Jayr POV - Tensei Shitara Slime Datta Ken Universe, Central World, Magic Continent, Kingdom of Siltrosso - 2013 AMB
After Granbell realizes that I was talking about his granddaughter and mutters her name, I nod and confirm, "Indeed, your granddaughter's soul was originally that of your late wife, Maria Rosso. Of course, after so many years passing, there is nothing left of your wife in your granddaughter's soul. After all, during her first reincarnation, all the memories and personality were completely purged, returning the soul to a blank state. However, in the end, the soul is still the same and easily available without causing any major issue to this multiverse, giving me the perfect opportunity to do something about it without worrying too much about the consequences."
As soon as Granbell hears my words, he glares at me and, with true steel in his voice, he declares with a tone that promises uncompromising retaliation, "No matter how much I loved and still love my late wife, I'll never sacrifice my granddaughter or any other member of my family to have her back! Not only would Maria never forgive me if I did such a horrible thing! But I'll never be able to forgive myself either! You'll not speak of such a thing ever again..."
Before he can continue, I interrupt him by saying in a casual tone, "Who has ever talked about sacrificing your granddaughter? Sure, she may be slightly sociopathic and very greedy, but that still isn't enough for me to casually harm a 10-year-old kid with memories of her past life as tyrannical ruler!"
After saying that, I continue to explain, "However, if I can take a small piece of her soul, more specifically a piece of her soul that holds a fairly powerful but dangerous skill that is also negatively affecting her nature. Then I can make use of it to restore your late wife's original soul along with all her memories before fully reviving her. After that, I can also easily fix the damage done to your granddaughter's soul."
In response to my explanation, the old noble calms down and mutters, "I see..." before he ponders what I just told him for a few seconds and asks, "Are there any downsides to this procedure? Will either my wife, Maria, or my granddaughter, Mariabell, be negatively affected by it?"
I shrug my shoulders and honestly reply, "The only real downside of this procedure is that your granddaughter's skill will be downgraded to a weaker version after I restore her soul, as most of its power will be converted to restore your wife's original soul. However, from my personal point of view, that isn't such a bad thing; in fact, it may very well be a blessing in disguise."
Hearing that, a frown forms on Granbell's face as he asks, "What do you mean by that? What is this skill you are so wary of?"
I take another sip of the still magically warm tea, obviously thanks to me, and then I reply, "The name of that skill is Greed. It is a Unique skill that belongs to the Skill type known as the Sin Series. These are a special presence even among Unique skills, as they represent human desire. Greed has the power to dominate human desires and bend them to the user's own will. The greater their desires are, the easier they can be manipulated."
I watch Granbell's face twitch a little as his calm and controlled facade breaks a little as I continue to explain, "The user can see through people's desires and control the target's desire, then let the target do as they command without them knowing. It has two methods of doing this: The first method is using their own desires to overcome the desires of their subject, leading the two to agree on a goal and therefore, turn them into their ally. The drawback of this method is that it can only be activated in conversation-length interactions. The second, quicker method works by simply using the unique skill 'Greed' to forcefully dominate and brainwash the target. It's even possible to destroy the target's will through a direct injection of enough 'desire,' turning the target into a walking puppet. At the same time, however, this technique is risky, as it could fail and likely backfire if the target were to notice it. Moreover, while quick, it may still take some time, depending on the extent of the target's desire."
At the end of my explanation, I see a bitter smile appear on Granbell's face while I conclude, "You clearly can understand how such a peculiar skill may twist a person's psyche, especially one of such a young age. On top of that, the memories of her previous life also didn't help at all on that front, as the former Empress was quite a twisted individual herself. I'm pretty sure that thanks to that skill and her own circumstances of not really facing a genuine threat in this life, Mariabell has become completely overconfident and arrogant in her approach to the other natives of the world, and you know perfectly well how dangerous this is. This little setback and your guidance may very well be the thing she needs the most to grow as a person and as your heir at the moment."
At this point, we fall into a calm silence as Granbell also sips from his refilled teacup as he ponders my words until he finally reaches a conclusion.
Then he puts down his teacup, sighs loudly, and admits, "Haa... You are right... I had already noticed a few concerning hints of what you told me, but I had ignored them before, as I convinced myself that such traits were necessary if they wanted to thrive as my heir. On top of that, Mariabell is so smart and knowledgeable that I already treated her as my close confidante... But now, after learning all this, it seems that I was blinded by her excellence and got too careless to the point of completely forgetting to actually teach her. In fact, now that I think about it, I may also have been affected by her Unique Skill, Greed, in some way, making me gloss over such details..."
After saying that, Granbell sighs again and says, "Haa... As long as you promise me that both Mariabell and Maria will be fine, then I'll agree. I'll do anything in my power to help you unite this world against that terrifying enemy!"
Hearing that, I nod and, looking at the old noble right into his eyes, I say in a confident tone, "I swear it. I, Pucci Jayr, the God of Healing, Justice, and Dragons, the administrator of the Voice of the World, and the Champion of Culture, promise that at the end of the procedure, both Rosso Mariabell and the resurrected Rosso Maria will be fine and healthy."
As soon as I finish my pledge, I feel my Divinity, Blessing, and even the Voice of the World act up, binding me to my promise while informing Granbell of it, who visibly relaxes and now looks at me with a gaze full of hope and genuine respect.
Shortly after that, Granbell and I quickly reach an agreement where we plan the best way to unite the kingdoms of the Council of the West with the rest of the allied faction and also the best way to prepare for the looming invasion subsequent battle before Granbell uses his Thought Communication to contact his granddaugher and make her come to us so that I can procede with the operation.
We don't have to wait for too long before Mariabell Rosso calmly opens the door and steps into the reception hall with a somewhat bored expression on her face.
Mariabell Rosso is a pale-skinned, petite young girl at the age of 10 with smooth, long, blond hair that extends past her waist and pink eyes akin to her pink lips.
Her attire consists of a dark red, knee-length dress with a white, ruffled collar and a black bow tied around her neck. The dress has buttons down the front and a scalloped hem.
She wears white knee-high socks or stockings adorned with small, dark bows along their length.
Her footwear is simple, dark-colored Mary Jane-style shoes. A detail worth noting is a green bracelet-like accessory on her wrists.
(Image Here - Mariabell Rosso)
As soon as she steps into the reception hall, Mariabell greets us in a polite tone before Granbell gives her a brief introduction, "Mariabell, this is Jayr-sama. He is a very important and esteemed guest, so treat him with the utmost respect."
In response to her grandfather's request, Mariabell focuses her attention on me and I immediately feel that she is trying to use her Unique Skill, Greed, on me to sense my desires, something that makes me chuckle loudly as it is completely impossible for such a low level Skill to actually affect me, especially since the user herself is ridiculosly weak compared to me.
Mariabell notices her skill failure and is unable to hide her shock as her eyes open wide and she briefly exclaims, "Wha...!?" before she quickly fixes her expression and tries to once again hide behind a calm mask, acting like nothing happened.
However, Granbell, who also noticed what she tried to do, let out another defeated sigh while I snort and say, "Hmpf! You should be a lot more careful about who you choose to use your skill on, girl. After all, a mere Unique Skill is not something that allows someone to be regarded as invincible in this world."
After saying that, I continue to explain, "While the ability to sense and manipulate someone's desire is indeed quite powerful and frightening against those unprepared or those too weak, for the truly powerful, it is something that can be easily countered by those who truly stand at the top of this world."
After that, Granbell starts to explain the reason for my presence, and needless to say, she is shocked to find out about the Champion of Power's invasion and his objective of destroying the whole multiverse.
She was even surprised by the fact that her grandfather knows about the multiverse itself.
But her biggest surprise came when Granbell honestly and directly told her that she was the reincarnation of his late wife and that I needed a small piece of her soul to revive her at the cost of downgrading her Unique Skill.
Needless to say, Mariabell outright refused and again tried to use her Unique Skill, Greed, to manipulate her grandfather into changing his mind and helping her fight me.
Unfortunately for Mariabell, Granbell is also one of the individuals at the very top of this world and is easily able to shrug off Greed's influence.
The only reason her Unique Skill affected him before in the first place was because he had complete trust in his granddaughter and was completely unguarded against her.
After that, I calmly knock Mariabell out by using Dragon God Spirit Haki to not only shut down her mind, but also her soul, which requires an absurd level of control, as one can easily damage the target soul if one is careless.
The reason for that is not only to calmly proceed with the operation uninterrupted, but also to ensure that she won't feel any pain at all from the procedure.
After all, cutting off a piece of someone's soul is something incredibly painful to the point that those too weak may even outright die because of the shock, especially since the patient may easily be shocked awake if only the mind and the body are unconscious.
Then, under Granbell's watchful eyes, I begin the operation. I start by using Spirit Magic to pull out Mariabell's soul before I carefully observe it to find the right spot I need to cut, the one that has imprinted the Unique Skill, Greed.
The reason for this choice isn't only because I want to weaken that awful skill that corrupts and twists its user's personality, but also because that area of Mariabell's soul is actually the most resilient, as it has been strengthened the most by the Unique Skill imprinted on it.
After studying Mariabell's soul for a few seconds, I find what I am looking for and, without wasting any more time, I envelope the soul with my Spiral Cosmo to further protecting in case something happens, and then, I carefully use Spirit Magic to delicately and precisely cut off a piece of the soul in a single instant, avoiding needless suffering and damage.
The next instant, I swiftly perform three actions at the exact same time.
I quickly envelop the soul fragment with my Spiral Cosmo to keep it together, avoiding its destruction as it is currently very unstable.
I also transform the Spiral Cosmo enveloped around Mariabell's soul into neutral soul energy and use it to fill the hole left behind by the fragment and quickly mend the damage done to it using a combination of Spirit Magic and Restoration Magic.
Lastly, I take advantage of my authority as the Admin of the Voice of the World to force the damaged Unique Skill Greed to downgrade it into the Extra Skill Sense Desires, a much weaker and more harmless version of it.
After doing that, I calmly put Mirabell's soul back into her body, syncing it back to her Material Body, Spiritual Body, and Astral Body.
Then I quickly use my Cosmic Awareness to thoroughly check Mariabell to ensure that the procedure is successful and that there are no unexpected issues before I look at the tense Granbell and inform him, "I'm done. The procedure is complete. Everything went as expected. Mariabell is completely fine; there are no problems with her body, mind, or soul whatsoever. The only aftereffect of the operation is that her Unique Skill Greed was downgraded to the Extra Skill Sense Desires. However, that doesn't mean that she can't evolve it back to Greed again. After all, Unique Skills are in some ways a reflection of their user's mind, making it much easier for her to do so."
Hearing that, Granbell nods and comments, "That's fine. I'm sure that this small setback will help her grow even stronger, and I'll surely be there to guide her to become the best version of herself..."
After saying that, Granbell summons his servants and orders them to carry his still unconscious granddaughter back to her room and make sure that she is fully taken care of.
After the servants and Mariabell left the hall, I focus my attention on the fragment of Mariabell's soul that I've extracted and say, "Now that the quick and easy part is out of the way, it is time to focus all my attention on the real operation..."
Shortly after saying that, I immediately proceeded by infusing an ungodly amount of neutral soul energy into the soul fragment, and in combination, I also used Spirit Magic and my technique, Dark Resurrection, to transform the soul fragment into a complete soul.
However, I do not stop here because the end result would obviously be only a mere copy of Mariabell's soul, which is not what I want to do.
Reaching this point, I cast a Restoration spell to rewind the soul's time and watch it as it quickly regresses, as the skills that Mariabell has learned in this third life disappear one after the other until it becomes a newborn soul with the inherited memories of her previous life.
Then the soul continues to regress before my eyes until it becomes a faint ember. This is a soul's most primal state, the form a soul takes when it is residing in the cycle of reincarnation, waiting to start its next great adventure.
After staying in its ember-like state for some time, the soul suddenly balloons, growing much bigger than before and becoming a much older soul than the initial state when I started this process.
This is naturally because the soul is now rewinding back to its second life, at the time of the European Empress who lived around 200 years ago in the universe that contains the Earth of this multiverse.
I calmly watch as the soul turns younger and younger before my very eyes, watching how the various experiences that she went through in her second life that shaped both her personality and soul quickly fading away one after the other, and before long, the soul once again becomes a new born soul, only this time it is a blank one, one without any memory of it previous life as the long stay in the cycle of reincarnation completely wiped out everything of the individual that it was before, Maria Rosso.
At this point, I focus more than ever as I watch the blank ember-like soul hover in front of me while still protected by my Spiral Cosmo and enveloped by the glow of the Restoration Magic I'm using.
This time, the soul remains in its blank ember state for much longer than before as time continues to move back quickly.
One year back, ten years back, fifty years back, one hundred years back, five hundred years back, one thousand years back.
When the soul rewound back by one thousand and five hundred years, the ember-like blank soul suddenly goes through a massive change as some of the memories of its first life start to reappear deep within the soul, as the process that wiped out all the memories during the soul's stay in the cycle of reincarnation comes undone.
As more years are rewound, the more memories reappear deep within the soul, bringing more and more back of the individual known as Maria Rosso.
At the same time, I'm getting closer and closer to the critical point, the time of Maria's death, something that makes me much more careful as I slow down the time rewind a little bit, since I want to catch the perfect time and also make sure that nothing unexpected happens because of my haste.
Once again, the ember-like soul suddenly balloons, and at the same time, the various skills she learned in her life are reimprinted into the soul one after the other, a clear sign that I've reached the time shortly before Maria Rosso's death.
At this point, I completely stop my Restoration Spell as I've reached my primary objective, I've recovered the complete and healthy soul of Maria Rosso using a small fragment of her reincarnated one.
I turn my head to look at the apparently calm, but clearly very nervous and tense Granbell and announce, "The most difficult part is done. I've successfully recovered and restored your wife's complete soul using a fragment of your granddaughter's soul. The only thing left to do is to purify your wife's body that was used to create your Undead Puppet, fix a few things here and there to make it compatible with life once more, and lastly, bind your wife's soul with her body to complete the resurrection."
Granbell nods and prepares to summon his Undead Puppet, but suddenly, he stops on his tracks as he looks at Maria's soul with a clear hint of concern in his gaze, and he mutters in a hesitant tone, "This... This is something that I've desired for such a long time. I've got so lost in my desperation and desires that I've never actually stopped to question myself. Is... Is this even the right thing to do at this point...? So much time has already passed since Maria died, would she even wish to be revived...?"
Hearing Granbell second-guess himself, I smile warmly and reassure him, "You don't have to worry about what Maria wanted. While I was recovering her soul from the fragment I took from your granddaughter, I watched a lot of her memories as they were restored, and saw that she truly loved you and your children from the bottom of her heart. On top of that, I've also felt a bunch of very strong emotions, the kind that truly left a mark on her soul, especially those at the time of her death. What I felt was a chaotic mix of emotions: fear, despair, rage, anguish, sadness, and so on. However, the strongest ones I've felt among that chaos were, without any doubt, love, hope, and longing. From that alone, I can say in complete confidence that Maria would be more than happy to have the chance to spend more time with you and your family. Even more so, if she can make up for the considerable time she has already lost."
In response to my reassuring words, Granbell reignites his resolve and, without wasting any more time, he summons the Undead Puppet he created using his late wife's corpse.
The next moment, a bright red magic circle appears in front of Granbell that suddenly releases a bright flash of light for a brief moment.
When the light fades away, in the place of the magic circle, there is the emotionless Undead Puppet standing protectively in front of its summoner.
At this point, I can't help but take a brief moment to look at the Undead Puppet of Maria Rosso, the late wife of Granbell Rosso.
I have to admit that Maria Rosso was a very beautiful and voluptuous woman who didn't look any older than a woman in her mid-30s.
She possesses extremely long, straight blonde hair that cascades down to her waist, framing her face.
Her eyes are large and expressive, a vibrant pink, and her skin has a delicate, almost porcelain-like quality, even more so thanks to the unnatural paleness as a result of her undead status.
Her expression is calm, almost serene, with a soft, neutral mouth.
She is wearing a light lavender or pale lilac-colored dress; the fabric appears soft and flowing, the neckline is slightly low, and it features a ruffled trim.
Visible beneath the dress is a gold necklace, comprised of two delicate chains layered.
From the lower chain hangs a pendant shaped like a stylized cross, embellished with a rose or rosette detail near the bottom.
Overall, she looks very similar to her granddaughter Mariabell.
(Image Here - Maria Rosso)
After taking a brief look, I tell Granbell to make his Undead Puppet lie on the nearby couch and also to order her not to move or retaliate, no matter what happens.
Then I don't waste any more time and quickly start to work on restoring the Undead Puppet into a simple corpse by purging the Necromatic Magic from it, which not only allowed Granbell to control the corpse, but also made sure that it was preserved in an almost optimal condition.
After doing that, I move on to revitalize Maria's corpse by using Dark Resurrection on it, and before long, I watch as the chest starts to slowly move, rising and lowering as the lungs start to work again, just like the rest of the internal organs like the heart as the subtle blush that is now present on her cheeks also clearly reveal.
In the end, I proceed to complete Maria Rosso's resurrection by using Spirit Magic to once again completely bind her soul to her body. Luckily, since this is Maria's original body, there is no rejection at all, and the whole process is almost ridiculously effortless.
The reason for that is that in the Tensei Shitara Slime Datta Ken Universe, the rules around death and resurrection are much more loose compared to many other universes out there and because of that I don't have to use an almost obscene amount of energy or find some witty way to circumvent the problem to force the process which is quite a nice change of pace.
After completing the whole process, I take a moment to confirm that I've done everything without any error and that I've successfully resurrected Maria Rosso before I inform Granbell, "It's done. Congratulations, your wife is once again among the living."
Shortly after saying that, I notice that Maria's eyes are now fluttering a clear sign that she is about to wake up, so I quickly remind Granbell to keep his promise to gather the nations that are part of the Council of the West and force them to let go of their grievances and unite to fight off the invasion of the Champion of Power before I quickly teleport away to give the reuniting couple the privacy they deserve.