When Frederick returned to his guild, he saw many people waiting for him. They wanted answers. They knew that they obtained some memories of the bodies they were using, but that only raised more questions. It didn't look like the memories were affecting their judgment. Still, they were having a hard time understanding the feelings and thoughts that they obtained alongside the memories. Although their innate skills leveled up, they didn't feel like celebrating.
Regardless, it didn't take long for Frederick to find Louise's group. They were near the place they usually camp, not to mention Luke and the hooded girl were with them. Like they were preventing them from going anywhere, things got complicated there as well...
"... He wasn't there?" Luke asked.
"He was… But he noticed our approach," Frederick replied. "You should go know and try to find him as well. Don't engage in combat if you find him."
"... All right," Luke said.
Although Jake didn't notice it because the faces of his officers were almost completely hidden thanks to the helmets they were using, Luke was one of them. He was also one of the guys who tried to ambush him with the guild masters.
"... You went to check Jake…" Louise said without hiding her suspicion. "Why? I thought that you were worried about him, and that is why you helped us."
"I was, and I am… That is why I went to talk with him and judge myself how the awakening affected him," Frederick said.
"With all the other guild masters while ready to fight?" Louise raised her voice.
"Calm down, Louise… Things are weird now, so it is understandable if…" Lana said.
"If we make mistakes… Which I did," Frederick said after a long sigh. "Those memories still are fresh on my mind, so I jumped to the gun without thinking. The others did the same since it seemed that the owners of these bodies had a bad history. With the man called King Judas… We don't know all the details yet. Still, King Judas was someone who tried to reunite the whole human race under his banner when his planet was being attacked by monsters coming out from dungeons. However, his methods were too brutal and caused many deaths."
"Jake can be brutal, but he isn't needlessly violent, and when he is, he has a good reason to be," Lana said.
"Perhaps he had, but we are talking about King Judas… He might have one reason, but his wishes couldn't outweigh of the majority," Frederick said. "When he got tired of being ignored because his ideas were too brutal, he took matters into his own hands and defeated many humans and absorbed many camps. Ultimately, he defeated a lot of enemies thanks to that, but humans as species had to pay for that."
"I can tell that you aren't telling everything…" Julian said.
"That is because the memories aren't complete," Frederick said. "We can assume, based on the conversations that we had, that the guild masters obtained some results at first, but our methods stopped working after a while, and that is what made Judas do what he did. You guys can understand that, right? Even if we don't get the desired results, we can't just become like our enemies to reach them. We need to retain our humanity while we survive. Otherwise, we might as well become monsters if we lose our principles."
They knew that Frederick was right… The human species reached that far after evolving in many fields, but they couldn't sacrifice that much to obtain something to survive. In a sense, they would be a lot more...
"Until things become more clear, you all should stay in the base and process your own thoughts," Frederick said. "I will talk with you again once I have more details."
Frederick left the area with the hooded girl, and the others didn't know what to do. They had some weird dreams… Some parallel Earth that was identical to theirs was invaded by monsters, and they suffered a lot just by trying to survive. They saw many people dying, including friends and family. It seemed like a pretty standard nightmare that the other guild members also experienced.
"About your dreams… Did the people three act the same way as the people you knew?" Karina asked.
"Yes… I couldn't pinpoint a single thing that they did that seemed different from the people I knew," Julian replied. "Somehow, my friends and I survived the first day of the invasion, even when dragons appeared and suddenly melted whole buildings. Fucking dragons… I get goosebumps just by thinking about it."
The others also saw their cities being attacked by dragons, they only survived by some massive strokes of luck. The terror of seeing their world being destroyed, the anxiety of knowing that things wouldn't be the same as before. Wondering how long they would survive like that…
They were worried about Jake and the past of his body, but their fears prevented them from thinking straight and doing anything. They knew that they wouldn't forget those dreams anytime soon, and trying to fight while thinking about those was beyond dangerous.
"We won't be able to do much in this state, and we are tired from the work of last week, so we will have to rest and try to get rid of those worried before anything," Lana said. "I was planning to return home and rest a bit, but Luke is too busy, and returning will only make me worried…"
"I don't think that our world will be attacked like that…" Louise said.
"You may be right, but I can't find any other explanation as to why we are here," Lana said. "Maybe someone gave us the opportunity to gain the power to prevent the destruction from happening."
Everyone wanted to negate that, but they couldn't just do so that easily. Their minds and hearts were full of doubt… In that situation, they wondered how Jake could keep going so fast…
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