Upon entering the paradise conjured by the formation, Sigrún, Eleonora, and Seraphina couldn't help but freeze mid-air. Almost at the center of the place, they could see, between two giant wolves, a half-charred body, missing an arm, with dull dark hair where only fleeting glimmers of stars could barely be seen.
"Erik…"
Seraphina whispered in a broken voice laden with pain as she approached the body almost fearfully, tears streaming down her eyes in torrents. Hearing Seraphina's voice, Eleonora and Sigrún snapped back to reality, at which moment the latter suddenly appeared in front of Erik, surrounded by blue fire.
With visible panic, Sigrún conjured hundreds of runes while simultaneously placing her hands on Erik's sunken chest. The moment Sigrún made contact with Erik, the blue fire surrounding her completely covered him, and instantly the hundreds of runes in the air began to emit powerful beams of verdant light onto Erik.
"How could you end up like this…?"
With waterfalls of tears streaming from her eyes, Sigrún murmured as her mana was consumed at a terrifying speed, trying to rekindle Erik's almost extinguished vitality. With expressions full of pain, Seraphina and Eleonora placed their hands on Sigrún's shoulders and began channeling mana to her, but their eyes never left Erik's figure on the ground.
…
Meanwhile, outside the formation, the Legend-level beings nodded to their Master-level subordinates to approach so they could also enter the formation. But at that instant, the void began to tremble violently, as if a cosmic earthquake had descended, and enormous cracks began to open in the void, from which strange droplets that seemed like holes in reality began to fall.
[A Calamity of the Myst! Fall back!!]
With solemn expressions, the Legend-levels ordered the Master-levels while their mana flared at full power and brilliant mana domes surrounded the Master-levels. Hastily, the Legend-levels teleported, appearing several astronomical units away with their entourage of Master-levels.
[The Void's Lament… That ruin seems more special than we thought…]
As the serious voice of Yrsa, the regent of the Boreal League, echoed in the heads of the other Legend-levels, they all looked toward the formation with solemn expressions. From their perspective, in an area tens of thousands of kilometers around the formation, a perfect sphere formed where light bent in an illogical and unnatural manner.
Within that sphere, all the Legend-levels could see the strange droplets of "nothing" "falling" like tears, giving the sensation that the void itself was crying. But those "tears," which seemed to evoke a profound melancholy and infinite existential emptiness in anyone who saw them, were extremely dangerous.
Anything touched by the tears dissolved into nothingness, as if its atoms became incapable of further interaction, simply dismantling in silence. Meanwhile, the entrance and the shields of the ships managed to resist a bit longer, using enormous amounts of mana to counteract the effect of the "tears."
But the resistance was futile; after a while, the ships' shields began to fail, and little by little the tears started to fall onto the ships' hulls, which held out until their mana was exhausted, and they ended up like everything else—dissolved into nothingness. A sight that sent chills down the spines of all the mana users present.
Amid the apocalyptic view, the Director of the Arcane Order stared at the formation, which remained intact amid the terrifying Myst Calamity, with a solemn expression. Although everyone present believed the Myst Calamity had been triggered by the ruin, he knew better than anyone. That calamity was happening because of Erik; the Myst was weeping for his pain.
[That boy is truly terrifying, Lysander… Although the scale is quite "small," the Void's Lament only occurs very rarely with the tragic and simultaneous death of several high-level beings or due to very rare cataclysmic events… Not even the death of Tal'veren or his generals triggered it…]
At that moment, the Director could hear the voice of his wife, Brigid, in his head, to which he couldn't help but nod solemnly. Gripping the sword in his hands, he replied in a complex tone.
[And this is what happens when Erik is still alive… I don't even want to imagine what will happen if he dies…]
[Let's hope Sigrún and the others manage to heal him… His vitality is on the verge of disappearing…] Brigid commented in a heavy voice, to which the Director could only nod with heaviness.
…
…
…
Not knowing how much time had passed, Erik suddenly found himself in a perfectly white space with only a low wooden table in the center, where he could see a person with their back turned. The person seemed to be a woman of short stature and well-defined physique, but what powerfully caught Erik's attention was the woman's long black hair, adorned with stars and galaxies, just like his.
At that moment, the woman turned around to look at him, revealing a face that seemed sculpted with perfect features, while her eyes, of an intense emerald green, scanned him from head to toe with curiosity. After a few moments, the beautiful woman, who seemed to be about 20 years old, smiled gracefully and commented in a clear and pleasant voice.
"You look quite funny, you know?"
"…"
Slightly confused, Erik lowered his head to look at himself. The first thing that entered Erik's field of vision were his hands, which looked wrinkled, like the hands of an old man. But what caught Erik's attention the most were his wrists and arms, where, over his university uniform, he was imprisoned by golden shackles with chains on which runes could be seen moving slowly.
Focusing on those strange runes, Erik saw them quickly rearrange to form words he could understand in the galactic language. Curious, Erik tried thinking of other languages, and to his surprise, the runes rearranged to say exactly the same thing in each and every one, including the language of his past life. But upon seeing one of the phrases on the shackles, Erik understood what it was.
{Only kill in self-defense or to defend family.}
With a somewhat strange smile on his face, Erik brought his hands to his face, where he indeed found wrinkled and old skin. At that moment, the beautiful young woman at the table produced a mirror from nowhere and showed it to him. In the mirror's reflection, Erik could see a man of about 60 with short, mostly grey, neatly combed hair, heterochromatic eyes—one blue and one green—and an enormous golden shackle with a chain around his neck.
"So this is the 'other side'…"
Seeing his aged face from his first life, albeit with one eye a different color and wearing his university uniform, Erik couldn't help but whisper softly. Then Erik looked at the smiling young woman before him and spoke respectfully while performing a small bow.
"I imagine you must be some kind of god taking a form familiar to me… Though you likely already know, I am Erik Verne; a pleasure to make your acquaintance."
Hearing Erik's greeting, the beautiful young woman nodded with satisfaction, then commented as the mirror faded into nothingness.
"Sit, let's chat a bit."
"Pardon the intrusion." Erik nodded politely, then sat down opposite the young woman, who conjured from nothing a simple porcelain teapot and two cups, and poured hot tea while speaking calmly.
"I see you're very calm. Perhaps it's because you've already 'died' once?"
"Yes. Although I don't remember seeing anything like this when I died in my first life, I'm in a different world, so anything can happen." Erik replied calmly as he reached out to take the cup of hot tea offered by the young woman, who conjured a plate of cookies and commented with a cheerful smile.
"Composed and elegant, I like it."
"Thank you for the compliment."
Erik replied respectfully while taking a cookie, a gleam of delight in his heterochromatic eyes. Seeing the almost childlike happiness on Erik's face as he tasted the cookies, the young woman couldn't help but comment with a warm smile, placing her elbow on the table to support her delicate face.
"Almost 90 years since you first ate a cookie from the trash, and you still love them… Seems you haven't grown at all in all that time; you're too adorable."
"Well, by this world's standards, I'm still a baby, so I can allow myself some liberties."
Erik couldn't help but comment with a cheerful smile on his aged face as he tasted the cookie—the best of all, Eleonora's super-special cookie. With an endeared smile, the young woman commented while watching Erik enjoy the cookies and tea.
"A normal person would remember traumatically eating a cookie from the trash and end up hating them, you know? They would never end up with diabetes from becoming addicted to them…"
"Well, I myself came from the trash, and I don't hate myself, so why would I hate cookies? They're too delicious to hate, and if diabetes is the price to pay for enjoying them, I'm more than willing." Erik replied with a smile while taking another cookie. The young woman spoke in a more serious voice while looking at Erik.
"…You're too 'stable'… Don't you hate your parents or anything like that? In your first life, they threw you in a dumpster right after birth, and in this life, they dumped you in a random orphanage…"
"I hated them for a while in my first life…" Erik responded calmly, and after taking a sip of tea, continued speaking casually while reaching for another cookie.
"Especially when I found out how a policeman had found me as a newborn in a dumpster. But in the end, I got parents better than I could have wished for and had a good life, so with time I forgot about it. There's no point in hating someone I never met; they could well have been a pair of crackheads who didn't even know what they were doing. Hating them was a waste of time."
"And the ones in this life?" The young woman asked while staring intently at Erik, who took a bite of his cookie before responding with a nostalgic smile.
"That's another story. Even before recovering the memories of my first life, I never hated them. In my hometown, orphans were common, so I had no reason to hate them. I even liked imagining they were heroes of justice fighting evil and would eventually come for me.
"After all, I looked different, and my eyes stood out a lot, so I liked to think they were the symbols of justice heroes and that only my parents had them. Later, at the University, my master explained a bit about my parents, and I learned that I'm actually alive thanks to my mother and that my father ended up killing her.
"At that moment, I felt closer to the woman who gave birth to me and whom I never knew, so I vowed to take revenge on that scum. Since my master told me he was much stronger than me, I hoped to do it in the future. Pity I couldn't; no one's life is guaranteed, really…"
Erik finished speaking with a somewhat regretful tone and reached out for another cookie. The young woman looked at Erik with a warm and cheerful smile, then asked upon noticing how Erik moved the golden chains aside to take his cookie.
"Do you want me to help you remove those shackles? So you can be freer."
"No need. Only with them am I truly free." Erik shook his head and commented calmly, which prompted the young woman to ask with a somewhat amused smile.
"The shackles make you free? How's that?"
"Well, from what I can see, these shackles represent the various vows I made in my life. Therefore, I was the one who placed them where they are, and that makes me free. After all, absolute freedom can only exist as a concept; in reality, one is always bound to something—family, laws, society, religion, a myriad of things. That's why these shackles make me free, because I chose each and every one of them. Even if the law changed or religion forbade it, I would follow my vows and principles above all."
Upon hearing Erik's casual response, the beautiful young woman couldn't help but let out a melodious giggle that sounded like the sweet, relaxing, and enchanting tinkling of a bell.
"Hehe, you're really weird, Erik."
"I've lived two lives in different worlds; that's how it is." Erik replied casually, then bit into another cookie. The young woman nodded with a smile and replied.
"You've relaxed quite a bit with the cookies. Now you're talking very naturally."
"Well, I'm about to die, so I wanted to enjoy my 'last supper' comfortably." Erik replied while taking another cookie, to which the young woman replied amusedly.
"Oh, but you're not going to die."
Erik's hand, about to bring the cookie to his mouth, stopped abruptly, and he turned to look at the young woman, who showed him a playful smile before looking to the side.
"Seems time's up. It was a pleasure talking to you, Erik. Keep enjoying your life so you have many stories to tell me the next time we meet."
Along with the young woman's words, Erik could see everything begin to blur as if it were smoke, at which moment the young woman's laughing voice resonated from all directions, soon fading into nothingness along with everything else.
"And don't forget to have many children…"
…
As Erik completely disappeared from her sight as if made of smoke, the young woman smiled adorably, then commented in a playful yet proud voice.
"If my proud son doesn't give me at least a thousand grandchildren, I won't be satisfied. And although you'll need many wives to achieve that, having inherited my beauty and talents, it'll be a piece of cake for you, my beautiful baby…"
***
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