“But, unconsciously, the ‘displaced’ fate, the changed fate, the happiness that might have once belonged to you, has forever become the past.”
After saying this, the warmth that he had finally managed to infuse into his tone disappeared again.
It became even more somber, the boundless noise like the incessant chirping of cicadas on a sweltering summer day.
His voice, too, was like a meaningless gust of wind among those cicadas.
“Seeing Mits’s smile again, or even… seeing her corpse, covered in blood and pale, my heart felt nothing. My once rich emotions have been worn away. I feel like an observer.”
Having lived through twenty-five years of “repetition,” enduring almost identical days…
He discovered that he had become “numb” to everything that was about to happen.
He had also become numb to this “fate” that he could not change.
When he took over as the head of the family, he knew that one day the Adventurer’s Guild would usurp the Royal Family, that dungeons would become the strongest industry, and that the Hysterm Family would surely prosper greatly.
While drifting among the various women he could use, he could recite every one of their “deeply affectionate” confessions.
Each time he returned to the Hysterm mansion and saw Mits, he could already predict that she would drug him.
Undoubtedly, his fruitless efforts made him a cog in the endlessly turning wheel of fate.
—But this world did not stop at the sixth iteration.
“The seventh time, Carver’s fate was to accept the current situation from his father. Although Will didn’t know that Carver was becoming his father for the eighth time, he was patient enough now. As the offspring of Mits and him, perhaps one could see a bright future in him…”
“Ah ha, but let’s set aside those details for now. Next, is what you want to hear.”
He chuckled at the figure in the gradually clearing static and asked a question that Will would undoubtedly answer with a yes—
“You must have guessed it, right?”
“Hmm. Yes. Will, my once most proud child, the child I considered to have accepted fate, has become a complete piece of trash.”
Carver’s pronunciation was slightly heavier for the first time. But it didn’t make him seem angrier. He was merely narrating with a detached, observational tone.
“The eighth iteration of Will—of course, I’m not talking about you. He seems to be no longer the same person as before.”
“He completely lacks the sharp wit of Mits and me. He doesn’t resemble the child of the two of us—even though he looks, has the same magic talent, the same voice, and says every word exactly the same as the previous Will.”
“In the end, he did something utterly idiotic, getting himself killed by a Slime in a desert where Slimes should not exist.”
It didn’t sound like he was describing something his own son had experienced, but rather talking about a trivial “supporting character,” Carver said.
“Only now did I realize… Ah, so that’s how it is.”
“Every time, it wasn’t me looping through my own twenty years, trying to break some damned fate. Even each time I inherited the family headship and restarted my repeating fate, the world and people around me were no longer the ones I saw before.”
“The world around me has been subtly changing. There are always people changing their ‘occupations,’ ‘names,’ and ‘abilities’—it’s just that the number of these cycles wasn’t enough for me to notice immediately.”
“On this stage, the world changes, everyone changes, everyone moves forward. A person cannot step into the same river twice. Even though it is the same river, everyone is no longer who they were last time—except me.”
“They are all characters changing ‘actors’—except me.”
“Of course, perhaps none of them are ‘actors’.”
“The young girl named Mits is a talented Mage, a girl abandoned by her lover under the guise of protection.”
“The child named Will is a Young Master with poor inherent abilities, prone to fits of rage due to a lack of fatherly love.”
“They might all be alive, but they are repeatedly reciting their scripts. Knowing their image each time, I can only be that actor—an actor like a clown on a stage, meant to amuse.”
He let out a self-deprecating laugh once more.
“…I am alone, observing the changes in this world. Watching it casually alter ‘fate,’ watching a new ‘fate’ that seems to be ‘looping’ but which I have no idea what the next iteration will bring.”
“The repeating life of nearly twenty-five years, what you thought you earned through your efforts, is merely a insignificant nod from ‘fate’.”
“And the ‘life’ you treasure as an Experience, is merely something that could be changed next time.”
“More importantly, all of this has no end. It will always conclude when that ‘incident’ occurs.”
He actually liked Daisianwei’s analogy, even though Daisianwei often acted as a “God” who spoke nonsense casually.
She always examined everything unfamiliar to her through her own understanding, which transcended this world.
But…
Perhaps the idea of “vertical” and “horizontal” axes is correct.
Carver is different from everyone else in this world… even different from the “Gods” of this world.
His time repeatedly cycles within this brief twenty-year span of life, yet it moves forward with constantly changing fate.
In other words, for him, other people’s lives are a short seventy years from childhood to old age.
His life is the repeating twenty-five years, starting from the inheritance of the family headship and inheriting the memories from each previous iteration.
As a self-proclaimed “Anchor,” Carver finds it difficult to say whether he hates “fate.”
But if he had to hate one thing, he would probably hate “capricious fate.”
Rather than “unchangeable fate.”
(5) Ba Leng Shi Ming Wu Fu
“Hmm… Although I can’t hear your feedback, do you understand now?”
“A drifting fate, a story that never reaches its end, the Head of the Hysterm Family treated like a toy…”
As he narrated, he also noticed that behind the static, the background was becoming increasingly white.
He had a premonition that this static was about to reach its end.
His battle with Will—that outsider—was about to begin, a battle to the death.
His palm gripped the long handle of the axe placed beside him once more.
“I’ve had enough.”
“A clown who rehearses again and again, after countless absurd farces that seemed to amuse him, finally doesn’t want to stand on the stage to be enjoyed at will any longer…”
“This time, I will end this ‘play,’ so that it is no longer an absurd story that never reaches its conclusion…”
Unlike before, he wasn’t just borrowing the strength of an Undead Warrior’s arm.
Instead, it possessed nearly half of his body, and the ferocious head of a warrior faintly appeared on his shoulder.
“To anchor it in this real world, where no more acting is needed.”
He raised his head and pulled the axe up from the ground.
“I will anchor my fate, I will anchor the existence of this world, I will anchor the reality that never ends.”
As usual, from his opposite, a fireball erupted with the intent to kill him, hurtling towards him.
“It is I, not you—who will decide the fate of this world.”
