Chapter 48: Unexpected Offer
Aurora had no idea why she had killed all 3 of her kidnappers so brutally just now after regressing back once more again, nor did she even know why she was lying on the cold hard concrete like this with her back on the ground right now, with blood and dead bodies surrounding her.
Truly, she didn’t know why.
She just heard them step out of their van after moping in her bed for a couple of hours and then suddenly just gained a massive urge to kill them right then and there.
And so that’s what she did.
But now that they were all dead, and her urge to kill was gone for the time being, all she could feel right now was... emptiness.
Or maybe it was numbness perhaps?
Again, she didn’t know.
Because in all of her past regressions, she had never felt like this before.
Ever.
Not even when she had murdered someone for the first time ever and had almost regressed again right on the spot due to the trauma of it all, and certain not when she had became so desensitized to killing people that she had stopped feeling anything at all from doing it.
No, this was something different entirely.
Something that she couldn’t even begin to describe.
If she had to put it into words however, it would probably be...
’Trapped.’
Forever in this endless cycle of death and regression.
After all, while she had been optimistic about her situation for a long time now, and never thought about giving up before no matter what opponent came her way, everything that she had witnessed on that day when she was at the hospital was just... too much for her to handle.
And she wasn’t even talking about the day when she had tried to kill that damn bastard Eric Porter and failed miserably at it, nor did she even want to think about him right now.
No, she was talking about all of the bastards that had appeared at the hospital on the same day she had ran to Eric’s safehouse before dying.
The overwhelming strengths that some of those bastards had displayed right in front of her, whilst all of them were trying to fight each other for her... she just couldn’t get it out of her head at all.
Not to mention that some of them even displayed magical powers and whatnot and were just summoning all kinds of abilities left and right like it was nothing...
’That was why I had gotten so injured and ran to that bastard’s safehouse despite not even being involved in the fights in the first place and asked him a stupid question based purely off of emotion before dying...’
She was just scared.
"..."
Aurora tried lifting her arm up in order to wipe the blood off of her face as it was starting to get into her eyes a little bit, but to no avail.
Her body didn’t want to listen to her at all, and she found it impossible to even move a single muscle in her body.
As such, she just continued to stare up at the sky and watched as the clouds slowly drifted from left to right, waiting for whatever to happen next.
Whether it be she gets arrested for this, or if someone just happens to come by and try to kill her off for some stupid reason it may be, she no longer cared for this life anymore.
It was better to just move onto the next one now and hope for the best in that one.
As Aurora was thinking about that and was waiting for something to happen however...
"Aurora, just what are you trying to accomplish here?"
A familiar voice that she knew all too well suddenly spoke up.
It was one that brought nothing but hatred, malice, and even fear into her heart.
She wanted absolutely nothing to do with the man behind that voice other than to just kill him again and again and again in all of her future lives.
But yet, despite wanting so badly to ignore the man and just act like he didn’t exist...
"Why...?" Aurora couldn’t help but whisper as she was somehow able to slowly turn her head towards him.
"Hm? Why what?" Eric replied back in a puzzled tone as he stepped a bit closer to Aurora but still stayed out of the pool of blood surrounding her.
"You said back at the hospital in the previous life that you’ll return back to being dumb and stupid as always in the next lives again after I regress, didn’t you? So why the hell..." Aurora trailed off for a moment as she began to clench her fists, "Why the hell are you here in this life again?!"
"Oh." Eric immediately understood what Aurora was talking about and fell silent for a moment.
While he knew that he could just simply tell her the truth and let her know that he was just in the dark as much as she was as well about why he was here right now, he figured that telling her the truth might actually make her upset or something like that, and well... he didn’t want to get slashed with the kitchen knife.
With that in mind, Eric thought about it for a little longer before telling Aurora that...
"I made a promise to a certain someone, that’s why." Eric answered calmly as he thought about the promise he made with Aria.
"..."
"What is it? Is that not a good enough answer for you?" Eric couldn’t help but ask when he saw the blank look on Aurora’s face.
"You’re so full of shit and you know it." Aurora stated as she glared up at Eric even more intensely than before.
"Maybe, maybe not." Eric shrugged, "But either way, can I ask you why you are lying on the ground out in the open like this? Someone probably already called the police on you, you know."
"...None of your business, that’s for damn sure."
"That’s true, but this isn’t normal behavior at all even for the likes of you, so I’m just a little bit concerned here." Eric replied back.
"Ha, that’s ironic, coming from you." Aurora couldn’t help but scoff at him just thinking about it.
"I know, but I mean it, Aurora." Eric said while trying to sound absolutely serious, "So?"
"...Why don’t you figure it out yourself, you bastard? You seemed to know quite literally everything about me already back in the previous life, so shouldn’t you know why I’m like this right now too?" Aurora snapped back at him.
Hearing this, Eric couldn’t help but sigh inwardly as he tried to come up with an explanation for her weirdness.
While it was clear that Aurora was still mentally broken and all of that as her regression had seemed to work properly and she remembered everything that had happened in the previous life, he still didn’t know what actually caused her to be broken in the previous life to begin with.
Aurora tried killing him in the hospital and almost died because of it, and then two days later when he had went to pay her a visit at the hospital, she was already mentally broken by then.
Seriously, considering that she had practically died so many times before that, and she was able to somewhat hold herself together through all of it every single time so far, at least according to his knowledge, how did him just almost trying to kill her once cause her to become broken all of a sudden?
It really just didn’t make any sense at all.
Unless, perhaps...
’She thinks that it’s absolutely impossible to escape her regression.’
And after thinking about it for a little bit more, Eric was pretty certain that this was exactly what it was.
In the novel, there were a few period of times when Aurora would begin to question her own fate and whether or not there was even a point in continuing to fight anymore after a particularly bad regression.
These thoughts usually came at a time when she has died to the same villain over hundreds of times already, or in some cases, even thousands of time.
And while these thoughts usually disappeared soon enough due to a multitude of reasons, they were still thoughts that she had nonetheless.
Taking that into consideration, coupled with the fact that Aurora was still technically at the very beginning of her regression cycles and still very weak minded right now, it was completely understandable why she had been broken since after their fight at the hospital.
Plus, he did mention that he knew about her regression right before she had fallen unconscious at the hospital and then appeared in front of her two days later completely uninjured, so...
’Really, if only I had gotten reincarnated into a different novel to begin with.’
Nevertheless, what was done was done, and besides, it wasn’t like he could’ve known in advance that there would come a time when he would regress alongside Aurora every time she died, although that was still just theory as of now.
All he could do now was operate on that basis for now and try and somehow lift her spirits back up again.
That was for the best with what limited amount of information he had right now, and Eric didn’t know any other way around it.
With all of that thought in mind, and an idea that will most likely work well popping up into his head, Eric played with the idea for a bit before taking a long and deep breath openly infront of Aurora.
Then, with words that he didn’t think that he would say to Aurora ever in a million years, Eric shifted his focus back to her, who was still staring at him down like a hawk, and said...
"I can help you live."