—–
The Goddess of Death giggled after she spoke with Maria. She had never experienced such a funny conversation in her entire life before. Maria was way too funny, often speaking things that didn’t seem to make any sense.
She rested her legs over the sides of the throne as her beautiful and slender pale-white legs moved around as if she were bored.
Hel licked her lips as she grabbed an apple from a nearby table using a wave of her hands to bring it to her hand, and she looked into the beautiful red fruit.
She opened her mouth and gave it a gentle bite. The moment she did, the entire fruit turned black and began to rot… after rotting, it turned into black ashes and dissipated.
“Hahaha~ Maria is really someone amusing! To think I would hit the jackpot with her…” she laughed.
The Goddess of Death looked into the boring palace around her, completely empty of anything. It was only her and the occasional soul or skeleton wandering around, often being her servants, but unlike Maria and her other Undead friends, they were all dull, emotionless, and seemingly silent.
Hel sighed. She wished she could have her all for herself here. She would never be bored anymore with such a peculiar woman at her side.
She would happily laugh every day and go on crazy adventures with the little Maria… there wouldn’t be a day she would be bored with her.
But well, Maria belonged to the surface for now, and she had many friends there already. Meanwhile, Hel was here, completely alone.
Her father, the God of Chaos, was always busy doing something else, and it wasn’t as if she were a child to want her father here forcing himself to make her have some sort of fun.
Every god had their own duty regarding their divinity. The god of chaos seeded chaos, the god of light created the light of the world and guided humanity, the god of nature protected nature and life and guided the elves, the goddess of love and fertility protected love and fertility, and also the elves too. The goddess of ice and snow protected the ice giants, maintained the coldness and iciness of winter, and so on.
The goddess of death had to do what the goddess of death had to do, which was bring souls to her domain and grant them the afterlife. She embodied a natural phenomenon. Her mere existence made death a concept.
And that was it.
It wasn’t as if she was permitted to go to the surface. Her existence would probably instantly kill almost anything within the continent she was to touch and turn them all into Undead to boot.
So that was a big no. Her power was way too much.
The surface was land for the mortals and the living.
Although there were Undead, they were considered some sort of “glitch” that shouldn’t really be there, but due to her influence leaking to the surface of the world naturally, phantasmal beings and undead surge naturally in areas with a lot of concentrated mana.
Undead were supposed to belong to the Realm of Death, Helheim, where only a few of the living beings of the world had ever explored, and only momentarily and with divine power capable of resisting the death essence of Hel and her domain…
Therefore, this place was… very desolate. Hel was always alone most of the time. Although Fenrir and Jormungandr, her siblings, often wandered around Helheim, they were closer to the living than death and were part of another completely different group of gods named Beast Gods, with their own duties.
So they were not able to come interact with her very often, and they seemed not to take their sister too seriously to do it either. Unlike her, they had many descendants they had to take care of.
So due to all these factors, and quite naturally so, Hel was always alone.
And she found in Maria a diversion to her eternal boredom.
But something else was developing in her deathly heart, something else she had never felt before for someone.
It was something like… a mother worried for her child.
Or maybe a big sister worried for her little sister?
Hel had developed some sort of feeling for Maria, without having spoken to her more than once, and very briefly at that.
By merely looking at her do her things, survive, thrive, make friends, and more, she slowly grew closer to Maria’s character.
Like looking at a very good TV Drama, but it was actually real life!
Hel couldn’t help but feel attracted to Maria in such a way.
Maria… She was really an amusing woman…
Now that she spoke to her, she ended up barely letting Maria talk, but the time she had to speak ended up spitting nonsense that only made Hel laugh at how ridiculous and hilarious Maria could get.
Seriously, who would tell a goddess that she was beautiful just upfront? Maria was really someone way too insane!
But that’s what Hel liked the most, how insane Maria could be. She was insane and fun, and that brought her fun too, and slowly, she felt like she was bonding with her as she saw her struggle and even began to have empathy for her.
When the God of Light tried to convince Hel to “disown” Maria from her Divine Protection, Hel went against his will and ended up declining his stupid request.
Before, she would have probably accepted so the old man would stop annoying her. But now? She couldn’t possibly let go of Maria.
Maria was hers.
“To think you even came across one of my father’s little Catastrophes… I wonder what you’ll do with the little girl… I can’t believe you’re actually trying to befriend such a being… Maria, you’re really something else, huh?” sighed Hel as she drank a cup of wine and looked at Maria’s daily life through a projection in front of her made from a glowing blue orb.
—-
