Chapter 283: Unearth (3)
I paused. How much should I say? He'd notice instantly if I hid the truth, and the same went for lying. He'd been so shaken by my sudden appearance because he possessed that much insight. No one knew better than Isaac just how impossible this situation was.
I couldn't demand honesty from him while deceiving him. This time, I chose to trust. I had resistance against mental interference, and after experiencing Biblio, I trusted Isaac a little more than before.
"I can see the holes in the heavens."
"..."
Isaac froze. His gaze struck me with suffocating intensity. To hear me speak so casually of the very concept that had once driven him to madness had to be agonizing. I didn't even fully understand what I was saying. Still, no bait could hook him more tightly.
"I can read myself. So? Isn't that worth extending your honesty by another three years?"
"Fine…"
"Then let's seize the power Ashton left behind, together."
His reaction was as fierce as expected. That much, we had already discussed. It was time to take one step further.
"And, as you've probably guessed, I've shared several lives with you already." Isaac flinched, stepping back. I calmly recounted everything I had endured since my first life. The status window, the Hero Points, the temple of Yemera, Wadluth and his riddles, Marquis Leandro, and Biblio. I concealed nothing.
He didn't show a hint of doubt. For someone like Isaac, proof was unnecessary. When I finished speaking, the crow effigy was utterly motionless.
"Isaac?"
Only when I stepped closer did he stir, as if waking from a dream.
"I truly despise this…"
"What do you mean?"
Isaac had accepted Ashton's division of the world into residents and guests. The blue windows appeared only to the guests. And Isaac, with his own interpretation, called them protagonists.
"Whatever the case, I don't doubt that you're telling the truth. Everything you've described matches exactly how I would have acted."
That reminded me of something.
"Do you mean… even sacrificing yourself to save me from the tower lords?" I asked the question as casually as I could, albeit it felt awkward.
I remembered him, drilling through the skulls of the two lords as they slaughtered tens of thousands together.
Isaac gave a dry laugh. "I lost the gamble."
"The gamble?"
"In that life, I betrayed you, lied to you, and toyed with you like a plaything."
So he admitted it himself.
"But near the end, I must've realized you had been regressing."
It would be better to start over.
Just those words had been enough for him to catch on. Even now, he amazed me.
After a moment's hesitation, he said. "It was a problem, you see. I couldn't know how you'd retaliate in the next life. To restore trust, I had to do anything, and I mean anything. I needed to make sure you came back to me. That wasn't a sacrifice."
"Then, wasn't it a successful gamble?"
In his final act, Isaac had left me with a debt of gratitude. Though I skipped one lifetime, I came back to him in the end. He was keeping his final vow—to be honest next time—here and now.
The crow shook its head, bitterness glinting in its gaze. "No. You'd certainly come to me. Whether you skipped one life or two, in the end you'd be battered and driven back here."
There was a faint trace of mockery in his tone. But I couldn't deny it. Here I was, after all. I had skipped only once and returned to ask for his aid.
"…"
"The gamble was something else."
"What was it?"
"The sorcerer who sacrificed himself for you probably thought at the very least I'd fall into an illusion."
"An illusion?"
"That a replica with memories would believe it had been resurrected. But no matter what lives I may have shared with you, I have no memory of them. I feel nothing when I look at you. So…" Isaac's eyes dimmed with quiet bitterness. "In the end, that past me only did something that benefited the present me."
Memory and emotion. With Rubia and Rena, such things endured. Even without altering the past through Lurium or finishing the scenario, their memories were preserved. Had I been especially determined to bring them back, their feelings would linger as well.
Isaac was different. No memories. No emotions. Even the altered skills were gone. There was no link between the Isaac who died in my last life and the Isaac before me now.
Only I remembered the Isaac of the past—the deceiver and sacrificer. I gazed silently at the one who bore none of it.
"…"
I had already veered far off the ordinary path, and I would only stray further. Could my mind withstand the weight of these ever-growing dissonances? A dull ache of bitterness and loneliness pressed into the hollow spaces of my heart.
"That aside, what is your goal?" he asked.
I answered with no hesitation. "I want to save Rubia."
"And once you do, what then?"
"I will make her Lord of Erast. I want to finish the scenario. I want to protect her."
"Finish the scenario, and then what? Will you set a human puppet on a throne and play the ruler behind the veil?"
"…"
In truth, I had never thought much about what came after. Quests and scenario clears. I had only ever thrashed forward toward the goal set before my eyes.
"Thirteen lives, and you are still dancing to the heavens? What is it you truly want?"
What did he want to hear? His questioning pressed on. I had no answer prepared.