Chapter 425: 425. Lucid Dreaming - 2
A few hours later, William had exhausted almost every lie he could think of. One explanation after another left his mouth as he desperately searched for something that Seraphine would accept, but every attempt failed before it could even take root.
He tried changing the details, presenting the story from different angles, and even bringing the gods and Sun Wukong into the conversation in the hope that a familiar legend might make the impossible sound believable and he would manage to either summon Tamasya or maybe get some of his powers back.
None of it worked. Every version of the story sounded just as unbelievable as the last, and Seraphine simply looked at him with the same doubtful expression each time.
"What the hell!" William finally burst out, unable to contain the frustration that had been building inside him for hours. "You seriously don’t believe me?"
"I’ve been sitting here for hours trying to make you understand how serious this is. If it weren’t for this veil, both of us would already be nothing more than pulp beneath those monsters’ feet. I’m not making this up just to amuse myself."
The sudden outburst caught Seraphine completely off guard.
Her shoulders shrank instinctively as she looked at him with confused, apologetic eyes, and her voice became much quieter than before.
"I’m sorry..." she said softly. "I thought... I thought you were only trying to distract me from everything that happened. I thought you wanted me to stop thinking about the scary things and calm down."
William froze for a second.
Instead of becoming less frustrated, he somehow felt even worse.
He slowly lifted his hand and slapped it against his forehead before dragging it down his face in complete disappointment.
"So that’s what you thought..." he said as he realized that he had taken her mental level for granted; she was not a child who would believe in anything; she was 12.
Without saying anything else, he turned around and walked a few steps away before stopping, his mind sinking deeper into thought as he tried to figure out another solution. Every idea he had come up with until now had failed miserably, and for the first time in a long while, he genuinely had no idea what he was supposed to do next.
Seraphine remained where she stood, looking at his back with growing concern.
She had never seen William lose his temper like that.
Every day she met him, he had always appeared calm and confident, as though he already knew what would happen next. Seeing him break so suddenly filled her with unease.
After hesitating for several moments, she quietly walked over to him.
She gently placed both of her hands on his shoulders and slowly rubbed them, hoping to comfort him.
"I’m really sorry," she whispered. "The things you were saying about godly beings, the monkey king, and everything else... I just don’t know how I’m supposed to believe them. They sound so impossible. I know they might be real, but still I can’t come to completely accept everything."
William barely reacted.
"Yeah... it’s alright."
His answer was absent-minded. His thoughts had already drifted somewhere else entirely.
[Funny situation.]
William’s eyebrow twitched. "What’s funny?" he asked in an irritated voice. "Huh? What exactly is so funny, punk?"
[You spent hours telling her everything except the actual truth.]
William let out a bitter laugh.
"Easy for you to say." He folded his arms tightly.
"What exactly am I supposed to tell her? That she’s inside a dream? That everything around her is being shaped by her own subconscious? She’s twelve years old."
He clenched his jaw. "I’ve thought about every possible explanation, Orion. Every single one. None of them work."
His frustration wasn’t truly directed at Seraphine. Deep inside, he already knew that.
The real reason he felt so angry was because he no longer felt in control. That realization slowly settled inside his chest like an unbearable weight.
Recently, his overwhelming strength had allowed him to dictate the flow of every situation around him. Even when circumstances became dangerous, he always possessed enough power to force reality in the direction he wanted.
Now that certainty had disappeared. For the first time in a long time, he felt clueless, not scared but lost.
The feeling disgusted him.
[Sigh... what you’re feeling isn’t something new.]
Orion’s voice had completely lost its teasing tone.
[This isn’t because you lost your powers today. You’re simply experiencing the same feeling you’ve carried since your previous life. As you become stronger, that insecurity of not being in control is buried deeper and deeper beneath your achievements, but it never disappears. It only waits for moments when your strength couldn’t solve the problem in front of you.
William remained silent.
"...Wow."
That was all he managed to say.
[The day you died on Earth, when that demon caught up to you, you lost control of your fate.]
[When Lux broke through your God spell, that same feeling returned.]
[And today, because Seraphine began lucid dreaming and stripped away your abilities inside this dream, you’re experiencing that exact same loss of control all over again.]
[No matter how much you try to suppress it, that dread keeps finding its way back.]
William’s breathing gradually became uneven.
He took several deep breaths, trying to steady himself, but each inhale only seemed to remind him of everything Orion was saying.
"Stop..."
His voice came out much quieter than before.
"Stop it, Orion."
Without another word, William stepped outside the protection of the Trickster’s Veil before walking toward a nearby rock and sitting down beneath the dark, murky sky.
"William!"
Seraphine immediately noticed what he had done.
"There are monsters nearby!"
She hurried after him, intending to cover him with the veil again before something detected his presence.
William gently raised his hand to stop her.
"I just need some time to think, Sera."
His eyes remained fixed on the empty horizon.
"Please... give me a little time alone."
The coldness in his voice made her frown.
She wanted to argue.
She wanted to insist.
But after watching him for several seconds, she quietly nodded before taking a few steps back to give him the space he had asked for.
[This is your chance.]
Orion spoke calmly.
[Don’t let your powers become the foundation of your confidence.]
[Prove to yourself that even if everything is stripped away from you, you still possess the ability to crawl out of any situation through your own will.]
William continued staring upward.
The clouds drifted slowly across the gloomy sky, covering whatever stars might have existed beyond them.
"What do you want me to do?" he asked quietly.
His voice sounded almost aimless.
[I want you to become who you truly are.]
[Not the person you think you are.]
William slowly closed his eyes. A long sigh escaped his lips.
Then, for the first time in a very long while...
He spoke honestly to himself.
My name is William Kaiser Solaris. I am a transmigrator.
In my previous life, I died beneath the claws of demons. They slaughtered my family, reduced my home to ashes, and left behind a hatred that even death could not extinguish. That hatred followed me into this new world.
For a long time, I believed revenge was all I wanted. I was young—arrogant, proud, and convinced that I would become a man worthy of admiration. I dreamed of making my people proud, of standing at the pinnacle through my own strength. My pride was my compass, and my ego was the foundation upon which I built my identity.
Then the demons came. They did not merely kill the people I loved. They killed my anchor, my pride.
In a single night, they shattered every illusion I had ever held. They showed me that I was insignificant—that all my confidence, all my ambition, and all my dreams meant nothing before the universal behemoths I did not even know about ever existed. I thought I understood the world, but I knew nothing.
I wasn’t the supposed hero with a purpose as I told myself for most of my life on earth.
I wasn’t even important. I was nothing more than a speck of dust in an endless universe.
Yet even a speck of dust has something to cling to. Mine was my sense of self and my unwavering belief in myself.
My pride, my ego.
And when those were torn away, I became a lost fragment drifting through an ocean of existence, searching desperately for the person I once believed I was.
Is this truly revenge that drives me, or am I chasing the things I lost that day?
Something I cannot yet name.
Perhaps revenge is only the first step. Perhaps what I truly seek lies beyond that wall, beyond justice, beyond victory itself. There is something waiting at the end of this path, something that even I cannot comprehend.
And if I am ever to reach it, then I must first believe that I can.
The demons stole my family. They stole my pride.
They stole the man I used to be. I will take everything from them in return.
Not because I am consumed by vengeance...
But because I want to make a point that they were wrong, I am not just a speck of dust in the endless ocean of existence. But in truth, I am someone who can shake the whole ocean.
I want to prove my point to the whole cosmos and everything in and beyond this whole sphere that stretches beyond my comprehension. It doesn’t matter how many planets or worlds the demons have swallowed; nothing is supposed to be eternal in this world.
I want myself back; I want to become the one I was. I was proud, egoistic, and confident that I could do anything.
and it is the truth.
I can do what I want; that is the point I want to make. No matter what the truth is, if it’s against my purpose, then I will make it false.
"Let’s go."
"Huh?"
Seraphine spun around in surprise.
She had been carefully watching the distant monsters to make sure none of them wandered too close, so when William suddenly appeared beside her, she nearly jumped in fright.
Before she could ask anything, William gently took hold of her hand and began walking.
Startled, she immediately spread the Trickster’s Veil over both of them again, worried that his presence might expose them.
"W-Where are we going?"
William continued walking without slowing down.
"To see my dead body."
Seraphine blinked several times.
"...Huh?"
She quickly hurried to keep pace with him, her expression becoming increasingly worried.
"William... are you alright?"
She reached out and lightly touched his forehead as though checking for a fever.
"You’re not sick, are you? Ever since I met you, you’ve been acting stranger and stranger."
William looked at her quietly.
Then he smiled faintly.
"No, Seraphine."
His voice remained calm.
"I’m not sick."
He paused for several moments before continuing.
"And... I’m not the William you know."
Comments