The sky was dark. There was a light drizzle of rain. These light drizzles accumulated into drops on a leaf and eventually dropped onto the ground, leaving the soil a darker shade.
There was a large house on the side of a hill. There were beautifully trimmed trees at the entrance. Combined with the modern design of the house, a picturesque scene was created.
Outside the house was a well taken care of the garden. A blue robot flew around to oversee the growth of these various plants.
Inside the house, in one of the rooms, Spring-Autumn came to be. A wave of dizziness crashed into his mind. The last memory he could recall was one of him getting washed away by the [River of Time].
"Where am I?"
He was alone in a king-sized bed. The mattress was the perfect level of softness and it felt like he was sleeping on clouds.
He lifted his body off the bed and took the time to make note of his surroundings. At the side of the bed was a small holographic clock. He could feel mana running through the clock to power it. It was a foreign technology. The clock showed it was noon through its blue holographic text. Spring-Autumn noticed that his [Attribute Cloak] was not with him.
"Am I in the future?"
Spring-Autumn thought of a possibility. He got out of his bead and opened the curtains. He could see the light drizzles of rain outside and the fresh evergreen outside.
At this moment, there was a knocking sound on the door.
"My dearest brother-in-law. It's time to rise and shine," A voice rang out from outside. It did not sound like it was coming from a young person.
Spring-Autumn scratched his head. Without thinking too much, he opened the door.
A face that he could not recognize was behind the door. He looked to be in his late twenties with black hair and a pair of shining green eyes that had an uncanny resemblance to Spring-Autumn. He had a well-defined jaw-line and high cheekbones that gave him a very dashing look. A white linen shirt covered his muscular body.
"Eh?" A voice of surprise leaked out. "Did you get a facelift, brother? You look so much younger!"
"...Who the fuck are you?" Spring-Autumn asked after listening to the man who appeared to be familiar with him.
The man scratched his head. A blue window hovered above his head. [Sage of Azure]. "Hmm, this is awkward,"
---
"So that's how it is," The man finished explaining.
The year was 2XXX. It was a little over a hundred years after the apocalypse. Humans had taken control of the world once again. They were living on an artificial island named [Quint], created by the joint effort of several heroes.
"You still haven't answered my original question,"
"Well, you'll remember when your amnesia wears off," The man was hesitant in answering the question of his identity. Spring-Autumn could tell that there were things the man wanted to hide.
As for the reason why the man explained everything to Spring-Autumn, the answer was ability rejection. He was told that when his ability rejected, he would have bouts of age acceleration or reversals but this was the first time that amnesia followed. From the way the [Sage of Azure] explained everything to him, it was obvious that the man was familiar with him.
However, Spring-Autumn knew that it was not from ability rejection. Rather, he had ended up in the future after getting washed away by the [River of Time].
"It's truly strange. Even your title is different," The [Sage of Azure] pointed out.
"Oh? What was it before?" Now that Spring-Autumn had confirmed that he had taken the place of his future self, he wanted to find out more about himself.
"It was [Lord Elusive Season]. Now it's [The First Awakened]. I didn't know you had this title before!" The [Sage of Azure] said.
"Can you tell me more about myself?"
"That sounds strange coming from you. Let's see…"
The two were walking through the garden of the house. Spring-Autumn had his hands in his pocket as he observed his surroundings. The rain had stopped but droplets of water lingered onto the vegetables in the garden.
"First off, we're living together because we're family," The [Sage of Azure] said vaguely.
"You called me 'brother-in-law' so who's your sister?" Spring-Autumn asked a question that was troubling him.
"Let's not talk about that,"
"..."
"You wrote several books detailing the events before the establishment of [Quint],"
"You make it sound like this [Quint] is an important landmark,"
"It is. Before [Quint], there was barely any order in the world. Monsters would constantly rampage through cities and people would die every day. It was a tragic period,
"After [Quint] was established, the remainder of humanity was quickly united and reformed. Order was re-established leading us to the current state we are in right now. I skipped a lot of important stuff but that's the gist of it,"
"I see. So where are these books that I wrote?" Spring-Autumn nodded and asked.
If he could get these books detailing what would happen in the future, he would be several steps ahead when he went back to the past!
"I'll let you take a look when we return. Let's go visit the main part of [Quint] first so maybe you can remember things,"
They exited the main estate. There was a small paved out road in front. A small car was hovering through the use of mana on the road.
The [Sage of Azure] boarded the hovering car while Spring-Autumn observed the thing outside. Who made this ugly thing?
He boarded the other side of the car.
"Where's the wheel?" Spring-Autumn asked when he went inside.
"What wheel?" The [Sage of Azure] asked back in a confused manner.
"How do you control this thing then?"
"With your mind, obviously."
"Oh…"
The [Sage of Azure] injected his mana into the car and they went off into the distance. Spring-Autumn suddenly felt really old looking at these mana-powered technologies.