The Twin Soul did not answer.
Even as Ashen called repeatedly, nothing came back. Whether it was the soft approach or a provocative one, only stillness echoed either way. He called the day after, and the day after that. Still nothing. As if he had never existed in the first place.
When another month passed without a reply, Ashen finally gave up on that avenue.
And with that door closed, he was forced to confront the fact that he was genuinely stuck here with no way out.
Acknowledgment brought rage. Potent and all-consuming, the kind that doesn't stop at the edges of reason.
His mana responded immediately, lashing in accordance with its master's state.
tssst— tssstt—
"UGHHAA—!!"
Like a berserker set on destroying whatever had put him here, the mana intertwined with his muscles. They bulged abnormally. His face reddened. His eyes nearly left their sockets.
"HAAAA—!!"
The rock was the closest target and the most hated, so the rock was first. For a moment it almost seemed like he would actually throw it.
That illusion was stomped out immediately as the weight increased to match.
Boom—
However, he didn't seem to register it. He ignored the additional heaviness entirely and let the mana continue its rampage through his body.
.
.
.
The rage only broke when he ran completely dry. The only reason he wasn't crushed to death was that the rock had lightened to match his gutted capacity.
It took another day of suffering before he could think clearly again. And the first thing he did was enter the dreamscape and reach for whoever was available.
But he couldn't sense the dream parasites.
No matter how many attempts he made, the result was the same. The most likely culprit was the circle. It had cut him off entirely… anything outside it simply didn't exist from where he stood.
'No.'
'I have to get out of this.'
'I can't stay here… I'll really go crazy.'
⛧
⛧
⛧
As it turned out, he had underestimated his own resilience.
Another month passed, making it ninety days total under the rock, and he hadn't gone crazy yet.
He had, however, calmed down.
After that bout of impotent rage, he recognized something he hadn't before. Holding at capacity when he was on the verge of passing out and holding at capacity when he was in a relatively stable state were completely different concepts. The gap in suffering was incomparable; the former felt like watching death approach as his body's functions shut down one by one, muscle fiber by fiber, while he was demanded to keep holding with the best he could muster through all of it.
That aside… in that state, the childish signals his mind kept sending multiplied exponentially.
So from then on, he focused on keeping his condition as stable as possible.
And when the fiftieth day arrived, something arguably worse than pain set in… familiarity.
His body began to adapt as Somatic Autonomy optimized it steadily, bit by bit. His nerves dulled. His thoughts grew sluggish, then narrowed and kept narrowing… until they focused on almost nothing else aside from balance and breath.
By the end of the third month, the rock had become the center of his existence. Food, memory, pride, shame… Everything receded behind one thought.
Hold the weight.
Even his hatred toward those who had put him here began to fade.
Hatred, after all, requires energy.
⛧
⛧
⛧
Edward stood at the edge of the blurred boundary and looked at what was inside it.
That was where his latest student stood. Perhaps his last.
The time acceleration currently running inside that circle was beyond his natural capacity. Ashen had been right to suspect as much. Sustaining it, even confined to a space this small with a single person inside, was not something he could do on his own ability alone.
It was only possible because of an equivalent exchange granted to him for his two centuries of mentorship.
Every student he had ever raised, every one that went and became a pillar of humanity, allowing still be standing was because of what he had passed on.
That had accumulated into a single boon. He had received it two hundred years ago, with the deaths of Morikawa and Rowan.
He thought it was some kind of cosmic joke, at first… one that he didn't find funny whatsoever at the time. It had taken him much longer to understand what it was for.
When he finally did, he made a resolution: he would create a student capable of ending humanity's suffering for good. Whatever the trade required, even if the price was his own transcendence.
But for that existence to be, someone first had to suffer far beyond anything reasonable. As he was arranging now.
Edward had never wanted to put Ashen through this. But who had made him the best candidate he had been waiting centuries for?
He had forged the Mischievous Spear while he waited. He had built the rock over decades, pouring into it everything he understood about what a true warrior needed… that alone had taken him decades to finish. And even then, he had not found anyone worthy of spending it on.
There had been many talented and gifted people. There had also been those with iron will and deep conviction. But none of them were enough… at least, not in the way he needed.
They would have become great champions of humanity, certainly, but none of them resonated with his deeper wish. The wish to actually stop the atrocities, and not merely survive them.
There was no one he found to hold the capacity to end it all.
…Until he saw Ashen.
He had only seen the tip of it… his vision had limits, and what lay beneath Ashen's surface was mostly still hidden from him. But what little he had seen had terrified him, even as he recalled it now.
That willpower. Fragile as it was… was also like a spring that showed no bottom. No matter how far down you reached, you would never see its end.
Edward knew immediately.
He was the one.
But a boon to one is sometimes a nightmare to another. And no matter how strong Ashen emerged from this, there was no guarantee he would appreciate the outcome when the process was this brutal.
'I'm sorry, son. I've made you suffer for a dream that is more fantasy than dream.'
'...But I can't help it. I knew from the start; it was either them or us. And if there is someone capable of standing up to that tide, I will make him stand up. No matter what.'
'Even if I have to break him first.'
He had been called the Kingmaker for two centuries. But no one had ever said anything about making kings being a painless process.
It was a thorny road, and there was no return from it.