A pale woman whipped her tears off her face with her sleeves and soon rose from the ground, weakly, a broken smile on her face.
She stood with the support of her sword, as though all of her strength had been snatched away from her. Her legs felt weak and trembled as she struggled to remain standing.
She then slowly took a step in a particular direction, using her sword as a cane.
"god tests his strongest soldiers with the most difficult tests, if I failed here, it does not mean that I will fail again, as long as I reflect here, as long as I remind myself of what happened today, as long as I let myself feel the guilt of it all, I will never make this mistake again... she is gone, she will never come back, she is... dead" Her knees buckled as she said this, as they met the ground with a thud, her eyes could barely hold back the stream of tears in them.
"Oh god... why are you cruel, what did your subjects ever do to deserve such wrath from you? Were you not the all-loving and most merciful being? Were you just bluffing about it? I have prayed to only you for my whole life, I have worshipped only you for my whole life, yet still, nothing good has ever happened to me, all my happiness, nothing but temporary."
She slowly stood up again, weakly taking a few more steps ahead.
"Why, god, why? I want to believe in you, I want to love you, but you keep pushing me further from you. If these are your so-called 'tests', I don't want them, I can not take them anymore. You say that you don't burden a soul more than it can carry, but I can't take anymore, my resolve is turning thinner and thinner, to the point where I am even starting to doubt your existence."
"Tell me, god, TELL ME!!! ARE YOU REAL OR NOT!!!?" Her voice echoed, but no reply was heard, what was she even expecting? A response? how foolish was she?
Several hundreds of steps later, what she was searching for was finally in her vision, the lifeless, mutilated body of Kealen, untouched by the flames.
A relic user can impose their will upon their source element directly as soon as they reach fifty access points, it is as if they wish for something to happen or for something not to happen if the wish is too absorbed then it will not come to be true, if the wish is appropriate enough considering their access level, it would come true in most cases, in short, the more absurd your wish is, the more access points you require.
Melissa had willed for kealens body to not get affected by her furious flames, and since the wish was not absurd at all, it came true.
She looked at the lifeless body, all of its pieces lying around. Gathering enough strength in her legs she reached out and gathered all of the ripped pieces with trembling hands as she placed them in a pile. She wanted to vomit, even witnessing this scene felt like torture, but someone had to do it, someone had to give her a proper burial, that was the least she could do for her late friend.
Resisting the urge to expel all the contents in her stomach, she picked her sword up, which was stabbed into the ground, bright, white flames ignited as they shrouded the sword, the metal turned bright-red as it started to bend, but before it could even be liquified, the flames gave the metal a shape, and soon after the bright flames were extinguished, the metal went back to its original reddish colour just resembling a shovel now.
It was her ability, [Melt]. It allowed her to melt any metal and give shape to it, the problem was that metals took a lot of time to cool back down, so to solve it, she asked the relic user of blacksmithing to customize a sword for her, in the end, the user of blacksmithing found the perfect material for her sword to be constructed by, a metal that softens at high temperature and solidifies in low time.
She shoved the shovel into the ground, and a couple of minutes later, a six-feet deep and six-feet wide hole, she climbed out of the hole, her clothes drenched with sweat and covered in soil.
She gave kealens body one last glance before pushing its remains into the pit, barely holding herself back from tears.
She gripped the shovel tighter and filled the pit with the help of it.
"god, may she be accepted into heaven, may she rest in peace" Melissa prayed for her, but as she was doing, a realization hit her, "kealen is not going to heaven, neither am I. I am a pirate, I am a murderer, I am a looter."
She wanted to know the answer to why god did not answer her prayers, it was quite simple, "I am a sinner, and my shoulders are carrying the burden of my sins. It is not bullshit like god is not real, oh, he sure is real, alright, that I can say for certain, but why would he answer the prayers of a sinner like me? Why would he? he has no reason to. I haven't even repented for my sins yet, and what if I do? I will just end up committing them again. I was born into piracy and I will die embracing it, that is my fate."
"If god will not answer me, if he will not show me a path, if he will not guide me, I will find an answer to my own questions, I will carve my own path and I will guide myself through that path... all alone, with me and my crew. If I can not enter heaven! I will create my own!"
The shovel in her hand went through the same transformation and turned back into a breathtaking reddish sword with detailed crimson patterns on it, that she pointed towards the dark-blue sky of the night, where billions and billions, an uncountable amount of stars were shining. witnessing that alone would make you wonder how unfathomable this being's powers truly are.
"GOD! IF YOU HAVE ABANDED ME! THEN I SHALL DO THE SAME! I WILL ABANDEN YOU JUST AS YOU ABANDED ME!"
Just shouting that sentence alone made Melissa's heart eka with fear, she was trembling with fear inside, but she didn't show it, she was challenging her own creator after all.
It was quite bold of her to say all that to a being that created the sun itself, from which she borrowed her measly powers from.
For the first time in two decades, she finally felt like an ant against an unfathomable being.
"A god is a god only because he has the powers of a god, if a god didn't have the powers required to be a god, he wouldn't be a god in the first place. If all I need is power, then I will obtain it! I will obtain as much power as I can! until I can call myself a GOD!"
It was as though she was mocking the omnipotence and omniscience of the true sovereign who ruled over all.
[And that was how the sins of pride and greed won over Melissa]