"You are not John Falken."
Rui's eyes widened with horror.
"You were never John Falken."
His expression flared with despair.
"You are just soone who was brainwashed and hypnotized to believe that you are John Falken."
He gritted his teeth as he clenched his fists.
"Who are you?"
"NO!" Rui bellowed as he ran away from the mory with an expression of grave severity. "This is just a dream. Just a nightmare. None of this is real. I just need to wake up and I'm sure that my mother will be there."
"Your mother is dead."
"No, she's not." Rui gritted his teeth. "She never died. She's still alive! She's still—"
He choked with emotions he didn't understand.
An extraordinarily deep grief gripped his heart.
The grief of losing a loved one.
The grief of losing a mother.
His breathing grew strained as despair and misery plagued his heart.
"I wonder how she would have felt if she had known that you were just a sick, deluded monster that lied to her your entire life." Tokugawa Ieyasu's taunts reached his ears.
Each word wounded him. "Not real. It can't be real!" A whisper of horror escaped him. "I am… I am—"
"Who are you?" The Divine Doctor's gleeful question reached him once more. He shook where he stood as a cascade of mories flooded him from the depths of the Mind Palace.
"No… It can't be. How can it be?"
"Your biological mother broke you." He heard his own voice speak to him. "Do you recall what your own na ans in the Silas Dialect?"
His eyes widened with alarm. "…Reincarnated."
"Except you aren't… Which ans she was involved in the process of brainwashing and hypnotizing John Falken's mories into you."
His breathing grew labored as his heart beat faster and faster. "No… It can't be. This… is a nightmare. Nothing more… nothing less. I just need to wake up."
And yet, his Mind Palace opened up once more as a flood of mories overwheld him. Whisper after whisper.
Visions after visions.
mory after mory.
Over and over.
An eternity of horror.
"Who are you?" The Divine Doctor's voice was cruel.
"She died surrounded by the people she loved," Alice told him with a smile amidst her tears.
"Your mother turned you into a monster," Tokugawa Ieyasu whispered to him. "NO!!!"
The weight of his emotions crushed his heart.
"She was a monster, just like you."
"Shut up…!"
"Like mother, like son."
"SHUT UP." He struggled to breathe as grief, horror, and pain choked him violently, suffocating him until he accepted the truth.
The truth that he had suppressed.
"I hope my love reaches you long after." He could hear his mother's whisper reaching him from within his heart. "I hope it reaches you long after I pass."
The one and only mory that evoked warmth in the depths of his heart rather than pain, grief, and horror.
The one and only person who gave him refuge.
His mother.
A mory he could seek refuge in. What followed happened with pure instinct.
In that mont, Rui's mind surged with power as he activated his Martial Heart and Mind. The VOID algorithm blazed into action as he spontaneously began developing a predictive model instantly.
One of the most powerful and largest predictive models he had ever developed in his life. A predictive model, not of a Martial Art.
But the one person he loved the most in the entire world. His mother.
A lifeti of rich mories erupted from the depths of his mind as he funneled them into the pattern recognition system of the VOID algorithm. From the day she had adopted him from the hospital after his biological mother passed away to the countless mories that he held of her in the Quarrier Orphanage.
The way she had fed him as an infant.
The way she had played with him.
The way she had spoken to him.
The way she had smiled at him.
His eyes grew blood-red as he activated the gamind technique, heightening his cognition to unprecedented levels of power.
His eyes fixed on the rapidly developing predictive model with love and horror.
With love for his very own mother.
And raw, unadulterated horror at what he had just done. "…Mother?" A faint whisper escaped him as he gazed at the simulation of his own mother.
The predictive model opened her eyes slowly.
Her gaze fell upon Rui.
Yet, in her eyes he only saw horror where he hoped to see love.
"Rui…" A whisper of fear escaped her as her eyes widened with terror. "…What have you done?"
"I… I just…" "Rui…" Her hands cupped his face with horrified concern. "What… have you done?"
Her voice, her mannerisms, her body language… all of it was identical to the person that he knew and loved as his mother.
And yet…
"Rui…" She gazed at him with an aching expression. "You know the truth."
Tears fell out of his eyes.
"I don't want this truth."
Her expression grew lancholic. "You mustn't live in a world of lies."
"…I don't want to live in a world without you."
A smile of love erged on her face. "You won't have to."
He stirred at her words.
"I told you…" She pulled him in a gentle, warm embrace. "I hope my love reaches you forever. No matter when. No matter where. I will love you always…"
His breathing cald down as he felt her love suffusing his mind like a soothing balm.
"Besides, have you forgotten…?" Her words coaxed his mind as a confident smile appeared on her face. "Project Water awaits you."
His mind shook as though struck by a teorite.
Suddenly, the fog saturating his mind disappeared as an endless, powerful Martial Drive blazed in his eyes. The entirety of his mind burned with ambition.
An ambition that blazed across two lifetis.
An ambition that blazed across two souls.
He couldn't fulfill Project Water as long as he was trapped in his own mind.
He couldn't master Adaptive Evolution if he was trapped in his mind.
He couldn't fulfill his life's greatest mission if he was trapped in his mind.
And thus, he accepted the truth.
He accepted the horrors that fate haf thrust upon.
He accepted the twisted past that defined who he was.
"I'm sorry you had to see at my weakest." His tone grew powerful. "And..."
His clear eyes fixed on hers. "…Thank you for everything."
A smile of boundless love appeared on her face as she faded away forever.
"My precious baby."
His eyes opened as he found himself suspended in the middle of a glass chamber amidst a pool of glowing liquid.
Yet, he didn't see what was before him.
No.
His eyes were fixed on the gates to the Sage Realm.
Previously, they were so far away that he couldn't see them.
Now, however, his eyes were just barely able to distinguish them.
Simultaneously, hundreds of thousands of kiloters away in the Britannian Empire the world mourned as the weight of forty-two Martial Sages shook all of heaven and earth. Every single Sage that the East Panamic Treaty Alliance was able to squeeze out.
RUMBLE
Pri Minister Edward's cold, murderous expression swept across all of them as he issued a single command. "Destroy the Kandrian Empire."
Boundless malice erupted from the depths of his eyes.
"Destroy everything that Rael Di Kandria has ever built."
RUMBLE!!!
The world shook as the conclusion of the third Great East Panamic War converged into a singularity.
A singularity that would define all of human civilization till the end of ti. -
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