Reincarnated Hero System - Chapter 1192 - 1192: A Tale of Two Friends I

Once, there were two girls born of the divine.

They were neither twins nor sisters, but even such bonds could never have matched the closeness that defined the two of them.

Everything about them, from appearance to personality and behaviour, stood in near complete opposition to one another.

Mallory, one of the pair, was a girl with hair as dark as the night and golden eyes that seemed to draw one in, carrying a calm presence and a beautiful, stoic face that rarely revealed any clear emotion.

She was curt and direct, always favouring logic and efficiency, and possessed a ruthless side that only grew stronger as she grew older and crossed the line from girl to womanhood.

Kirone, the other, had very long white hair, her delicately featured face almost always alive with bright expressions that starkly contrasted Mallory’s stoicism.

She was as playful as her expressions implied, often acted on emotion, whim, and desire, and as she matured, she drifted ever closer to the threshold of hedonism.

Given how different they were, it was often a mystery how such closeness could exist between them at all.

However, as the saying goes, opposites attract, and in their case, it was as though they had been bound together from the very beginning.

These girls were born into power and authority, their parents among the strongest existences within the known universe, a ‘Supreme’ King and Queen of the divine race of gods.

The golden blood flowing through their veins granted them lifespans with no visible end, while their innate talent and brilliance placed them a step above others of their generation.

Combined with the resources their status provided, along with their unique abilities, it’s little surprise their rise through the ranks of power came swiftly.

They lived lives filled with everything from calm, silent moments to adventurous, wondrous ones, as well as times marked by sorrow and solemnity.

Nexus Events? Encounters with powerful Cosmic Entities from beyond their universe? Turning the tide of intergalactic wars even within their own universe?

Well, they’d checked every one of those off their list.

Come rain, come shine, come solar storm, or intergalactic calm, the two goddesses stayed by one another’s side, regardless of the circumstances that surrounded them.

This held true even when they were younger and still little more than teenagers, back when Kirone ventured to a world under attack by the gods’ enemies in the demon race, motivated solely by her pursuit of someone she’d developed a crush on.

Mallory remained with her throughout that entire ordeal, never leaving her behind, even when they faced a crisis where death loomed close enough to touch, and Mallory alone had a clear path of escape.

She refused to take it and remained behind for Kirone’s sake.

Later, as they grew and matured, Mallory began to desire the creation of a power base that belonged solely to them, separate from their parents, so they could establish their own foothold on the intergalactic stage.

Despite the danger tied to such ambition, especially with the inevitability of standing against the faction ruled by the god Emperor, Kirone stayed beside Mallory through every step taken and every consequence that followed.

Even when Kirone defied convention and expectation, breaking deeply rooted social taboos by finding love with a member of the demon race that stood in direct opposition to the gods, Mallory supported her without reservation, prepared to face any storm so her companion could claim what she desired.

Through every battle, every spill of blood, and every war that followed, they stayed together, supporting and guarding one another through everything that unfolded.

It reached a point where nearly everyone across the wider intergalactic stage came to view them as a single entity rather than two individuals.

If one of them was spotted within a region, the other was assumed to be nearby, an expectation Mallory often took advantage of through her efficiency-driven way of thinking.

They’d intentionally separate at times, each dealing with different matters across astronomically distant locations, making use of the openings left in their enemies’ defences by the belief that they were never apart.

Their true breakthrough onto the intergalactic stage, along with their rise toward genuine authority, came several thousand years into their lives when an associate of theirs, unknowingly caught within a temporal paradox, waged war against one of the most powerful divine factions ruling thousands of galaxies.

That faction was the Kyrexi.

In the conflict that ended with the deaths of the god Kings and Queens who led the Kyrexi, Mallory and Kirone didn’t hesitate to finally reveal the forces they’d been cultivating in secrecy for millennia.

They moved quickly to claim the territories left behind by the fallen Rulers, throwing the intergalactic stage into turmoil as a new faction of gods rose to prominence.

This faction was composed of younger generation talents originating from both their home galaxy and far-off regions across the known universe.

They were gods who aimed to rise against the existing Rulers, unconcerned with the consequences of drawing the god Emperor’s ire.

By taking advantage of the Emperor’s injuries following the fall of the Kyrexi, they seized territory, gathered influence, and built power through wit and sword alike, becoming a force to be feared within only a few short years.

Their faction became known throughout the universe as the ‘New gods’, a group born of the younger generation who saw those before them as outdated and destined for replacement.

The two goddesses were the heads of the New gods faction, each holding equal authority as its rulers and masters.

Although minor internal tensions existed among their direct subordinates across the faction, the two never allowed such issues to grow into disputes that could threaten the stability of their power base.

Having been raised under god Kings and Queens who controlled vast territories and governed countless existences from many cultures and temperaments, they’d learned how to manage diverse forces of their own, testing various methods and structures over entire centuries.

Because of that experience, there were very few obstacles when the time came for them to face the reality of ruling on their own.

With Mallory publicly recognised as the ruthless, efficiency-driven figure and Kirone known as the cheerful, carefree smile representing the faction, many often underestimated Kirone, especially when weighed against their fear of Mallory, almost to the point of forgetting that the New gods were ruled 50% by Kirone herself.

Only enemies who would never again witness the light of any star, along with the subordinates closest to them, understood that behind Kirone’s bright, carefree smile was a woman capable of ruthlessness equal to Mallory’s.

After all, she ruled a faction of gods drawn from hundreds of different galaxies, seized power in the wake of a fallen god faction, assassinated dozens of Galactic Rulers to claim their territories, and forced hundreds more into swearing allegiance under pressure.

There was no reality in which she could have been as gentle as her smile suggested.

Mallory, by contrast, was the one most expected to carry out such acts, and she did, though on rare occasions, their subordinates caught glimpses of another side of her, one reserved solely for Kirone, a side that made it clear she’d allow the universe to burn if it meant protecting her.

These two goddesses, bound as closely as they were, knew each other’s brightest truths and deepest secrets alike.

Secrets that figures across the intergalactic stage, especially their enemies, would sacrifice anything to obtain, including knowledge of abilities no one else even knew they possessed.

That was the depth of their bond.

Their coordination in combat was so natural that they didn’t require spoken words or telepathy to understand each other’s intent, and even outside of battle, during negotiations or when confronted with carefully veiled threats, they remained so perfectly in sync that observers often wondered if they shared a single mind.

Their bond revealed itself again when what became known as the greatest intergalactic war in the history of the universe began, the Great Valmone War.

Although they were in separate locations at the time, occupied with entirely different matters, they immediately took identical courses of action aimed at increasing their personal power.

Weakened god Rulers recovering from prior battles against demons or devils began to vanish without explanation, their territories quietly divided, with a significant portion of those star systems falling under the control of the New gods.

Enemies of the New gods from other races, unwilling to witness the rise of another divine faction capable of challenging their power, often found themselves caught in unexpected ambushes during major intergalactic battles, suffering severe losses that ranged from vital territories to priceless artifacts and even their lives.

The number of Race Rulers across the universe fell drastically throughout the Great Valmone War, partly due to the natural toll of warfare, though a considerable portion of those deaths had been carefully orchestrated by the two goddesses working from the shadows.

The Old gods eventually realised this and tried to suppress them, only to find themselves forced into a war fought on two fronts, one against the demons and devils, and the other against the New gods faction.

As for why the demons weren’t hostile toward the New gods in the same way they were toward the Old gods, the answer was simple.

The individual Kirone had fallen in love with just happened to be one of the Demon Kings ruling the strongest demon-controlled planet in the universe, and he also happened to be best friends with the Demon King whose declaration of war against the gods had ignited the Great Valmone War.

A handful of directives along the lines of allowing the New gods to strike at the Old gods so they’d be weakened when facing the demons was enough to bring most of the level-headed demon factions into alignment, leaving the New gods largely unopposed by them.

Of course, there were still those who harboured hatred toward all gods regardless of faction, and their attempts to attack the New gods ended much as before, with a further reduction in the number of Race Rulers across the universe.