The Purgatory, within the underground floors of the Citadel.

“…why do you feel like venting out your anger on someone you don’t know is a bad thing? After all, you’ve reached godhood. It’s fine to be selfish every once in a while.” A middle-aged looking man in a white coat asked the young woman that was laying down on the bed beside him.

“I guess it has something to do with how I was brought up,” the young woman replied, her expression somewhat conflicted as she wondered whether it was fine for her to continue. Eventually, seeing the man look at her, nonverbally telling her that her secret’s safe with him, she let out a sigh as she continued.

“I didn’t really have a good childhood while growing up. Well, sure, I was born in a family of transcendents, allowing me to learn early on that power made the world go round. However, I wanted to use my power for good and help make the world a better place.”

“Unfortunately, my parents instilled the mindset that no person in the world was good, so violence was the right answer to everything,” she added, slightly shuddering as she recalled this moment. “They even went so far as to punish me if I even did a small good deed for others. On top of that, they also punished me if I disrespected them. How the hell was I going to adjust if everything I did seemed to be wrong?”

“It took me five hundred years to escape the clutches of my family, five thousand years to not let their teachings influence me any further, fifty thousand years to truly forget their teachings, and five hundred thousand years to turn over a new leaf.”

“It’s been a couple of million years since then, yet what they’ve instilled in me still affects me from time to time,” she said with a light sigh. “Thanks to the things I’ve done in the past to suppress it, it only comes out in the form of sadistic tendencies… yet even that I want to stop doing.”

“That’s going to be difficult to achieve,” the middle-aged man said in response, scratching his head. “After all, you’ve been ingrained with the mindset since childhood. Plus, we both know very well that things you pick up at childhood are hard to remove, may it be beneficial or not.”

“Have you ever tried accepting the mindset instead and—“

Ring!

Just before the middle-aged man could finish his words, an alarm rang, prompting the man to give the young woman a wry smile as he turned off the alarm. As the young woman sat up straight, knowing what the alarm signified, the middle-aged man scratched his head as he told her, “Although our time is up, let me finish what I had to say.”

“Have you ever tried accepting the mindset instead, allowing it to just become a natural part of yourself? After all, following the Law of Reincarnation, which you control, you have to have a good side and a bad side.”

“You know very well that wouldn’t fly with me, Doctor,” the young woman said in response as she stood up, removing the wrinkles on her clothes with her hands. “We’ve been talking about this for over ten millenniums already.”

“I’m just saying the option is always there, Theresa,” the middle-aged man replied before standing up to give her a handshake.

After shaking the doctor’s hands and paying the necessary fees, Theresa soon left the building she was previously in, which was in actuality a small hospital situated in the south portion of the Citadel’s underground, the same portion of the Citadel her office was in. She then made her way to one of the various elevators installed along the intersections of the entertainment section, entering it as she was going to head back to the upper floors to work.

Although the Citadel had a massive entertainment section situated underground, in actuality, those that came here had given notices to their higher-ups in advance, with some even having to file those notices a few times just for it to be accepted.

Of course, Theresa was no exception to this.

Once she returned to her office, she went ahead and checked the progress of the various beings she had reincarnated into entities of energy and law for the New Cosmos Project. While she was looking through Arthur’s progress, a light smile could not help but appear on her face as she muttered to herself, “Reaching the first stage of advancement within three weeks of being reborn… if that isn’t fast, I don’t know what is.”

“But of course, it could always be faster… I wonder if I could make him feel pain for a bit so he’s reminded to advance faster,” she said soon after, letting out a giggle filled with playful yet malicious intent for a bit before soon becoming silent. About a minute or so later, she let out a long sigh as she murmured with a groan, “I hate this feeling.”

Ding!

Hearing a light chime resound throughout her office, Theresa stood up from her seat as she pressed the button on the desk, which she would normally use when she was going on a break. However, this time, she pressed it twice, telling others that she was called by her superior.

After making sure that she had done everything she had to before leaving, she then left her office as she made her way to one of the higher floors in the Citadel’s south tower. That was where her superior was located, after all.

Gulping a bit of her saliva from slight nervousness, Theresa knocked on the door in front of her, eventually obtaining a voice of confirmation from the other side, telling her to come in.

Once she entered the room, she sat on the empty chair in front of the only desk in the room, where her superior was seated behind.

Surprisingly, her superior was a man that looked like he was in his twenties. Although from a certain perspective, this sight would be considered another case of nepotism, Theresa knew very well that this man was her superior thanks to his achievements and his specialties. In short, he had obtained his position all thanks to his natural talent and exemplary effort.

“May I ask why you called me here, sir?” Theresa could not help but ask out of nervousness.

“As I told you before, calling me Salazar is fine,” the man, whose name was Salazar, said in response. “Anyways, the reason why I called you here is due to the New Cosmos Project.”

Tossing a small stack of documents to Theresa, he then told her, “According to the higher-ups, the entities we try to create for the project are too streamlined, so they wrote something called the Treaty of Individuality to circumvent this problem.”

“If you were to ask me what I think about the treaty, I normally wouldn’t give two shits about it. But considering how their individuality would hasten the completion of the project, then I obviously wouldn’t protest against it,” he added.

“Is that all, si— I mean, Salazar?” Theresa asked as she looked through the stack of documents, feeling like he was going to say something else.

And unsurprisingly, he did.

“As the Purgatory isn’t used to doing something like this, we’re applying the effects of the treaty by batches. We’ve gone through two batches already, with high levels of success surprisingly,” Salazar replied.

“With that being said, you’re part of the current batch, the third batch.”

“In other words, I want you to give more freedom to the beings you reincarnated as entities,” he said, only to go silent soon after as he recalled something. “Speaking of which, I remember you sending me a report of an entity of energy under you that seems to be doing a good job. If you could give me a report on his previous lives for study, that would be great.”

“I’ll keep that in mind. Would that be all?” Theresa nodded as she asked after she was finished reading through the documents.

Seeing him gesture towards the door in response, Theresa nodded once more as she took her leave, returning to her office a few minutes later.

Letting out a light sigh, she pressed the button on her desk a couple more times as she opened her computer monitor, deciding to first finish the tasks Salazar gave her before she moved onto her usual tasks.

“Although it’s always kind of nerve-wracking to talk to him, he’s actually a really kind guy,” she said to herself as she went ahead and slightly modified the systems used by the entities under her, allowing the systems to have more freedom as she gave the systems the option to be affected by the environment of the world the entities were in.

After applying that change, Theresa pondered if she should implement a couple more changes to their systems, eventually deciding that it was better for her to get a second opinion on her other changes for now.

“With that taken care of, let’s go ahead and write up a report on Arthur’s past lives,” she said after she was done with the first task, trying to psych herself up.

Unsurprisingly, every being that existed in the multiverse was bound to have a couple of past lives, whether they wanted to or not. The only way to stop this was to become immortal. Of course, Arthur was not exempt from this, with Theresa certain that he had a few past lives of his own.

In fact, it was this exact thought that prompted a confused expression to appear on her face as she tried to search for Arthur’s past lives.

“Huh… lacking authority to obtain information regarding every past life Arthur has?”

“With my current authority, I only have access to his three most recent past lives? If I wanted more, I would have to call a higher-up?”

“…eh?”