Chapter 727: Grimm’s Past Part 1

[Context!! This scene takes place about 8 years after the main story! And it’s going to show Grimm’s past!!! Also, the conversation between Almighty Pandora and the child Goddess of the Apocalypse would largely be things you readers have already seen in a conversation Pandora once had with that goddess! Not much changes, so I didn’t show it!]

"...Pandora... what are you doing?" Grimm asks, hugging me so tight it hurts.

"...Grimm, could you show me your past, please? I found that relic in your room... a relic that reads memories." Grimm has a memory-reading relic. I’ve never seen her use it, but I’m interested in her past. The Omnipotent Pandora knows everything, but I, as an avatar, don’t.

"...Fine. This is the first time you’ve taken an interest in my past." Grimm just agrees. This absolute degenerate doesn’t even ask for anything in return.

"Really?"

"Yes, yes. It’s interesting to show you my past. You want to see what I was like before I became this, right? I’ve always wanted to tell you about my past, but I have to follow certain restrictions... but if you see it for yourself, the problem is off my shoulders." She says, going to the drawer and taking out the artifact in question.

Soon she touches her own head and then comes to me, touching mine. Immediately, everything goes white, and we appear on a brick road. I look around, seeing a kingdom I don’t recognize.

"Where are we?"

"About 578 million years ago. For your information, the various races have existed for nearly 1 billion years, BUT all races can only retain up to 100 thousand years of history and forget everything due to loss of records, etc. So, it turns out many races don’t even know how long they’ve existed, aside from some that went extinct." She says, gesturing around where I see some races that don’t exist today.

"And so you... where are you?" I ask, wanting to meet the Grimm of the past. The Grimm in front of me starts walking until we arrive at a square, where I see a girl with red hair, with equally red eyes, wearing very restrained clothes. She has relatively large breasts, but smaller than Grimm’s and far more contained by her clothes.

While her physique can hardly be described as seductive because the white dress tries to cover and expose as little as possible.

"That’s you? Wow... she looks like a completely different person. She’s beautiful, but kinda... bland." I say, watching her try to talk to people politely, but everyone just ignores her.

"Yeah... she is bland, indeed..."

"Grimm, why does everyone ignore her? Isn’t she recognized as someone important? She’s literally the avatar of the primordial goddess!! She should be worshipped, in my opinion." I say to her.

"She’s too kind, too idealistic, too foolish, and doesn’t know how to assert herself. In the beginning, she was worshipped, but later everyone just started seeing her as someone annoying and moralistic, in other words, an idiot." Grimm looks at her past self with disgust.

"What is she trying to do?"

"Gather people for her cause, which is some kind of world peace treaty, but of course, no one cares about the nonsense she spouts..." The past Grimm sits on the edge of the square’s fountain, seeming discouraged.

"Besides, Pandora, the important people don’t care about her either. They only pretend to care to try and get her help with various things, so she’s just a tool and nothing more. She would never achieve peace the way she is." When Grimm says that, I look down.

At my own body and posture. Grimm calls her past version pathetic, but she made me pathetic, making me act like an "innocent" and cute little girl.

"..." We watch the past Grimm go help a child who slipped on a brick. Her kindness is pleasant, very pure, a rarity to see someone so pure, but the current Grimm’s face contorts with disgust seeing this.

"...It seems you deeply hate your past."

"Of course I hate it. I hate that stupid sow who thinks she can solve everything by being a goody-two-shoes. Look at her. Look how the people around her either mock her or look at her like she’s a whore they want to throw on a bed and rape."

"Her stupidity irritates me, and it irritates me even more that I couldn’t be different. I needed someone to try to control my brain and fail for everything to change." She speaks with an uncomfortable seriousness.

"But there must have been something good, right? It’s not possible that no one liked you." When I say this, Grimm laughs at me.

"You’re so innocent, Pandora. The reality is that there wasn’t a single person who truly liked her, not even children. Do you know why? Because everyone knows what she is. To everyone, she is a tool."

"It was culturally taught that she’s an object in this world, like a homunculus locked into a function. They started treating her like that because they realized she only knows how to do the same thing and nothing more, like a perfectly functional toy."

"Why feel affection, gratitude, love, or friendship for an object? She’s incapable of even expressing dissatisfaction. You will never see my past self complaining that everything is going wrong or that she’s being humiliated." The scenery changes to some kind of party, and I see the past Grimm in a ballroom covered in wine while some people laugh.

But the past Grimm just has a smile on her face, forcing herself to act as if everything is fine.

"Do you see that, Pandora? It was on purpose, but my past self just smiles like an idiot. If someone spilled wine on me nowadays, I would rip out their organs and make them eat them while they die slowly."

"But this stupid girl just accepts the humiliation, everything hidden and wrapped up in an ’accident’... it wasn’t an accident, and I know it." I approach the past Grimm, but my body passes through her as if I were a ghost.

"It’s a memory, Pandora. You can’t change anything... besides, it doesn’t matter anymore..."

"Grimm, could you show me the day you became... the you of now?" I ask her, and she seems thoughtful.

"...When we leave here, I’m going to stuff you with so many tentacles you’ll be traumatized for the rest of your life. Consider that payment for seeing my most humiliating memories." When she says that, I gulp.

’What a damn wicked woman...’

"..."

"Come on. I’ll show you the fateful day when I finally woke up to the reality I enjoy living in now."