Villainess X Villain: They are obsessed with each other!

Chapter 357: Chapter: 356 In a way I was always free.

The next day, Ian walked toward his field with a mattock he had borrowed from the village chief. He planted the blade into the soil and began turning the earth, one stroke after another.

The sun gradually climbed higher into the sky, its heat becoming increasingly oppressive as sweat rolled down his body and soaked his clothes, yet Ian didn’t stop, or rather, he couldn’t bring himself to stop.

His arms began to ache, his palms grew sore from gripping the wooden handle, and his breathing became heavier with every passing hour, but he continued working without paying much attention to any of it.

He needed something to occupy his mind, something simple enough that he didn’t have to think about anything else, because what Destiny had told him the previous night was proving much harder to digest than he had initially expected.

Among the countless worlds he had visited throughout his lifetime, Ian had encountered theories similar to what Destiny had described.

Some ancient civilizations had speculated about the existence of other universes, while others had spoken of Fate as something far greater than a mere force that governed the lives of mortals.

However, those theories had always been vague and superficial, nothing more than the fragmented beliefs of civilizations that had never truly managed to see beyond the boundaries of their own existence.

Some had even claimed that Fate itself was the strongest being in existence, but Ian had never taken those words seriously.

He had travelled too far, seen too much, and fought against too many supposedly absolute beings to place much faith in such stories.

Yesterday, however, Destiny had spoken about those things as someone who had actually witnessed them.

She had reached the edge of the universe, looked beyond reality, observed other universes and even encountered another version of herself.

That knowledge had left Ian feeling strangely complicated, because for the first time in a very long time, the foundation upon which he had built his entire life had begun to feel uncertain.

His entire life had been spent chasing freedom from Fate. He had escaped its threads once, something that should have been impossible, but even after doing so, he had never truly considered himself free.

He still needed to become stronger, strong enough to eventually kill Fate itself, because as far as Ian was concerned, no being could ever be truly free while something existed above them that possessed the authority to decide the course of their lives.

He might have escaped Fate’s threads, and Fate might currently be incapable of directly interfering with him, but that was only temporary.

Eventually, the restriction preventing Fate from acting would disappear, and when that happened, Ian knew that surviving would be nearly impossible, even if he somehow returned to the peak of his strength.

Now that his body was dying, his chances of resisting Fate were even smaller, but strangely enough, that no longer frightened him as much as it should have.

Destiny had promised to safeguard his soul, and Ian knew that gods couldn’t be trusted but their promises were something that was entirely different, so he would have another chance after his death.

He would be reincarnated, grow stronger once again, and eventually accomplish everything he had failed to accomplish in this life.

But what would happen after that?

That question had been bothering him ever since last night. What would he do after reincarnation, after becoming strong enough to kill Fate, after finally obtaining the freedom he had spent his entire existence pursuing?

For the first time, Ian realized that he had never actually thought beyond that point. His entire path had been built around reaching a single destination, and he had spent so long staring at it that he had never bothered to wonder what he would see after reaching it.

Even if he became the strongest being in his universe, what would that actually mean if there were countless other universes beyond it?

What if, after finally breaking the chains of Fate, some existence far greater than himself appeared and decided to enslave him instead?

What if there was always something above him, another layer of existence, another being, another law that could render everything he had achieved meaningless?

If Destiny was telling the truth, then even this universe, which Ian had once believed to be immeasurably vast, was nothing more than a grain of sand compared to something greater.

He had spent his entire life fighting to become the strongest creature within that grain, but what meaning did strength have if the grain itself was insignificant?

Ian drove the mattock into the soil again.

For a moment, he stared at the earth beneath his feet.

Perhaps that was what disturbed him the most. The idea that the thing which had given his life meaning could itself be meaningless on a larger scale.

Freedom had always been the answer whenever he questioned his existence. He had fought because he wanted to be free, endured because he wanted to be free, and even accepted death because he would rather die by his own choice than continue living as someone’s puppet.

Yet now Destiny had shown him that existence was far larger than he had imagined, and suddenly that answer seemed strangely small.

If there were countless universes, and countless beings far stronger than anything he had ever encountered, then perhaps his struggle was nothing more than a meaningless struggle taking place inside an insignificant corner of existence.

Ian couldn’t help but wonder whether this was simply what life was like. Perhaps every answer only led to another question, every boundary revealed another boundary beyond it, and every goal that seemed like the end of the road merely became the beginning of another journey once it was reached.

He continued working until his thoughts gradually became quieter.

By the time Ian finally stopped, the sun had begun its descent toward the horizon. The oppressive heat that had weighed upon his body throughout the day had softened, replaced by the warm orange rays of evening.

Ian looked across the field and realized that he had tilted the entire thing. Every patch of soil had been turned over, leaving the earth loose and ready for planting, yet strangely enough, he felt no satisfaction from the accomplishment.

Normally, finishing such a task would have given him at least a little sense of fulfillment, but today it meant almost nothing to him.

He rested the mattock over his shoulder and began walking back toward the village, his footsteps slow and unhurried as he watched the surrounding world with a distant gaze.

The trees swayed gently in the evening breeze, birds returned to their nests, smoke rose from the chimneys of distant houses, and villagers gradually began returning home after finishing their own work.

Everything was ordinary, almost painfully ordinary, and yet Ian found himself looking at all of it differently.

He remembered the countless places he had visited throughout his life, the civilizations that had risen and fallen, the powerful beings who had once believed themselves immortal, and the countless people who had fought desperately for things that seemed insignificant from the perspective of history.

He had once thought himself different from all of them, someone who had seen enough of the world to understand what truly mattered, but perhaps he had been no different after all.

Then, somewhere within his memories, he heard the voice of his younger self.

”Even if I am unable to achieve freedom, then that’s that. Of course it would be sad, but so what? At least I tried. At least I fought. No matter the consequences, I will not regret my actions.”

Ian slowed down.

Those were the words his fifteen-year-old self had once spoken to the world in the dead of night, at a time when the difference between himself and the gods had been like the difference between a single grain of sand and the soil beneath an entire world.

Back then, he had known almost nothing. He hadn’t understood the true nature of Fate, hadn’t travelled across countless worlds, hadn’t encountered beings capable of destroying civilizations with a thought, and certainly hadn’t known that the universe itself might only be one tiny part of something far greater.

He had simply been a foolish fifteen-year-old boy standing at the lowest point of his life, yet somehow that boy had possessed something Ian felt he had gradually lost along the way.

Conviction.

Ian let out a quiet sigh and lightly patted the dust from his clothes. Had he really grown weaker in the most important way?

Had he become so obsessed with reaching the end that he had forgotten why he had started walking in the first place? His younger self had never promised that he would win.

He had never claimed that freedom was guaranteed, nor had he believed that his struggle would somehow become meaningful simply because he succeeded.

He had only decided that if freedom was what he wanted, then he would fight for it, and if he failed, he would at least have the satisfaction of knowing that he had chosen his own path rather than surrendering to someone else’s will.

Ian looked toward the setting sun.

It continued descending beyond the horizon as it had every other evening, completely indifferent to his thoughts and struggles.

The world didn’t care whether Ian became the strongest being in existence or died tomorrow.

The universe didn’t care either. Perhaps even the countless universes beyond it wouldn’t care.

There would always be something greater, some existence that stood beyond whatever boundary he managed to reach, and perhaps there would never be a point where he could confidently say that he had reached the absolute peak of existence.

Ian smiled faintly.

”Hehehe... it seems I’ve really grown old.”

He shook his head, almost amused by his own thoughts. So what if this world was nothing more than a grain of sand? So what if this universe was merely one tiny fragment of an existence too vast for him to comprehend?

He had never wanted to rule the world, nor had he ever dreamed of becoming some supreme being who stood above everything else.

What he wanted was freedom, and perhaps he had been making things unnecessarily complicated by trying to attach some greater meaning to it.

If he became free, then he would find a way to preserve that freedom.

If something stronger appeared, he would deal with it when the time came.

And if he eventually encountered an existence so powerful that he had absolutely no chance of defeating it, then he would still have a choice in how he faced it.

That was the part Ian had forgotten. Freedom had never meant having the power to guarantee victory. It had never meant being untouchable or becoming the strongest existence in creation.

Freedom meant possessing the right to choose his own path, even when the choices available to him were terrible. It meant that if he chose to fight, the decision belonged to him, and if he chose to die, that decision belonged to him as well.

Ian’s gaze softened as he remembered the boy he had once been.

Even back then, when the gods had seemed like beings beyond his reach, he had still chosen to fight. He had known that he might lose, yet that possibility had never been enough to make him surrender. Perhaps that was the true meaning behind everything he had spent his life pursuing.

A faint smile appeared on Ian’s face as he continued walking toward the village.

”Even if there are countless universes, and even if there is some existence out there capable of crushing me with a single thought, so what?”

His voice was quiet, almost lost beneath the evening breeze.

”At least I’ll have a choice.”

He looked once more toward the setting sun before lowering his gaze and continuing down the path.

”Just like back then, I could choose my own death. Even now, I’ll choose my own death if I have to. If I win, then I’ll live freely. If I lose, I’ll still die as someone who chose his own path rather than becoming someone else’s slave.”

His footsteps gradually carried him closer to the village, where warm lights had begun appearing through the windows of the houses.

Ian smiled.

”In a sense...”

He paused for a moment, allowing the thought to settle within him.

”I’ve always been free.”