Chapter 309 Volume V - Chapter 27: The Dark Hands
*(A/N: Uh... hi? I'm back, something like that, I guess. This note is going to be really long, so I apologize in advance... but I need to write it.
First of all, I am sorry. I haven't posted a chapter in three months. There are a lot of reasons for that, actually... I've really been through a lot in these three months. And these months have also made me realize a lot of things.
Now... let's put my life aside and talk about Lunerra (that's how I shorten the name of the novel). It's not that I didn't write any chapters for Lunerra in these three months. In fact, I actually wrote quite a few chapters. But most of these chapters are not available now. Because I deleted them, changed them, rewrote them, they turned into something else, and so on. And that's how I realized something (or somethings) about Lunerra.
Even though I really like Lunerra and it's my first novel, it's a novel with a lot of mistakes and inexperience. There are a lot of plot holes, some of the characters and their actions are really simply stupid, there are a lot of things that don't make sense, a lot of imbalances, and so on. And the more I saw these things, the more they annoyed me. So I kept changing the plot and the events of the later volumes of the novel, trying to make it somehow better and logical.
I think the most logical thing would be to rewrite Lunerra from scratch. But... we've come too far. 350 chapters are not too little, and I don't have unlimited time. Of course, I also have a contract with Webnovel... In short, I'm a bit too late to correct any mistakes or inexperience in the earlier parts of Lunerra.
Continuing the note like this might have given the impression that I am going to drop Lunerra. This is not the case. Whatever happens, Lunerra is the first novel I've written. It is quite literally my childhood dream, and it seems that there are as many people who still enjoy reading it as there are those who don't like it. I'm being harassed by quite a few people on Discord about the situation xD.
In short, I'll continue writing Lunerra even though I took a long break. Of course, it won't be as fast as before... Maybe not even 1 chapter a day. 3-5 chapters a week? I guess that's how it will be. I'm not sure.
But it's not just my personal life that has brought such a change to Lunerra. I've solved most of the problems with it. It's just... I have other novels I'm working on. And while I continue writing Lunerra, I want to start another one, mostly for the WSA contest. I'll probably post the first chapter of that soon.
Anyway... I've talked too much. The note was really long. But that's the way it is. Thank you all for waiting for the novel until now. I apologize again for everything.)*
The sky was covered in the darkness of the night. But... there were no stars. The clouds, after all, were everywhere... cutting off the sky from Lunerra. The whole city was covered in white. And soon, it seemed, there would be more of it.
It was cold. I felt really cold under the cover of night. It was natural, of course, since it was the middle of winter.
But... none of that mattered much. What mattered was what I was about to do.
"I can hear you."
The voices in my head suddenly stopped talking. I could only sigh deeply as the sound of passing cars in the distance and the whispery hum of the cold night were the only sounds I could hear.
"I can hear you from the very beginning."
A few more seconds passed as if they were trying to understand what I was saying. They didn't even seem to believe it... but finally, one of them, usually the one who spoke the most, opened his mouth again.
'This is unexpected...'
'Did he hear everything...?'
"I heard, but that's not the important thing... right?"
I had indeed heard things I shouldn't have... but as I said, they were unimportant.
"I'm aware of the deal you made because of your previous failure, and I'm aware that's why you're trying to reach out to other dimensions."
I narrowed my eyes and continued calmly and yet coldly as I looked up at the sky.
"I will help you, I know how to reach another universe, after all. That was your goal all along... But..."
There was a momentary glimmer in the dark sky. It was as if a tiny lamp had flickered on and off.
"In return, you will fulfill a few things I ask of you."
'If you know who we are, what makes you think we will accept this offer?'
He said it in a threatening voice. It was almost as if he had backed me into a corner and was telling me to either submit or die... But the situation was very, very different from that.
It wasn't me who was backed into a corner.
"Why are you starting over for the seventh time, why are you asking me for 'help', if you are that omnipotent? Have the powerful Lords forgotten to swallow their pride when faced with a problem they cannot solve?"
The moment the last word left my mouth, the whole world stopped. All the colors faded, turned gray. Everything became... still. Immediately afterward, the ground beneath my feet began to shake violently as if a violent earthquake was occurring. The sky itself trembled as if it were collapsing.
A tremendous pressure was concentrated on me for a moment. It forced me to kneel, and it succeeded. My weak body was too weak to resist such a thing. But... I didn't need to.
The pain didn't matter. Kneeling didn't matter. Pride didn't matter. Everything else didn't matter except the outcome.
'Do you think we can't try any harder, Vessel of Knowledge?
"Yes, given that every time you try you only make things worse. Your next attempt will also end in failure. And the one after that. And so will the next one. And then... there won't be another 'try'."
I heard another voice in my head, as if trying to say something, but I ignored it and continued.
"Lord of Time, Tempo is not among you? Fate must be here too. Their silence explains much, even now. Will you continue to act like the blind and deaf? You can do it once more, you can do it a second time... But the third time you try to repeat the same thing, there will be no more 'future'."
A sound that seemed to burst my eardrums suddenly echoed throughout the planet, let alone my body. My body trembled so violently that my organs felt as if they had contracted. The metallic taste of blood reached my tongue.
'Silence! How dare you!'
Yet I restrained myself.
"I'm not like the ones before."
I tried not to care about the blood between my lips. I did my best to hold myself against the stupidity of the 'divine' beings in front of me.
"I will not commit suicide, even if it takes days, months, years. There will be no new vessel after me, I will not allow it. Even if you send your apostles to hunt me down... none of them will kill me. On the contrary..."
For a moment, it felt as if the bones in my arms and legs were breaking because of the enormous pressure. The amount of blood that came to my mouth suddenly increased. But I swallowed it all back and left my bones to their fate.
I narrowed my eyes even more. With the thick, red blood running down my neck, I spoke as precisely as I could.
"You know that Xavirs are not immortal. Wasn't it the death of Knowledge that started it all? It's not certain that the same thing can't happen again, and it's also not certain who can do it..."
The next time I blinked, I found a recolored world in front of me, as if nothing had happened a few seconds before. The sky wasn't collapsing, the planet wasn't trembling as if it was going to fall apart.
The sounds of cars, crowds, and the living city... were all I could hear.
However, in the midst of all this 'normality'... another voice echoed in my head, and for a moment I couldn't help feeling as if the whole world had stopped again.
'Run, run as far as you can... fake Xavir.'
For seconds, nothing else happened as if I was hallucinating, as if everything I saw and heard was a lie. Minutes passed, but still nothing happened.
I looked up at the cloud-covered sky as I immersed myself in the cold, white snow.
Is this how the eighth loop will end? Just because of the pride of a few divine beings that they couldn't swallow...? Hah, if I could feel my emotions, I would have laughed at that non-stop for a few minutes.
I closed my eyes, letting the cold seep into my body, and just... thought.
Twenty years... Twenty years from now the ninth loop will begin. I have a minimum of twenty years and a maximum of sixty.
I'll sacrifice the eighth. If they don't change their minds by the ninth... then I'll try to take things into my own hands.
If that also fails... On the tenth, neither they nor I will have a choice. And if we fail once again at that...
No. There is no such thing as failure. There will be no failure.
My whole body ached, my bones felt like they were on the verge of cracking.
I must already have a few of the apostles after me... I have to survive them first. I have to make sure that in the future, there will be no other vessel but me. I have to end this loop with my own hand before it's over.
So... I have to be the villain of this loop.
I knew more or less what I was going to do, I just needed to think more about it, calculate more things, and bring more possibilities into it. But... in the end, it was obvious what I had to do.
That's how the first loop started, at least for me. I thought it wouldn't be too difficult. But... it was also a loop in which dozens of things happened that I could not have predicted.
*******
Darkness...
Why can I never get used to it? Whenever I faint, sleep, or lose consciousness, I find myself in this darkness. Without exception, every time.
Sometimes I forget, that's why I think I've never been here, but no... I'm always here, dragged here every second I'm disconnected from the world.
But why does this still feel strange to me? Why does this feel like a place I shouldn't be? Like... like I don't belong here. Like... I'm not allowed to be here and I'm breaking the rules.
This time, these feelings are much more overwhelming, much more pronounced. Is it because, unlike most times, this time my memories are still with me?
I looked around, I searched everywhere, hoping to see something, but... nothing. What I encountered was literally nothing. I could only... float... in this endless darkness that I was in. That was it.
Memories of Aiden flashed before my eyes. The place where he had to suffer every night to survive... was very similar to this place. And as someone in his body, there was a good chance that I was in that place.
If I'm really there... then I have a few guesses about what will happen in a few minutes.
I took a deep breath and tried to prepare myself, but strangely there was an uneasiness inside me that I couldn't shake. Still... I decided to ignore it and did what I had planned to do.
"Is anyone there...?"
For a moment, nothing happened. The endless darkness remained as it was and nothing changed. However, the next second, what I expected happened.
The infinite darkness suddenly rippled as if it had just realized I was here. Everything that had been still a few seconds before suddenly began to slowly stir. The infinite darkness stretched in a strange way as if it were a living and conscious being rather than nothingness.
For a brief moment, everything was still again. It was such a stillness that it added to my tension that I couldn't help swallowing and reflexively taking a step back. But the moment I took that step back... the darkness suddenly rippled again. This time much more violently than before, even... excitedly.
Dozens, hundreds of hands of pure darkness appeared before my eyes. More human hands than I could count, their palms turned toward me, their fingers seemingly aching to hold onto me. They were slow, unlike the darkness that rippled fiercely. They were more frightening than ever, with fingers that kept moving and moving and movements that grew stranger every second.
Seconds passed. The dark hands kept approaching me, literally from everywhere. There was really nowhere for me to run.
I waited. I just waited patiently. Two meters stood between me and the closest hand, then one meter, then half a meter...
Nothing happened. Aiden didn't appear out of nowhere, nor did that white figure I had seen in his dreams, one of the Lords, appear out of nowhere.
I felt myself sweating, and for a moment the hand that was only a few seconds away from touching my chest, its fingers opening and closing and grabbing me like a madman, seemed bigger and more dangerous than ever. And I... took another step back involuntarily.
Something touched my back. It was perhaps one of the coldest things I had ever touched in my life. The way it kept rubbing against my clothes, against my body, made all my brain cells freeze.
When only the tip of a finger of one of the dark hands touched my back, everything froze again. Silence enveloped my body, I felt the darkness creeping into me, and I looked at the hand just a few centimeters away from my eyes, not moving a millimeter, as if it was truly frozen in place.
All the hands rushed at me at the same time, as if they had been waiting for this specific moment.
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