OLD-WORLD EXTRA

One Day Later...

"There is only one lesson you can learn from history, and that is the guarantee that humans do not learn any lessons from history. We will always repeat the same tragedies; we will never stop the infighting, no matter how much the next generation suffers..."

Emir stood in front of the students, his words echoing in the open room.

This class wasn't the usual one he taught in; it was a lecture hall with no less than ten rows of seats surrounding the podium.

All those seats were taken, which wasn't a surprise.

Though his classes usually housed around a hundred to a hundred and ten students, this classroom allowed for more, so he accepted those who wanted to at least listen to one of his classes.

Unfortunately for them, it was a history lesson, and as second-year students, they expected that they had already learned it.

But those thoughts didn't cloud their minds for long, as Emir's words easily hooked them.

"To be human is to fight, to inflict pain... To be human is to involve yourself in conflict-in war, no matter what kind. Peace is never an option. It's a dream and it will forever remain as such."

He chuckled, his eyes showing familiarity, seemingly remembering something.

"We might make poetry about it, sprinkle some deep-meaning words, and call it a day... But nothing ever ends poetically. It ends and we turn it into poetry. All that blood was never once beautiful. It was just red, although some of us might say otherwise..."

The holoscreen next to him materialized a hologram that showed a long wall of text below a golden eye outlined in black.

"Take the CCA for example; it's made up of many orders. The first order, the second order, and so on, but even still, loopholes are strategically placed for their own benefit, ones that only they and a few geniuses would notice."

Emir threw shade on the Order, hinting at the start of his attempt at dismantling the propaganda present in the Academy.

But he stopped himself there, aware of the severe consequences of pushing further.

"Now... though I say all of that, it doesn't mean we shouldn't learn about history."

The hologram flickered, and a common term was shown.

{Missing History.}

"This term refers to the hidden truths within our historical books... And it's not only truths but hidden years as well."

Those smart of the students immediately picked up on what he was saying.

The Archive housed hundreds of history 'books,' but there were significant gaps of nothingness between most of them.

It was as if the knowledge and time between each historical record had been erased from existence.

Everyone who knew of it deemed it as strange but almost no one bothered about it.

Why would they? After all, it didn't affect their current lives.

Not many were interested in their history in the first place... and the reason for that was simple.

When knowledge became as common as pebbles on the road, it got treated as just that: pebbles.

But the Elites were better than that, as anyone must attest.

The position they reached today wasn't solely due to luck.

They had retrieved all they could of that history and filled the gaps with their own 'interpretation' of events.

Naturally, that interpretation leaned in their favor, but no one bothered to challenge it.

Bread and circuses-a time-tested method of control.

By entertaining the masses and censoring information, they ensured people wouldn't question anything.

It was a never-ending pattern that began at the dawn of civilization, perfected by the Romans, and continued by those in power-a recipe followed by every empire.

This applied primarily to the D-Class citizens and above; those below the middle class were too busy surviving to even think about such things, so Emir excused them.

Who he didn't excuse were the students in front of him.

Most of them learned history only through the occasional class from their professors, the second years included.

"There's no doubt that most of you know of the term Cold War..."

He paused momentarily, seeing most of them nod.

Those who didn't were either too ignorant or too knowledgeable.

The latter didn't nod for an obvious reason.

They held the opinion that calling it a 'cold' war did it a disservice, for it was certainly 'hot.'

Coups, revolutions, terrorism, massacres, assassinations, war crimes, genocide, crimes against humanity-the list went on.

Armageddon was close, extremely close.

Those before the old world narrowly escaped nuclear holocaust by a hair's width.

It was a combination of skill, luck, and most definitely divine intervention by Players outside

Earth.

"But what do you really know of the second one? The only Cold War that took off."

Sofia, unsurprisingly, was the first to raise her hand. Elijah was the second, followed by a few other Elites and a small group of second years.

Emir scanned the room and then picked one of the second-year students, showing his fairness.

"T-Thank you, Sir... Alright, so, uh, from what I know, during our missing history-the time just before Armageddon―the world hated the United States with a passion. And it was for a simple reason: their mouths spewed words of peace while their fists were shoved down the world's throat, choking some slowly and outright killing millions of others. They, the ones the entire world claimed were evil and incompetent, kept on winning. It was natural considering they were in control of our technological singularity while also being the first to implement teleporters on a global scale. Yet eventually, their unsustainable growth caught up to them. Like every empire before them, their chase after profit and power caused them to succumb to the weight of their own contradictions. The world fell alongside them, changing everything as we know it."

With the student's long answer over, Emir slowly nodded and said:

"Too vague, but yes, correct. Ten AUC for you."

Bowing his head, the second-year student almost roared his gratitude:

"Thank you, sir!"

Ignoring him, Emir sent Lyra a telepathic message:

[Send ten creds to that guy.]

[...Sure.]

At her reply, he turned to the holoscreen, flicked his arm, and the hologram increased in size.

"They spent tens of trillions and killed millions, only to cement themselves as an empire destined to ruin."

Once it reached the classroom's ceiling, it flickered, revealing two pixelated flags, as if

intentionally obscured.

One was white and blue; the other was black, green, and red.

"These two flags belonged to what we used to call countries, as you must know... And they

were at war."

Another set of flags materialized below; this time one was white, blue, and red, while the

other was blue and yellow.

"Those countries were at war as well."

The third set of flags materialized, followed by the fourth, fifth, and sixth, until the entire hologram was filled with flags, reaching all the way to the bottom.

Some were recognizable and clearly displayed with names beside them, but many others were pixelated, suspected to have come from the East-specifically Asia, many parts of Africa, and

a few countries in the Middle East.

Those countries and many other erased ones had experienced a communist resurgence... or so

the world was led to believe.

In reality, the West used this as a propaganda tool. Only China and some of its close allies genuinely fell under that label.

The West targeted nations like Vietnam, Guatemala, South Korea, Haiti, and especially Indonesia, feeding misinformation to suit their interests.

Mass graves became common in these areas, and the concept of a "free strike zone" emerged, where civilians were considered as much of an enemy as the military-even infants were not

spared.

Meanwhile, India and Pakistan were embroiled in conflict, and Afghanistan descended into internal strife, exacerbated by covert interventions from the USA.

Sudan was the same, with the only difference being that the UAE and KSA were heavily

involved. Argentina faced a coup, as did many African countries, while Saudi Arabia, not busy enough with Sudan, attempted to challenge Iran with the help of its Gulf buddies, all supported by the USA, their men trained by them.

However, they stood no chance, and when rumors of the deployment of nuclear weapons surfaced, they quickly retreated, focusing on smaller-scale skirmishes in Yemen, Sudan, and

other erased countries.

This wasn't the whole story-there was more to uncover.

However, Emir's knowledge was limited by what was available in Lyra's database.

Using the Archive In Between, he could only verify the accuracy of this information. The rest, not so much, for it was undoubtedly fabricated.

"All of them were at war... Who was responsible? They themselves. But ultimately? The

United States. China and Arabia were no slack, but when it came to impact, the US outmatched

them by a wide margin. Either way, these proxy wars were for their benefit, no matter how little. And guess what? All of this is considered missing history."

Students nodded in surprise at his words, even Sofia. They had all heard of small wars before Armageddon, but they hadn't realized there had been so many.

"Old Worldeners were jaded by this. At their time, there was a world-ending disaster every

other day, so it was natural that most of the wars became mere trends-badges they wore for

a while, throwing them away when the next best thing came along. It got so bad they could eat breakfast supporting one country and switch to another by dinner, casually forgetting their earlier stance within hours. Their hypocrisy was astounding: one side was indifferent, while the other only pretended to act if they were guaranteed safety."

Suddenly, two flags were highlighted and brought to the center. The first of the list that he

showed.

"This one is a great example of that. To be real with you all, this wasn't really a war-it was a massacre, a genocide, an apartheid. Whatever you choose to call it, it was a tragedy-a stain on humanity's existence-that it ever happened. And they weren't the first. It was just the

beginning, an appetizer."