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Riven had not expected the reaction to be that strong and immediately regretted starting with the personal detail.
However...
"Hah! There’s nothing to be sorry about, human," Said the Ten Thousand Poison Master. He set his own cup down harder than necessary and looked straight at the Asura. "If this womanizer hadn’t stopped seeking a new woman every century and instead settled down with her, I bet most of this wouldn’t have happened. After all, the reason why "Genesis" even sold her heart and soul to the Void was because of the emptiness she felt inside after knowing you had already found another woman!"
The accusation came out without any attempt to soften it.
The Asura Blood Sea Emperor felt an immense sense of guilt, completely losing all his appetite and lowering his head, sighing. "I... Yes... I know, old friend... I know how much it is my fault..." He kept his eyes on the table and did not try to argue the point any further.
Their youngest friend looked at both and shook his head.
He waited until the other two stopped speaking before he added his own view.
"Although I agree that "Genesis" was heartbroken by your actions, friend, and this was one of the many reasons that led her to the Void... I also believe there were other factors, factors that none of us could have predicted," the table stayed quiet while he continued.
"Despite her great talent, she’d always been among the most emotional of us all, and also someone who became too attached to the planets she had seeded," that attachment had been obvious to anyone who spent time near her.
"When the Cosmic Monarchs started pruning her sector out of nowhere in their first appearance in billions of years, she became so heartbroken after seeing the world she loved disappearing from the starry sea from one day to the other... it’s obvious she’d fall into deep depression, and even despair," he sighed, shaking his head.
The sudden loss of entire systems would have been hard for anyone to accept, especially someone who had personally shaped them with so much love and care as her did.
"..."
Ten Thousand Poison Master fell silent, shaking his head.
He set his cup down and did not pick it up again right away.
"We also were her friends... Maybe... Maybe we should’ve been there for her some more. I guess you’re not completely at fault for everything."
The admission came slower than his earlier accusations.
"If we had just been there for her some more, instead of growing distant because of our long lives and the way we live... but oh well, the past is the past, and it is impossible to rewrite it once it happens."
He glanced at the Asura once more and then looked away.
"..."
Riven remained in silence after hearing that.
The conversation had moved into territory he had not expected when he first sat down.
He had indeed rewritten the past after all, even though it seemed so utterly hard to believe, he’d done incredible and amazing things himself and had begun to change the past.
The memory of those changes stayed clear even while he listened to the three Precursors speak about permanence.
But perhaps his own case was simply too unique to serve as any comparison, let alone as something reliable, as he himself had no idea how he’d even returned to the past to begin with...
He kept the thought to himself and did not interrupt the quiet that had settled over the table, even as uncomfortable as it felt.
Even more after living three more lives after this one.
The extra memories only made the current situation feel more complicated than it already was.
But these were questions that would be for much later.
Riven was now concerned about the present and what to do with the current world he was living in.
The three figures in front of him mattered more now than any unresolved details from other timelines.
And above all, why?
Just why were these old guys inside his soul to begin with?!
The question had been sitting at the back of his mind since the moment the palace appeared.
"May I ask why you’re here?" he asked. "Why... now? What’s happening?"
He kept his tone even while he waited for a clear answer.
The three of them looked back at Riven and nodded.
They exchanged a short glance with each other before the first one spoke.
"You’ve inherited our legacies," Said the Divine King of the Cold Star. "And are now currently developing Skills and Cultivation Methods that carry fragments of our power, soul, and even mind through psionic energy." The connection had been built gradually until it finally became strong enough for them to appear within his Soul, or rather, Dreams. "It also seems that your great growth on the Realm of Spiritual Energy and Psychic Power has made this far easier than it should have been."
"We’ve used that connection to gather here, we aren’t truly the same people from the past, I am, unfortunately, not the Ten Thousand Poison Master himself, but what remains of him," Said the purple-haired old man. He stated the limitation without any attempt to hide it.
"But being called by these titles is not wrong either, fragments or not, I consider myself as him, even though I am mostly the heart that she tore apart from the main body," Said the Asura Blood Sea Emperor. The detail matched the crystal Riven had felt earlier and explained why that particular legacy had fused so easily with the Vampire Bloodline. "The rest of us... well, it’s hard to know what happened after we unleashed all our power and.. exploded."
None of them could really remember well what happened after they died.
"When we die, we release all accumulated energy and life into the universe, so new worlds with strong life can be born, some of these worlds, or sometimes, even lifeforms, even inheriting a part of our power as a whole," The Divine King of the Cold Star declared.
After hearing his words, Riven immediately thought about the Deities governing the Apocalypse, granting blessings, classes, skills, and support to mortals.
Authorities.
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