She slapped Elizabeth with all her strength.
The impact sent Elizabeth flying.
Her body slammed into a nearby chair, toppling it over.
The sharp sound of splintering wood echoed in the room.
Elizabeth’s cheek was torn open, and a portion of her skin was ripped away, leaving raw flesh exposed.
Blood dripped down her face, staining the floor.
Instead of crying in pain, she raised her head and glared at the woman.
The woman flinched.
“You—you bitch!”
The woman raised her hand to hit her again, but stopped.
She could see it.
Elizabeth would rather die than listen to her.
The woman’s face twisted.
She took a step back, her voice trembling as she barked,
“Use this to heal yourself. We can’t have you looking like a monster with that face at today’s party.”
She pulled a weak healing potion and a small book from her Spatial Inventory and threw them at Elizabeth.
The bottle rolled on the floor, stopping near Elizabeth’s legs.
Without another word, the woman turned and left the room.
After the sound of her high-heeled shoes faded into the distance, Elizabeth lowered her gaze.
Tears slipped from her eyes.
She touched her torn cheek with trembling hands and—
The scene changed.
The blood stains on the floor had dried.
Elizabeth’s face was wrapped in bandages, stained with faint traces of blood that had seeped through.
The healing potion the woman gave her was a weak one, designed to work slowly over time.
Elizabeth couldn’t use stronger healing potions.
She wasn’t a demigod.
Her body would be overloaded by the Divine energy in them.
It would cause her to explode.
Elizabeth was busy reading the book the woman—her ‘mother-in-law’—had given her along with the weak healing potion.
“…”
Neo, although frozen and unable to move, could see the content of the book.
He clenched his jaws due to the overwhelming pressure of Elizabeth’s subconsious mind crushing him and read the book.
It was a Spell for childbirth.
The contained a detailed method for creating life through magic.
The man and the woman would tear a portion of their souls and fuse them along with their Divine Energy.
This process would create an embryo that could then be nurtured and developed in specialized hospital chambers until it grew into a ‘child.’
The entire process, the book claimed, would take only a few months.
‘This Spell…’
Neo knew about it.
It was how children had been born for centuries since long ago.
Thanks to it, women no longer needed to carry children in their bellies for nine months, and labor pains had become a relic of the past.
Intercourse had long since ceased to be necessary for reproduction.
‘This was the Spell I helped Gaia create during the apocalypse,’ Neo thought.
Back then, childbirth had become nearly impossible with normal methods.
The scene shifted abruptly again.
“Why haven’t you used the Spell?!” The mother-in-law’s glared at Elizabeth.
“I have not awakened my GodBlood. I can’t use Spells,” Elizabeth said, giving a genuine reason, but an excuse nonetheless.
“You bitch!”
The woman raised her hand.
However, her hand froze mid-air when she noticed the look in Elizabeth’s eyes.
Elizabeth wasn’t afraid.
The the mother-in-law lowered her hand and spat.
“You either awaken and use the Spell, or you do it the natural way with Aelric.”
“How?” Elizabeth scoffed. “He can’t even get it up—”
“Both of us know he hasn’t touched you because he prefers the other gender, not because he can’t do it with you.”
The woman’s words made Elizabeth freeze in fear.
“If I give him an ultimatum, he’ll do it with you. So, make your choice.”
Before the woman could leave, the Elizabeth spoke through gritted teeth,
“Is a child so necessary that—”
“A child is necesaary. Ours is a world that stands of bloodline,” the woman spoke coldly. “We bought you because of your bloodline. Now do your work.”
The scene shifted once more.
Elizabeth stood next to a cradle.
Judging by Elizabeth’s appearance, two or three years seemed to have passed.
Inside the cradle, a child barely a month old slept soundly.
Elizabeth maintained an expressionless face.
However, her eyes revealed her true emotions as she stared at the child.
Disgust.
“It’s just a Spell-born child,” Elizabeth muttered, as if she was trying to reassure herself.
The child, inside the cradle, remained utterly oblivious to Elizabeth’s emotions.
Neo, his soul form flickering in and out of existence, observed from the corner of the room.
He noticed the changed air around Elizabeth.
It was an unmistakable sign.
‘She awakened her Godblood.’
‘She awakened when she was almost 21. In other words, a late awakening.’
‘It means she had a sky-high talent.’
‘That explains how she became the youngest Exalted Demigod in the history.’
His gaze shifted to the child.
‘Seems like she used the Spell for childbirth-‘
Neo’s thoughts came to an abrupt halt when he saw what was happening.
Elizabeth moved her hands.
She reached into the cradle and grabbed the child’s neck.
“I… hate you….”
Hatred, sorrow, regret, and confusion.
Her emotions crashed against each other.
Elizabeth’s gaze was locked on the child.
She knew, deep down, the child had done nothing wrong.
It hadn’t asked to be born, much less under these circumstances.
But the sight of it—the tiny being lying there so innocently—only made her hatred boil over.
Find more chapters on My Virtual Library Empire
Her lips quivered as tears began to streak down her face.
She hated herself for feeling this way.
Finally, after what felt like hours, Elizabeth’s grip loosened.
She took a step back from the cradle.
Her shoulders shook with suppressed sobs as she turned her gaze away, unable to look at the child any longer.
The scene changed.
A few months seemed to have passed.
The once dimly lit room was now brighter.
Warm glow of daylight streamed through the open window and a faint scent of lavender wafting through the air.
The room was properly taken care of, unlike before.
The biggest change, however, was in Elizabeth.
She sat beside the cradle.
Her eyes were filled with tenderness as she played with the child.
‘She decided to not hate the child for what happened,’ Neo realized.
Judging by how Elizabeth flinched every time the child laughed and tried to grab her fingers, he could tell that Elizabeth still found it difficult to forget everything.
However, she was trying.
Trying her best to be a mother.