Brand New Life Online: Rise Of The Goddess Of Harvest

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Bellarine tried to heal Franken’s core, using her powers to mend his wounds as well.

“B-Bellarine…!” Franken muttered.

How long had it been? How long since she had shown any concern for him?

She used to be such a worrywart, always scolding them for being reckless, using her powers to stitch their wounded souls back together.

Where had it all gone wrong?

When had… they become like this?

Amid his madness, Franken began to realize he had once been a simple farmer in the living world.

“Bellarine…”

And Bellarine had been…

CRASH!

“G-Guhhh?”

Before Franken’s eyes, a sword of gleaming starlight pierced Bellarine’s soul core. Her nether core leaked energy and began to shatter slowly.

“A-Ah… A-Atrokus…?”

She turned slowly, gazing at Atrokus writhing in agony and despair, fighting a power that had seized control of him.

He couldn’t stop it.

He simply couldn’t.

“A-AAHH…! S-STOP…! NNNGH…! W-WHAT IS THIS?! WHAT’S…!”

As Bellarine collapsed beside Franken, black tears streamed from her eyes.

Franken stared back in silence.

“No, no…! NO, NO, NO, NO!”

Atrokus screamed. Tears of miasma poured from his eyes as he suddenly grasped what he had done. His friends—his old friends who had grown distant over time but had always stayed with him through thousands of years of madness and slaughter.

The friends he had made after dying, when he believed everything was hopeless after living as a pitiful bandit.

The Farmer, Franken.

The Seamstress, Bellarine.

Two ordinary people who had fallen into the netherworld after dying in the same raid Atrokus and his bandit group launched against their village… where Atrokus himself was killed by a mercenary defending it.

A union forged in despair and agony, regret and suffering—but through a long journey, it had made them inseparable among the Death Generals of the Demon King’s army.

“I never told you…” Franken muttered, voice fading. “I… I was going to propose… to you…”

“F-Franken…” Bellarine whispered, lips trembling. “W-Why didn’t… you say anything? Why now…”

“I’m sorry…” Franken said. “At some point I… ungh… At some point… I stopped being myself… I… hahah… how ironic…”

“…I can’t say it wasn’t the same for me,” Bellarine sighed, meeting his gaze. “I… want to go back… Franken…”

“…”

“I want… to go back to those times…” she murmured through tears. “I hate this place… what I’ve become… everything is so ugly… and horrible… I am… so tired…”

“Bellarine…” Franken’s soul slowly rose. Bellarine reached back.

As their souls touched one final time before death, they experienced it.

Vast green grasslands. Blue skies. The warmth of the sun.

Farm animals, farmlands, yearly harvest festivals.

Music, alcohol, good food, laughter, friends, family.

“Hahaha! Where are you bringing me?”

That night, Franken had planned to propose. He led her behind the barn where they kept the horses, away from the harvest festival noise.

“It’s here, just here…”

Franken held her hand tightly. They smiled at each other.

Bellarine had been such a beautiful young woman back then. Franken was a tall, muscular young man—shy and a little awkward.

“What?” she asked with a teasing smile, tilting her head. “Come on, say it…”

“I-I…” Franken muttered, scratching his head. “Bellarine I… I love… I love you…”

“I know, dummy,” Bellarine chuckled, half-drunk, and kissed him.

That kiss—that warm, perfect kiss.

As twilight flames consumed their souls and bodies…

That warmth remained.

“Would you marry me?”

And before the flames devoured them completely, a new future was born within those altered memories.

As their souls merged while burning into oblivion…

“Franken… Yes, of course!”

Atrokus watched his friends slowly burn. The beauty of their shared past brought him to his knees.

“A-Ahhh…! No…! Don’t leave me…! NOOOOO!!!”

He screamed in horror, agony, and despair as his friends rose into the sky and vanished amid twilight flames.

He collapsed to his knees, hands trembling. He had already lost control of his body—except his head.

From his stomach, a sword sliced outward, tearing him open.

“Gaaahhh…”

Atrokus vomited miasmic blood and glared at the figure stepping from within him.

“H-How…? Why…”

She looked back with cold disdain, then turned her gaze to the fading twilight flames.

“When you burned your own arm before reattaching it, my spores had already burrowed deeper than your flames could reach. I also infected that soul fragment you left behind—the one you didn’t burn.”

She walked slowly toward the battlefield. With a snap of her fingers, every Undead froze. The White Ghosts stood speechless before they began grinding the enemy down in furious vengeance.

She glanced back, eyes glowing with twilight energy. Her footsteps spread nature across the ground.

“I let you eat me so you would lower your guard. Your stomach was indeed hell itself, but I survived by constantly consuming your Death Essence to regenerate. Spreading my spores inside you was easy after that. I let you have your fun—beating my friend, using my powers… How did it feel, Atrokus?”

“A-Ahh…! Y-You weren’t…! in despair?!”

“All an act.”

“…!!!”

Atrokus gasped, realizing how thoroughly he had been played. He—a near Tier 6 Undead of immense power—now knelt before a mere Tier 2.

Just who was this woman?

Why did things come to this?

“But why…! Why my friends…”

She looked at the remaining flames and their ashes.

She approached and infused them with spores, raising them as new Sporeborns.

“A-Ah…! Stop…! Stop desecrating them… it’s wrong…! You’re a mon—”

“A monster? Really? Think about what you’re saying.”

“…?”

“Who has brought pain and suffering to innocents?”

Elayne looked at Franken’s giant, muscular body and patted it, spreading more spores within.

“You.”

Then she turned to Bellarine’s ghostly remains—an ethereal, jelly-like substance twisting into a beautiful purple jellyfish-like being as spores spread through it.

“Your friends have made countless suffer. They killed and devoured millions…”

“…”

Atrokus understood.

This was it.

This was his judgment.

Karma.

The woman before him was no mere Undead.

She was something divine—a goddess who had come to judge him for his sins.

For his countless sins.

“How does it feel now?” she asked, eyes blazing bright gold and red. “How does it feel to lose your friends right in front of you, Atrokus? Painful, isn’t it?”

“A-Ahhh…! AAAHHHHHH…!”

Atrokus burst into tears, unable to contain his grief and horror as he realized he would never see his dear friends again.

“Yeah, that’s how it feels. Right there—that’s the emotion you forced countless people to endure. It is… horrible, isn’t it?”

“…I’m so—”

“Don’t apologize.”

“…?”

“I don’t want to feel bad for trash like you.”

“…A-Ah.”

Atrokus trembled in fear as she drew closer.

Her eyes burned with vengeful wrath.

How long had she suffered in the hands of these people?

How much longer would she be toyed with and used?

How long would she watch everything she loved crumble before her eyes?

No more.

“I will seize everything… so I won’t lose anybody anymore.”

In that moment, Atrokus realized the true monster might not have been him after all.

Her hand pierced his chest, tore out his Nether Core, and…

No, she did not consume it. She shattered it, freeing countless souls into oblivion.

“G-Graaahhh… Gaaahhh…”

Atrokus, with no will left to resist, let her do it.

He collapsed to the ground, bleeding out. His consciousness slowly faded, overtaken by her.

“Franken… Bellarine…”

As darkness consumed him, Atrokus recalled countless memories with his dear friends.

While crying in regret and pain, he remembered how deeply he had loved them.

And because of that love, how far they had gone to keep living together.

Franken and Bellarine had been quite moral before he forced them to consume souls to grow stronger like him.

It was his fault they had twisted over thousands of years into mad monsters who reveled in others’ suffering.

“Now I see why the noble races say we Undead are not the true rulers of the Netherworld…” he muttered. Elayne turned, listening to his final words. “It’s because… of this madness… this madness that consumes us… until we become something else… tread… carefully… Elayne… you too, might become… like me.”

As Atrokus perished, his soul was overtaken by the vast colony of spores and mushrooms. His body rose anew, marked with a Twilight Sigil on its forehead.

“…”

Those last words echoed in her mind for some reason, but she sighed, shook them off, and turned her gaze back to the battlefield.

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