Hearing Tiamat's bitter murmur, Sol closed his eyes and massaged his forehead.
This world was a world that worked on the principle of near equivalent exchange.
There was no denying that the greater the result sought, the greater the price that would follow it.
Sol understood this lesson deeply about what happened with Camelia and the goddesses. He understood it, even more, when Nent made him realize the price all Blessed had to pay eventually.
Continuing that line of thought, how astronomical would the price be of creating an unprecedented Zone that needed the help of so many powerhouses?
As though reading his thoughts, Skuld spoke on the side.
"If we do this, all those who participated will receive a great backslash. But…It isn't as bad as you think and in fact is necessary. It’s at least way better than Tiamat alone doing it."
Skuld grimaced, "Firstly you must understand that the rules of this world are like a law. Of course, there is a certain difference. Normally, when you break the law, you get punished and the punishment changes depending on the rule broken. No matter how numerous you were, this will not change the sentence that all of you will receive. Or at least, not lower it. "
"But this doesn’t apply in this case. What people don't realize though is that the higher the number of people who break the same rules at the same place and moment are, the lesser the resulting punishment becomes since the burden will be equally shared between all of them."
"You mean…"
"In another world, at another time, where my sisters and I didn’t leave Chaos, Tiamat did the same, however, she did everything alone. In her hubris and supreme confidence in her power, she paid a huge price in helping you obtain an admittedly very powerful zone. The problem is what came after…"
Skuld spoke grimly, "Ymir acted."
"Impossible!"
Tiamat exclaimed in surprise.
Ymir. The first goddess under Chaos and the strongest of them all.
That being wasn't just powerful, she was essentially the incarnation of destruction and power.
She alone had enough might to suppress most of the Sins and Virtues goddesses.
At the end of the war, all the goddesses had to work together in order to seal Ymir alongside the mother goddess of Chaos, and only then did the war turn in the favor of Order.
Even Tiamat, despite all the confidence in herself, had to admit that she was far inferior to that monster, even after becoming a false god.
Skuld didn't bother arguing and continued, "The attack of Ymir was one she had accumulated a very long time for a very specific moment. After doing it, the seal around her tightened even more but her job was already done. She had opened the way and the results were quite tragic."
"Because of her attack, the seal of Tartarus in this territory got undone, the Titans, Giants, Chaos Spawn, and others that were imprisoned all rushed out to wreak havoc. Meanwhile, using the opening, the Wing of Freedom entered the fray and used the dimension of Nihil to smuggle in the few free demigod Titans that had fled in Tartarus."
"Blood flowed and dragons died in troves. And…"
Skuld gave Tiamat a complicated look,
"You were really a monster. Even under the assault of this coalition, even though you were more weakened than anyone, you still stood proud and managed to kill a large number of them."
"So, I died?"
Tiamat asked calmly.
"No. You were too strong. In the first place, their goals had never been to kill you. They just needed to stall you long enough.”
She threw another look at Sol, "You were the target all along."
Sol immediately felt a splitting headache.
"In the end, Darling managed to escape thanks to the help of another demigod. Bastet was a very surprising appearance for the coalition. At the price of her life, she managed to send you out of the encirclement. This is where you meet us.”
When she said this, love seemed to overflow from her heart as she took a step forward toward Sol until she was close enough to hug him.
She wrapped her arms around him in a gentle embrace and continued.
“The Darling back then was completely different. You were filled with guilt and self-reproach. You became cold and focused on seeking power for vengeance. You were…really sad.”
Skuld closed her eyes as she thought of all the visions she had seen.
Words alone could never convey what she really felt. That was why, looking up, she tiptoed and—kissed Sol.
The moment their lips came into contact, Sol blacked out.
‘Where am I?’
When Sol came to himself, he realized that he wasn’t in Tiamat’s palace anymore.
Rather, all he could see were the ruins of a once-mighty castle.
[This is…]
Sol has never felt so horrified in his entire life. Everywhere he looked, all he could see was death.
Far away, he could even see the gigantic body of a blue serpentine dragon impaled by a spear the size of a mountain. All around her were the destroyed bodies of equally gigantic beings that Sol did not recognize.
‘Kiyohime?’
A bubbling feeling of fear mixed with anger welled up in his heart while he clenched his fists unknowingly. He certainly recognized the 8th Heaven that had been completely destroyed.
[Don’t worry. This is my mindscape, and what you are seeing is the vision of a world that will not come to be.]
Sol frowned as he looked at the floating Skuld with increasing suspicion. His heart was still thumping loudly in his chest, but this didn’t stop his mind from working.
He had some knowledge about foresight but everything Skuld told him was too accurate for it to be simple foresight.
[Explain yourself. This can’t just be a normal vision of the future. No one aside from a goddess should be able to do this.]
Skuld did not seem surprised. In fact, her smile widened even more.
[It’s exactly as darling said. Then again this wasn’t hard to guess.]
She mused and nodded to herself.
[Darling said that if you didn’t believe me, I just had to say this. *Ahem* Tell me, what does it feel like to see someone who regressed? Pretty neat, right? Isekai and Regression in one go for the win.]
Skuld spoke in a deeper voice, clearly impersonating someone else. Sol cringed hard at those words but at the same time, he became increasingly sure that Skuld wasn’t lying.
[You were right, Sol. It’s impossible for a King ranked like me to see so far and so precisely in the future. But, this was never a vision of the future. After all, I did live through most of this.]
Saying so, she smiled cheekily and bowed.
[Hello darling, let me introduce myself again. I am Skuld. One of the three Norns. I came back from the future in order to save you and everything you care about. It is a pleasure to meet you.]
Sol’s thoughts went into overdrive as he tried to make sense of the situation.
He received too much information in just that one sentence to not be confused.
A Regressor.
It is a term used for people who for one reason or another managed to go back to the past, generally with only their memories intact.
Sol was no foreigner to this term since he had been an avid fan of such literature. Thus he was all the more astonished.
Going back to the past shouldn’t be possible.
It wasn’t a simple question of power. The price necessary would simply be astronomical.
Even someone as powerful as Medea could only rewind time for a maximum of 24h and she was unable to rewind any deaths.
Now, from what Skuld was implying, she completely went back to more than thousands of years in the past.
[...You must have paid a huge price.]
[You are right, the price we had to pay was tremendous.]
It was impossible to send her full memories of all future events. The disturbance in space-time would have been too great and the only result would have been a failure.
All they could do was send a pocket of memories accompanied by clear feelings.
The candidate to receive the memories had been Medea at first, due to her control over time and identity. She was the most suitable because she was close to Sol since he was a child and could have trained him and educated him in the best way from the start.
If they sent the memories further down, she could have even helped in changing Mars’ and Blaze’s death, thereby obtaining even more allies.
That would have been perfect. However…
[Medea died during an ambush after she opened the gate of the witch world.]
[Wha–?]
Sol blanched at those shocking words.
With a wave of Skuld’s hand, the mindscape completely changed. Sol felt his heart tighten at the sight presented to him. There laid Edea as her hand was held in the hands of someone.
Even as her body was breaking down, the weak smile on her face never faltered. The drops of tears that fell on her face rolled down her cheeks into the blood soaked ground. She opened her mouth with what little strength she had left, sadly…Sol could not hear anything.
Even as his vision turned blurry, there was no sound reaching his ears. It was only after touching his own face that he realized that he was crying.
Sol couldn’t even bother to think about how he could cry in a mind world. But Skuld, seeing this, understood.
Only a pain so deep it affected his very soul could bring such a result. She wanted to stop showing him the terrifying visions, to hug him and to console him.
However, she knew she couldn’t.
This was a necessary step in helping Sol create a brighter future. No matter how painful it was, he had to go through it.
Even though she knew it was necessary…
[Should we stop?]
Sol closed his eyes and felt his mind roar. It was painful. He felt like wanted to just break down right then and there.
Even though he knew that this was nothing more than the vision of a future, just the thought of losing Medea was so heart-wrenching it felt like he was dying.
Despite the pain he was experiencing, there was only one answer he could give.
[Continue.]
He couldn’t stop. He refused to stop. He had to see it through until the end. He had see for himself just how hellish the future was.
[Darling….]
Skuld hesitated a little but finally nodded.
Following Medea’s demise, different scenes presented themselves to Sol one after another while all he did was watch in silence, even as he wiped his eyes to stop his vision from getting blurry, any more than it already was.
It felt like going through a living nightmare that he would never wake up from. Sol knew that he might be completely traumatized after this but, even then, he never tore away his gaze from the scenes shown.
When the world was finally plunged into darkness.
[Those memories…]
[They are mostly yours.]
[Why….]
[Why didn't your future self simply send his memories to you directly? It would have been useless. There was nothing you could do that would change the fact that Ymir was ready to strike. Medea, for example, had the influence necessary to move the Witches and Ambrosia. But what about you?]
Skuld shook her head and continued.
The plan with Medea had to be scrapped. But future Sol did not give up. Years after years and decades after decades.
The people around him dwindled. Some left and some died, but he never lost faith.
[You didn’t just want to create a parallel timeline, that would have been useless. What you had in mind was much, much more ambitious. You wished to completely erase and reset the time we were in. It should have been impossible. It was something that broke all common sense. Everyone thought you were crazy and we all tried to stop you. But against all odds…You succeeded.]
Skuld looked like she was in rapture as she told this story.
[How…]
However Sol did not have enough capacity to pay her any attention. He was having a difficult time wrapping his mind around Skuld's explanation.
Rather than answering, the darkness around them faded as a new scene formed.
This time it was a man looking at himself in the mirror.
It was a middle-aged man whose eyes seemed to blaze with a mad conviction.
[Is this…me?]
[Yes.]
Sol had a hard time believing it. The man looked nothing like the current him.
A gaunt body with a cold and emotionless face with one scar running down over his right eye.
However, more than anything, the greatest shock was the fact that the man did not possess the characteristics of Golden hair and blue eyes Sol currently had.
His golden hair was replaced by common black hair while his blue eyes were of a beautiful golden hue full of divinity.
[I didn’t want to speak since it would be useless but I believe I need to do it at least at this juncture. Too many words would overwhelm the spell but you need to remember.]
The man, Sol, spoke with a raspy voice.
[We underestimated the power of The Reverse Side too much.]
‘The Reverse Side?’
[I believe at this moment, we still call it—The Mirror Dimension.]
*Crack*
The world cracked and crumbled like a broken mirror.
The last words from his future self were echoing loudly in his ears as the mindscape was broken.
When Sol opened his eyes in the real world, none of the usual easy going attitude was present in them.
