Having traversed countless realms, can you possibly be as clever as me?

Satella, the Witch of Envy

921

640. The Truth from Four Hundred Years Ago

On a green hillside filled with the fragrance of flowers and grass, the witches' tea party finally gathered all its members.

Pride, greed, wrath, lust, sloth, gluttony, and... envy.

"Having traversed multiple realms, you've finally arrived at the City of Dreams. You rude fellow."

Echidna spoke harshly to the approaching Witch of Envy, her gaze and tone filled with malice, her eyes revealing hatred and obvious disgust.

“She’s Satella, the one we know,” Minerva said, arms crossed and chest puffed out.

"So Donna, put away your audacious ideas. You don't want to be our enemy."

"Hmph!" Echidna snorted unhappily, turning her head away without saying a word.

"Alright, ladies, stop excluding me." Tsurugi clapped her hands and said calmly.

"Now that we've gathered them all, let's get down to business. It's time for some spoilers. Stop giving me riddles."

His lack of threat to the witches was pointless; all of them, except for Echidna, had already accepted their own deaths. They were not attached to existing as mere souls. Dying according to their beliefs was far better than compromising and clinging to life.

Echidna is an exception, purely because she is 'greedy'; death is something that poses no threat to her whatsoever.

In short, they are all a group of exceptional individuals who fit the excellent matchmaking system of this world.

Tsurugi was also annoyed. He just wanted to hear a spoiler, and he would leave as soon as he finished!

As for resurrecting these witches—they can offer conditions if they want, and if they don't, Tsurugi doesn't care. Right now, he just wants to stay as far away from these gods as possible.

"Alright, alright, our guests are getting impatient." Echidna clapped her hands with a smile, then coughed lightly and waved her hand.

"Then let me tell you the story from four hundred years ago."

"A long, long time ago..." As Echidna's story unfolded, the scene began to change.

"Summarize the key points in five minutes!" Tsugumi interrupted Echidna's storytelling session, stating bluntly.

"I have absolutely no desire to watch your melodramatic love stories anymore!"

"...You really have no patience." Echidna gave Tsugumi a resentful look, sighed, and continued...

—The story takes place a thousand years ago, when humans were not the dominant species in the world. The most powerful races that ruled the land were the naturally strong dragons and the elves, who had unique advantages.

Humanity's living space was far less advantageous than it is now, four hundred years later, with powerful nations occupying the four corners of the world. On the contrary, humanity at that time could be described as a weakling barely surviving under the dominance of powerful races.

All of this changed with the appearance of witches, or rather, the Great Sin Factor.

The witches come from all sorts of corners and stories. Some are human children, while others are products of human experiments. But without exception, they all one day suddenly gained possession from the 'Great Sin Factor'.

These factors endowed them with powers that transcended the rules of the world—powers far greater than protection, and protection could never interfere with their operation.

The witches, once they began their actions, turned the world upside down.

The eldest witch, Sekhmet, burdened with the hopes and honor of her people, used all her secret arts and cruel methods, violating countless taboos, in an attempt to bring back the ancestors who were called gods. However, what she ultimately created was a flawed mistake.

Abandoned in the wilderness, without the skills to survive or anyone to care for her, the girl's chances of survival should have been nonexistent. However, the force that kept this woman alive existed. Ironically, the taboos and overlapping sins she committed, the clan's long-held desires, ultimately produced a negative feast.

Possessing power, she survived in the desolate land by instinct. She was later captured and raised by a man. The woman was completely obedient to the man and gradually transformed from a wild animal into a human.

But she was a slothful witch who needed nothing but survival, even if she suffered devastating treatment for a woman—she just wanted to survive, to live, nothing else mattered.

So, to ensure her survival, she snapped the necks of all the men who raised her, returned to her homeland, slaughtered them all amidst the wails of her people, erased all traces of her existence, and then fell into a peaceful and happy sleep.

Then one day, she was awakened by those powerful and proud dragons—they were all-knowing, they did whatever they wanted, and their innate strength and dominance over Mana made them regard humans as ants and playthings.

"How annoying! I hate it! You've disturbed my sleep!" With this thought in mind, the witch angrily snapped the necks of every dragon she saw, and soon, she had slaughtered half of the world's dragons.

921 >>

Humanity's living space expanded, and kingdoms began to be established. Around the four great spirits, humanity began to build its four kingdoms.

In the southern empire of Flavia, the northern holy kingdom of Gustico, and the eastern nation of Lugnica, humans who made pacts with elves began to master magical techniques, while other witches also appeared one after another.

Minerva, a raging witch who attempts to mediate the war but whose power leads her to indirectly slaughter countless other races across the land for every human she saves, is driven to despair by her authority.

Typhon, whose biological father was an executioner, observed his father's execution philosophy for many years, began to search for the value of "absolute justice," and ultimately became the arrogant witch Typhon, who judged all evil.

A girl who was chosen as a sacrifice because a lord conducted a forbidden experiment gained the gluttonous factor. After slaughtering the entire territory, she decided to create a future where humans would no longer suffer from hunger, and thus began to create abnormal 'monsters' as the Gluttonous Witch Daphne.

A girl born in an ordinary village and with a fiancé, whose village was destroyed in a war caused by the tyranny of the rulers, was chosen by the factors of the color field and became the most perfect woman in everyone's eyes.

That very night, she became the fiancée of the uprising leader, which in turn triggered countless wars, spreading endlessly from small countries to large ones, thus accelerating the demise of small nations and the unification of large ones. This led to the establishment of the Color Realm Witch, Camilla.

There is also Echidna, the Witch of Greed, who obtained the Greed Factor, recorded the trajectory of the world, and ultimately resolved to create a world where "people can understand each other."

The witches of the Seven Deadly Sins are all like this. Each of them, to some extent, is one of the biggest driving forces behind the development of human civilization to where it is today. It can be said that the countless calamities brought about by their existence have actually promoted the development of human civilization.

Therefore, at that time, "witch" was not a derogatory term. (The latest update is now available on the book club forum; your interpretation is welcome.) In a sense, they were even like guardian deities of humanity, which is why the witch cult exists.

These witches were born at different times, and over a period of thousands of years, the witch factor has been passed down through many different holders. Many of the witches of today are actually born later, while there were already many factor holders before them.

However, as time progressed to the four hundredth anniversary, a sage named Freugel appeared in the world.

He possessed knowledge and wisdom beyond his time, as well as extraordinary persuasive abilities. It was his advice that led Wasteland Hessin and Echidna to establish the foundation for Kararaki, the fourth great nation of mankind. In the Dragon City, the sage met the dragon Polkenica and the first swordsman Red, forging a friendship between them.

And—Echidna

"I was his original partner!" Echidna pouted, clearly resentful.

"That lecherous, prematurely gray-haired man doesn't understand me at all; I'm clearly the most suitable one..."

"That's why nobody likes you~~~" Sekhmet said lazily.

Even Polkenica thinks you're a creepy woman.

"Shut up!!!" Echidna glared at the red-haired witch, then continued telling the story.

The four-person team united, and the sage began to gather people with the desire to 'save the world,' and the Witch Cult was born in the process.

At the same time, the first Sword Saint Red fought in the Sword Slave Arena of the isolated island of Jinuhebu, achieving an undefeated record of six thousand battles. People firmly believed that as long as the Dragon Sword was drawn, there would be no defeat.

The dragon Polkenica signed a pact with Farsel Lugunica, the thirty-fifth king of Lugunica, and the national symbol changed from the lion to the dragon, thus giving birth to the Pro-Dragon Kingdom.

At the same time, in the great forest, a half-elf girl named Satella with beautiful silver hair and violet eyes was born. The sage who came here stopped and accompanied Satella, witnessing many nights with drifting stars, bringing warmth to Satella who was trapped in a spiral of sorrow.

The sage helped Satella contact the scattered witches, and Satella became friends with almost all of them. Then they gathered together and began to act for their respective ideals.

Then... one day, Satella absorbed the essence of jealousy and transformed into the Witch of Jealousy.

She destroyed half the world, and was eventually sealed away by a sage, a dragon, and a sword saint...

"Wait, wait!" Tsugumi interrupted Echidna's story, her brows furrowed.

"What happened during this process? Why did you skip over the part I most wanted to hear?!"

“Because this is a story recorded by the world,” Echidna said with a smile, raising her teacup.

921>>>>

"What I'm about to tell you is the story that happened before it was 'embellished'."

"In these four hundred years, we witches have all died in various accidents. Typhon was drowned by the flood, Sekhmet fell into the Great Falls, Daphne starved to death in the desert, Minerva was trapped in a trap and went mad to her death, and Camilla was burned to ashes."

"It's surprising, but it's also reasonable, isn't it? After all, no one knows whether an accident or tomorrow will come first. Even a witch can die accidentally, which is perfectly normal."

"But—" Echidna's gaze subtly shifted.

"It wasn't until one day, when I was attacked by someone I knew, that I realized something was wrong. His name was Hector, and as far as I knew, he was a 'prince' and 'hero' of a country."

"But the Hector who appeared before me had not only changed his personality, but also gained a sin factor called 'Melancholy' that we were unaware of. This gave him extraordinary combat power, to the point that he almost killed me."

"I defeated him, and thus began to uncover the secrets behind it. I searched the places where all the other witches in the world had died, recreating the moments of their deaths, collecting their souls in preparation for awakening them, and then at that moment—"

"I, too, have been attacked by 'deception'!"

She released her grip, and a white-haired girl with a blurred face appeared on the grass. She had long, platinum blonde hair. Echidna looked at her with utter disgust.

"She has the power to take filth and vulgarity to the extreme, to deceive—to make people 'misread' everything, to swap existence and non-existence, from sight to memory, and even to replace the facts that have already happened in the world."

"This power sounds impressive, but it is actually extremely limited—she can only correct and mislead what has already happened, and rewriting reality requires touching it. Furthermore, she can only exist if there is more than one observer."

"I don't know where she came from, or even if she existed in this world at all. But this factor she possessed induced and caused the death of each and every one of us!"

"Then, it was this ability to modify that allowed Satella to use the jealousy factor she shouldn't have, and to alter reality, turning it into the factor that Satella killed and devoured us!"

"The direct result of doing this was that the power of jealousy was amplified infinitely! If the three of them hadn't sealed her under the Sage's Tower in time and separated everything from her, the destruction of the world would not have been so simple!"

"So... what exactly is the power of jealousy?" Tsugumi asked with interest, showing little emotion towards the story.

He already knew the outcome; after all, he had used his jealousy ability more than once.

"You should also know that, in order to protect Subaru, that child made countless adjustments to the nature of his time travel."

Echidna smoothed her hair and said softly.

"The power of jealousy is not something that develops over time, but rather—"

“Manipulation of the timeline,” Satella said in a sorrowful voice.

"There is no such thing as parallel out-of-control events in this world, but the power of jealousy is to create a non-existent timeline out of thin air, thereby creating a tributary that extends backward into linear time."

"This ability is the greatest threat to the world. No matter how many times the world is physically destroyed, it can be easily reshaped. But if a timeline is created, it means 'cutting' the world itself."

“The fate of this world is predetermined,” Echidna said softly.

“Only the sin factor as an external element and other people are not subject to fate, but as long as they exist in the world and interact with each other, fate will always flow in the predetermined direction.”

"And that vile and despicable fellow, that 'saint' named Pandora, perhaps chose to plot all of this for this very reason."

"She wanted to turn a single river into a mighty river with countless tributaries."

"She wants to turn a complete world into countless branches!"

Latest plot update: Click to follow http://

922

0 Ending spoilers (nonsense)

Well, the story is roughly the same as what Tsugumi guessed.