Chapter 4 – The Goddess Awakens
Aurora wandered deeper into the meadow, unease gnawing at her. She needed to understand this new body, this sealed bloodline, and this System that whispered in her mind.
If this is really me now, then I need to know what I can do… and what I can't.
Her steps carried her into the edge of a dense forest. Birds scattered overhead, startled by her presence. Aurora stopped when she felt it—the oppressive aura of something alive.
The trees bent slightly as a monstrous figure emerged. A hulking beast, covered in jagged bone-like plates, saliva hissing against the grass. Its eyes glowed crimson.
[Target Identified: Abyssal Devourer – Level 68.]
[Estimated Combat Power: Overwhelming.]
[Warning: Host is advised to retreat.]
Aurora froze. Her heart hammered. Level… sixty-eight?
Her knees trembled, but then—something stirred inside her. A presence, vast and radiant, broke against the System's seals.
Her bloodline flared.
The world shifted.
In a heartbeat, her plain white dress burned away into threads of divine gold. Ornaments of celestial design wrapped around her body, a halo of faint starlight forming behind her. Her hair gleamed like molten silver, and her eyes ignited with constellations.
Aurora—no, the Goddess of Cosmos—stood where the trembling girl had been.
She didn't even know how she cast the spell. The words simply fell from her lips, older than language itself.
"—☼ Solar Incantation: Dawn's Judgement! ☼—"
Light surged between her hands, condensing into a searing orb. It grew, pulsing with unbearable radiance, until she thrust it forward.
The mini sun screamed through the forest, colliding with the monster.
The explosion tore reality apart.
A blinding wave of heat and light erupted outward, carving a bottomless pit into the land. Trees disintegrated into ash. Firestorms raged for miles. The Abyssal Devourer's shrieks were consumed in an instant, reduced to nothing.
Aurora stumbled back, horrified at the destruction she had unleashed. But the magic hadn't ended yet.
The dark aspect of her sealed bloodline rebelled.
Black clouds boiled into existence overhead, churning with unnatural rain. The skies wept obsidian droplets, extinguishing the flames—but corrupting the land with a shadowy taint.
The pit became a scar on the earth, filled with smoke and cursed rain.
[Warning: Unstable manifestation detected.]
[Bloodline Seal tightening… Divine Form inaccessible.]
Her golden ornaments flickered, then shattered into light. Her halo vanished. The radiant goddess collapsed back into the frail body of a girl in a white dress, panting heavily.
Aurora clutched her chest, trembling. "W-What… what did I just do?"
Far away, countless powerful eyes turned toward the forest.
In the Demon Territories, emperors and high-ranking nobles rose from their seats, their expressions grim.
"Divine-class magic… here?"
And within the shadows of the forest, a lone girl had been watching.
Silvia, daughter of the Demon Lord, her crimson eyes wide with awe, whispered to herself:
"A goddess… in gold ornaments."
She dropped to one knee in reverence, convinced she had witnessed the descent of a higher being.
But when she later met Aurora, fragile and dressed in white, she would never connect the two.
The System's seal had seen to that.