Confusion painted the younger Neron's face as he processed this revelation that his senior was bestowing on him.
The fact that his world could have been saved at any time.
"Then why... Why would you choose not to help, Neron? Why go through all these months of searching if you didn't need to?"
Neron's smile widened, a hint of mischief in his gaze. "Because I didn't want to," he replied simply.
Young Neron's confusion turned into frustration and hurt.
What was happening? Why was this happening? Even after months of traveling together, forging a respectful friendship... how could this happen?!
"I trusted you, Neron! I never should have. You betrayed me!"
In response, Neron's expression shifted, his eyes narrowing and his smile turning cold.
He met the young boy's gaze with an intensity that sent a shiver down his spine.
"Don't you already know...?" He stated, his voice icy.
"You should never trust a Neron,"
"S-shut up! I thought I could trust you! You said you would trust me too! Why did you suddenly become like this? After everything we've been through?"
Silence.
"Is it because you've finally gotten the Arcanas? You no longer need me, do you? You... you monster!"
Neron listened to the young boy's words, his expression calm and composed.
He knew he didn't have to address the confusion and hurt that filled the air between them.
'But whatever. Might as well...'
With a sigh, he began to unravel the truth that he had long suspected.
"Neron," He began, his voice tinged with a mixture of both lethargy and coldness.
"From the very beginning, I found it odd that a version of myself, no matter how young or inexperienced, would fail to save his own world and simply mope around about it."
Young Neron's eyes widened in surprise, the realization dawning on him. "What are you saying, Neron? What do you mean?"
Neron leaned back against a rocky outcrop, a wistful smile playing on his lips.
"You see, Nerons across the branches are often enigmatic personalities, tending to be either too selfish or too selfless in their pursuits. If I were to classify myself, I would fall into the selfish category."
Young Neron's brow furrowed in confusion. "Selfish? But why? What do you want?"
Neron's smile softened, and he locked eyes with the young boy.
"I want to be happy," he confessed, his voice filled with a mix of longing and determination. "But true happiness, for me, involves everyone I care about being happy as well."
Young Neron's voice trembled with a hint of frustration as he asked, "But even after all this time we've spent together, why don't you care about me? I've stuck by your side, unlike your friends who abandoned you."
Neron chuckled lightly, his eyes glinting with a hint of mischief.
"Oh, you really are such a fool," he remarked, his voice laced with a sense of amusement. "My friends didn't abandon me. It hasn't even been up three months since I arrived in this world. It just seemed much longer."
Confusion clouded the young boy's face as he struggled to grasp Neron's words.
"What do you mean? It's been almost a year already. They... they never came back for you!"
"Had it really? I already know about the temporal field, Neron. You manipulated time to make it seem like we had spent so long together. Not much time has elapsed since that conversation we had beside the campfire."
"W-what are you saying...?!" The young one's eyes twitched as he took a step back.
"Still going to play dumb, huh? Do you know why I intentionally made it seem like I probably had no assured other means of going home except the Arcanas, despite having complete trust in my friends?"
"I... what...?!"
"It's because I knew you would pull this move."
"W-why would I... do something like that? Why are you accusing me of these things? We've been together for so long, yet—!!!"
Neron's smile widened, his gaze unwavering. "Because I know you've been lying to me this whole time," he declared, his tone firm.
"I intentionally played along, waiting for the moment to reveal the truth."
Young Neron's eyes widened in shock and confusion, his voice barely a whisper. "What... What truth? I don't understand."
Neron's gaze bore into the young boy, his smile unwavering.
"The truth is, my dear Neron, that your world wasn't destroyed by some external force like the Nether or an extraterrestrial threat," he revealed, his voice cutting through the air.
"It was destroyed by you."
The young boy's mouth gaped open, his eyes filled with disbelief. He stammered, trying to find words to defend himself. "No, that... That can't be true! I... I didn't..."
Neron's voice grew cold and calculated.
"Save your lies. The jig is up," he said, his voice dripping with certainty.
"I know everything. There's no point in pretending any further.
The young boy's fa?ade cracked, his shock and confusion slowly melting away.
"I see. So you realized that, huh?"
"Yes. I know these Arcanas aren't the actual thing. You just set up this whole farce if an Arcana hunt because you didn't want to seem too suspicious.
"Haaa... I see." Slowly, a twisted smile began to form on the young boy's face.
"You wanted me to try to use the Arcanas and create [The World] so that you could travel to my world and destroy it... the same way you destroyed this place."
"Pfft! You even knew about that, huh? I guess I really underestimated you."
At this point, the young Neron no longer had the cute and innocent expression one would expect from a kid his age.
Instead, a sinister gaze rested on his face, and his lips twisted to form an amused smile.
"I made you underestimate me, so it's not really your fault. From the very beginning, I knew you were already in possession of the Arcanas, but I pretended not to know anything. You intentionally spread out the search of the Arcanas, making them difficult to find—based on how I told you they were."
Truthfully, Neron's senses could cover the entire universe if he tried.
Finding an Arcana, or pretty much anything substantial, wasn't going to pose a problem to him.
Yet it took months to find all of them.
"You operated on my narrative this whole time. And while you must have desperately wanted me to use the Arcanas so you could find a way to my world, you also thought my friends could come for, granting you yet another access, so you decided to hide your time."
But the moment Neron made it seem uncertain that his friends would even show up, the younger Neron switched up his tactics and decided to use Time Magic to quicken the process of finding the rest of the Arcanas whole probably replacing himself with a duplicate within the time-dilated reality.
"That's pretty much the whole thing, isn't it?"
*
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[A/N]
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