'But more embarrassing things are coming my way,' thought Shane dismayed.
Then he heard himself saying, "Why are you all afraid?"
"Are you not?" asked Frank.
"I am, but that doesn't mean I can't talk. It's therapy for me." The past Shane shrugged.
Hope couldn't hold it anymore: "HAHAHAHA! Look at how much you're trying to act cool! As if you can lure the girls. How funny!"
Vins popped on Shane's forehead. He took a deep breath and continued to watch the entire scene unfolding in front of his eyes with a complicated emotion in his heart. He shook his head.
Back then, he really did think he was acting cool, but looking at himself from a distance, he looked like a clown begging for attention. He really disappointed himself this time.
The scene changed while he was still thinking, and the familiar robotic voice echoed in the background.
[Now then, we wish you the best of luck. Try not to die.]
"Can't they make things clear?!"
"I want to go home!"
"I think we are supposed to survive. Didn't you hear the last sentence that that voice spoke?"
Frank finally asked, turning toward Shane, "Are you not afraid?"
"What's the point of being afraid? You could have entered that reincarnation door. We have all already died in the most embarrassing way possible. What could be worse than that?" replied the past Shane.
Shane couldn't continue watching this mess.
"Can we fast-forward this?" he asked, quickly turning to Hope. "It's embarrassing to watch myself act cool and haughty like this."
"No, no. This is fun! Let me record all of your embarrassing events!"
For a while, the voice explained the rules, and the people there talked about the live stream before the main situation of this scene arrived: the monsters!
After a moment, everyone seemed to have woken up from the roars of the monsters and someone said, pointing finger at the past Shane's direction: "You f*cker! This is all your fault! Why did you tell us to enter that door?!"
"Yes! It's this man who spoke such motivating words! Now, look what happened!"
Shane rubbed the bridge of his nose. "I'm fast-forwarding this scene."
He wanted to do this because he didn't want Hope to see how he had ended up puking his guts out after finishing the scenario. It was way too embarrassing to let a girl watch his weakest moment.
He quickly opened the time attribute tab that had been saved into his system by Hope and started turning the time forward a bit. Now, it almost looked like the scene was really fast-forwarded. Everything happened in the blink of an eye, and Shane only stopped when his past self had already entered the gates of the institute.
He released a breath and sighed.
"Now it's time to meet my sister," Shane grumbled.
Even though he would be seeing her, he probably had no way of saving her. Heck, he didn't even feel any intention in his heart to save his sister anymore.
By this time, the two people had collided, falling pitifully to the ground. The girl just now asked her brother:
"Brother, what the f*ck! Did you end up dying too?!"
Shane has previously been shocked to the point of being unable to speak. He finally gathered and exclaimed: "What the heck happened?!"
"Well, we went on a long trip in the mountains. Had an accident," Tess explained.
"Who else died?"
Shane didn't want to listen to this nonsense anymore. He shut himself out and said to Hope. "This is getting boring. What do you exactly want me to do now?"
Hope grinned. "Then let's go and see Max. we haven't seen him for a while. I want to scare him a bit."
"Can't we kill him with my level?" Shane raised his chin arrogantly.
From what he could see, his stats showed a series of question marks, which could only mean one thing. His powers were so high that the system menu couldn't determine his level. Was it necessary to do this when he could finish it with just a flick?
Hope disagreed. She shook her head and said, "This has already happened in the past. Don't you remember? Okay, then we can do one thing. We can leave everything up to the original Jake and fast-forward as before. What do you think?"
Shane scoffed. "You should have said so. I was getting bored of this anyway."
So Hope retook control of the body and wrote something on a piece of paper, detailing all the future events and what Jake has to do. If Jake doesn't, she threatens to kill his body once she enters the future, which she almost certainly will.
After half an hour, they were finally done with the job, as Hope said with a pleased expression on her face. "Let's go."
They successfully fast-forwarded the time. Now that Shane thought about it, it really was Jake who had dealt with himself. So he didn't annoy himself in any way.
When he thought about it, he felt it was funny now that he had returned to that memory.
When the flow of time finally stopped, Shane found himself standing in front of the window, staring at himself from the outside in the dead of night.
He suddenly felt a chill go down his spine.
Wasn't this the last time he spent the night in that room? After that, he couldn't go back to his apartment anymore. Now that he looked at that place, he indeed felt a little nostalgic in his heart.
He sighed and muttered, "I can't go back to being a naive Shane anymore."
pA n,dan0ve1.c0m He recovered soon after this and said to Hope, "Let's go and meet this Max now. We should discuss something with the man."
Hope also agreed with him, and the two of them quickly went to the palace wearing two layers of the cloak. At this time, Max was pacing back and forth in his room as that same old man was trying his best to calm the man's anxious mood. At this time, Hope said, "Let's see whether this person has grown stronger or not. If possible, kill him now."
Shane was surprised. "Why? Didn't you say that you didn't want me to meddle in the past anymore? Why did you want to kill me now?"
Hope reminded him kindly. "Don't you remember that everything that should have happened has already happened? Ed's and Dirt's bodies are already missing. The past Hope took care of it under my command, and now, we must finish everything we had started. We have already reached this place. Don't tell me you regret taking up this job."
"It's nothing like that," replied Shane in a complicated tone. "Tell me, would someone have taken this job if not for us?"
Hope was silent for a moment before she nodded. "That's right. This world had to be destroyed whether it was us or someone else."
Shane didn't understand one thing, though: "Why would you ask the past Hope to steal the master's body?"
Hope chuckled. "Shhhh. It's a secret!"
Shane shook his head and removed the cloaks from his body, revealing himself. The System God and the old man both jumped up and down after seeing a stranger suddenly appear in the middle of the room. The old man recovered faster as he yelled, "Guards! Come forward and get him!"
Shane scoffed and said, "In your dreams!"
After saying that, he quickly pulled out his sword, the Kinslayer, and started attacking the System God without any hesitation.
Seeing that a familiar man had started to attack himself, Max cursed under his breath and pulled out his own weapon. "I knew there was something wrong with you! You weren't giving off good vibes!"
Shane sneered. Of course, he would give off dark vibes. He had a thousand-year memory and had already killed many people with his hands. Massacring the entire sect wasn't a joke. Of course, his aura would turn into something darker and crueler.
But Shane had no intention of going to reply to the man anymore. He simply kept attacking the man again and again.
As he started fighting, Max's expression changed. In the past, when Max was still learning and young, aside from Hope, he had also exchanged blows with Shane many times. So he had figured that the girl knew two kinds of fighting methods because Shane and Hope fought in completely different manners.
Now that he was faced with a similar attack pattern, he was stunned and shocked to the point of missing an attack. The sword attacked him as he was thrown back. His back hit the wall and broke the bricks, falling back into the throne room in a very embarrassing state.
Ever since he had turned into the system god, he had started taking care of his so-called image in front of everyone. He would look good despite his moral conduct. But now, his entire face was covered with dirt and blood, making him look pitiful.
He stared at the man coming out from the inside and trembled from head to toe, saying, "It's you...."
<quillbot-extension-portal></quillbot-extension-portal>
Read latest chapters at f(r)eewebnov𝒆l Only