CHAPTER 37: CHAPTER NO.37 ’MAN’ HATING GODDESS

I muttered under my breath. "Of course. Why not me?"

As if the universe enjoyed proving me right, the terrified swarm of people all around me collapsed in eerie unison. It wasn’t a gradual thing—one by one, like dominoes falling—it was everyone, dropping at the exact same second, like puppets whose strings had been cleanly severed. Limbs tangled. Screams choked mid-air. Faces slackened as bodies sprawled across the asphalt.

Even the girls I had been shielding in my arms went limp, their panicked grip loosening into nothing. Their breaths slowed, their eyelids fluttered closed, and they sagged against me with the same eerie synchronicity.

"...The hell?" I whispered, my voice sounding too loud in the sudden silence.

The city was never quiet, not New York. Even at midnight, there was always something—the blare of a horn, a faraway siren, the shuffle of hurried footsteps. But right now? Dead silence.

And then I noticed—no, felt—it.

The air pressed against me like an invisible tide. Heavy. Suffocating. It wasn’t the Minotaur’s presence anymore. No, this was different. The beast’s aura had been raw, savage—like standing too close to a bonfire. But this? This was cold and sharp, yet heavy enough to drag the air out of my lungs. My skin prickled. My throat went dry. My heart hammered against my ribs as if warning me to run.

But I couldn’t.

Because above the wreckage, above the dust-choked street and the groaning Minotaur that hadn’t moved since freezing mid-charge, something else had appeared.

A figure.

Floating.

No wings. No visible support. Just hovering, draped in flowing, pale silver garments that rippled in a wind I couldn’t feel. Her hair was long, cascading down her shoulders like strands of moonlight, catching the dim glow of the streetlamps that still sputtered through the chaos. Her face—damn it, her face—was beautiful, but in that unsettling way beauty can sometimes be. Ethereal, flawless, but cold. Cold enough that when her eyes landed on me, it felt like I’d been nailed into place.

I realised something important in that instant: it wasn’t the Minotaur everyone had collapsed under. It was her.

Her lips parted slightly, and her voice rolled through the silence like velvet over a blade.

"...Man."

Just one word. And it wasn’t spoken with confusion, or greeting, or anything human. It was spat with disgust, with venom, like the word itself was filth corroding her tongue.

Every hair on my body stood on end. I clenched my jaw, trying to swallow the dryness in my throat.

I didn’t know who—or what

—she was. Goddess? Spirit? Some higher being? Hell, maybe just another variety of demon masquerading as divine. But I knew one thing: the sheer pressure radiating from her eclipsed the Minotaur entirely. It wasn’t even a contest.

The hulking beast, horns glinting in the lamplight, was frozen mid-breath, eyes wide and unblinking, like a toy abandoned by a child. Even its massive muscles twitched uselessly as if straining against invisible chains. The once unstoppable predator was reduced to prey.

And she hadn’t even looked at it.

Her focus was entirely, terrifyingly, locked on me.

My instincts screamed to back away, but my legs felt like they’d been bolted into the pavement. Sovereign Haki stirred within me on instinct, faint ripples of willpower pushing back against that suffocating weight pressing down. My chest burned with the effort. It was like trying to stop a tidal wave with a sandcastle.

Her gaze narrowed, and for just a moment, her expression twisted into something darker—something raw. Loathing.

But she reined it in at the last moment and said, "How’re you still awake, mortal?"

Her voice cut deeper than the word itself. "Mortal." The way she said it wasn’t just an insult—it was a sentence. Like she’d already decided what I was, and by extension, what I deserved.

I swallowed, hard. My throat clicked dryly. How am I still awake? That was the question burning in her tone. I didn’t know if blurting the truth—that I had no damn clue either—was a smart move or the stupidest thing I could possibly do.

The pressure pressed harder, like invisible hands shoving down on my shoulders, trying to force me into the same unconscious heap as everyone else. My knees buckled. Concrete bit into them as I crouched low, my teeth grinding against the weight.

Inside me, Sovereign Haki strained, resisting, flickering like a guttering flame against a storm. My willpower roared in protest, invisible but mine. I wasn’t supposed to survive this kind of aura. Hell, I wasn’t supposed to even stay conscious. But somehow, I was.

And that... pissed her off.

Her lips curved downward, disgust mingling with confusion. She drifted closer without moving her legs, robes trailing in the air like they were underwater. Her eyes—pale silver, cold and sharp—narrowed as they scanned me, searching for something.

"Pathetic," she said softly, almost to herself. "And yet..."

The words trailed off, unfinished.

The Minotaur let out a strangled grunt, finally managing to twitch, like it was being allowed to breathe again. Its massive head stretched backwards as air filled its chest, expanding it to its limit, then—

RAWWWWWWWRRRR!

The Minotaur’s roar shook the air, rattling the broken glass still clinging to windows above. The ground beneath my palms thrummed like a living drum, each stomp echoing through my bones. Its nostrils flared, pumping out hot gusts of air thick with the stench of iron and damp earth. It looked alive again, but not free—like a chained beast granted just enough slack to thrash.

The goddess finally looked at it.

A luminous bow shimmered into being in her hands, forming out of sheer light, the kind that burned my retinas just looking at it. No string. No wood. Just curved radiance, bending reality itself into a weapon.

The Minotaur, for all its size, froze like a deer under headlights. Its chest rose in rapid heaves, its muscles quivering. For the first time since it appeared, I saw fear in its beastly eyes.

Her pale fingers drew back nothing—and yet a string of light stretched between her hands, humming with tension. A spear of brilliance, an arrow woven from raw divinity, coalesced where no quiver existed.

And then it hit me.

She wasn’t drawing on mana. Not demonic power. Not even the natural pulse of aether in this city. Whatever energy poured into that bow came from something else entirely. Higher. Harsher. Unforgiving.

Every instinct in me screamed: If she lets that fly, the Minotaur is done. And maybe me along with it.

My throat tightened. My hands clenched around the unconscious girls lying slack beside me. Their faces were pale, still trapped under her pressure. All around us, dozens—hundreds—of strangers lay collapsed, helpless. If she loosed that arrow, the fallout alone...

I couldn’t breathe.

Her voice was cold steel wrapped in silk when she spoke again."Polluted creation. Beast forged from the arrogance of men."

The Minotaur snarled, but it didn’t move. Couldn’t.

She aimed.

And my heart dropped into my stomach.

Because that glowing arrow? It wasn’t pointed at the Minotaur anymore.

It was pointed straight at me.

THE. FUCK?!

"H-Hey, let’s talk like civil—"

The words tumbled out of my mouth faster than I could think. My voice cracked halfway through, sounding more like a plea than an argument. Not my proudest moment.

The glowing arrow of divine light didn’t so much as tremble. Her pale, silver eyes narrowed further, pinning me in place like an insect on a collector’s board.

"You dare speak."

Her tone wasn’t raised. It didn’t need to be. Each syllable hit me like a hammer on bone.

"I—yeah, well, people tend to do that, you know? Talking. Very common. Big fan of it, actually." My lips moved on instinct, spitting out words to fill the space before silence crushed me completely. I had no plan, no grand speech—just my dumb mouth running because if it stopped, I’d have to face the fact that an actual goddess had a nuke of holy light aimed between my eyes.

Her expression didn’t change. Not an inch.

Sweat rolled down my temple, tracing a cold line along my cheek. My knees still ached from the pressure of her aura, every second making it harder to stay upright. Sovereign Haki burned faintly inside me, not enough to fight back, just enough to keep me clinging to consciousness.

I dragged in a shaky breath. "Look, I don’t know what kind of... cosmic beef you’ve got with guys in general, but maybe blasting random pedestrians in New York isn’t the healthiest coping strategy?"

Her eyes flickered. Just for a heartbeat. But I saw it—something sharp, like a spark of rage contained under ice.

"Man," she said again. The way her lip curled made it sound like she was spitting acid. "The root of corruption. The architects of cruelty. Parasites."

Okay. Definitely a man-hater goddess. Check.

She tilted her head, silver hair drifting with the motion, and studied me like I wasn’t even human but some malformed bug daring to twitch under her heel. "Why do you still resist?"

"I don’t know!" My voice came out louder than I meant, cracking under pressure. "I shouldn’t be standing here! I shouldn’t be awake! Believe me, if it were up to me, I’d be passed out like everyone else right now. Best nap of my life. But nooo, apparently I get the VIP torture package instead!"

For the first time, her perfect, unearthly face faltered. Not much, but enough. A crease between her brows. A flicker of... doubt?

The bow of light in her hands hummed louder, vibrating with condensed force. The arrowpoint shone brighter, a miniature sun ready to pierce my skull.

Every instinct screamed move. But my body wouldn’t listen. My legs were stone, my chest locked tight, my heartbeat stuttering against my ribs like a trapped bird.

Still, I forced words past my dry throat. "If you’re gonna kill me, at least have the decency to tell me why. I deserve that much, don’t I? Or is basic courtesy also a ’man-made corruption’ in your book?"

Her lips pressed into a thin line.

Silence stretched between us, thick enough to choke on.

Then, slowly, the pressure around me shifted. It didn’t vanish, but it twisted—like a blade turning just enough to press the flat against my skin instead of the edge. The suffocating weight eased just enough for me to suck in a full breath.

Her voice was colder than the void when she finally answered.

"You are awake because your will is not yours."

I froze. "...What?"

She lowered the bow slightly—not much, just a hair, but it was the first sign she wasn’t about to obliterate me on reflex.

"That flame inside you," she murmured, eyes narrowing, "is not mortal. It reeks of something... older. Something that should have been erased."

My stomach lurched. Was she talking about the system? Sovereign Haki? Or—hell—Lucifer?

Her gaze sharpened again, pinning me like a knife through parchment. "Who gave it to you?"

My mouth opened, then closed. My brain screamed: Don’t. Say. A. Word.

Because telling her about the system? Yeah, that was suicide. That was handing the cheat sheet to the enemy mid-exam.

So I did what I always do when cornered. I lied through my teeth.

"Would you believe... natural talent?"

Her eyes narrowed further. The arrow in her bow flared dangerously bright again.

Shit.

***

Stone me, I can take it!

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