Chapter 296 295. What Really Happened.
After contemplating on whether I should just reveal the truth or just erase their memories and send them back, I decided to reveal the truth because, except for traumatising my other half, there was no other benefit in hiding the truth since I was already free from the laws of the world.
"Answer for the first and most important question: Yes, I am Eshwar." I said, ignoring the surprised expressions on my other half's and Isha's faces, and I removed my ever-scribbling pitch-black mask.
"Are you sure you can reveal your face so dully?" My other half asked, to which my mouth twitched in annoyance.
"I apologise; continue." My other half apologised quickly with an annoying smirk on his face.
"Eshwar." Isha called out, and
""Hmm?"" Both I and my other half glanced at her with our brows raised.
"N-no, no, umm, eh? Huh? Y-yu-you? No, you!! What should I call you?" With the cutest and most confused face, Isha asked, pointing her finger at me.
"Hm~ What do you mean? You should call me Eshwar~" I appeared behind Isha with a playful smile on my face, picked her up, placed her on my lap, and hugged her tightly from behind, as my gaze turned misty involuntarily.
"Hahahaha, how much I missed you!" I mumbled as I relished her warmth, thinking of how many gods I had fought against just to feel this warmth, how many times I had died for it, just to be with her; for once I had succeeded, someone other than me had enjoyed her company. With that thought, I glanced at my other half with hatred.
"Hoho, how much I want to kill you for hurting her." I mumbled, gritting my teeth, as I glared at my other half with tears filling my eyes. While I did everything I could just to be with her again, that as*hole had hurt her more than the gods themselves.
"E-Eshwar!" Isha mumbled, and when I looked down at her, I noticed that she had an extremely worried expression on her face, making me furrow my brows at her.
"Are you hurt?" I asked and noticed her flinch in my arms; only then did I notice the involuntary killing intent that was oozing out of my body.
"S-sorry." I apologised and ceased the entirety of my presence, scared of scaring her.
Glancing at my other half from the corner of her eyes, Isha gently pushed my arms back, slowly got up, and sat down next to him before giving me a stern gaze that demanded answers. Though my heart clenched at her actions, I did my best not to show it on my face, but looking at how Isha's face twisted in regret, I realised I had failed.
"You could say that we, he and I, are the different sides of the same coin." I began to explain with a bitter smile.
"He is.... a part of my soul, while I am the entire, original Eshwar." I said, ignoring their shocked looks, and I continued.
"You only have memories until you, no, my body began to crack from all the divinity that descended upon me." I said, staring at both Isha and my other half, who nodded their heads in response.
"Let's keep you aside for now, since you really did die at that time." I said this to Isha with a bitter smile.
"I...." Isha opened her mouth to say something but stopped herself, pressing her lips.
"Why did you think that you died at that time?" I asked my other half.
"Huh? What's that supposed to mean...." He said with a frown, but he was cut short by Isha.
"You could have just regressed.... Like you always did." Isha said this with an enlightened look on her face.
"At least she is smarter than my dumb half." I scoffed at my other half.
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"You!!! What are you? How are you? Are you alright?" My other half gently pushed Isha off and zoomed towards me. He clenched my collar and glared at me with a pained expression on his face.
PATT!
"What was that for?" My other half glared at me after getting slapped by me. I simply pointed my finger at Isha, who was more shocked and terrified by the revelation, scared to even imagine the hell I have been through again.
"Don't compare my life with that. At that time, I didn't have a reason to fight, but after you died, I had a reason to hunt down the gods." I said and made the trembling Isha float towards me, and I placed her in the middle after slightly pushing back my other half, and I stared at them as my other half comforted her.
*
After a few minutes.
"What's wrong?" Isha asked, looking at me.
"Well, you seemed scared of me." I said in a teasing tone, looking at her apologetic expression, I felt like a jerk.
"And... I am looking at you after a very, very, very, very long time. I don't think you know how heavenly I feel right now that I'm looking at you." I expressed my emotions, and it was just the tip of an iceberg that came out of my mouth, and I certainly did feel extremely happy looking at her. I mean, I hadn't seen her for trillions of years, and as tedious as fighting the gods was, the more tedious it was not being able to see her again. I had even thought of why I was doing what I was doing just for a single woman, and by the next instance, something within roared, because she was "my woman." And that was it; from then on, that question never appeared in my mind.
"I.... I know how horrifying it is to watch everything repeat themselves over and over and over again, until all of my emotions go numb, not being able to do anything but look at those terrifying things happen again and again. I know how it feels to look at the graves of those who once I thought to be precious, until you become horrified to love somebody, I know..." My other half continued to ramble, but
"I. I am Eshwar; I do not need self-pity, definitely not from somebody who's my literal half. I tolerate everything I know I can, and I will tolerate it if something that's mine is on the line, doesn't matter how little significance it has." I said in a low but powerful enough tone, putting an end to his ramblings.
"What?" I asked Isha, who was looking at me with a sympathetic gaze.
"Nothing...." Isha shook her head with an audible gulp, and tears welled up in her eyes.
"Anyway, let's continue; where was I?" I asked, even though I remembered it.
"Why he thought that he had died at that time." Isha said it with a serious look on her face.
"Yes, I hadn't died that time; instead, even though I was crumbling, in my mind I thought it was supposed to be like that, so I hadn't resisted whatever was happening to me. After a few days, I finally stopped receiving divinity, so when I opened my eyes, I was in the middle of densely grown grass, and in front of me was still a completely healthy and sleeping, beautiful goddess, Isha....or so I had thought, until I caressed the cutely sleeping Isha's cheek, only to find a perfectly healthy, but cold, dead body of Isha." I mumbled, and I felt dead inside as I remembered that day as if it were yesterday. Without looking at the expressions on their faces, I continued.
"Drowning in despair, I began to sniff out the traces of divinity, and soon I felt traces of your divinity spread out all over the world, and from then on, I began to look for the strongest source of your divinity, but when I found it, I was in front of a god, a fallen god to be precise, and after a long devastating fight, I killed it and got a piece of your soul, so creating a theory of my own, I was enraged at the gods, who were responsible for your death, and began to hunt down every single one of them." I said, and just the thought of it enraged my entire existence, but I controlled my anger because I had become a being whose rage could destroy literal universes.
"Collecting the piece of your soul, I ended up a few pieces short, whose traces I couldn't find; with a mere thought of acceptance, I ascended to godhood and fell into the divine realm, only to begin my hunt again. It wasn't long before I felt my strength surpassing the few minor gods around me, and that was enough for me to declare war against the gods. Since I was just a minor god at that time, none of the gods took me seriously, and since they had underestimated me, I had the upper hand, and I was able to catch many off guard and kill them off." I said it in a huff, as just the thought of those gods aggravated me. I was still hiding many facts in the story I was narrating to them, like how many times I had died before being able to kill those fallen gods, how petrifying it felt just being in their presence, and many other things, but if I went into much detail, I knew they wouldn't be able to handle the consequences that would befall them later on.
"As time passed, I received the title Berserker, and as my indifference while massacring the gods grew, my title also began to change accordingly, until I was called the IBOTT, the Indifferent Berserker Of The Twilight." I explained the facts behind the title while staring into my other half's eyes.
"By that time, I had half of your soul, and it wasn't enough for the "cycle of rebirth" to accept you as a "complete" existence, so I continued to search for the pieces of your soul, and at the end, I couldn't defeat all the gods and died." I said, and as soon as my words ended, I looked at Isha in her eyes,
"It was then, and only then, did I find another piece of your soul."
"Which was stuck to my soul."