(Hopefully, this chap isn't confusing. If after reading you have any questions let me know and I will do my best to answer them.)
*Knock Knock*
"Hey, Rimuru…" Shuna said as she walked into the room with a mixture of concern and seriousness. "I… have a question."
"What is it? Is something wrong?" I asked with concern after noticing her expression.
"This… You can bring people back after they have died…. Right?" She asked as she began to fidget with her hands.
"I should be able to. Depending on the circumstances it might make things more difficult. But it shouldn't be too hard. Did something happen?" I asked as I brought her into a hug and began to stroke her hair in hopes of calming her hair.
Shuna remained quiet for a moment before saying.
"My mom… Since I knew it wasn't possible when we first met I never asked. And, well… my family had accepted her death. So it wasn't one of the things we had been thinking of. It just was what it was…
But now that I am getting married… I thought… I thought about how much I missed her, and how I want her to see that we are doing well…" Shuna said as her voice began to shake and she began to cry.
I hugged her tightly before saying.
"Call Benimaru and your father."
Shuna looked up at me with slightly red eyes before asking in a hopeful tone.
"Is… is it possible?"
"Didn't I tell you? If there was anything you ever wanted I would make sure it happened. I cannot break my promise to you can't I?" I told her while stroking her hair.
Shuna returned the hug as tightly as she could for about a minute before giving me a quick kiss and rushing away to call her family.
It left me in a moment of silence to think about everyone else.
Souka lost her mother.
Hinata had… killed her parents. So that was extremely complicated.
As for Milim…I should probably ask her about anything first before giving myself a headache thinking about how to deal with that mess. Her mother would be a bit difficult to bring back, but her father…
'Ciel. What do we do if the soul of Shuna's mother has been reincarnated as someone else?'
[Even when souls are turned into a "Clean slate" there are still remnants of them in it. But it still is possible to bring that person back….] Ciel began to give an explanation of how we should proceed.
It seemed a bit complicated, and well, it was. But it wouldn't be impossible to do so. The hardest part would be locating the soul itself. As only a small trace of Shuna's mother would be trackable.
And so I began to do the preparations needed.
A few minutes later Shuna, Benimaru, and Momomaru burst through the door with a wide range of expressions.
"Lord Rimuru… Is… can you really do it?" Momomaru asked as his voice shook.
"I made a promise. Didn't I?" I said as I finished the preparations inside of my void world.
"Let's get started. This is going to take some time." I said as I sat down on the floor and closed my eyes.
How many souls are in this universe you ask? A lot. So Many Souls.
But thankfully obtaining all the sins and virtues from Yaldabaoth and Yahweh had made the skill Veldanava unlock its full potential. Which made this process slightly easier.
[Yaldabaoth and Yahweh are activating the sin of Lust and the virtue of hope. Activating their respective controls over life, death, and souls.
Supercharging the sin of Lust and the virtue of Hope using Turn Null.
A new skill has been generated from the combination of Lust and Hope. Osiris, God of Life and Death.
This skill has been placed under the Origin: Akashic Records.
Activating a subskill of Osiris: Remembrance of those who passed.]
My eyes opened and it was as if I was staring onto a sea of bright lights all around me. Each of the lights was a soul that was inside of our universe. And there was an overwhelming amount of them.
Trying to find a specific soul in it would be like trying to find a specific grain of sand on a beach. But thanks to the newly created Osiris there was one specific soul that shined a different hue than the rest.
Calling that soul closer to me I saw that it had indeed passed onto the reincarnation cycle. But thanks to the plans I had made with Ciel I was ready for this.
I pulled out a hollow soul that I had created during my preparation and transferred all of the new "Data" into it. And then I returned the newly created soul back to its new owner. It left me with a singular shining soul in my hands.
'Whoever said that time heals all wounds was correct.'
I began to reverse time on the soul, returning it to when it used to be Shuna's mother.
And once I had her soul on my hands I used Origin: Creation to recreate her body and the clothing she wore before she died. Leaving a sleeping Crimson-haired ogress on the floor.
The process had looked quite strange for the ones watching.
In their eyes, I had sat down and closed my eyes. Opened my eyes, which now had some strange symbols and were glowing brightly, and stared off into space for a moment before pulling out a small glowing orb from out of nowhere and then pulling out another hollow orb.
Transferred some of the light from the shining orb into the hollow one before making it disappear. And then, the shining orb began to change rapidly as its light dimmed and glowed once again until it ended with a slightly different hue than at first.
Made the orb float into the middle of the room before a body suddenly began to form from the orb. And the next moment there was a sleeping ogress on the ground. An ogress they were all extremely familiar with.
They all wanted to rush to be next to her but seeing me stand up and walk closer to her they remained in their place.
And as I looked at the sleeping red-skinned and crimson-haired ogress I said my first words to her.
"Your name is Raem."[1]
Turning to the excited group to my left I gave them a small smile before telling them.
"She needs some rest. She will wake up in a few hours. So it would be best to not disturb her too much until then."
And the very next moment I was tackled by the three of them into a hug.
— — —
After Raem woke up, there were a lot of emotions in the room. And overall, a huge amount of confusion on her part. Her last memories were as she was about to die. And now she was surrounded by her family. Who all looked slightly different due to their evolutions. She was also in a place she didn't recognize. And the architecture all around her looked quite strange.
And by the time Benimaru, Momomaru, and Shuna were able to explain what was happening I ended up being sandwiched between the four of them in a hug.
"This is all sooo weird! But I feel so happy!" Raem said as she was still mostly confused about everything since she hadn't had the time to process it. But she was still being affected by the joyous atmosphere.
"My little daughter looks all grown up now! And my baby boy is already a man! What the hell is going on!" Raem continued to say out loud as she alternated between giving hugs to everyone in the room.
And so the strange family reunion continued for the rest of the night. Until eventually Raem had to go rest once again. To at least have some time to process the barrage of information.
— — —
Sometime after this, I approached Souka to ask her about her mother. But she gave me a firm answer I didn't expect.[2]
"No. My mother died a warrior's death. She died protecting us. And taking that away from her would be like spitting in her own grave. To our tribe death is an important part of life. And though we respect others' views on it, it is something we are firm on. Especially if your death was due to protecting something.
You have no idea how much I appreciate you asking me. But I know my mother would also refuse if given the choice. You can ask my father if you want, but I am sure he would agree with me." Souka answered with a firm tone full of respect.
And sure enough, when I asked Abiru he gave me the exact same answer.
So it left only one person to ask. Milim.
— — —
"Err...…" Milim only answered by putting a complicated expression.
"Is it bad of me to say…. I don't want to?" Milim asked with a bit of a hesitant tone.
"I… I had to grow up alone since they died so early in my life. I had Gaia with me but even then he died too. And well… After learning so much about him… I resent Veldanava." She said as she gauged my reaction.
But seeing I wasn't judging her for her words she continued.
"I don't think my mom did much wrong. She was just sort of a regular person after all. So I can't blame her. But Veldanava could have taken care of us. I guess I understand him wanting to leave his power behind and live a normal life. But if he hated his power so much why did he give so much of it to me? If he cared about me why would he let himself and mom get killed in some stupid attack?
He had some stupid extradimensional palace he could have taken us to be safe. But he just left me alone. If it wasn't for Ramiris and Guy I would probably have ended up dead after going on my rampage.
After Ramiris got corrupted Guy was pretty much the only person to take care of me for the longest time. So if anything I consider him more of a father than Veldanava, as weird as that sounds to say."
And for what must have been the first time in her life Milim began to vent all of the anger and stress about her life. She continued to talk for hours complaining about things she didn't know annoyed her. And telling me all the things she had kept buried deep inside.
I just did my best to listen and comfort her. And it finally made sense how the bundle of joy called Milim could awaken the skill of Wrath. She really did have a lot of anger buried inside of her.
By the end of it, Milim looked exhausted but also relieved.
"I feel like I weigh a fraction of what I used to. Thank you" She said as she laid on the grass.
~A/N~
Shout out to Joao132135 for reminding me I should probably do this. I was planning for a short portion of the chap being dedicated to it but it ended up becoming a chap of its own.
[1]The meaning of Raem is 'Affectionate (mother), Loving (mother). A mother who has strong affection for her child..'
[2] Yeah… I'll be honest. I didn't want to do the Raem scene again. So new lore unlocked. Lizardmen respect death, especially if you died protecting something.