Chapter 95: Ch 94: The Epidemic

It did not even take Goddess Paphelia an hour to come back.

She had stormed out of the room with a pout on her face, and just an hour later, she was back and sitting in front of Aiden with her arms crossed.

"I will have you know that you are not the reason I am back. This just happens to be one of my favourite rooms right now. It has nothing to do with you. Do you understand?"

The goddess stressed this again and again in order to drive her point across. And Aiden kept his smile on his face to show that he understood.

But that only served to make the goddess angrier with Aiden.

"What? Are you not even going to give me an answer anymore? Aren’t you getting too full of yourself? I will not forgive you unless you declare me as your goddess. Hey, are you listening—"

Goddess Paphelia yelled, but it all fell on deaf ears.

Aiden shook his head and decided to lie down and fall asleep. He could not slip past Goddess Paphelia right now, and even the system told him that the best course of action was to wait.

But how long would he truly have to wait around for?

Aiden was never left alone long enough to carry out any plan. He was either with Goddess Paphelia or Aeloria the few times the goddess did go out.

The first day he had been under constant watch, but by the second day, the goddess had to leave frequently, and Aiden was left alone with Aeloria.

The priestess did nothing but sit in front of Aiden the whole time she was there, almost as if she was keeping an eye on him.

But Aiden felt bored staying in the room, and he even decided to complain about it to the priestess sitting in front of him.

"This is so boring. Do you not feel the same while keeping an eye on me? I am sure you also have a lot you want to do. So you should go and do it—"

"I am fine. I am commanded to keep an eye on you, so I would prefer to do that in silence."

Aeloria told Aiden, but he could read boredom in her eyes as well.

"Ah, I just wish something fun would happen already. This is all so boring—"

The second Aiden complained, his room door opened and Goddess Paphelia entered with a pained face.

She tried to remove that expression from her face as soon as she could, but it was hard for her to remain completely indifferent.

’Huh? Goddess Paphelia is surprisingly human in her emotions despite being a goddess. Her reactions are too much like a human’s.’

Aiden realised that there was a story there. But unfortunately, he had no interest in hearing her hardships when all he wanted was a way for him to go back to his goddess.

But Priestess Aeloria could not remain indifferent to her goddess, and she decided to ask Goddess Paphelia what was wrong.

"Tsk, it’s nothing for you to be worried about."

Goddess Paphelia promised with a pout on her face, but it did not take long for her expression to crumble, and she rushed toward Aeloria to bury her head in Aeloria’s chest. ℯ

"Ugh, it is so hard! Why is everything so hard these days for me? Nothing is going right. First, Aiden keeps refusing to serve me despite me trying everything. And now this new epidemic. What am I supposed to do?"

Goddess Paphelia sounded genuinely worried, which surprised Aiden.

After all, Goddess Paphelia seemed to care for her people, so she should be able to handle a crisis of this scale.

"Tsk, you are laughing at me, right? I can feel you lightly scoffing at me while I am trying to control my emotions. You just have no idea how hard it is to be a goddess."

Aiden remained quiet and allowed Goddess Paphelia to vent her agitation out. After all, this was a good source of information for him.

"Tsk, every hour people are dying in my territory, and everyone is praying to me to save them. But doing so would require me to get rid of the animal residents of my territory. If I do that, then I will invoke karmic retribution. This is something humans need to resolve on their own."

This sounded more like an excuse to Aiden, but thinking back on the matter at hand, his goddess had never directly interfered in anything he did as well.

And not only her, the other gods he had met had never directly interfered with human fate except for the time at the slave village.

But that was an exception because the god had not yet been born there.

Still, Aiden felt a little surprised at Goddess Paphelia’s words. Especially at the fact that she considered rats as a part of her territory and recognized them as worshippers as well.

"What is it? You are looking at me like you are seeing me in a new light."

"Ah, it’s nothing really. I am just surprised at the fact that you consider rats as a part of your worshippers."

"Oh, so your goddess does not recognize non-human, non-intelligent species as a part of her territory? Or are you just biased?"

Goddess Paphelia’s question shook Aiden. But thinking back at it, he had never considered such things before. He had only ever followed the system’s guidelines, and that was what he intended to do in the future as well.

Not that it mattered right now. Aiden was caught in something else for now.

"So, what exactly is happening with the epidemic?"

Goddess Paphelia’s expression immediately became serious again.

"I don’t know. That is the problem. Something is spreading through my territory, and even I cannot simply erase it without consequences."

Aiden frowned at her words.

For the first time since arriving in this place, he wondered if he could actually help her without betraying his goddess.