A Villainess Should Be Strong

She lunged down into the forest, gently descending to the ground and calming her mind to focus on the scanning process.

Then, this time, within a couple of tries, she found out about one peculiar thing that might be the reason for Aleksei's worrying words. His sensed might have proven to be true, after all. It wasn't a mistake.

Gulping a mouthful of saliva, Estelle took this matter up as her next challenge. She gradually approached it to confirm exactly what was this thing, and why it made up such an unsettling presence.

It was a discomforting ball of energy. It didn't have a form, but it seemed to start spreading all over the forest. It was hard to detect. Before, when she scanned over the area, it didn't get picked up precisely because this energy's form was so subtle. However, once you located it, you would find it hard to even take your mind off of the energy ball. The energy concentrated further and further into a secluded part of the forest, somewhere that she knew no one would ever think of going to if it was under normal conditions.

[Is this actually the Chaos' sprout? No.. it shouldn't have escaped from the higher realms yet going by the timeline. If so, how can this be here? It's clearly.. a spawn that carries the same hue with the Destruction Magic.]

If Destruction Magic was essentially the element Chaos abided by, then what was this energy? An alternate version of the Destruction Magic? Estelle knew that the destruction had started somewhere long after this, because according to her broken memories, the past Goddess Estraea did not even visit the town until a month later because she was stuck up in the higher realms with the Absolute because of some forgotten matters.

"I'm really sick of this element.. I wish I could do something to fight back, to destroy this. Building an immunity would also be.. great," Estelle said, covering her mouth to prevent her from getting sick even further.

Even as the Goddess Estraea's body, she still had adverse effects towards this sinister thing. It was as if the energy was solely built to plague her path, hinder her very being.  She stepped backwards, as she gathered her pure mana to try and dissolve this thing. In the past, the Goddess might have missed this particular element and let it grow out until it became a threat for her and her existence, in addition to a highly probable scheme that reeled her in.

Estelle than figured out a way to properly channel her magic in the same way that this unsettling energy was forming with, and fired it to the innermost core of the energy's concentrated parts. This created ripples over the surrounding area, almost shaking the entire place up and creating tremors. The earth shook, trembling as the energy collision created such an apparent destructive ability that even Estelle was forced to step backwards in order to get out of the harm's way.

"...So I can actually destroy it.. No, I'd say that this is only minimizing the scale of the energy, but it didn't completely destroy the element," Estelle analyzed the results and was pleasantly happy with it as she finally started to see differences, like an overturn in her original perception of her magic being inferior in front of this sinister energy. Her archenemy.

Sure enough, the energy grew back, bouncing into existence as if Estelle's attack never happened at all. Like a punching bag. It came back, being as annoying as ever.

Estelle began her trial and error session, trying to replicate the same thing she performed just now. The trial's results were more or less the same, which made her quite disappointed.

Estelle brought her hand up to her lips as she carefully thought about what to do next. There were several things that she picked up. Several things that she hoped to expand on further and figure out a bigger answer.

First, it wasn't like her energy was weaker than the other. It was just so that the nature of the two magic contradicted each other as said by Heine when he explained.

Second, there was almost like a rupture for her to take control of in the energy ball. Previously, she had learned that her magic could be very stable and had a stream of tranquility to it even as she was spawning high intensity magic. On the other hand, the Chaos' magic was doomed to always stay unstable, disruptive, and hard to control. It was for the exact same reason that this magic tended to negatively affect those who were exposed too much to it.

Third, 'affecting' it wasn't impossible, but it could only be done using her signature magic, the Creation Magic. She cautiously tried prodding the ball of energy using other elements and it turned out to be futile. However, only when she used the Creation Magic was she able to do some changes to the energy. This proved that there should be a way to solve this problem, she just hadn't found out about it yet.

"If I could figure out a way to.. seal this power or encapsulate it to the point where it doesn't harm me anymore.. then it would be perfect for resisting it," Estelle grinned. Knowing that she was currently blessed with her abundant, extensive powers and that this wasn't a complete reality, Estelle was much more confident in being brave and daring in her experiments.

Even though she would still have to feel the uncomfortable feeling, she wanted to try this out. She knew that she was strong, just not that strong to regain her worth and overcome all her challenges by herself yet. In order to become stronger, she had to follow the path of painful duties, which included facing this particular sinister energy.

She started to work her way up, teetering over the blackish energy and applying all sorts of methods to see which ones had effects and which ones didn't work at all. Through doing this, she had to come close to the energy ball and naturally received the negative brunt of it.

In the end, after her experiments, she was left with some choices, and most of them did not directly destroyed the energy, but instead could weaken it in a specific way and change the destructive nature bit by bit, whether it was through corrosion or forceful contact.

The first one was the energy ball method, which fired the same concentration as the one the ball of energy had. This made the opposing energy minimized, but the element still stayed intact. This meant that the energy still affected her quite a lot, but the area the energy elapsed over would decrease.

The second method was lacing the energy ball with a sheet of her signature magic that would wrap the opposing energy up. This actually started to corrode the Chaos' magic and began to weaken the energy. This weakening made the energy more tolerable for Estelle to interact with, which left her to wonder if building a tolerance level towards the magic was indeed possible.

The third one was the most complicated one that worked, but also the one that had the most effects. She tried to gobble the other's magic up, overpowering it. However, it wasn't done with brute force, but rather like penetrating into the energy and trying to replace it with her own. With the right amount of concentration and amount, she was able to somewhat both weaken and minimize the energy ball. It was like mixing two strange liquids together. They didn't mix, and always fought with each other to seek the one that could overpower the other and take charge.

In this case, because the Chaos energy was immobile and didn't respond to her energy approaches except for bouncing back whenever she damaged it, Estelle was able to find out the suitable grasp of energy she should apply just by roughly guessing with her choices and experiments.

Combining the several methods could be possible. She began theorizing over all sorts of things, but the one main factor that she noticed was that the energy would always keep coming back after some time. She hadn't discovered a method that could eradicate the energy completely, not to mention that this wasn't the purest Chaos energy, but rather was just an alternate version of what she faced back in the Surface.

She was further and further drawn into this mystical experiment and couldn't help but delved herself deeper every time. There were so many options to try out, so much choices to pick from. She happily went ahead and applied her magic continuously.

However, there was one thing that she failed to note down. If before, her appearance in the Elven country and simple power exchange granted the race powers similar to hers for several generations, then what would happen to this forest that had been imbued by her magic times and times again?