Leveling Up by Seducing Milfs-Chapter 198. If You Were Truly a Monster

"Two hundred... years...?" Nerissa’s voice was so quiet that it was hard to hear. "You’ve been with her... for two hundred years?"

Rick couldn’t see the picture in the crystal very well, but Nerissa’s face told him everything he needed to know. This was the moment when Rick really wanted to see with his eyes.

This was the moment when she learned that Typhon had betrayed her.

"Seventeen children," Nerissa went on, and her voice was empty now, as if all the warmth had left it. "You have 17 kids with her...? While I... while I bore you three hundred, thinking we had the same dream."

The crystal cracked because she was holding it too tightly and her hands started to shake. "Did any of it matter to you?!"

"All those years, all those promises, and all those nights we spent talking about our future together..."

"WAS ANY OF IT REAL!?"

The crystal broke, and Nerissa screamed. It wasn’t a scream of sadness or hopelessness. It was pure rage that made the whole room shake in response.

The scene changed again, and Rick was now in what looked like a courtroom. Nobles and officials from the ocean filled the room, all of them watching as Nerissa sat on her throne with a look Rick had never seen before.

It was a mix of cold rage and something that looked like insanity.

Seventeen ocean dwellers stood in a line in the middle of the room. They looked like they were in their late teens to early thirties, and they all looked enough like Typhon that it was clear who their parents were.

These were the kids who came from the affair.

"I didn’t ask for any of this," the oldest said, his voice shaking with fear. "I didn’t pick my parents!"

"Please, Your Majesty, we haven’t done anything wrong."

Nerissa’s face stayed the same. "Your very existence is proof of the greatest betrayal ever committed against this crown."

"Your presence mocks every vow your father made to me. Your lives are built on two hundred years of lies."

"But we’re not guilty!" a young woman yelled, her face wet with tears. "We had no idea! Mother Seris kept us out of sight about it!"

"We thought Father was just a traveling salesman who came to see us when he could."

"We had no idea he was the Emperor Consort!"

Nerissa said, "Innocence doesn’t change what you stand for," and her voice was completely flat.

Without feeling... It was as if she had turned off all of her feelings so she could do what came next. "I sentence all seventeen of you to execution."

"Immediate and... final decision from the Empress."

Rick felt an overwhelming urge to turn away, but he found himself unable to do so, captivated by the ghostly figure before him.

He had to watch as Nerissa executed each of the seventeen kids herself, using her water magic to drown them one by one. The excessive water pressure amplified their screams, which echoed throughout the room.

The execution wasn’t the most disturbing aspect... it was Nerissa’s expression throughout the entire ordeal.

She felt nothing—no anger, no happiness, no guilt. She had transformed herself into an empty shell, capable of committing terrible acts without a hint of remorse.

The scene changed again, and Rick saw an underwater kingdom that he didn’t know. He remembered the Abyssal Trenches.

This was where Queen Seris had ruled and where Typhon’s secret lover had made her own smaller kingdom in the ocean’s deepest parts.

Nerissa floated over the kingdom. Her huge royal body was like what Rick had seen in the current battle, but it was even scarier.

Thousands of trench dwellers below her looked up in fear and confusion, not knowing why their empress had come to their land.

"You hid a traitor," Nerissa’s voice echoed through the water. "Your queen took my husband and had children to try to take my throne."

"This kingdom is a reminder of betrayal!"

Someone from below yelled, "But Your Majesty, we didn’t know any single thing about that!"

"Queen Seris never told us about the Emperor Consort!"

"We’re loyal to the Ocean Empire!"

Nerissa said, "Loyalty claimed too late means nothing," and she raised both hands.

Rick was horrified to see Nerissa literally pull the ocean down over the kingdom, putting so much pressure on everything in the Abyssal Trenches that it crushed every building, structure, and living thing.

The screams only lasted a few seconds before the pressure got too high for anyone to live.

Nerissa’s pain needed blood, and three thousand two hundred and forty-seven lives ended in minutes. 𝚏𝕣𝕖𝚎𝚠𝚎𝚋𝚗𝐨𝐯𝕖𝕝.𝕔𝐨𝕞

The scene changed again, and Rick saw what had happened. Nerissa was alone in her private room, looking at her hands.

They were clean... and the magic had left no signs of what she had done, but Rick could see the weight settling on her shoulders.

"What have I become?" Nerissa said to herself. "I just killed three thousand of my people who were not guilty..."

"I killed seventeen kids who had done nothing wrong but be born with confusion!"

"I’ve become what I promised myself I would never be when I took the crown...!"

She waited for the tears to come, for the guilt to hit her, for some kind of emotional response to the terrible thing she had done.

But nothing happened.

She didn’t feel anything.

The emotional shutdown was over.

Nerissa had become a machine that could rule and care for the wards, but she felt nothing. There’s no happiness, no sadness, no guilt, and not even any hope.

Just nothingness.

Rick saw the years go by quickly. Nerissa spent fifty years acting like an empress, devoid of the warmth and wisdom that defined her greatness.

Her kids tried to get to her, but she pushed them all away. Her advisors brought her problems, and she solved them quickly and without emotion.

The kingdom worked perfectly, but its heart was dead.

The most painful moments were the small ones. A grandchild brought Nerissa a drawing they made, and she said, "Very good," in a flat voice before going back to work.

Nerissa attended a party for one of her children’s 100th birthday. She felt obligated to go but left early without speaking to anyone.

Many times, her children and subjects attempted to remind her of her former self, but she had transformed into a shell devoid of emotions.

And through it all, Typhon sat on his throne, cursed by his guilt. He couldn’t speak, move, or do anything but be a constant reminder of what his betrayal had cost.

The red light got brighter, and Rick felt himself being pulled deeper into Nerissa’s pain. Now he could feel it, not just see it.

Eight hundred years of experience, fifty years of guilt that had to be kept hidden, and the weight of three thousand deaths that could never be undone.

"I deserve this emptiness," Nerissa’s voice echoed through the void. "I should feel nothing at all..."

"A terrible monster such as me doesn’t deserve to get to feel things..."

Rick wanted to scream that she was wrong, that the situation had pushed her to her breaking point, and that killing those people was wrong but understandable given how bad the betrayal was.

But before he could put his thoughts into words, another voice broke through the silence.

"If you were truly a monster, you wouldn’t care that you had become one."

Rick knew that voice.

It was his, but not from now on.

He remembered what he had said to Nerissa in the throne room when he grabbed her face and told her to feel something.

"A real monster doesn’t spend fifty years punishing themselves."

"A real monster doesn’t turn their own emotions off because they’re horrified by what they did."

"You’re not a monster, Nerissa."

"You’re someone who made terrible choices because of unbearable pain, and that’s normal for living things like us all."

"And that’s a real thing because it’s fixable."