{AN: Made a discord server with the help of my friend, here is the link:
https://discord.gg/ZCX5F5cfKq
Don't worry I will also post the link in the comments session.}
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Seeing the stone wall disappearing I immediately knew something was wrong. The story was probably told one-sided, which means it's from my alternative self's perspective. So the Dragonborn villain shtick is probably exaggerated in some way.
The other part that is definitively bugging me are the Dragon Breaks, those are supposed to be some kind of big deal but they were almost an afterthought in the engraves, my alternate self put them there just as some kind of pretty engraving instead of using it as some kind of warning.
I am not dumb enough to treat those as an afterthought, my past self never described the Dragon Breaks Events or what they caused, and those are supposed to be extremely important world-altering events.
Another thing was how he was able to enter Apocrypha? wasn't it kind of a big deal he couldn't do it before or something like that? That is a pretty aggravating plot hole in there... Wait... Maybe he made a deal with Hermaeus Mora at that time but didn't see fit putting and engraving about it. Definitely suspicious, principally because something like that can easily change the context of the next scenes, principally the other where my alternative self acquired the [Eternal Mangekyo Sharingan]. If he was already in contact with Hermaeus Mora and kept making deals with him over the years, that ending definitely makes way more sense.
Probably one of the reasons why he was so successful in his campaigns too, I know myself and I am definitely not a military genius by a very long shot. And while my alternative self may have more experience than me, I doubt he would become that much of a military genius. So deducing he has been using Hermaeus Mora over the years is plausible. But there are still some holes in this history, and I bet they were left there on purpose.
I just hope this isn't the stealing body cliche. The alternative me could be planning to steal my younger and full fo potential body. Yes, we do have the same body, probably, but if someone with his experiences and wisdom were to take on a younger and not [Sharinganless] body, he would probably be a god in human flesh.
But he also did indeed activate the Brass God, I just don't know if he was able to completely activate it or just partially. My money is simple partially activating, his situation would be way different if he had full activation.
Seeing as this happened id decided to fasten my pace, until now I was going relatively slow to conserve stamina and energy. I know I am in a desert and finding food or water here would be pretty difficult.
Btu better reaches the top soon, my alternative self said he doesn't have much time. And I want to at least look at the bastard in the eye. and yes, I do indeed consider him a completely different person, no matter how you look at it he is a different person.
I started climbing up the cobblestone path a little faster right now, I don't know how much time my alternative self has, but I don't want to lose the opportunity to at least see him once.
I have already gone through 5 of the nine buildings in Mt. Arcana, well I think they are buildings. From afar the only thing I could see were 9 gray blurs in different parts of the mountain.
Soon I was able to reach the sixth building, and to my utter surprise, it was a party hall of sorts. when I looked at the plaque my suspicions were confirmed.
[Party Hall]
A party hall of sorts huh, it is probably completely empty, but a simple investigation won't hurt. I just went through the party hall, abusing my limited 10 meters range the most I could. The good thing is that there weren't that many rooms in the party hall, it was a party hall for fucks sake so it isn't supposed to have that many.
Soon I was already outside of the party hall and going towards the 7th building.
My heavy steps echoed in the cobblestone path and all this running was starting to mess with my breathing already, climbing such a huge mountain on foot was not a good idea, and my modern-day foot accustomed to always have some kind of shoe to protect my feet were now starting to cry for mercy.
Thankfully I have [Ripple]. Breathing deeply I let the positive energy of the sun flood my body and give me energy. Suddenly I felt my body way better, it was like I took a good nap and I am feeling rested and full of energy right now...
I kind of feel stupid right now... Very stupid... I could've easily used [Ripple] to get me out of the abyss of negative emotions... I would work as a spark and simply start me out of that darkness... Yeah, I am definitely stupid... The whole shtick with [Ripple] is its positivity sun energy... *Sigh*, Better continue going on.
Soon enough I exited the party hall and continued through the cobblestone path. In my mind, I couldn't help but wonder how my talk with my alternative self will go. Will he be too crazy to talk? How much time passed since the events described in the wall? How much did I change for everything to happen that way? a lot of questions and almost no answers.
My mind continued swirling with possibilities and plan while I run towards my next destination, of course, I didn't stop cycling the [Black Heaven and Earth Technique] and the [Ripple]. No matter how you look at it doing this can only benefit me in the long run. Imagine how much I would be able to progress in 10 years if I continue always cycling these two techniques like this.
This made me remember, I still need to find a way to combine my [Ripple] and cultivation technique. It will take a lot of time, but I guess I can come up with something. I bet it would be way easier controlling my [Fury] and [Black Origin Threshold] if I had [Ripple] fused with my cultivation technique. But things like that take a lot of time and before coming to Nirn I was always working with time restrictions...
Now that I think about it... It may be extremely ad and depression that I don't have anyone and that life isn't worth living anymore, and that-
*Breath*
[Ripple]
Positive energy surged with more intensity in my body enabling me to get out faster from the negative emotions vortex.*Sigh*, this is getting irritating. I really need to learn to control my emotion better.
Going back. Excluding the negative part because I apparently can't even think about it... there is also a positive side right now. I am literally in a magic middle-ages setting, there is literally nothing here to dictate how I should or shouldn't act. I am literally the freest I've been in my whole life. And that is equal parts exciting and worrisome.
Soon my crazy and chaotic thought process was interrupted by me arriving at the next building in Mt. Arcana. Reaching the stone plaque I read what the 7th building is.
[War Hall]
Probably a place where people discussed war strategies and had meetings with other adversary countries. I don't doubt this place was used multiple times in the past, principally considering my past self was a warmongering conqueror.
The war hall was big, very big. But it only had two floors, and going by some things writing in the stone wall here and there, I guess this war hall wasn't just used for war. I bet this war hall had a more multilayered function.
And as expected there wasn't anything interesting in this shitty hall. And I am inclined to believe that this Mt. Arcana here is fake. Besides being an older version cording to the engravings on the wall, there was literally nothing here that isn't naturally found.
I guess I need to elaborate a bit. It may look all fancy and all, but everything found here is just stones molded to look fancy. Yeah, everything here you could easily found in nature out there, there is barely anything technological here, yeah the sculptures and engravings are fancy. But in the end, those are just simply stones, nothing more, nothing less. So I started drawing some conclusions on my mind, maybe this is really a fake Mt.Arcana? or maybe it was made to look like the Mt.Arcana when it was first completed, way back there when my alternate self was still a fleet commander.
I did nothing to stop my varied thoughts, it's a good form of entertainment while I climb this cobblestone path towards my next destination. The 8th building, or more know as the 8th grey blur I saw in this mountain. It didn't take much time running for me to reach the other building. And looking at the stone plaque it read:
[Guest Quarters]
A guest quarter is it? I am going to simply ignore this shit because I refuse to heck every single apartment of this glorified stone hotel. Yeah, I am getting kinda pissed of only seeing stone nonstop, it was almost like Mt.Arcana was teasing me about it, making me waste time investigating and searching only to be met with stone after stone.
I simply passed through the guest quarter whiteout missing a bit, I am honestly just too anxious to reach the 9th building, or more know as the palace. And I sincerely doubt there is anything here. with more hurried steps I continued running the cobblestone path, getting closer and closer to the supposed palace.
This time my mind didn't wander, it was like the closer I was to the palace the more I could only think about it. It was a strange and alien sensation, but I guess even my subconscious wants to focus on this event right now.
The pala drew closer, or more precisely, the formless grey blur grew closer and closer. This shitty 10-meter range will undoubtedly be the death of me one day, but I can already guess some possible solutions for this.
After some more time running I finally approached the palace, unfortunately, due to my sight 10 meters limit I can't accurately see it, but I can at least describe its entrance. It was of course big,e extremely so, I could barely see a third of the archway entrance, it probably has more than 30 meters of height.
This archway much like the one is aw at the entrance was polished, but I could still see some engraving on it. It has a distinct greek-like visual, the characteristics of greek columns, and what is probably an exotic top, sadly I am unable to see it as it's incredibly high right now.
Passing through the archway I continued on a more fancy cobblestone path until I reached another archway, this one was an almost exact copy of the first one. I simply passed through and continued walking, then came another archway, and another, and another... after the 9th archway, I finally saw the true entrance of the palace.
It was like the archways incredibly tall, two gigantic stone doors guarded the entrance, sadly I couldn't even see more detail because of my sight limit range, it probably looked stunningly beautiful. I could climb these walls using [Ripple] but that-
"Enter."(Alt Jin).
Immediately the giant stone door that decorated the palace disappeared, it was like they have never been there before. Pretty similar to how the wall in the library disappeared. I shrugged and entered the castle.
But the moment I took that step everything changed. I was expecting to see the interior of a beautiful castle full of details and decorations made of stone, or maybe something like a throne room of sorts. But the moment I entered the palace everything changed.
It was rubble, simply rubble everywhere. I could see even with my limited sight the moon shining, which indicates that even the ceiling has fallen a long time ago. I simply continued walking until I saw a blur. Sadly I couldn't discern much from here, but I simply continued walking avoiding rubble and destroyed stones that entered my path. The silence was both deafening and ominous, and the destroyed palace gives a special kind of creepy atmosphere. My bare footsteps echoed through the destroyed palace.
Soon I reached my 10 meters range and was able to see my alternate self.
My first impression is that he looked liek a corpse. Not only was he old, but he was dryed too. His eyes were simply two dark holes with nothing on then clearly showing that he doesn't have the [Sharingan] anymore. The scars on his throat and eyes region were ugly and jagged, it only boosted his corpse-like image. On his body he was using the same armor I saw in the statue, but this armor clearly saw better days, and calling it armor is a very big stretch, it's more akin to a bunch of metal pieces stuck together with nothing but magic.
He didn't sit on a throne or an elevated surface, opting to use a part of the ground that was free of rubble to sit. He honestly looked like a man on his last legs, someone who has overextended his welcome in that land of the living, a true dead man walking. Seeing his condition I couldn't help but point it out:
"Look at what has become of you... A rat in the desert."(Jin).
"It appears that I've risen above."(Alt Jin).
"Why do all of this... You told me your history... Made me climb this mountain... Why? Before you talk about anything I just want to know why."(Jin).
"Well... I just wanted to do it right."(Alt Jin).
"Do it right? I know you fell because of-"(Jin).
"No, you don't. You don't know ANYTHING."(Alt Jin).
At looked at this man's outburst. He isn't the mad dog I was expecting, for me right now, he looks more like a bitter old man with too many regrets.