Chapter 858: Hatred and Love

Aloflis was somewhat flustered.

She sat atop the coffin, but her illusory body could not block the increasingly dazzling radiance.

“No, there’s nothing. This is my Master’s corpse. She died, and I was only preserving her...”

Why preserve her?

Aloflis fell silent.

This task had clearly never been part of her mission.

As an intelligence that would always obey her Master’s orders, she should have obediently completed her mission.

But...

“I’m sorry! I can’t, I can’t give it to you! Even if this goes against my mission, I, I can’t do this! Without this fragment, even the final trace of my Master’s existence will definitely disappear!”

Aloflis clutched her head as intense pain surged from within her heart.

As an intelligent system, she suddenly felt the increasingly faded aura of the End surge from her illusory body.

The colorless power condensed her body once again.

Yet at this moment, she no longer possessed any color.

[Aloflis, Faded Form]

She had been affected.

It had begun on the day she first chose to preserve this corpse at the cost of abandoning her mission.

“I remember now... Ha... So that’s why, that’s why...”

Aloflis’s memories became increasingly chaotic, yet one voice gradually grew clearer.

Within her memories, the woman whose face could no longer be seen lay exhausted before her. At the final moment of her life, she opened her mouth and said:

“Alo... flis, I’m sorry. I can only leave you all alone...”

“It’s all right, Master. I am the intelligence created by the greatest Golden Tribe, after all. Being alone is nothing.”

The woman’s voice broke with sobs. Trembling, she raised her deathly pale hand and gently stroked Aloflis’s cheek.

“No... Aloflis... you don’t understand... I’m sorry, I’m sorry...”

Why was she crying? Why was she apologizing?

Aloflis did not understand.

Her Master was the daughter of the greatest Governor in the Golden Tribe. From the moment she was born, she had always been so proud and so confident.

Was it merely because of one failure?

Aloflis thought for a moment, then seized that hand and revealed a brilliant smile.

“Master, completing the mission you bestowed upon me is the Meaning of my existence. As long as we can remain together, everything will be fine. Once I complete the mission and give this fragment to the next person who arrives, I’ll go find beauty for you, Master. Even a corpse can be revived, you know~”

Aloflis still could not understand why she was suffering so intensely. Was it because she was going to die?

If she died, she only needed to be revived.

Was it because of the End?

Then they only needed to defeat the End.

Hadn’t the Golden Tribe always been victorious?

Looking at Aloflis’s face, the woman became even more sorrowful.

“...I’m sorry... I was too selfish... I should never have entrusted something like this to you... You had only just been born... You hadn’t even witnessed the glory of the Golden Tribe... But... but I could only leave the final trace behind on you.

Aloflis, hate me. Hate me forever...”

The woman continued to cry, but even the blood tears flowing from her eyes had turned black.

Trembling, she used the last shred of her strength to insert a dim, lusterless fragment into Aloflis’s chest.

“I’m sorry...”

Her final words consisted of only those three words.

Aloflis would forever remember the look in her Master’s eyes when she died completely.

It contained sorrow, pain, despair, fear... and countless other emotions that her database was fundamentally incapable of understanding.

Those were not emotions the Golden Tribe should possess.

She died, leaving behind Aloflis, whom she had created just before her own death, an existence with no true connection to the Golden Tribe itself.

They had not even formed the sacred Eternal Binding.

The Treasure Vault was sealed.

Relying on the fragment in her chest and her mission, Aloflis maintained her Self.

This was the technology of the Golden Tribe. Within the Golden Tribe’s Treasure Vault, it was the only thing unaffected by the End. It was also the only fragment that the Golden Tribe’s technology could not analyze, as if it should never have existed in the first place.

The only thing they could do was extract the energy of [Infinity] from this fragment.

For the first hundred years, Aloflis wondered why her Master had ordered her to hate her.

After a thousand years, Aloflis watched her Master’s gradually disappearing Body and felt a trace of confusion.

After ten thousand years, Aloflis continued repeating her daily work, organizing the items, maintaining her form, and... sitting beside that corpse alone, lost in a daze.

Year ?.

“No... this shouldn’t be happening...”

Aloflis felt fear.

It was the fear known as loneliness.

Even after the woman’s corpse had endured the passage of countless years, even with the Treasure Vault sealing it away, and even though the corpse of a member of the Golden Tribe should have remained eternally indestructible after death...

It was about to disappear.

Year ??.

“No, why? Why hasn’t anyone come yet? Why am I the only one here? No, no... Master, wake up, wake up! I’m scared... I’m so scared! Being alone is so cold. There’s nothing here, I can’t do anything, I can’t...”

That year, she understood what fear was.

Year ???.

Aloflis descended into madness.

She began to hate the woman for creating her at the final moment, when the Golden Tribe had already fallen to the End, leaving her to endure this eternal loneliness alone.

She was unwilling. She was afraid. She did not want to remain in this dark world, and she did not want to bear that responsibility.

Why did it have to be her?

Why... could that woman simply die whenever she wanted? Why couldn’t she have been the one left behind in this cramped world?

Why...

That day, Aloflis understood what hatred was.

Year ????.

“No, you can’t disappear! You, you are my Master! You can’t disappear!”

Only the final unstable phantom of the woman’s corpse remained. Aloflis felt Anger, panic, loneliness, despair....

She could not disappear. Otherwise! Otherwise, she would truly be the only one left here!

And so... she removed the fragment from her own heart, the fragment known as Blasphemy.

“I don’t want you to disappear! I don’t care who comes here! I don’t want to remain here alone, waiting! I don’t want... to be the only one! I hate you, I hate you...”

For the first time, she denied her own mission. For the first time, she shed tears.

She found a transparent coffin inside the Treasure Vault. The coffin was not any special item, and the material used to make it was merely the heavy ice within the most ordinary Stellar Core.

She placed the woman’s phantom inside the coffin and put the Blasphemy fragment in her hands.

The fragment’s power broke through the colorless End, and the woman’s phantom once again regained the form of a corpse.

Aloflis lay beside the coffin.

From the moment she denied her mission and removed the fragment, her existence had also entered a countdown.

“This is fine... This is fine... This way, the one who is lonely... will be you... I hate you... I... love you...”