Chapter 214 213. Who Am I?
?In an office room, a rough-looking, bulky man and a beautiful woman sat next to each other, discussing.
"Haa..... But if we bring Katharine to the guild now, it will be harder for us to work freely. I will definitely care for my daughter, and a bit excessively if she's in front of me, ignoring everything else that actually needs proper care." Ronald Glover sighed and said while trying to convince his wife that bringing their daughter to the guild wouldn't be ideal at this moment.
"I know you care for her, but that's not what I was talking about. We can bring her into the guild building; if she is here, roaming in front of us, we can be unconcerned about her and do our work more efficiently and effectively, as we won't have to be stressed about her well-being." Avery Glover explained for the millionth time that they are only bringing her to the guild building because of the safety it offers, not to make her work in the guild.
"No, but if we do bring her here, she will be forced to work for the guild...." Ronald was about to explain his reasoning but halted when he felt a presence slowly becoming known. Though he thought the presence wasn't that strong, it certainly made them wary because of how it was able to get so close without them even noticing it. And what was more weirder was....
KNOCK, KNOCK
"...." Ronald and Avery frowned when they heard the knocking. They began employing mana in their bodies, getting ready for whatever was about to come, but...
"Excuse me, I am Gang Jiwoo, can I enter the room? I have something important to talk about Katharine." The presence outside the door introduced himself as Gang Jiwoo; he was one of Katharine's friends, which was enough reason to let him in, though the real reason they wanted to let him in was because he said he had something to talk about their daughter. Then they remembered what they were just about to gloss over, which was the fact that his presence couldn't be noticed until he made it known on his own cord; they couldn't lower their guard against someone like that.
"..... come in." Ronald glanced at Avery and replied only when he saw her nod her head. ƒ𝚛𝐞𝚎𝑤𝘦𝚋𝓷o𝚟e𝘭.c𝐨𝙢
CLUNK
"Excuse me." The door opened, and a white-haired and white-masked man walked in. Avery was slightly dazed by the charm the man excluded, but as her brain registered the man's white mask, she flinched, and of course, Ronald wasn't any different. He tried to talk and noticed that he couldn't speak.
"....shhhh..." They saw White Swan place his index finger on his masked mouth before his eyes arched, and though they couldn't see it, they could tell that he had an ominous grin on his face. Taken aback by the absurdity of the situation they were in, Ronald tried to reach the desk in front of him, which could read his stress level and inform everybody in the guild about it, but he felt like he would die if he moved.
They couldn't see or feel any magic power, aura, or anything else that seemed to have bound them, but they could tell that if they moved they would die. In fear, they glanced at the White Swan and noticed his hair gradually turning black. They were surprised to see that black flames started to be lit on the edges of his hair, which was still turning black, but they didn't know if the man himself knew about it and that it was happening according to his will or not.
"I'm extremely sorry..."
*
"I'm extremely sorry, I had to sneak in with this cloak I bought from the player shop." I said in Jiwoo's voice and made some corroboration for unseen circumstances.
SNAP
And with a snap of my fingers, I activated the white parasite's "link" skill to get access to any electronic or mana infused devices in the room.
[Skill: Link activated.]
[Searching for devices near by.]
[Targeted devices found. New links created, connecting....]
[3 new devices linked successfully.]
[Total devices linked are 13.]
ZZWOOMM
'Hmmm....' I stared at the three new windows that popped up in front of me—two cameras and a voice recorder—and thought of deleting the records of me entering the room and...
[Do you wish to 'erase' the database of the selected parts?] [Y/N]
'Mhm.' I hummed inwardly and clicked 'yes' with a nod, and left the audio recorder as it is, but I stopped it from recording things from now on.
CRA-CRACK (4x)
POOT
I concentrated my mana on the cameras, which busted with a weird sound before cutting off the link from all three, somehow, still connected devices.
"Now then, hello, I'm..." I was about to introduce myself, but stopped because of the abrupt question that arose in my head.
'Who am I? Eshwar? The Eye? Max? Eshwar Frost? Or all those other fake names? Slogans?' I ponder hard because, to my knowledge, all of them are dead. Why did an absurd question abruptly pop up in my head? Even I don't know, but I definitely found my thoughts accurate because... 'Eshwar' had died back on the Earth, I destroyed, 'The Eye' had died as soon as I got back my consciousness, 'Max' had died when I was a three-year-old, or when I remembered my past lives, 'Eshwar Frost' is a name I gave myself to remember the dead, and everything else is just fake and meaningless, then who am I?
I didn't know what to think as soon as the realisation hit me, quite hardly to be honest.
Whoa!! Never in all my lives did I ever expect to be asking myself this question; this is quite a crazy dilemma.
What I was doing a few seconds ago and what I am asking myself now have nothing to do with each other, but still, this question... it feels like an unforeseen tribulation.
"I....I am...." I stuttered to find a proper answer, and my head started to hurt because I was going through all of my memories in search of who... I was.
"No, don't release control on mana!" I ordered myself and continued to focus on my memories. I "ordered" myself in order to self-hypnotise into a clearly focused focus on keeping mana in check, but that "order" turned into something else, and I got an extremely large rush of ancient, indescribable information and words that soon started to make sense to me, and I, no, The Eye, who had been in search of the "authority" that would gain him a sense of self if awakened, awakened as "The Order," and the mana I controlled to halt any moments of Ronald Glover and Avery Glover stopped before moving, as if that was how it was supposed to be from the beginning.
The feeling of overwhelming omnipotence, omnipresence, and omniscience that I felt when I was the Eye returned.