The Adventures of Rose Hood

Chapter 42: The Right within the Wrong

I finished recovery in record time and began hunting outside of city bounds. I decided to train shift and learn how to be a smaller dragon.

After a bit of training, I managed to become as small as a horse. Still big, but I could move around in dragon form. I also felt some relief outside of the city, because I could resonate with the evil magic and experiment with it.

I tried mimicking Wrath and controlling evil creatures, but only goblins would obey me. The others would flee.

As I trained, I slowly recovered more memories, and I understood more fully why the rest wanted to destroy the other gods, but I disagreed with destroying the world. As I remembered more, I realized that I needed to be the core. Because even if I managed to convince Wrath not to destroy the world, she would still start a war that would destroy it as collateral.

I was meditating when I felt a presence.

"Whoo, that's a lot of evil. And at the center a little dragon. Rose, what did I say about controlling that."

"I'm meditating, please don't interrupt."

"Please, I could feel that evil presence from town. I'm sure if your boyfriend wasn't the vice-captain, they'd have sent out a subjugation party."

"GHRK... Dallel isn't my boyfriend."

"Eh, please. Anyways, that's a lot stronger than what I felt before. You aren't trying to become the evil god yourself, are you?"

"Didn't you hear, I have the Sloth shard in me."

"Yeah, but I also heard she was asleep. And sleeping shards don't resonate that much evil, especially when inside of a body as strong as yours."

"Size comparison, I'm short."

"You are 10 times larger than Thalia, I'm pretty sure you'd be able to hold it in."

"Well, I'm not trying to right now. I'm trying to meditate."

"Yeah, there's going to be an S rank meeting tomorrow. Try to hide that aura, or I guarantee that the other S ranks will be trying to kill you."

"What, am I invited?"

"Actually, yes. After you managed to take on 10 godly level entities and recover in a little more than a week, they actually wanted to meet you and maybe make you an S rank."

"10?"

"The 9 shards and the king Whilderbeast."

"But three of the shards were on my side."

"And? The fact is that you managed to survive the will of a god with a weeklong recovery. Most would die from their minds breaking, but you not only managed to survive, but you were unharmed mentally. That's impressive."

"I guess."

I knew that I couldn't be harmed as I was an equal in willpower with Envy, but they didn't. I never realized how impressive that would look to someone who was unaware of my nature, and even though Asura suspects something, he likely thinks that I'm just getting slowly corrupted from my connection with Sloth.

"Anyways, can I continue to meditate?"

"Mind if I watch?"

"Not at all."

I began to meditate more and more. I dug down into myself and found my core. It was black and muddy. It seemed dirty, like someone covered it in mud on purpose. My memories didn't tell me anything.

'I should clean it.'

So, I began to do so, the dirt was packed thickly, and I looked to see if there was easier way to clean it and saw that Sloth's core was much the same way.