were wiped by the system?"
Ivory took a step forward, her expression incredibly earnest as she tried to bridge the gap. "Lilith, look at us. The God of Creation you are talking about—the one who saved your life and gave you a peaceful future—is the exact same supreme deity that we serve. We would never act against his wishes or harm his people."
Lilith crossed her arms, her gaze remaining highly skeptical. "And why on earth should I just blindly believe that?"
"Because of our true titles," Ivory replied smoothly, her voice dropping into a serious, reverent tone. "You might not trust standard deities, but you definitely know about the ultimate guardians of creation. You have faith in the strength and purpose of the Aventador, don't you?"
The moment that specific word echoed through the living hall, Lilith's entire posture stiffened. The stubborn defiance in her eyes instantly cracked, replaced by a wave of genuine shock and nerves. "Wait... what did you just say? The Aventador? Don't tell me... you three are actually them?"
Ivory looked back at her with absolute pride and slowly nodded her head. "Yes. We are the Aventador."