Cermin couldn’t believe his eyes at all. He had witnessed many things as a transmigrator, even weird things like vampires with tentacle wings, or people being engaged to Moomin-like creatures at the age of 10….
But this was weird, in a different way.
It looked amazing and sad at the same time, somehow. The stars falling down.
It felt like when something died, but in such a painfully beautiful way. And you know that one day, that thing will find its way back to you…..
And sure enough, new stars dotted the sky. Shining brighter than those before them.
The people cheered, and someone made fireworks from their Mage Focus, explosions of color on the black and white night sky.
He turned to Ronin watching these fireworks with narrowed eyes. Every time there was a new explosion, it becomes reflected in his dark, dark eyes. Painting it with some color.
Cermin found himself singing. A silly tune that he had to sing so much as a child, again and again.
Because he studied at the Little Stars Pre-School for Blessed Children after all. It was basically their anthem.
“Twinkle, twinkle little star…..”
Ronin turned to him. Cermin was singing something beside him while watching the newly born stars, but he couldn’t hear him properly from the loud fireworks and the shouting of the people below them.
Eventually, Cermin sat on the rooftop, breathing the fresh air and smiling. But unlike everyone’s genuinely joyful smiles…..
His was laced with melancholy. Sadness that could only be a form of…..
Missing someone.
Ronin somehow couldn’t read his mind at this moment.
No, that was wrong. He can read it, but Cermin’s mind was moving too fast. Too many blurred images passing by. All of the same person that was too distant….. Too washed away by that melancholy to see.
Ronin found himself sitting beside him, trying to look closer. And closer…
“It’s over.” Cermin turned to him. “That was beautiful, wasn’t it?”
Ronin leaned back. “Yes.”
Even when he didn’t watch it properly and was too focused on trying to keep up with these images in Cermin’s head, this person…
It really was a beautiful sight, both the falling stars, the rebirth, and the fireworks.
“Let’s not go back yet. Please. Let’s stay here for a while.” Cermin pleaded, holding on to Ronin’s arm.
Ronin blinked and was a bit too dazed to take that arm off him. But seeing that reaction, Cermin misinterpreted again, and took his hand off himself.
“Unless of course… You have someone waiting for you. Then you can go back, I’ll just stay here.”
Ronin shook his head. “No one’s waiting for me. I’ll stay.”
Cermin’s lips quirked up to that small smile again.
“What do you think new beginnings mean?”
Ronin furrowed his brows at this random question. But them again, the Astral Ball was a mark of a new beginning, so maybe that’s where the question came from.
“It’s a bit of a paradox. It is the ‘beginning’, and yet it was ‘new’, meaning that it an ‘old’ beginning exists. And yet would it really be a ‘beginning’ in the first place if an old one already existed? It would be just something in the middle until we reach the ‘final end’.”
Cermin nodded. “I never thought about it that way before. Yeah….”
“Final end.” Cermin rubbed his chin. “I wonder what my final end would be.”
‘Definitely not something good, I’ll make sure of that.’ Ronin vowed in his head. ‘I’ll make your end in this world something so painful.’
But then again….. That would not be his final end. He might still go back to the real world after dying in the HTM machine.
And would Ronin really care about that?
Was his hatred for Cermin or Min Cheng stronger than his hatred for the one who caused his death? The one he vowed to look for after earning 1M points?
If it was….. That would just make Min Cheng his temporary enemy.
Someone that he shouldn’t take too personally when it comes to taking revenge too. Like a miniboss instead of a final boss. And yet…..
He was in too deep at wanting his destruction. He was in too deep towards Cermin himself, really. He had been too invested…..
To the point that he was trying so hard to learn more about him, to learn about his past.
Even as a system, he never really have seen much of Cermin recollecting his memories. It was like he had been avoiding thinking about them entirely. There were some glimpses here and there, but they were all unimportant.
Like buying groceries or walking around with pretty girl in a ponytail.
And yet….. Now that they were in Stone Mage, somehow, Cermin’s memories resurfaced more. And these memories felt more important, felt like they matter so much to him…..
Yet at the same time, he was so scared of them.
Ronin could tell. It was just like Duke Taevas suppressing his memories about Muld. They want to bury these things to the grave, and yet they come back like ghosts haunting them anyway.
“What happens after death?” Cermin mumbled to himself. “I’ve always wondered that. Christians say that you either go to heaven, purgatory or hell. Buddhists say that you reincarnate. I have heard teachings on both sides, and yet I don’t know what I prefer more…..”
Ronin does not know what to feel about a dumb, shallow idiot like Cermin suddenly worrying about death and the afterlife. It feels a little out of character from how he knew him back then…..
But at the same time, Cermin had also been changing due to Stone Mage.
At first he thought it was simply because Aurion was a part of him and possessing him from time to time, but that was not just it.
He was growing. Mentally, emotionally… And even something greater than those things.
He was not as immature and shallow as before.
Did he also have a hand at that change? After all, the only difference Stone Mage had from all the other worlds…..
Was that he was the villain, he who was not forced to fit into Cermin’s level of mental capacity.
But Cermin was then again of course, dumb enough to speak out loud about Christianity and Buddhism to ‘someone not from the real world’. He caught on to this, and scratched his head while chuckling.
“Ignore the nonsense I said just now. Just think about that question with me. What do you think happens after death, Ronin?”
“Nothing.”
Cermin blinked. “Huh?”
“There should be nothing. That is the final end. And yet somehow, humanity had stained it with their hopeless desperation for something. And so, things like the Other Side exists, things like the afterlife exists.”
Ronin spoke with a bit of anger. “Humans could not accept death, that was the only reason why life after death exists. But once they do…..”
“The complete nothingness will embrace them, and there would be nothing. No pain, no happiness, no identity, no memories. No soul. No existence.”
He looked at Cermin in the eyes. “They too would become nothing. That would be beautiful, wouldn’t it?”
Cermin was a little taken aback. He found Ronin’s gaze at him while saying those things…
So frightening.
And yet… Just like the falling stars, he could not stop himself from gazing back at it.
It was like an endless abyss that stares back.
“Wouldn’t you find comfort in that? The nothingness will take away all your inhibitions and flaws, all the mistakes you made. Then, you will become part of everyone who had dissolved into nothingness as well.”
“Becoming a piece of the pitch black sky. Not as a star, but the darkness itself.”
Cermin gulped. “That sounds really terrible…”
Ronin laughed. “It is. Terrible. But it also felt like the True End. The End of all Ends. Everything else other than that are fake.”
They went into silence for a while, a little bit of nothingness surrounding them.
And somehow….. Cermin also found himself agreeing. Yes…..
He had come to seek that out. After all, new life meant new suffering. New painful memories.
There will always be sorrow and despair no matter what life you lead.
There will always be….. People like his gege, who will scar him forever. Even when he lives a new life in a new world as someone else entirely new.
New beginnings does feel fake. A mere distraction. A temporary relief.
He was about to say he agreed, when…..
“We should go back. Ignore that, Your Highness.” Ronin said, standing up. “If someone caught us, we might get punished and earn another bad behavior record.”
Cermin blinked, and Ronin’s hand was in front of him, as if urging him to take it and just forget about it.
“O-Ok… Yeah, you’re right.” He took the hand and brushed himself up, wearing a forced smile.
Ronin preferred him this way after all. Still in blissful ignorance.
Cermin just doesn’t suit darkness. He had always been the bright and sunny type, and so if he needed to stay cooped up in that fake hope and happiness…
Let him stay there. Let him stay there until Ronin kills him once and for all and steal his Flame, steal his hope.
Then let him stay happy and carefree once he returned to the real world, maybe even leading a normal life and eventually thinking that all this transmigrating shit was just a dream.
A very long, long dream. A story he’ll tell to his children and grandchildren, until he passes away and came to learn what the afterlife really was.
And Ronin would never wish the fate of being reincarnated as a system to him, not even he who was just his temporary worst enemy.
This 𝓬ontent is taken from fre𝒆webnove(l).𝐜𝐨𝗺