308  Volume V – Chapter 26: To Change the Future

Alaric Wisderm is a character in The Lands of The Lunerra who never once appears to the player. Of course he couldn’t… because he was dead.

He was a mad scientist. Of all the wieras that ever existed, he was the closest to chaos and madness.

And yet, why did he become a scientist instead of slaughtering everything around him and driving everything into chaos…? Because being prone to chaos and being one of the closest to madness did not change the fact that he was intelligent. He was capable of logical thinking. He was able to suppress his own urges. Even if it was a bit… difficult.

But his death was also due to the fact that he eventually lost his sanity. During his life, he had carried out countless experiments that were really important, but the failure of one of them led to his death. Then the seat of greed became vacant and Saligia, the organization of the wieras, was looking for someone new.

That is why they were interested in Adrian. They were looking for someone powerful for the seat of greed, and they wanted someone who was more manipulable than an experienced wiera.

In the Lunerra I was in, though, things were a bit different… For example, Adrian was not the only candidate, I was one of the chosen candidates. Saligia had lost the authority of greed and I was the one who accidentally took it over.

Now, on top of that… is Alaric Wisderm actually alive? And was I in the same body as him without even realizing it…?

A few of his experiments were recorded and available in the game. So I know how ruthless, horrible, and insane he really is.

I looked at the purple-eyed man standing in front of me, who looked exactly the same as me, Ethan Subter, except for his eyes. Then I quickly turned my head to the side, to the gray eyes of Aiden Tenebra, who was still looking at me expressionlessly.

“No way…”

“But it is.”

Aiden turned his eyes toward my wiera side, or rather Alaric Wisderm.

“By nature, he’s one of the people who will help me, and you, the most, no matter how much trouble he causes you. So get used to it.”

No… No, I can’t. I just can’t…

How can I get along with someone who does unthinkable things just out of curiosity? It’s simply impossible…

“Don’t worry much, he is quite different from who he is supposed to be. As a wiera, he carries your memories as well, so you could call him a mix of you and Alaric Wisderm. That’s why he seems so much more sane than he used to be… And that’s also why-”

“You’re asking the impossible from me.”

Alaric Wisderm widened his smile slightly as Aiden sighed. That crazy smile was slowly forming on his face.

“You don’t have to get along with me, Ethan.”

I frowned again. But before I had a chance to speak, Aiden interjected again.

“Even though you screwed up the plan and got here much earlier than you should have… as long as we change things, we can continue to do what we need to do as if nothing happened. And what you need to do is learn from Alaric how to use caora and suppress yourself as a wiera. As he says, you 16:13

don’t have to get along.”

And I just stood there for a moment with dozens, hundreds of different questions and thoughts in my mind, and finally… my mind became so chaotic that I wasn’t even sure what to think.

Why are they just standing there in front of me as if nothing had happened…? As if… what they’re saying is very simple, not very important.

Turning back to the duo and looking at their expressions, all I could do was curl my lips upward for no reason.

“I don’t understand… I don’t fucking understand anything.”

I clenched my fist again. I thought about everything I had experienced since the day I came into this world. And when I looked at these thoughts… most of them were full of pain. Yes, there were moments when I was happy and enjoyed my life. But most of my memories… were nothing but tragedy.

Now… isn’t it all because of the two people in front of me…? One of them is the one who planned everything from the beginning, at least it seems that way, and the other one is a madman who has been tormenting me for almost a year…

Now, they’re standing in front of me and just asking me to do something where they are as if none of this happened…?

I… don’t get it anymore… I don’t know what to do. I don’t even know which of my thoughts to focus on…

In the midst of all this chaos, on the endless grass and under the sunless sky… something touched my forehead.

My eyes snapped up as I saw the hand reaching out to me. And then the owner of that hand.

Aiden Tenebra, his dull gray eyes staring blankly into my soul, spoke in a voice that somehow sounded like a whisper.

“This is going to hurt a little.”

I opened my mouth, tempted to ask what would hurt, but not even a few seconds later, everything froze.

The lush green grass stopped moving in the gentle breeze. Suddenly, all the colors began to flow downward, as if someone was cleaning the paint off a window. As everything turned gray, the figure of Aiden and Alaric, smiling just behind him, disappeared into the chaos.

While all this was happening… my whole body suddenly went rigid. Where Aiden had touched me, on my forehead… I suddenly felt a slight warmth, followed by a strange sensation that felt like it was seeping into my brain, and a sudden pain that felt like it was ripping my brain apart while I was still alive.

I didn’t even have time to scream or make any sound. Everything was suddenly plunged into darkness, an eternal darkness… All my senses disappeared. But the pain did not disappear. It continued to exist with me, even more intensely.

If I could, I would have smashed my own head into pieces, I would have destroyed my soul, never to be reunited again, but… these were things I could not do in the infinite darkness. The only thing that existed was me, and the pain… I didn’t even have thoughts or memories.

But, in the midst of this… a light appeared. A tiny, faint light. Immediately afterward, strange, unidentifiable things emanated from this little light into infinity… Colors, images, and sounds.

*******

When I opened my eyes… what I found was the white ceiling of my room. It was still not morning because a small night light illuminated my room, just as it had done just before I went to sleep.

But… this time, something was different. I knew it because I felt like my thoughts were different.

‘He held on…’

‘He woke up…’

‘Can we do it this time?’

The voices were still here, though. They hadn’t changed… and they didn’t seem to realize that I could still hear them. But… I didn’t care in any way.

What I experienced after I fell asleep… After all that pain… why am I… still alive…?

The time just before I started to suffer endlessly in the endless darkness was not much in my mind, I could only vaguely remember it. But… one thing was clear.

Just like the people I could hear now, there was someone there whose voice sounded as if dozens of people were speaking at the same time. He was white, he didn’t even have a face. But… he spoke to me.

You are here to survive.

That was the reason why I found myself in that endless darkness when I fell asleep. At least that’s what the white being said.

You have to do this every night, every second you sleep. Otherwise, your body cannot handle the ‘ability’ you have gained.

Every night… Do I have to suffer like this every night? For an ability that I don’t even fully understand what it is?

These thoughts, the pain… were things that would prevent a normal person, especially a child like me, from even thinking normally. The fact that I had to go through this every day would make most people commit suicide on the spot.

If it was me a few days ago, maybe he would have chosen suicide too. But… I was different. I was still the same person, but I was also like a completely different person from who I used to be.

I am Aiden Tenebra, son of Aaron and Aria Tenebra, brother of Clara Tenebra.

These were the first things I repeated in my mind, and it felt like something I had to do to remind myself who I was.

I know my name, I know where I am, but… who am I, what am I…?

That was the second question that crossed my mind. But… as if the answer to it had been engraved in my mind a long time ago, it suddenly appeared in my mind.

The keeper of knowledge.

That was what appeared in my mind.

After the answer, I didn’t do anything for a while. I had a feeling that whatever I asked myself, the answer would appear in my mind. And this thought… it scared me involuntarily.

No, it wasn’t fear, it was just… for some reason, I was hesitant to even think about anything.

Thinking, though, was not something that could be completely avoided. And so… the answer to my next question suddenly appeared in my mind, even though it was only a simple thought.

Why can’t I be scared?

I thought about it reflexively. I didn’t even realize I was thinking it… but that didn’t stop me from getting the answer.

One of the prices of knowledge.

The… price of knowledge?

Oh, no… don’t think. Don’t think…

But it was not possible… So I kept thinking, even if I didn’t want to. And so… the answers kept appearing in my mind one after another.

It didn’t take long for me to lose myself. My thoughts became chaotic as new questions appeared in my mind with each answer. After a while… it literally started to hurt. And the more time passed, the worse it got.

After I don’t know how long, what brought me back to myself was… the door to my room opening. The sudden change in my vision caught my attention, even with my confused mind, and I turned my head in that direction.

The person who came in was… a little person. A child. A girl with light brown hair that fell to her shoulders and gray eyes with a strange sleepy glint in them.

“Bwother…?”

Ah, Clara… Right. She was the one who kept me alive in the first place.

Do I have to act like a child…? Will she be wary of me when she sees that I’ve changed? Maybe… scared of me?

No… I don’t want that.

“Clara… what happened?”

I put a smile on my face, a fake smile maybe, just so the child in front of me wouldn’t be upset. That’s why it felt strange, like something that shouldn’t have happened.

I’m fooling her. I’m fooling her by faking a ‘smile’.

Does that… make me a bad person?

Again, I reflexively thought of a question. But… this time no answer appeared in my mind. Just like the questions I repeated in my mind when I first saw her. But I couldn’t think much about it.

“Mum and Dad are gone… where are they?”

Ah, did they go to the lab again?

“I guess they had to go to work early… How about sleeping with me?”

Clara quickly nodded her head up and down. I saw her lips curl up a little as she snuggled into my bed. She looked happy as she closed her already sleepy eyes and surrendered herself to sleep again.

For a moment, I thought nothing as I looked at her cute face. Seconds passed, minutes passed. Yet all I did was keep looking at her face.

Why are we doing this to her…? I didn’t realize it before, but now, when I’m no longer a normal child, I can think about it.

Why are we… we who were just an ordinary family before, going through this?

This time, I got an answer to my question.

To change the future.

To… change the future?

And when I thought about it, this time, instead of getting an answer, I saw so much more. I really, literally saw.

I saw the future that awaits this world. I saw who are the people who had the voice as if dozens of people were speaking at the same time. I saw what role we play in this future.

It was like a dream… I had seen it, time passed quickly and it was over in an instant. I was back in my room, lying next to my sister, but… I just froze where I was.

For this? Is this why we endure so much pain…? Is this why we go from lab to lab when we should be living a happy life?

I was frustrated. No… I wasn’t just frustrated. I… I hated… I hated the Lords, I hated Lunerra, I hated this universe, I hated everything.

Why did my father and mother have to lose themselves when they should have lived an ordinary life after retirement?

Why was my sister forced to carry a burden she shouldn’t when she should have been a successful architect and built a happy family?

I looked at my sister’s face at that moment. Her sleeping, cute, and tiny face. When I thought about what the future held for this girl who didn’t even know anything, and when I realized that I could do nothing to prevent that future… I hated everything.

In the same way, that’s why I made a decision.

If I can’t change the path to the future… then I will change the future itself.

So, that same night… rather than waiting for the Lords to call out to me, I called out to them.

This was the beginning of it all. There were a lot of things that happened afterward, of course, there were also a lot of things that happened in the past… But this was the moment when I decided to change the future.  

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