Now, let us rewind back to when Benjamin and Tensei were in the middle of discussing their identity crisis matters on the beach, before a sea monster interrupted them and everything spiraled out of control into cosmic devastation.
***
"So... what did you want us to discuss here in private that you did not want your won to find out about? You dragged all the way to this remote beach and even created seats, so it must be important."
Tensei sat formally and stiff on the flat boulder, his posture rigid but proper, his golden eyes still warily watching Benjamin as if he expected the other man to do sothing unpredictable at any mont.
"Would you not make it sound like I am cheating on them or sothing?" Benjamin frowned and crossed his legs on his boulder. "You said Diana earlier... You said that you were originally from Diana. You an that third sister planet to Earth and Elyndor, right?"
"Indeed, you are surprisingly well inford about the worlds," Tensei nodded, his expression showing a flicker of respect. "I cannot pinpoint the exact ti of my reincarnation to Elyndor, but I know it was sothing around six thousand years ago, give or take a few centuries."
Benjamin made a mildly surprised face at the ntion of such a high age number, his eyebrows rising and his eyes widening slightly.
"Wow, that... is quite the age number, haha. I did not expect you to be so ancient. But how co you cannot pinpoint the exact year? Elara and the rest of these long-lived beings seem to know the exact ti they were born down."
"Yes, that is because they keep proper written records of it and have archivists whose job is to maintain those records across generations," Tensei explained, his voice calm and asured. "Especially royalty and nobility, or those in positions of power—they keep specific count of the ti they were born so that their age can be verified for legal and ceremonial purposes. That is how I can even roughly rember it was around six thousand years ago I reincarnated here, because Silverøse-sama was still an infant at that ti.
"However, when the age begins to surpass ten thousand years? It just becos a genuine pain to keep exact records of every single year. Sakura-sama knows she was born around twelve thousand years ago, but that is all. If it was exactly twelve thousand and three hundred one years, or twelve thousand and eight years, she cannot tell the difference anymore. The years blur together after a certain point."
The two n talked deep about age and the passage of ti, with how it felt to remain alive for such an extended period, watching the world change around you while you stayed mostly the sa, outliving entire civilizations sotis.
Though, Tensei clarified during their conversation that he was already part of a long-lived race of tribal demihumans back in Diana, with a natural lifespan that stretched centuries rather than normal human lifespan. So the concept of living a long ti was not foreign to him.
Though he is even more long-lived now after his reincarnation and his various upgrades.
Thus, unlike Benjamin who was adjusting to the idea of immortality from a human baseline, Tensei had always known that living long was normal.
"Trust , you shall get used to it eventually," Tensei assured him, his golden eyes softening slightly. "It may be strange for you initially, watching people age and die while you remain utterly unchanged. But fortunately, many of the people surrounding you, the people who you call family and loved ones, are going to be around for similarly long periods of ti. You will not be alone in your longevity. That makes the burden easier to bear, no?"
The discussion soon shifted to the planet of Diana itself, and the mysterious connection that seed to exist between the three worlds of Earth, Elyndor, and Diana.
Tensei explained that he was reincarnated to Elyndor after he died during a monster subjugation mission.
He was trying to subjugate a dangerous monster, that is, not the other way around.
The mission went wrong and he perished, only to wake up in this new world with his mories intact.
Diana has different sides and different regions with different levels of technological advancent, Tensei explained, but in many ways it was closer to Earth in terms of progression.
There were cars, trains, suits, jeans and many of the sa conveniences that Benjamin rembered from his old life.
However, there were also large parts of Diana that refused to join the progression, that rejected modernization and digitalization, but clung to older ways of living.
Those regions remained dieval and removed from the digitalized world, with knights, castles, kings and peasants living as they had for thousands of years.
By the sound of Tensei and the way he described certain technologies — the way he talked about steam-powered machines and clockwork devices with analog systems — Benjamin could make out that the Diana that Tensei had reincarnated from was sothing in a steam age era.
A ti where machines and technology were still a bit archaic and clunky compared to the sleek digital world of modern Earth.
But due to sothing involving the cosmos and the nature of reality, and the way ti flowed differently between worlds, Tensei admitted that it was entirely possible that Diana was still like that now, frozen in its steam age, or it had progressed further into sothing Benjamin would recognize.
There was no way to know without visiting, and visiting was not easy. Nearly impossible.
This entire line of discussion indicated that Elyndor, Earth, and Diana probably had sothing to do with... the original.
If Benjamin ca from Earth and Tensei ca from Diana, then there might be a third person sowhere in Elyndor that shares their similarity.
Either that, or the person who is supposed to be the Elyndor-native equivalent is what will erge as a new being if Benjamin and Tensei ever fully rge together.
It still needed heavy research and many more findings to draw most conclusions about the nature of their connection.
However, Benjamin soon rembered sothing during their conversation.
Sothing that he did not rember to do or ask about when he was with Violette or even Ren.
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